Anne McCosker

“Still alive and kicking” are four little words and yet they meant so much coming from the mud-filled trenches during World War I.

This book is a moving account of this War through the eyes of a young soldier, Frederick William Scott Martin, a Queenslander whose life was drastically changed by conflict. His life was cut short in 1917 and his moving letters to his family back home reveal the hell of the trenches and also the lighter side of an officer’s life.

This brief, but moving glimpse into Fred Martin’s life, reveals the boy who left his home to enthusiastically fight for his country, turning him prematurely into a man. He survived injury and illness, gained a Military Medal on the Western Front, became an officer and then, aged just twenty-one, disappeared into the mud, gunfire and barbed wire of Polygon Wood.

About the author
Anne McCosker was born in New Guinea, as an infant evacuated from there to Australia before the Japanese invasion, and grew up in Queensland. She has a B.A. History Honours Degree, Bedford College, University of London. Her father was a veteran of both World Wars and she first visited the Western Front with him 1967. She currently lives in Weymouth, Dorset.

Pub date: 01 August 2013
ISBN: 978-1-908336-65-1
Format: 152x229mm
Binding: Paperback
Extent: 274pp
Price: £14.99
Publisher: Tommies Guides
Imprint: Reveille Press

BIC Classifications:
First World War (HBWN)
British & Irish history (HBJD1)
Australasian and Pacific history (HBJM)
Regiments (JWTR)
First World War, 1914-1918 (3JJF)