The Reluctant Tommy
First edition cover
|
|
| Author |
Ronald Skirth Editor:Duncan Barrett |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-Fiction |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan Limited |
|
Publication date
|
2011 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 324 |
| ISBN | |
The Reluctant Tommy is a book written by Ronald Skirth who was a member of the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War. His experiences during the Battle of Messines and the Battle of Passchendaele were detailed in this book. The book captured attention due to Skirth's actions during the war to avoid enemy casualties. The manuscript was known only by the family for decades before finally being published in 2011.
After coming home from the war Ronald Skirth entered the teaching profession. When he retired in 1971 he started work on his war time memories during the First World War, and in particular his experience of disillusionment. Although he initially intended to focus on his relationship with his wife Ella, touching on the war only briefly, he soon felt under a "compulsion" to write more about his war experiences. He worked on the memoir for over a year, eventually filling five green ring binders with many hundreds of pages, and over the next few years, despite suffering two strokes, he repeatedly went back to the material, editing, amending and adding to what he had written.
In 2010 the memoir was published in book form by Macmillan, as The Reluctant Tommy: Ronald Skirth's Extraordinary Memoir of the First World War, edited by Duncan Barrett. Barrett wrote in an introduction that he felt that Skirth's story "deserved as wide an audience as possible—and to be read in its protagonist's own words". Skirth's daughter Jean, who had given permission for the memoir to be published remained uncertain whether publishing the memoir was what her father would have wanted, but believed that it was important that his story was widely known. The book carried a foreword by Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow, in which he wrote about his grandfather Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D'Oyly Snow. Referring to the popular description of the lower ranks as "lions led by donkeys", Snow acknowledged that "If Ronald Skirth was a 'lion', Thom Snow was ultimately a 'donkey'."
...
Wikipedia