Once again I owe a heartfelt debt of gratitude to the men who fought on the Aisne in 1914 and recorded their experiences for future generations to read. Without their observations and accounts of the four weeks of the campaign, this book would have been all but impossible to write. In tracking down those accounts I must thank the Institution of the Royal Engineers for permission to quote from the RE Journal, the Imperial War Museum, the British Library, The Grenadier Guards archive, the Royal Air Force Museum, 9th/12th Lancers Museum at Derby, the Somerset Light Infantry archive, the Leicestershire Record Office and the National Archives. To Maurice Johnson I must extend my special thanks for allowing me full access to his extensive personal archive of Aisne material and for his advice and opinions on numerous questions which arose during the writing of the book.
No book of this nature could be written without first covering the ground on foot and following in the footsteps of those who fought in the valley nearly 100 years ago and in which respect my thanks must go to Dave Rowland, Paul Webster and Bill Dobbs who spent three days with me in March 2012 walking the battlefield and sampling the local brew, and to my wife Joan who first discovered the steep hillsides and valleys of the Aisne with me in 2008. Thanks must also go to the myriad of Great War Forum members who have answered questions, corrected my errors and sent me material. In particular I must thank Doug Lewis, Keith Iles, Stuart Cole, Adam Llewellyn, Jonathan Saunders and John Etheridge who have gone out of their way to collect or transcribe material for me. Sebastian Laudan in Germany pinpointed exactly which German units were involved in the fighting on the British front. Rebecca Jones of Glory Designs in Coventry has again made sense out of my sketches in producing some excellent maps and The History Press very kindly gave permission to quote from Tickled to Death to Go. The photograph of Jock Marden is courtesy of his grandchildren John, Stephen, Tom and Richard Espley through his daughter Hazel. My thanks also go to Jon Cooksey who has once again edited this volume with his usual diligence and enthusiasm. In all instances every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders where any substantial extract is quoted. The author craves the indulgence of literary executors or copyright holders where these efforts have so far failed.
Jerry Murland
Coventry 2012