Book description
'Ella darling, There are things I have concealed from you up till now
that I think you ought to know; things that have turned me from a
different person from the Ronald you know.' So, in April 1918, Ronald
Skirth, a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Artillery, wrote to his
sweetheart, back in England. A year before, Skirth, then just nineteen
years old, had been sent to fight on the Western Front. This is his
story, the story of a young man who went to war a devoted servant of
King and country and returned utterly convinced that war, all war, was
wrong and who acted upon his convictions, making a pact with God that he
would not kill. This riveting memoir was written fifty years after the
end of the war, drawing on his own contemporary diary entries and
letters home. Never published before, it affords a vivid, moving and
surprising insight into that most dreadful of conflicts. After the
First World War, Ronald Skirth returned to England and married Ella. He
became a teacher and, after he had retired, wrote his memoirs of the
First World War. He died in 19xx and is survived by his daughter, Jean.
Duncan Barrett is an editor and writer. He lives in London.
