Retreat from Amiens

RETREAT FROM AMIENS: MAY 20TH 1940

A true account told by a soldier who was there

Early one morning in the English summer of 1939, Edward Cooper spread a blanket on the short grass of the South Downs high above the Sussex village of Folkington. Before him, he saw the clean lines of the South Downs and the broad panorama of the Sussex Weald, silent in the soft haze that promised the hot day to come.

Appreciative of the beauty of it all, he thought of the many times he would return to enjoy such moments. Delighting in his freedom, he felt contented and at peace.

But, within months, he suddenly and unexpectedly found himself enlisted in the British army, soon to be trapped in the horror and suffering of the Second World War.

This book is his story.

Written when the events he described were fresh in his memory, he recounts with devastating freshness and poignancy the memories of a young soldier caught-up in the British military withdrawal from northern France that was the retreat from Amiens.