Description: This is one of the classic personal accounts of the First World War which was written by a private soldier. The author, a sixteen-year-old lad from Croydon, lied about his age and joined Lord Kitcheners Army in the summer of 1914. He served in the Machine Gun Corps where he fought at the battles of Loos, Somme and Arras and at Cambrai where he won the Military Medal after being badly wounded. It is based on his diaries which he kept against regulation to give a vivid and honest picture of life on the Flanders fields where thousands fought and died.