Old Front Line (Pen & Sword Military Classics, Number 3)

July 1st 1916 is a date that remains embedded in the British folk memory. It was the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the day on which British and Empire troops suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, a third of them fatal.

In this evocative classic memoir John Masefield, the future Poet Laureate, describes the battleground over which the armies were to fight. He had spent months at the front and was familiar with the men, the trenches that they inhabited and the conditions they endured. 'The Old Front Line' was written shortly after the battle, and this elegant account will still move the modern reader as well as providing a valuable guide for the many 21st century visitors to the battlefield. This edition has a powerful new Introduction by Martin Middlebrook.

John Masefield (1878-1967) is in the highest class as a writer of clear, muscular English, whether he is writing about the countryside he loved so well, or, as in this book, the sea, with which he maintained that love-hate relationship which is the hallmark of the genuine seaman,' writes Professor Lloyd. Brought up in Herefordshire and soon orphaned, Masefield was trained on the Conway at Liverpool, served his apprenticeship in windjammers, sailed around the Horn and was beached in New York before he was eighteen. His experiences in these impressionable years stayed with him for the rest of his life. Back in England at the turn of the century, Masefield worked for the Manchester Guardian and published two books of verse (one which contained 'Sea Fever') and a collection of short stories before Sea Life in Nelson's Time was published in 1905. He became famous in 1911 with the publication of Everlasting Mercy, when the use of the word 'bloody' created a sensation. Reynard the Fox, published in 1919, consolidated his position. In 1930 he was appointed Poet Laureate and other honours followed, notably the Order of Merit in 1935.