This Bloody Place: The Incomparables at Gallipoli: With The Incomparables 29th - Tapa dura

Captain Albert Mure, a company commander in the 5th Battalion The Royal Scots, spent forty-three days in Gallipoli - far longer than many men who fought there would survive. In those few weeks, this brave, stoical officer was reduced from a fit, determined leader of men to a physical and mental wreck. In simple and honest language, Mure conveys the drama of the first landings, knowing that very shortly afterwards he and his men would be ashore and experiencing the same fate; his sympathy for those under his command is clear. Although suffering from shell shock, when the time came for him to leave the peninsular, he nevertheless felt like a deserter, remarking that, 'you can carry a no-longer-fit soldier's body out of the firing-line, but not his soul.' Originally published in 1919, Mure's story of his experiences at Gallipoli is full of a rawness and immediacy that I believe makes it worthy of a place amongst the many Great War memoirs.

RICHARD VAN EMDEN graduated from Newcastle University in 1988, and obtained an MA from Reading University in the following year. After working as a journalist he became a freelance writer and researcher. Having worked on several historically-based television series, he wrote his first book, Tickled to Death to Go which he has followed up with several highly acclaimed and commercially successful titles, including Britain's Last Tommies, Boy Soldiers, The Last Fighting Tommy, The Quick and the Dead, Meeting the Enemy and Tommy's Ark.