The Long Run

On the morning of July 1, 1916, at Beaumont-Hamel, the men of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment climbed out of their trenches and advanced into no man’s land. Eric Mackenzie Robertson went over the top on that fateful day—and survived. Almost unbelievably, just four years later, Robertson would become the first born and bred Newfoundlander to compete in the Olympics. With her engaging journalistic style, Joan Sullivan—author of the award-winning In the Field—returns to tell the story of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, a lost Olympiad, and one man’s extraordinary journey through the battlefield and into history.