Mud Beneath My Boots - A Poignant Memoir of the Effects of War on a Young New Zealander

Allan Marriott tells the story of a young New Zealander in the trenches from two perspectives - the raw, vulnerable boy and the seasoned man - providing a unique insight into one of the blackest periods of our history. In 1915 Len Coley lied about his name and his age, and within two years found himself in the trenches at Passchendaele, when he was barely nineteen. Shelled, shot at by snipers, poisoned by mustard gas, and give up for dead, he somehow survived Passchendaele, Ypres, Messines and the Somme. In 1930 he revisited the battlefields, keeping a detailed journal and drawing on notes he had written from 1916-1919, as a boy soldier. In it he examined the memories that surfaced, and looked at how the mature man felt about the momentous events that had unfolded around that frightened young man. His nephew, Allan Marriott, has used his uncle's extraordinary record to tell his story and provide a unique insight into one of the blackest periods of recent history...