War To End All Wars Books

October 1913 and the St Vincent is in Portsmouth harbour, where four midshipmen have come to the end of their first two-year cruise. Called to Captain Ironside’s cabin, they learn their fate. Three are made sublieutenant, the fourth is pushed out of the Navy, a failure. There was no tolerance in the Royal Navy for weaklings and incompetents who failed to master the basics. They were beaten for every infraction of the rules of seamanship, encouraging them to conform or to get out. Adams, born to the elite, is made sublieutenant and posted to Iron Duke, flagship of the Grand Fleet, and the latest and largest of superdreadnoughts. McDuff goes to Good Hope cruiser bound for the South Atlantic. An old ship, and he had hoped for better, but there were chances to specialise on an armoured cruiser. Sturton, able and slightly maverick, hoped to be sent to another battleship where he could become a gunnery specialist, but instead goes to Sheldrake, a destroyer joining the Mediterranean Fleet. Destroyers were wet, cold, and uncomfortable, but it could be the making of his career. Baker, the failure, had never fit in. He came from the wrong background and was ostracised aboard ship, left on his own to survive the best he could. Rejected by the Navy, he is forced to join the Territorial Army or be disowned by his rich, vulgar father. Nineteen years of age and dumped on the scrapheap. War comes in August and the four young men meet its challenges in surprising ways. Number 1, Amazon/Kindle/War Fiction, July 2020

November 1914, and the three surviving midshipmen enter the next phase of the war. Richard Baker is now a public figure as a VC and is active in the early days of the trenches, raiding and straightening the lines in minor actions. His battalion comes to the battle of Neuve Chapelle with a reputation for aggression and success, before meeting up with massed machine guns and uncut wire. Simon Sturton continues to make a name as a successful young officer in the destroyers of the Harwich Patrol, taking part in the actions that were so frequent on the Belgian coast. Christopher Adams enjoys success at the Falkland Islands, but then finds his glittering career faced with disaster from an unexpected cause.

April 1915, and it has become apparent that the war will be neither glorious nor short. England is changing, rapidly in some aspects, and the feuding between military and politicians is just beginning. The three remaining midshipmen, two successful, one disgraced, have survived so far. Simon Sturton is still with the destroyers of the Harwich Patrol, fighting in the unending series of minor actions that keep the Channel open for the troopships to cross to France. Christopher Adams, once the bright star of his year at Dartmouth, is sent from one temporary, insignificant posting to another, mostly in minesweeping trawlers manned by Reservists, managing to find action in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Richard Baker, a failure at sea, finds his new life in the Army increasingly to his taste, enjoying the social prominence of his VC in London, while he trains his new battalion and takes them back to France.

It’s late 1915 and the industrial nations still have not geared up for war. Shortages of munitions leave soldiers hanging on barbed wire in the fields. The war in France is at a stalemate, both sides finding it impossible to advance, and spending tens of thousands of lives on the discovery. Richard Baker is in the front line with his battalion, learning how to fight this new war. While the generals, well behind him, are only focussed on finding a way to let the cavalry loose in another Charge of the Light Brigade, reaching for glory. At sea, Simon Sturton continues to make a name for himself as one of the new breed of destroyermen, while Christopher Adams has overcome his fall from grace sufficiently to be posted to Black Prince cruiser, part of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in the months leading up to the long-awaited ‘Great Smash’ in the North Sea.

World War I enters the summer of 1916 with the perceived failure of Jutland and the bloody defeat on the Somme, where the British Army was forced to beg for truce to bring their forty thousand wounded in. The survivors of the four carefree midshipmen who entered the war in '14 are now different men, promoted too rapidly and responsible for the deaths of those who follow them, with no alternative other than to obey the orders of Butcher Haig and the venal government in London. The war on land and sea is at best at stalemate and the sole hope for the fighting men is to survive until eventual rescue by America. For the while, they must struggle forward and hope to not kill too many of the men who blindly obey them, trusting them to do their best.

**Winner of Amazon KDP Select All Stars** 1917 and there is no end in sight to the war, yet the men and women fighting it know it cannot continue indefinitely. Civilisation itself will not survive any great prolongation of the butchery. The hope is that the Americans will bring victory when they arrive in sufficient number. The fear is that the collapse of Imperial Russia will massively empower Germany. At sea, Simon Sturton becomes involved in the bold, but possibly pointless, attack on the submarine base at Zeebrugge. On land, Richard Baker is thankful to avoid the horrors of Haig’s final disaster at Passchendaele, returning to the trenches in time for the Spring Offensive of 1918. Lloyd George’s government is finally bringing some efficiency to the conduct of the war and has built an adequate armaments industry, but is accompanying this with a vicious corruption reminiscent of the days of Billy Pitt. The families of the two are in place to profit from both aspects of the Home Front.

The War To End All Wars series has received more than 4800 5-Star reviews on Amazon. The Great War is coming to the end of its fourth year. Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey are exhausted, unable to maintain their armies and replace their massive losses in manpower. Russia is in revolution, Germany is close, Austria-Hungary is losing control of its Balkans states, the Ottoman Empire is breaking up. In Flanders, the German offensive has failed and has used up the remaining reserves of manpower and materials of war. Britain and France have, barely, a sufficiency of strength to launch a final great attack. America has come to the rescue with additional manpower and is poised to make the difference. India has sent vast numbers of troops to the Western front, enabling the British Army to stay in the war. It is desperation time. At sea, the submarine offensive has failed, though it still causes great damage. American troopships have crossed the Atlantic with almost no losses. The allied powers are stumbling towards a final victory over starving Germany. Richard Baker and Simon Sturton have had a long war and are still in the front line on land and sea, playing their part in the long-delayed victory.