First edition, first impression. 296pp, with six small maps in text. Red cloth-covered boards with black lettering front and spine. 12mo. Cloth is worn, unevenly faded, rubbed and rounded on corners and fraying at ends of a dry and sunned spine, with some marks and soiling. Text block edges dull and dust darkened. Front and rear hinges cracked, resulting in wobbly boards. Some faint and occasional spotting on first and last few leaves else internally generally neat and clean and free from marks and annotations.
Major William Watson was a young Oxford post-graduate when the First World War inbroke out. He enlisted, expecting the war would last just a few weeks. He started as a motorcycle despatch rider and saw active service during the key battles of 1914 and early 1915 but became a tank commander and saw active service with the tanks, including at Cambrai in 1917. This, his evocative and compelling memoir of those years, is now very hard to find in its original 1920 edition but it has been reprinted (including under different titles) in the years since.
