Remember the fallen

"THEY shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn..."

Poet Laurence Binyon's evocative words are spoken each Remembrance Sunday as poppies are laid before war memorials throughout the United Kingdom and overseas.

Each year the band of survivors of the First World War grows ever smaller.

When oral historian Richard Van Emden was writing the introduction to his latest book, Britain's Last Tommies: Final Memories From Soldiers Of The 1914-18 War In Their Own Words (Pen & Sword, £19.99), he noted there were only six surviving veterans who served in the British Army on the Western Front.

Over the past 20 years, Van Emden has recorded the memories of nearly 270 servicemen who fought in "the war to end all wars". Britain's Last Tommies includes many of the best stories he has heard and his own memories of these remarkable men.

For example, Richard Hawkins, who could never quite manage to disguise his enjoyment of battle; Ted Francis, who started out with an idealised picture of war and ended with a deep hatred of all the bloodshed it involved; "Smiler" Marshall, always ready with a song; and Norman Collins, who saw a vision at the Armistice of the marching feet of all those who had died and left him behind.

This book is a worthy tribute to those who not only experienced the slaughter of trench warfare, but somehow survived it when so many of their comrades perished.

War memorials bear timeless testimony to the sacrifice of our forbears. A Century Of Remembrance: One Hundred Outstanding British War Memorials (Pen & Sword, £19.99), was written by Derek Boorman, of Dunnington Hall, York, to raise funds for the War Memorials Trust. It is a litany of sacrifice, mainly by young men in extremis.

The Shot At Dawn Memorial unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas, Staffordshire, in June 2001 remembers more than 300 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were executed in the First World War.

The life-like sculpture is based on Private Herbert Burden, of the Northumberland Fusiliers, who deserted at Ypres after his unit suffered heavy losses. He was executed in July 1915, aged 17.

Field Marshal Sir John French commanded the British Army when Pte Burden faced the firing squad.

With his Colonel Blimp moustache and short, stocky figure, French looked the archetypal First World War general who nailed British manhood to the cross of the Western Front while experiencing chateau comforts miles away from the mud and blood of the trenches.

General Sir Hubert Gough called him an "ignorant little fool" and was delighted when French was replaced by Haig as commander-in-chief in December 1915.

Yet Winston Churchill believed French had more imagination than Haig and "would never have run the British Army into the same long drawn-out slaughters" like the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917).

French, who started his military career as a cavalier cavalry officer, also had a roving eye, cheating on his wife well into middle age.

Richard Holmes, in The Little Field Marshal (Cassell, £8.99), concludes that French was a brave and inspirational leader whose attempts to solve the tactical conundrums of 1914 and 1915 were marred by his undisciplined intellect and mercurial personality.

Sometimes it takes a novelist's imagination to put a human face on the horror of war. Sebastian Barry has achieved this in A Long, Long Way (Faber, £12.99) which was short-listed for this year's Man Booker Prize.

Barely 18 years old, Willie Dunne leaves Dublin in 1914 to fight for the Allied cause, largely unaware of the growing political and religious tensions festering back home. Barry evokes the camaraderie of Willie and his regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, but also the cruelty and sadness of war, and the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt.

Tracing their experiences during the First World War, the narrative dramatises the events of the Easter Rising within Ireland, and how such a seminal political moment affected those fighting for the King of England in foreign fields.

It also charts the effect the war has on Willie's relationship with his father, a member of the Dublin Force Police and fervent loyalist.

"A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow." This quotation by Winston Churchill earns a place in The Daily Telegraph Dictionary Of Military Quotations (Greenhill Books, £19.99) which delves into the carnage and brutality of war as well as its comradeship and exhilaration. Editor Peter Tsouras brings 4,000 years of military history to life through the words of soldiers, commanders, theorists and commentators. The sayings of characters such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Wellington and Crazy Horse incorporate the distilled wisdom of warriors across the ages.

(You can buy Derek Boorman's book directly from the author at Dunnington Hall, York, YO19 5LG tel: 01904 489841)

Updated: 16:51 Friday, November 11, 2005