A Very Unimportant Officer, edited by Cameron Stewart

I had to rid myself of lice whilst on leave," writes the hero of this absorbing book. "I was fairly clean and not troubled about being lousy, but fleas were very prevalent in France. Personally I would rather have lice than fleas. Generally I had both." The life of an infantry officer on the Western Front during the greatest battles of the First World War has been recreated in fact and fiction very many times, but never more powerfully than in these diaries and letters of Captain Alexander Stewart of the 1st Battalion, the Cameronians ("the Scottish Rifles"). The immediacy, candour and sheer literary merit of his journals make this an important new source for the Great War.

Expertly edited by Stewart's grandson, this book brings home the horrors of life and death in the trenches, but also the occasional high spots. There was courage, camaraderie and moments of exhilaration among the terror, which are superbly expressed by Stewart as he leads his men "over the top" time and again. He had experiences enough for several men in the course of his two years on the front line; he was wounded, gassed, won the Military Cross, nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning from an ill-ventilated coke fire in his dugout, undertook perilous night attacks, and was immensely lucky to have survived the war.

Stewart's sanity and good humour shine through his moving and occasionally distressing diaries. There is not much hatred of "the Boche" but plenty for the unnamed generals who withdrew the men's rum ration, thus making them fight the battle of the Somme while stone-cold sober. "May they know fear on a cold morning at day-break," was Stewart's heartfelt curse. It was a fear that all felt but all internalised. "I only knew one man who showed his fear to all," records Stewart, "and his brother had just been killed." This is the story of those "who have spent a night standing, sitting or lying in mud with an east wind blowing and the temperatures below freezing point" for night after night, under heavy shellfire, waiting for the order to attack. "For days on end the officers would get what almost amounted to no sleep," he writes. "This deprivation particularly applied to company commanders who at all hours of the day and night were receiving and sending out orders and casualty returns, etc. Nearly all the hours of dark had to be spent visiting posts and positions." As well as rats, lice and fleas, the summer of 1916 brought "great big fat, sodden, overfed, bloated brutes, bluebottles and large houseflies. They settled on one's face and food. I have seen them on the roof of a dugout like a swarm of bees. Most of them must have come from and lived on dead bodies".

Always careful of his men's comfort before his own, superbly calm under fire (he smoked his pipe during one attack) and a natural writer to boot, Capt Alexander Stewart MC might have been — in his own estimation — "a very unimportant officer", but he was clearly also a very remarkable man..

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

Captain Alexander Stewart was recruited to the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) regiment in 1915 at the age of 33. He survived the horrors of the trenches and served during the brutal battle of the Somme before being injured. Flashes of dark humour and an appreciation of the absurd enabled Captain Stewart to remain sane amid Europe's headlong rush to destruction. Commenting on subjects as diverse as the difficulty of shooting a rifle while smoking a pipe, and how to hold onto his boots during a vicious shell attack, Captain Stewart captures daily life alongside the dramatic battles of the war. He vividly describes the Battle of the Somme and the infamous mud that "was more like thick slime than mud," and provides details of battles and battle plans as well as the unbearable living conditions in the trenches. Yet throughout the chaos and futility of war, Captain Stewart reflects with compassion and intelligence on the fears and immense courage of the men under his command. A VERY UNIMPORTANT OFFICER is a fascinating portrait of a man's struggle to retain his humanity amidst the lunacy of war.