Harry Drinkwater

Jon Cooksey

David Griffiths

A lost diary of the Great War so brutally vivid you'll feel you are there in the trenches

One of the best diaries of the First World War

Rodderick Suddaby, former keeper of the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum

Unique ... an unvarnished view of the war’s horrors – and its occasional joys

A remarkable insight into the mind of a man who went through WW1 as an infantryman in the trenches, private and officer ... No-one who wants to understand the truth about the trenches can ignore this book

‘I saw several fellows fall, one fellow coughing up blood and all the time, bullets were hacking about me. I ran for about 70 yards carrying with me all the Lewis gun things I had brought up and dropped breathless into a shell hole headlong onto a German who had been dead for months.’ 
 
Harold Drinkwater was not supposed to go to war. He was told he was half an inch too short. But, determined to fight for king and country, he found a battalion that would take him and was soon on his way to the trenches of the Somme. As the war dragged on, Harry saw most of the men he joined up with killed around him. But, somehow, he survived. 
 
Soldiers were forbidden from keeping a diary so Harry wrote his in secret, recording the horrendous conditions and constant fear, as well as his pleasure at receiving his officer's commission, the joy of his men when they escaped the trenches for the Italian Front and the trench raid for which he was awarded the Military Cross. 
 
Harry writes with such immediacy it is easy to forget that a hundred years have passed. He is by turns wry, exhausted, annoyed, resigned and often amazed to be alive. Never before published, Harry's War is a moving testament to one man's struggle to keep his humanity in the face of unimaginable violence.

Harry’s War

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Harry Drinkwater

Praise for Harry’s War

A lost diary of the Great War so brutally vivid you'll feel you are there in the trenches

One of the best diaries of the First World War

Unique ... an unvarnished view of the war’s horrors – and its occasional joys

A lost diary of the Great War so brutally vivid you'll feel you are there in the trenches

One of the best diaries of the First World War

Unique ... an unvarnished view of the war’s horrors – and its occasional joys

A lost diary of the Great War so brutally vivid you'll feel you are there in the trenches

One of the best diaries of the First World War

Unique ... an unvarnished view of the war’s horrors – and its occasional joys

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