Subaltern's War (War Library)

Charles Edmund Carrington (21 April 1897 - 21 June 1990) was an English officer in the British Army during the First World War. In 1929 he published A Subaltern's War under the pseudonym Charles Edmonds.[1] When war broke out in 1914 Carrington was in England preparing for university entrance examinations and enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, although he was under age. In February 1915 an uncle obtained for him a commission in the 9th (Service) Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment where his job was to train his platoon. In August 1915 he was deemed too young to join the battalion in France. Carrington desperately wanted to fight after spending more than a year training in England. He managed to obtain a transfer to 1/5th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, a Territorial battalion, and sailed to France in December. He spent six months in a relatively quiet sector of the Front at Gommecourt before being transferred to the Battle of the Somme in July 1916.[2] In 1929 he published his memoirs of his time as an officer on the Western Front, A Subaltern's War which he had written ten years previously. Carrington sought to counter the widespread view that there were no other types of men who served in the war than "Prussian militarists" and "disillusioned pessimists": "No corrupt sergeant majors stole my rations or accepted my bribes. No incompetent colonels failed to give me food or lodging. No casual staff officers ordered me to certain death, indifferent to my fate".[3]