Tommy Atkins

Tommy Atkins is the English soldier who joking broke the cavalry of France at Minden, who singing marched with the Great Duke to the Danube, who grumbling shattered Napoleon’s dreams at Waterloo, who sweating in his red coat tramped back and forth across India, who kept his six-rounds-to-the-minute at Mons, and who died in the mud at Passchendaele, the sands of the Western Desert, and the jungles of Burma. If his name has been eclipsed by his more illustrious commanders—Cromwell, Marlborough, Moore, Wolfe, Wellington, Allenby, Slim—they at least will accord him his rightful place beside them. They knew his worth. Tommy Atkins is his story—the story of this most versatile, most adaptable, most unmilitary soldier.