Fire-Eater The Memoirs of a V. C.

by A.O. Pollard

Alfred Oliver Pollard (1893-1960) could be looked upon as a British equivalent of Ernst Junger (Storm of Steel) in that he enjoyed the war, in and out of the trenches; he regarded it as a great adventure. Even killing brought satisfaction. One of his letters to his mother Best of spirits and having a good time. By the way, I have killed another Hun. Hurrah! Well, Cheerio! In another place he ambition was to be realised. I was to take part in a real charge. With luck I might bayonet a Hun. He writes in a ‘gung-ho’ colloquial style and his descriptions of the fighting are vivid with all the gory details. There is a touch of Sapper in his writing; at times It reads like an adventure story from ‘Boys Own Paper’ but the action is real enough. He was no shrinking violet when it came to describing his own part in the action, nor was he averse to quoting from the citations that accompanied his awards - apart from the VC (Gavrelle, 29th April 1917) he was also awarded the MC and bar and the DCM, putting him among the most highly decorated. He enlisted in the HAC in 1914 soon after war was declared and went with the 1st Battalion to France in September 1914; he was commissioned into the battalion in January 1916. Apart from a spell training Americans in 1918 he was with the battalion throughout the war. He was demobilised in February 1919. This is a most enjoyable book

Genres: History, World War I, Military History

274 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[ValeriZentsov]

Fire-Eater is a fast paced 'Boys Own' type account of a very brave man's experience of war. The account begins with his quite frank immaturity, and runs through to the close of the war and a retrospective epilogue written much later in his life.

Obviously you can consider that Pollard may have been economical with the truth in some areas, perhaps cutting out duller or less impressive parts of his experience, but even so his multiple accounts for gallantry and their citations stand alone as firm testament to the man's courage under fire.

An excellent account of one man's war, and a relief from much modern writing which tends toward introspection and which it perhaps too swift to consider all those involved in war and the psychologically broken victims of war.

[AskHistorians]

A remarkable English memoir from a man who would go on to become a prolific author of mysteries and thrillers, this volume offers the narrative of a highly-decorated infantryman who freely admits to having absolutely loved his experience in the war. A vigorous, rousing work. Of interest, too, is that Pollard's is one of the stories that gets woven into the fabric of Peter Englund's recent (and highly acclaimed) The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War (2011) -- narrative history at its most powerful.