Artillery was the decisive weapon of the Great War but its story is almost forgotten. The developments in artillery tactics, equipment and shells played a major role in the final Allied victory. British artillery was in the forefront of all those changes. This book gives the reader a dramatic insight into the story of artillery in the First World War. Donald Boyd joined his local Territorial Force artillery unit in September 1914. Commissioned in 1915, he learnt his trade in France from unsympathetic pre-war Indian Army regulars who did not understand how war was changing. From 1916 to 1918 he took part in the Western Front's major battles, including the Somme, Third Ypres, Cambrai and the 1918 offensives. The stress of an artillery subaltern's existence, observing in the front line, keeping the guns in action at a battery position or leading ammunition columns up tracks exposed to shellfire brought him to nervous collapse twice. The author is frank about his problems and convincingly conveys the relationships within his sub-unit which helped or hindered his struggle to stay in the front line. AUTHOR: Donald Boyd, born in 1895, was training as a journalist with the Leeds Mercury when war broke out in 1914. He served on the Western Front as a Royal Artillery officer from 1915 to 1918 and was awarded the Military Cross for recovering two guns during the Great Retreat of March 1918. After the war he joined the Manchester Guardian, reporting on the Irish War of Independence and Soviet Russia. In 1936 he joined the BBC and reported from the USA during the Second World War. Retiring in 1955, he lived in Cornwall until his death in 1973. Michael Orr lectured at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in War Studies and Soviet Studies. An experienced battlefield guide, he is writing a study of the Western Front experiences of British generals of the Second World War. ILLUSTRATIONS: 16 b/w images
