Publisher's Synopsis
Seen through the eyes of nine Chelsea Pensioners, this is a wonderfully moving account of what it was like to be a soldier during the 20th century. These tales, chronicling their early lives and reasons for joining up, and spanning conflicts from the First World War to Indonesia, are also stories of poverty-stricken childhoods and boy soldiering, of thwarted ambition and cheerful acceptance, of dogged determination and unsung heroism. Searching, touching, unsentimental and imbued with great humanity...to read this book is to understand what soldiers are all about, what they fight for, and how they fit into the world of the 21st century.
