Gallipoli to The Somme | by Alexander Aitken edited by Alex Calder

Description

The most vivid and moving memoir of World War One by a New Zealand solider. Alexander Aitken was an ordinary soldier with an extraordinary mind. The student who enlisted in 1915 was a mathematical genius who could multiply nine-digit numbers in his head. He took a violin with him to Gallipoli (where field telephone wire substituted for an E-string) and practiced Bach on the Western Front. Aitken also loved poetry and knew the Aeneid and Paradise Lost by heart. Aitken began to write about his experiences in 1917 as a wounded out-patient in Dunedin hospital. Every few years, when the war trauma caught up with him, he revisited the manuscript, which was eventually published as Gallipoli to the Somme in 1963. Aitken writes with a unique combination of restraint, subtley, and an almost photographic vividness. For this editon, Alex Calder has written a new introduction, annotated the text, complied a selection of images, and added a commemorative index identifying the soldiers with whom Aitken served.

Pages: 264

Published: 2018