Mud Beneath My Boots
A Poignant Memoir of the Effects of War on a Young New Zealander
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Using previously unpublished letters and journals, author Allan Marriott retells the amazing story of his uncle, Private Len Coley, who at barely 16 lied about his age to enter the army in 1916 and found himself in the trenches at the battle of Passchendaele.Shelled, bombed, shot at by snipers and poisoned by mustard gas, he somehow managed to survive the momentous and infamous battles of Passchendaele, Ypres, Messines and the Somme - and then in 1930, now in his thirties, he revisited France and the scenes of his boyhood terror.Len wrote a journal of his trip back to the battlefields in 1930, drawing on the detailed notes he had kept as a boy soldier from 1916-1919 before the Second World war, and wrote about the memories that surfaced, and the way he was now able to think about things as an adult that had been happening all around him as that frightened young boy His nephew, Allan Marriott, has used Len's extraordinary record to tell the story of life in the trenches from two perspectives - the raw and vulnerable boy and the seasoned man - providing a unique insight into one of the blackest periods of our recent history.
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Final read for 2023.
Re-created by his uncles diaries, Allan Marriott uses the words of Len Coley to describe his service in France and Belgium in the trenches of World War I. At 17 years old, Len lied about his age, and used a false surname to enroll in the New Zealand infantry, in 1915.
For three years he trained initially in Egypt and then France, and fought in Messines, Passchendaele, Ypres and the Somme. Early on in the war he was gassed, and while dragging an injured man to safety his gas mask was knocked off, and he wasn't able to replace it in time. The chlorine gas was to effect his breathing and general health for the remainder of his life.
In 1930 he returned to Belgium and visited the places he fought, the places he rested and took leave. Len's thoughts at this time are also recorded in the book as he read back over his own diaries from fifteen years before. This isn't a story of the war itself, although it explains aspects of it well, this is the personal story of Len Coley, and how the war effected him, and his memories.
His diary is turned to a narrative, it is readable and comes across as legitimate. It shares his inner thoughts as well as his various actions, some of which he was not proud. Like many he questioned the point of the war, the difference it made, the killing. The diary shifts between his war time and his return visit in various chapters and includes two periods of time spent on leave in England, as well as time in hospital and in recovery, largely from respiratory issues.
There are various black and white photographs, the war ones from the Kippenberger Military Archive, those of Len and family from his family archive. At only 200 pages long, it is a short, but memorable read.
4 stars
