Men, Horses, Mud and Stew

With beautifully illustrated chapters that capture the atmosphere and spirit of the era; Men, Horses, Mud And Stew is an exceptional read. This is the story of Wilfred Cook who volunteered for the army at the age of eighteen and left his home in Leeds in March 1915. After initial training in Whitley Bay he was transferred to the Northumberland Fusiliers (known as the Fighting Fifth). He then recounts how they were equipped and sent to the battlefields of France and Flanders to reinforce the regiments already fighting there; and in evocative detail, we are immersed in thenarrative from how they arrived first at Poperinghe and from where they marched by night to join the battalion entrenched at St Eloi on the Ypres Salient. After developing septic poisoning from a blister on his foot caused by the long marches he was sent to a Military Hospital in Rouen where he spent his 19th birthday. The nursing sister called him her ‘Little Fusilier’, and he describes the excellent care he received there before returning to the trenches of Flanders. Rather reluctantly he then became a bandsman and stretcher-bearer. There are many amusing accounts of his fellow bandsmen as well as the harrowing stories of his work as a stretcher-bearer: the stretcher bearer takes no part in the actual battle but sees everything that goes on.