Alex Bowlby (1924–2005)

For many years I have had this book on my list of Second World War memoirs to revisit, if only I could find a copy. First published in 1969, I read a library copy over 30 years ago. In 2021 it was finally re-released, essentially as per the 1989 edition, which was topped and tailed with an introduction from historian John Keegan and an epilogue from the author.

The book covers the author’s experiences as a young rifleman joining a regular battalion of the Greenjackets after the victory in the Desert, and destined to fight the remainder of their war in the Italian campaign. Re-rolled from motorised to ordinary infantry, and with many of the long serving regulars of the battalion having been rotated home after years of overseas service, the battalion’s steadiness and morale seems often on the cusp of crisis.

The author himself is a somewhat unusual individual… perhaps the best description, giving a hint as to the flavour of the book, can be taken from John Keegan’s forward to the 1989 edition:

'Alex Bowlby, though a genuine private soldier, who apparently never aspired to rise above the rank of Rifleman, was a gentleman. He was not, however, one of Kipling’s ‘gentlemen rankers’, one of those declasse Victorians who enlisted as a desperate escape from social failure in civilian life. War and conscription took him into the army and, once established in his platoon, he seemed content to share its company and observe and record the experience of fighting from a worm’s eye view. The result...is one of most unusual of all books about the British army in the Second World War'.

Having survived the war, Alex Bowlby went on to have a life in advertising and writing that took him around the world and back to England. Something of an eccentric in later life, he suffered from what we now call post traumatic stress disorder, and ended his days in relative obscurity, dying in 2005. Sadly his book appeared to have slowly sunk into obscurity as well, and its re-release is most welcome.

Highly Recommended.

Copy purchased by the Reviewer online from Booktopia.… (meer)