To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May

A born storyteller, Charlie May's vivid eye for detail and warm good humour brings his experience in the trenches (and the experience of millions of ordinary men like him) to life for a 21st-century readership. Captain Charlie May was killed, aged 27, in the early morning of 1st July 1916, leading the men of 'B Company', 22nd Manchester Service Battalion into action on the first day of the Somme. This tolerant and likeable man had been born in New Zealand and - against King's regulations - he kept a diary in seven small, wallet-sized pocket books. A journalist before the war, May's diaries give a picture of battalion life in and behind the trenches during the build-up to the greatest battle fought by a British army and are filled with the friendships and tensions, the home-sickness, frustrations, delays and endless postponements, the fog of ignorance, the combination of boredom and terror to which every man that has ever fought could testify.

Born in Dunedin,CHARLES CAMPBELL MAY, is one of the most quoted New Zealand soldiers of World War I. He was killed in "No Man's Land" on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916. Passages from his wartime diaries have been anthologized in books, academic and popular, about that war and that battle. His diaries, the originals of which are in the Regimental Archive near Manchester, have pride of place in the Imperial War Museum in London.

Gerry Harrison is Charlie May's great-nephew. He has been an actor and worked in film and TV production and served as a councilor for twelve years. Meanwhile he has written pieces for theGuardianandThe Times, and theIrish Times. He lives in Ireland.