A Long Way to Tipperary?

Maurice Neal was 15 when he joined the King's Royal Rifle Corps in 1906. By the time his regiment was shipped off to the Somme to fight in the First World War, he was a relatively experienced young sergeant. He and his men soon found themselves plunged into the full horror of trench warfare, daily enduring the shock of losing comrades and lying for hours in the mud surrounded by dead and injured fellow soldiers and deafened by the thunder of the bombs and guns. Throughout, Maurice kept a ca...