YARN OF A YEOMAN

With the emphasis on the lighter side of military life, despite the grim nature of the fighting described, this memoir takes us into the world of a Middlesex Yeoman during the Great War. Originally intended as mounted Horse, the Yeomanry, after initial training in Egypt, were flung into the furnace of Gallipoli as humble infantrymen. The fierce fighting reduced the unit to a strength of less than fifty. Back in Egypt, to their joy, the Yeomanry got their horses and patrolled the Suez Canal until they were despatched to the Salonika front in northern Greece. Their final Great War campaign was Allenby’s successful thrust across the Sinai into Palestine and Syria, and the Yeomanry’s battle honours included Gaza, Philistia, Judea, Jerusalem, the Jordan, Megiddo and Damascus. As Field-Marshal Allenby writes in his foreword: ‘It is a story, brilliantly told, of heroism unsurpassed’.