The Wipers Times: A Complete Facsimile of the Famous World War One Trench Newspaper - Hardcover

The Wipers Times: A Complete Facsimile of the Famous World War One Trench Newspaper, Incorporating the 'New Church' Times, the Kemmel Times, the Somme Times, the B.E.F. Times, and the 'Better Times'. It was early 1916 when Captain F.J. Roberts of the 12th Battalion Sherwood Foresters found a shell-shattered old printing house just off the Square at Ypres. "Some printing house... some square", wrote Roberts in later years. "There were parts of the building remaining, the rest was on top of the press...''. Nonetheless, this was the press that Roberts used to publish a newspaper for the troops of the 24th Division. On February 12, 1915, the first number of The Wipers Times appeared and one of the greatest institutions of the war in the trenches was born. After the second issue, a German 5.9 shell hit the press, and Roberts moved publication and printing to another press located, with no small irony, at Hell Fire Corner. As the Division moved along the battlefront, so did the press and one Times or another was in production along the Western Front until December 1918. All the pages of The Wipers Times are collected here to offer a splendidly evocative insight into the times and the temper of life in the trenches. Parodies of all aspects of life at the front, grim satire and comic 'advertisements', 'special effects' by the Division's literary celebrities... here is a spontaneous chronicle of the comradeship, cheerfulness, humour and humanity that characterised the spirit of the British 'Tommy' in the face of unspeakable horrors. Few books can speak with the voice of the soldiers of the 'war to end wars' as vividly as this unique compendium.