OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE

One of the finest of all published memoirs of the Great War, truly a classic of its kind. The author had enlisted in 1901 in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers (spelling changed from ‘Welch’ to ‘Welsh’ in 1881 and back to ‘Welch’ in 1920) and was a reservist when war broke out. He rejoined his old, 2nd Battalion and landed in France with them on 11 August 1914. He went right through the war with the battalion, never missing a battle, winning the DCM and MM and ending up still a private. Here is a typical soldier of the pre-1914 regular army, one of the ‘Old Contemptibles’ and this book is a delight, written in his own unpolished manner. Fighting, scrounging, gambling, drinking, dodging fatigues, stolidly enduring bombardment and the hardships of trench warfare, always getting his job done. A tribute to the army that died on the Western Front in 1914.