Foot soldier Sam Sutcliffe enlisted at 16, fought on the front line at Gallipoli 1915, the Somme 1916, and Arras 1918. He starved, he froze, he got shelled and shot at and gassed, and bitten by lice and centipedes. He saw men wounded, dying and driven mad, and to his lifelong regret, he killed. Somehow he stayed lucky, survived – and, in his seventies, he finally unleashed his remarkable near-total-recall memory and wrote it all down, toddlerhood to demob. My father had a harsh honesty, strong opinions, a dry-to-sardonic-to-ribald sense of humour and he didn't hold back whether detailing his poverty-stricken childhood in north London, his final fight-to-the-last-man battle on the Western Front, or his view from the trenches of the Poor Bloody Infantry's lead-from-the-rear commanders. He gives the facts as he sees them – and his feelings still deep in his soul down all the decades. Just through one pair of eyes, as he always emphasises; no historian, just a boy who left school at 14 and lived it and, eventually told it.
Book description by Sam Sutcliffe's son, Phil, who edited his memoir.
Book description by Sam Sutcliffe's son, Phil, who edited his memoir.
