Dimensions
147 x 174 x 15mm
Jacko Moran joins the army at seventeen, with a baptism of fire at Gallipoli. Jacko tells his story of the war in a terse direct way that pulls no punches, from his first days in the Flanders trenches, in 1916, to the last great German offensive in 1918. It's all there: not so much the major battles, but the minutiae of trench life, the corpses, the stink, the black humour. The comradeship.
His soldier mates who become his "band of brothers". He feels wanted and even secure in the trenches because he is valued, doing something he is good at. Knowing also that when the war ends, so will this part of his life - and that there is nothing in peacetime to replace it.
Jacko is semi-literate, a tough street-lout with bad memories of an alcoholic, abusive father and a slum background. In war, though, his gutter-fighting skills become of use. He becomes first a corporal, then a sergeant. He wins the VC for a bloody little action, storming machine-gun nests. A born fighter, Jacko uses the memories of his abusive father to drive him.
Wounded, he meets a nurse he knew in Egypt and they have a brief affair. Although from a good middle-class background, Jessica Collingwood is like him. Wanting freedom from the social strictures of society, enjoying self-worth as a good nurse, aware that society will try and slot her back into a submissive "woman's" place when the war is over. Peacetime society will have no use for either of them.
