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by Ray Cantan (Author)
Just over a year ago I was given a manuscript which had been written by a soldier of the Great War, 1914 to 1918. Sid Kemp, the author of the manuscript signed up, with his brother Fred, in August 1914 and fought in France until he was invalided out in the early months' of 1917.. Both Sid and his brother survived the war and Sid had a long life working in his beloved Kent. When they signed up in 1914 they enlisted in the Royal West Kent Regiment and this book relates Sid's experiences. My Grandfather, who was the Commanding Officer of the First Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry (DCLI), was killed on the 16th April 1916, in a frontline trench on the battlefield at Arras. Visiting his grave last year, I walked around the cemetery and had a look at the names on the gravestones. I wanted to obtain a better picture of those who had lain close to him for the past century. Officers and Privates beside each other. What shook me most was the fact that a lot of those buried there were teenagers, some as young as eighteen years of age. To say that I was upset by what I saw is an understatement. I was horrified and amazed at how this had occurred and how the carnage had been accepted back in England. On reflection, I suppose that the general public wasn't aware of the magnitude of the slaughter. Family members would have known about the death of a loved one when the letters stopped, or they received a telegram, but they wouldn't have known the magnitude of the overall picture. On my last visit, I made a commitment to my Grandfather and to all those young men buried in the Fauberg d'Amiens Military cemetery in Arras that I would find out why it had happened and whether blame could be apportioned for their deaths. Shortly afterwards I was very fortunate to be given the manuscript on which this book is based. It is excellently written and describes, very accurately, what happened in Sid's life after he enlisted, together with his brother, on the 26th. August 1914. He was twenty-two years of age at the time, and his brother was nineteen. He was obviously a very calm, cool, and collected individual as he has written his account without burying the story in emotion. In writing the book, I didn't change his story, but I did add some modern views on what took place, and I have called these comments; 'Reflections.' Things started going wrong for Sid Kemp just after he enlisted. Britain was totally unprepared for war, and there weren't even the facilities in place to train the recruits. Once they got to France, it was still a shambles. Sid's day to day account is fascinating but also amusing in places where he describes the interaction between the people he encounters. As it is his personal account and actually happened, it is all very believable. What comes across, as his story unfolds, is how Sid got more and more disheartened as day after day he lost so many of his friends. In 1914 his Platoon was made up of people he knew from the locality of Kent where he grew. By 1917 they were all strangers to him as the majority of those he knew had been killed or wounded. What upset him the most was the fact that the large number of deaths that occurred during the various offensives like Loos and the Somme, hadn't brought any significant military successes. There were no positive gains to balance the large quantity of deaths. On the title page, Sid Kemp has typed - "This story is written in Remembrance of my friends who served in The Queens Own Royal West Kent Regiment during the period 1914 to 1918, as I did, and never returned to the England that they loved." This book is also dedicated to Sid Kemp and his brother Fred who both suffered during their lives as a result of their experiences and illnesses in that terrible war. It is a very moving story with a humorous twist. After reading it, the reader will have enough facts to be able to come to their own conclusion as to who whether blame should be apportioned for what hap
