The Great War Memoir of Ralph Ellis: Sussex Artist and Author

This memoir is a rare production, portraying both in images and in words the experience of a soldier in the 7th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment on the Western Front from 1914 until he was wounded in 1917. It is a personal story but one also shared by the comrades with whom he served, and by every infantryman who experienced the horrors and hardships of the Great War. At first Ralph drew on his artistic skills to record what he was witnessing and then employed his gift as a writer to produce a compelling narrative, which complements the images and graphically describes what it was like to actually be there. Like the vast majority of those who served, Ralph was not a professional soldier; he was an ordinary man, who found himself in extraordinary circumstances and rose to the challenge. In this volume, Ralph Ellis’s Great War memoir is reproduced in full colour and published by the Sussex Record Society with a contextual commentary provided by historian, Sue Hepburn.