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'Occasionally a set of correspondence is so illuminating that it bursts through the accessibility barrier and genuinely deserves to be made available to a wider audience. The Foljambe papers are so self-evidently in this category that it is a real delight to see them in print.'
Richard Holmes, Britain's foremost military historian
Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres - each a place name that resonates with the noise of battle along the Western Front in the Great War. Royal Horse Artillery officer Francis Foljambe, whose personal correspondence forms the main thread of this unique Family at War, was with the BEF in Belgium during the early days of the war. His artillery battery had the unique distinction of firing the first 18-pounder rounds of the Great War near Mons on 23 August. Together with his brother Ted, an officer in the Rifle Brigade, and the extended Foljambe family, his life became swept along with the tides of the war.
The Foljambes played exactly the sort of role that one might expect from an English upper middle-class family of the Edwardian age. The head of the family was the Rt Hon Francis Foljambe (the Squire). His son George had commanded a Territorial battalion of the Sherwood Foresters and younger brother Hubert, a Regular officer in the King's Royal Rifle Corps, was killed on the Aisne in 1914. George's eldest son, Ted, was reported wounded and missing at the Battle of Cateau. The other son, Francis, had been commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery in 1912 and lost his popular battery commander, shot through the throat at Mons in 1914.
The author Jolyon Jackson is a cousin of Francis Foljambe, whose letters form the centrepiece of these diaries. Other family letters that have languished in an attic since the Great War, unseen and unknown, are also included in the Family at War; letters that depict the family's domestic experiences as being of equal importance. These are letters from the women of the family showing many of their hopes and fears and their bravery in the face of terrible events to come. Rather less predictably, letters that disclose illuminating personal stories are revealed, such as Francis's brother Ted's developing relationship with the Polish nurse who tended to him as a wounded prisoner of war, whom he later went on to marry. There has been ample literature published on prisoners' experiences in the Second World War, but far less like Ted's letters on this aspect of the Great War. This unique combination of archive photographs and personal correspondence makes Family at War a rare contemporary insight into how the Great War changed the lives of a whole generation.
Author, Brigadier Jolyon Jackson, joined the Army at seventeen. His early service was spent in Germany during the Cold War, in Northern Ireland, and on exercise worldwide. He also spent two years in Dhofar with a Baluch Battalion of the Sultan of Oman's Army. Jolyon commanded 1st Battalion the Royal Green Jackets and later attended the Royal College of Defence Studies. He commanded 43 (Wessex) Brigade and is currently Director Recruiting and Training Operations for the Army, living in Wiltshire.
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