It's been a while since our initial episode looking at forgotten memoirs of the Great War,

and there was a positive reaction to examining this very subject, with several of you getting in touch to suggest some more titles.

So I thought a few months later, it was about time we returned to the subject of forgotten memoirs and looked at another volume of a lesser-known account

connected to a soldier's experience of the First World War.

Memoirs are an important part of our understanding of the layers of the Great War,

especially in an era when all of the veterans are gone.

And the memoirs themselves are all part of the importance of understanding

personal testimony something we discussed recently in some episodes on oral history.

The book for this episode looking at forgotten memoirs is the years of remembrance by Harold Maybury and it was published

in Warrington in 1924 by a small publisher connected to the local newspaper. It was a book that I'd

never heard of until a book list of Tom Donovan's, one of my favourite secondhand military book dealers.

He put a list out some months ago and I saw this

memoir on there and what drew me to it was that it was an account written by a soldier who had

served in the second fourth battalion of the South Lancashire Regiment. Now that's probably a little

known battalion of the Great War. Why was I

interested in that? Well, one of the veterans that I knew, James Leslie Lovegrove, Smiler

Lovegrove, had served as an officer in this battalion, gone out with them in 1917

and served until he was wounded in the fighting on the Hindenburg line

the following year. And although I had the regimental history, I wasn't aware that there was

this personal account by another member of the same battalion. And Lovegrove, of course,

was an officer. He was a second lieutenant commissioned.

I mean, he looks about 12 in the photographs of him.

...