Home in Time for Breakfast

The shells are nothing in comparison to the everlasting torture of lice and the loathsome mud. To see me trudging along one would take me for an old man of sixty. Stuart Chapman was one of the lucky ones. A young soldier suffering staunchly through the nightmare of trench life in World War One, he returned to his native shores after the Armistice in one piece, unlike so many of his generation, many of whom never reached majority age. Chapman faithfully recorded his day-to-day life in France from 1916 to 1919, touching upon not only the squalor, violence, sheer exhaustion and astonishing discomfort but also the valour, comradeship and sacred moments of frivolity. This diary offers a unique perspective - of one who felt, lived and saw what history books can only recount from much-repeated facts. The fight was for the greater good, but set the tone for a century that darkened from there onwards.