Joe Cassells offers the reader a superb memoir of the earliest days of World War I as seen through the eyes of a private soldier in one of Britain’s best regiments. The reader is given an account of the dark days of constant retreat before the German march on Paris, and on into the stalemate warfare in the trenches. The author offers his personal experiences in an easily read style as though he was telling it the reader personally.This book truly is a delight since it offers the reader a first person account, a soldier's account and not simply the dry cold facts offered up by most records encountered by historians and military history readers.