My Own Darling. Letters from Montie to Kitty Carlisle

Editor's presentation inscription and his mounted photograph on front endpapers; also signed by him on title page. 8vo; original blue boards; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; pp. 256; photographs in text. A little curl to dustwrapper edges, and its spine slightly sunned. Very good condition. "Montie Carlisle married his beloved Kitty only three months before the outbreak of the First World War. From the time he joined the Northumberland Fusiliers in September 1914, until after the end of the war, whenever they were apart he wrote to her every day. These letters describe his training at Belton Park, Grantham, and the journey to Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles, where he was wounded. He went out again to the Middle East in 1916, and then to the Somme campaign, where he was severely wounded. In 1918 he returned to France for the final months of the War as a Staff Officer. After Kitty died in 1979, Christopher Carlisle discovered almost 500 of his father's letters and noticed several written in August 1914. During the following years, he found much of interest in them, not only as a war record, but also as a social history, because although none of Kitty's letters to Montie survive, her own life is reflected in his comments on her letters to him. The letters in addition show the character development of Montie, from an inexperienced Second Lieutenant to a battle-hardened (but always sympathetic) Staff Officer.".…