To Fight Alongside Friends

The First World War Diaries of Manchester Pals Captain Charlie May – written and kept in secret and published now for the first time. A born storyteller, Charlie May’s vivid eye for detail and warm good humour brings his experience in the trenches (and the experience of millions of ordinary men like him) to life for a 21st-century readership.

This tolerant and immensely likeable man had been born in New Zealand and – against King’s regulations – he kept a diary in seven small, wallet-sized pocket books. A journalist before the war and a born storyteller, May’s diaries give a vivid picture of battalion life in and behind the trenches during the build-up to the greatest battle fought by a British army and are filled with the friendships and tensions, the home-sickness, frustrations, delays and endless postponements, the fog of ignorance, the combination of boredom and terror to which every man that has ever fought could testify.

His diaries reflect on the progress of the war, tell jokes – good and bad, give details of horse-rides along the Somme valley, afternoons with a fishing rod, lunch in Amiens, a gastronomic celebration of Christmas 1915 and concerts in ‘Whiz Bang Hall’. He describes battles not just with the enemy, but with rats, crows and on the makeshift football pitch – all recorded with a freshness that brings these stories home as if for the first time.

The diaries are also written as an extended and deeply-moving love letter to his wife Maude and baby daughter Pauline. ‘I do not want to die’, he wrote – ‘Not that I mind for myself. If it be that I am to go, I am ready. But the thought that I may never see you or our darling baby again turns my bowels to water.’

Fresh, eloquent and warm, these diaries were kept secret from the censor and were delivered to his wife after his death by a fellow soldier in Charlie’s company. Edited by his great-nephew and published for the first time, these diaries give an unforgettable account of the war that took Charlie May’s life, and millions of others like him.

Author Biography

Born in India, Gerry Harrison returned to England for his education. Leaving school, and to fulfil a passion, he became an actor, before following a rewarding career on the production side of feature films. He has since worked for as a producer for Channel Four, BBC and ITV, and then as a councillor for twelve years. Meanwhile he has written pieces for the Guardian and the Times, and the Irish Times.

He is the author of The Scattering, a history of post-war Irish emigration to north London, and is currently completing a biography of legendary BBC radio producer and communist Reggie Smith. He lives in Ireland.

Charlie May was Gerry Harrison’s great uncle, and Harrison’s father was May’s Godson. When he was bequeathed his diaries in 2005, Harrison deposited them in the Regimental Museum in Manchester for the benefit of other researchers and writers, after which they moved to the Imperial War Museum. The diaries have never before been published as a whole.