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Remembrances
of Hell
This book is sub-titled "The Great War diary of writer, broadcaster and naturalist, Norman Ellison". A gem of a book. Ellison joined up as a Territorial in 1914, with the 1/6th (Rifle) Battalion, the King's Liverpool Regiment. He served with that battalion in Flanders, at Ypres, Arras and on the Somme before he was invalided out with trench foot.
His descriptions of cold nights on lonely patrol, happy days in billets and many other vivid scenes are a delight. Norman Ellison was perhaps lucky, for a caring RSM posted him to the battalion transport - a safer haven for a man who lost his mother and father during the war, and upon whom devolved the responsibility for two younger sisters. He managed in this way to avoid the bloodbath on the Somme in 1916.
Ellison's diary is accompanied by an excellent selection of IWM and other photographs, as well as some of the diarists own sketches.
The latter third of the book is taken up with postwar correspondence concerning the nature of remembrance, with eminent people of the 1920's and 1930's, among them Edmund Blunden, Sir Philip Gibbs, Henry Williamson and George Bernard Shaw. There are also some articles relating to battalion reunions and visits to the old battlefields. Incredibly, 300 of the battalion originals who went out to France in early 1915 met for reunion well after the war.
Well worth reading and readily available on the used book market.
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