Charlie's War Illustrated: Remembering World War One

As a child Mick Manning wondered why his grandfather always wore a poppy in his buttonhole on Remembrance Day. This book, written as if Charlie Manning himself was talking to us, is the answer to that question.  He was a fighter in the artillery serving in Egypt, Palestine and France during World War One.  His resilience, energy and sense of duty are apparent but the privations and brutalities of the war are not hidden. These author illustrators know how to draw young readers into a fascinating personal story while passing on a great deal of information.  The artwork is arresting and includes some fine diagrams of the layout of the trenches and the structure of tanks.  Pages are well designed with written text, illustrations, photographs and pictures of memorabilia, for example cigarette cards, all working harmoniously to tell the story. There is a lot of telling dialogue in speech balloons while the language in the main text is often lyrical. We have a dynamic word picture of the soldiers moving into battle: ‘Tough lads, shy lads, mummy’s boys and bullies pushed out of the trenches in their thousands; going “over the top” into a storm of bullets and explosions’.  It is the little human details that make this book so memorable. ‘Some gas smelled like the pear-drop sweets I used to get from my auntie’s shop and I’ve never eaten them since!’ We also learn that  messages requesting ‘pen pals’ were sometimes found in boxes of shells from the women who worked in the dangerous ammunitions factories back home.  The bravery of the soldiers, the camaraderie in the trenches where soldiers would sing songs, play cards and make trench art from bits of wood and the warm friendships formed thread through the story. But these authors never hide the human cost of a terrible conflict. Near the end of the book we learn that Charlie survived to return to his job in the steelworks and his friend Fred to running a pub near Liverpool. ‘But the things we’d seen and done and the friends we’d left behind haunted us for the rest of our lives.’