Nearly 100 years have passed since the guns blazed in the ever-deepening mud of Passchendaele. Yet places such as Ypres, the Marne and the Somme can never remain mere names in a chronicle of war - they are heavy with meaning as the setting for the near-destruction of a generation of men. It is this aura of tragedy that makes Huntly Gordon's book - consisting mainly of his own letters written home from the front - such a potent memoir. Gordon was a typical product of his generation - sensitive, intelligent, unpretentious; capable of detached, trenchant and reasoned judgement. As the glorious summer of 1914 drew to a close, it was difficult for the 16 year-old Gordon to realize that the world he had planned and prepared for at Clifton College was a world in which he now had to prepare for war. By 1916 he had left school, and after an intensive and ill-balanced course at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, Royal Field Artillery.
In June 1917, he was at the Ypres Salient, getting his 'baptism' at Hell Fire Corner in one of those intensive artillery duels that formed the prologue to Passchendaele in July 1917 before being engaged for six weeks in the havoc of the battle itself. In the opening months of 1918, his battery was to fight a series of rearguard actions near Baupaume during the brutal German offensive of 21 March. A transfer to a quiet sector to rest and refit was eventually possible, but they arrived there just in time to face the final German onslaught of 12 April...In The Unreturning Army Huntly Gordon recalls his experiences of a tumultuous conflict and field of battle that seem almost inconceivable to us now. And his words, for the most part written at the time, have an immediacy, freshness and poignancy that will not fail to enlighten and astonish and move the reader of today.
Author Biography
Huntly Strathearn Gordon was born in a Perthshire manse in 1898. Educated at Merchiston and Clifton College, he joined the army in 1916. After the war he studied medicine, before going to China with Shell Oil. Returning in 1926, he joined London Transport and rose to be Chielf Welfare Officer, in his spare time surveying archaeological sites with Sir Mortimer Wheeler. During the Blitz, he initiated food trains for the thousands sheltering in the Underground, and was awarded an MBE. He married twice, and had four children. Huntly Gordon died in 1982, and is buried at Kincardine Church in Strathspey. David Gordon is Huntly Gordon's youngest son. Born in 1956, he went to Sherborne School and Sandhurst. He has been a soldier, parliamentary researcher and county councillor. A lifelong campaigner on environmental issues, his passions also include vintage vehicles and old houses. He lives in rural Somerset.
