A Very Unimportant Officer

Subtitled ‘Life and Death on the Somme and Passchendaele', and first brought to public attention on the BBC's Today programme, this book is an edited version of the World War I diaries of infantry officer Captain Alexander Stewart.

In fact ‘edited' means doubly edited. Captain Stewart's actual diary entries are laconic in the extreme; hardly surprising considering that at the time he was under constant enemy fire, sheltering in trenches full of stinking mud, leading his men on forays into German lines and often suffering illness (and eventually injury). By his own admission Stewart was not a Wilfred Owen or a Siegfried Sassoon and high literary achievement is not to be looked for here. Eleven years after the War, and often smoking his mascot pipe which had seen him through the trenches, Stewart wrote a commentary on his original entries. Again this is brief and matter of fact, although it goes along way towards fleshing out and explaining the immediacy of the actual diaries.

Both these texts are presented by Captain Stewart's grandson Cameron, a professional writer and broadcaster. His additions, setting the historical, social and family contexts, are by far the most informative and moving elements of the book, not least in conveying the importance of Captain Stewart's life and experiences to his descendents.

At £18.99 the book, although very nicely presented with black and white illustrations and an extremely well designed dust jacket, could be rather expensive for students of WWI, to whom it may convey little that's really new, or which could not be found in collections such as that of the Imperial War Museum. For the general reader, it is an interesting if at times rather'bitty' experience. I personally feel that it was well worth publishing for its significance to the Stewart family; and for the rest of us it certainly succeeds celebrating the heroic war service of a man who was, in his valour, modestly and common sense, very far from Unimportant.