Soldiers’ Tales

These are stories told by the young men who were actually at war. They are their versions of what was going on as they saw it. The tales come from soldiers, sailors and airmen, from the Boer War to the 21st century.

This is not war as shown in the movies or war as appears in official reports. This is war as it is actually fought. In wartime there are some corners of foreign fields where things happen not quite according to the official rules and maybe unknown to the Great and the Good. Those looking at the big official picture may see something quite different from what is seen by a boy in one small part of the battlefield. But these are the stories the boys told to us girls back home. They will give you a different perspective of some famous events.

All the men who told us these stories are long dead. But before I too am dead I am retelling their tales as a tribute to their memories.

And there is one thing that every soldier I ever chatted with said - and I think it is something our politicians and generals could well consider now. These soldiers said that whatever fancy and clever new weapons were invented from cruise missiles to tanks, the outcome of a war always depended on how many men you had on the ground. “In the end, war always comes down to being a job for the PBI,” they said. “The PBI - the poor bloody infantry. No army can ever be successful without them.”