A British Infantryman recounts his harrowing experiences on the Western Front of the Great War, from the Battle of Somme to Arras and beyond.
At the age of seventeen, full of idealism and patriotism, John Tucker enlisted in the London Kensington Regiment. Deployed to France in August 1915, he survived three years of bitter trench warfare, was seriously wounded, and returned home to Blighty a few months before Armistice Day.
During those years, Tucker took part in the Battle of the Somme, the battles of Arras and Cambrai, and the Third Battle of Ypres. While his patriotism remained unflinching, his idealism gave way to the grim realities of day to day survival in the trenches. As he began to understand what constitutes courage, he grew from boyhood to manhood.
In Johnny Get Your Gun, Tucker contrasts the beauties of the French countryside with the ugliness of widespread death and destruction, and paints a picture of French country life hardly less squalid than the soldiers’ own lot. But above all, he makes the reader realize what it was like to fight in the war to end all wars.
