Publisher's Synopsis
The son of a police constable, Bernard Garside was born in 1898 in Skipton, North Yorkshire, and educated at Ermysted's Grammar School and the University of Leeds. He interrupted his history studies in 1917 to volunteer for the army.;Garside's memoirs, written in 1944-1945 for his nephew and niece, concentrate firstly on his experiences as a young subaltern with the Duke of Wellington's Regiment on the Italian front in 1918. Relatively little has been written on the British contribution to the Italian theatre. Garside writes of actions on the Montello, the Asiago plateau, the final Allied offensive towards Vittorio Veneto, and of a British soldier's view of life in war-torn northern Italy. In the second part, he moves to World War II, recounting the dangers of the Blitz in Hampton, Middlesex, and his work as a captain in the RASC and later in the Army Education Corps. By 1944 Bernard Garside is engaged in the Army's preparations for peace-time and the final pages of his memoirs serve as a monument to those who worked for a just and constructive re-shaping of education in post-war Britain.;The foreword and introduction place the memoirs in the context of Garside's Yorkshire background, his career at Hampton Grammar School from 1924 to 1959, and his noteworthy contribution as local historian to the community of Hampton until the time of his death in 1963. The notes provide readers with other historical sources to compare with Garside's writings about military events in Italy in 1918.
