Reality and Reactions: I Wanted My Children to Know

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.
~Frank A. Clark.


About The Book.


This book is a true story set during the post war years of Britain. It follows the experiences and escapades of a young boy’s life for the first 24 years. He encounters hardship, fun, horror, and finally love. A rich vein of humour runs throughout this naive young man’s attempts to find a better life and escape from the poverty he was born into. In his early teens his life didn’t have direction. It seemed to be always ‘make do and mend’, full of obstacles, mishaps, crisis, and having to help keep poverty at bay in his large family. At last his dad helped him to achieve ‘every schoolboy’s dream’ in the glorious age of steam locomotion, or so he thought.

During his late teens the young man is enticed by his older brother’s tales of adventure and excitement in far-away places he’d never heard of. Desperate to change the way he lived he saw a possible new future. This affected his life in more ways than he could have ever imagined. At just turned 18, the army gave the young man a completely new life, comradeship, travel, excitement, and a new confidence he’d always needed. It was character building at its best, it became his new family. Alongside the tough army regime he found fun, drinking, fighting, womanising, general mischief and hell-raising. He would also face danger and feel the loss of comrades he came to know as brothers. This book tells his story, warts and all!


About The Author.


Frederick Bates Brookes was born in Leeds, 28th February 1944. He has lived in Blackpool and now Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, for the last thirty five years. A happily married man and a devoted father to his two lovely children, he is a natural story teller. Initially the idea for this, his first book, was born out of his son’s school project on family history but only took on written form when a life threatening illness made him face the reality of not being here to tell the story. He wanted his children to know. Having survived many operations against all odds, and with the support of his dedicated wife, the book was developing well when tragedy in the form of his wife’s sad death took away all motivation and the book was left unfinished at that time. Some six years later, passion to tell the story was re-ignited. It is now ready for you, the reader.