LONDON MEN IN PALESTINE AND HOW THEY MARCHED TO JERUSALEM

The subtitle describes the scope of this book which has been written in the style of a novel based on the author’s experiences – at least that’s how it seems to me. The characters in it are fictitious, certainly none of the officers named can be found in any Army List. Coldicott does not say what his unit was nor his brigade nor division but it is clear that the ‘London Men’ are from the 60th London Division, a TF second-line formation, which went to France in June 1916, four months later it was transferred to Macedonia and in June 1917 it was again moved, this time to Egypt. The battalion in which the author was serving was 2/21st London, 181st Brigade, and he was a company commander (probably ‘C’ Company) who had been awarded the MC for his part in the action leading to the capture of Sheria, Third Battle of Gaza, immediately before this book begins. This account covers about five weeks from November 1917 to December when Jerusalem was captured and the author wounded.
Coldicott is evidently something of a literary figure, the text is well-strewn with poetry and his descriptions of the desert conditions as the men marched and fought from Huj to Jerusalem are vivid enough even if the language is a bit ornate at times. In one passage he is watching the men as they struggle on in the heat and the dust and flies and the thought crosses his mind that even the sergeant-major, ‘a man seemingly as strong as an ox’, might fall out but he puts the thought out of his mind at once: “Pardon, O giant of strength and endurance, that I indite these words, yet did not a like shadow flit sometimes across thy own cheerful vision?” Quite so. By the time the reader reaches Jerusalem he will know he has been through the mill.