Dick Read was among the first to respond to Kitchener's call for volunteers in 1914. He joined 8th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment at the outbreak of war and, within weeks, was heading for the battlefields of Northern France with the British Expeditionary Force. But the spirit of adventurous patriotism that carried him to war gradually turns to sober reflection as the fighting intensifies and he suffers the loss of friends and comrades at the Battles of the Somme and the Marne. In 1917 he is commissioned in the Royal Sussex Regiment and makes a long, hazardous journey to Egypt to join his Regiment only to be recalled to take part in the Second Battle of the Marne, where his leadership and bravery win him the Croix de Guerre. This narrative, refined and uniquely illustrated over the years, but retaining a rare sense of authenticity, is a personal record of one man's war and a profoundly moving epitaph for a lost generation.
