Author’s Foreword

 

In a quiet war cemetery in France is the grave of a young man, a cousin of my father. An old family photograph shows a solemn little boy with fair hair and glasses who was destined to go into the church when he finished university. Instead  he went to war and died at Pozières in 1916 at the age of 22 with the rank of Captain and a Military Cross to his name. Just one of thousands upon thousands of young men from all over the world who found themselves in this small corner of France and Belgium. They went for the adventure and in a belief that they were serving their King and Country but so many never came home.

As I sat by the simple white head stone, the mother in me wept for the boy, the soldier empathized and the writer decided it was time to tell a story about the Great War.