Path of Duty

Memoirs of a young volunteer in World War 1 to the Royal Naval Division and service in France and Belgium prior to being captured. Frederick Cornelius went to war as a young volunteer with a Victorian upbringing, where regular church going and the Christian ethic were impressed heavily on him. He became exposed, rapidly, to an unimaginably different world. This book is his testament to the folly and carnage of war and the adaptability and courage of those caught up in it. His war began when the combination of zeppelin raids on London, the war situation in France and his sense of duty impelled him, in 1915, to volunteer to fight for his country. He enlisted in the Royal Naval Division and served mainly in horse transport, supplying the trenches with food, ammunition and equipment, and later he fought in the trenches. He saw action as a ranker at Beaumont Hamel, Arras, Gavrelle, Passchendaele, Welsh Ridge and elsewhere.