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The story is about Henry's journey from the training grounds in Scotland to Egypt and then to the Western Front where he stayed for most of the war until being hospitalized at the end of 1917 and sent home to Great Britain. The diary starts with Henry's battalion being packed up in a boat at the end of 1915, heading south, but even the soldiers don't know their final destination. It turns out to be Cairo in Egypt where the soldiers are allowed to "acclimatize" before they are sent out fighting. Chew's descriptions of their stopover in Malta and later the sights in Egypt are very enjoyable and reflect his carefree mood at the beginning of the war. He is a young man who is keen on going to the war, on seeing the world and earning glory for himself and he spends his time describing the nicer things instead of the hardships. He gets dysentery in their Egyptian camp, but even that cannot get his spirits down. These carefree entries are to change rapidly as the war progresses.
After the Christmas of 1915 they are sent into the desert where Henry experiences his first real hardships with the sandstorms, 18 miles marching a day in soft sand, the Turks and the very bad rations all adding up to a tiring and very negative experience. It is also here that he first has to kill someone which he describes as unreal - it was dark and when he first had to use the 'steel' he said it felt more like they were killing cattle. After the tiring months in the desert they are finally allowed back into Alexandria in May 1916 and Henry's carefree style returns a little as we learn about how soldiers had fun at the Front - football games, swims in the sea and visiting tourist attraction like the Sphinx or the Great Pyramids. However, the freedom and relatively peaceful times are again swept away quickly as the order comes for them to march to the Somme.
From June 1916 until the November of 1917 Henry stays in France where we follow him as he manages to survive the Somme without a scratch, goes on to crouch in trenches for weeks on end and still gives descriptions of how nice the food was in small French villages. But the most we see here is towns being shelled, soldiers marching in waist-high mud, people killing each other and how cruel life was at the Front. After these accounts we also understand better how lucky Henry Chew was to have survived the war at all - without any permanent physical damage.
Overall, I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. It is a very touching story of a young man having to go through the Great War and coming out of it, if not whole, but definitely alive. The writing style is very simplistic, which can be confusing at times to those readers who are not familiar with the events of World War 1, but the descriptions are detailed and entertaining. The little anecdotes Chew put in also help to lighten the mood, but his factual writing also takes away a little from the horrors of World War. We can both appreciate and understand the events of the Great War more after reading this book - and it's worth reading as it's relatively short and easy to get through. The final thing that makes this novel worthy of the readers' attention is that it carries a lot of meaning, especially for those British families whose members took part in the war. For the rest of us it helps to appreciate the sacrifices that those people made in order so that others could live in peace.
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But yes, do pass it on to him, it's a good read and different from many mainstream history books.
