A TROOPER IN THE ‘TINS’ Autobiography of a Lifeguardsman

The author of this unusual Great War memoir, R. A. Lloyd, was an Irish-born working-class man with ambitions – later fulfilled – to become a teacher. He enlisted in the 1st Battalion, the Life Guards in 1911 and by the time the Great War broke out was a Corporal of Horse. The memoir has great value as a portrait of the class conscious life in one of the British Army’s traditionally elite cavalry regiments. There are scenes – familiar to anyone who has seen the hit play ‘War Horse’ – of a Life Guard’s life both in barracks at Knightsbridge, London and behind the trench lines of the Western front. The author witnesses the aftermath of the first gas attack near Ypres in 1915 and many other scenes – both sparklingly funny and sombrely sad – of the war. A fascinating period piece.