In A Flanders Field: A Territorial Battalion at Ypres, October 1917

Written neither as a conventional biography or battalion history, this work centres on the remarkable life of Joe Waite, a boy soldier of the Great War.Though, in telling his story, the names and lives of 64 of his fallen comrades are also revealed.All were lost in just one month of fighting, during the hell that was the Third Battle of Ypres - also known as Passchendaele. Born in a tough, working-class neighbourhood in Coventry, in the heart of the industrial Midlands, Joe’s childhood was blighted by the loss of his mother and tempered by his father’s decision to separate him from his siblings and remarry.The need to earn his keep forced him into factory work from an early age, soon resulting in a humbling brush with the law.Eventually, the outbreak of war, and later, a family row over a pair of boots, lead to his enlistment in the army, at just 16 years old. Hiding the secret of his true age from his comrades in the 1/7th (TF) battalion, The Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Joe left Cove