The Wipers Times was the Private Eye of the Ypres Salient during World War One. Edited, while under bombardment, by a battalion commander in the Sherwood Foresters, written by soldiers actually in the trenches and distributed by ration-wagon and ammunition-mule. The paper bears vivid witness to the shocking realities of trench warfare. Yet for all the occasional horror of its content, The Wipers Times was a gentle, humour-filled and satirical paper which, once its codes are cracked and its riddles solved, tells an interested reader much about the characters and personalities of the men in the British Army of the First World War. Interpretation of regular features such as the bogus music-hall advertisements that feature in every issue, columns like ?Answers to our Many Correspondents' and ?Things We Want to Know' and careful study of some of the remarkable poetry published in the paper, explain to readers what it was like to be there. The Mud, the Gas, the Shells, the Fear, the Courage, the Humour and the Bitterness; much is revealed about these and many other things in this remarkable book that unravels the eighty-year-old Riddles of Wipers. AUTHOR: John Ivelaw-Chapman was educated at Cheltenham College. National Service in the RAF extended to an eighteen year commission. During this time he served as a pilot in Germany, Cyprus, East Africa, Aden and Malaysia. On retirement from the service, he worked as an antique dealer, auctioneer and occasional contributor to magazines and newspapers. His first book, High Endeavour was compiled from his father's personal archive which documented an adventurous military life from Royal Flying Corps subaltern to vice-chief of air Staff in the nuclear-equipped Royal Air Force. He has always had an interest in the history of World War One this interest became an obsession with the chance discovery of ?The Collected Issues of the Wipers Times' and The Riddles of Wipers resulted. Illustrated *
