Augustus and the Great War

I uploaded my book, Augustus and the Great War, to the Kindle Store. You can read it here. It's aimed at children aged around ten to twelve.

It’s no fun getting your head stuck down a toilet, but that’s what happened when I decided to stand up to The Three Amigos, a gang at my new school. Somehow, this made me a troublemaker, and I was kept back in detention. On the way home, I got picked up by the police, so things weren’t great in my first month of senior school.

And when I got home, my parents were still arguing. They stopped long enough to let me know that I had to move out of my bedroom for Granddad to come and stay. Great! Granddad told me he could travel through time using an old compass to guide the way. Right. Sure. Humour the old man. But I was having a fiddle with it, and somehow, I managed to send myself back in time. When I returned, Granddad told me he got the compass from his father who was given it by a young infantryman during the First World War. 

When Granddad got suddenly ill with chlorine gas poisoning, I just knew he’d been back to the First World War. And then he told me I was the young infantryman, and that I’d have to go back in time to give the compass to my great-grandfather.  

The crash of the shells was beyond anything I imagined as I sat in the trenches with the other soldiers of the London Regiment, waiting to go over the top. The whistles blew, we all stood and fixed bayonets, and then clambered up the ladders and over the parapet into the fog of smoke and gas, the machine-gun bullets plucking at the soil all around us. We crossed the muddy fields towards Loos, and using rifle and grenade, house by house, we forced the Germans from the village.  

But then I knew I must face my biggest trial: I had to join the attack on Hill 70, the infamous German stronghold. I knew my great-grandfather lay wounded on the hill, and that unless I could get to him, I would never be born.

The story revolves around a young boy, Augustus, who travels back in time to the Battle of Loos, September 1915. If you like it, please leave feedback.

I'm working on another book about two brothers in the opening weeks of the war that deals with the retreat from Mons. Should be done in a few months. With luck!