Private 12768: Memoir of a Tommy

by John Jackson, Hew Strachan (Translator)

A newly discovered account of life in the trenches that challenges our perception of how British troops viewed the First World War. There is no shortage of personal accounts from the First World War. So why publish another memoir? The principal reason is the tone of enthusiasm, pride and excitement conveyed by its author, Private John Jackson. Jackson served on the Western Front from 1915 until the war's end; he was present at Loos in 1917, on the Somme in 1916, in Flanders in 1917; he was on the receiving end of the German offensive in April 1918; and he took part in the breaking of the Hindenburg Line at the end of September 1918. Conditioned by Wilfred Owen's poetry and dulled by the notions of waste and futility, British readers have become used to the idea that this was a war without purpose fought by 'lions led by donkeys'. This narrative captures another perspective, written by somebody with no obvious agenda but possessed of deep traditional loyalties - to his country, his regiment and his pals.

Genres: History, Autobiography, Memoir

264 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

JJ was born in 1929 in rural Devon. In 1931 he and his younger brother moved with their parents - who were ‘flat broke’, out of work and in poor health – to a rented cottage in Lyme Regis on Dorset’s Jurassic coast.

The family survived on what they could grow and rear on a small allotment and what they could catch in the sea. For cash they took in lodgers. They were not the only family in difficulty. JJ was shocked to discover that the playmates next door were not available on Tuesdays because Tuesday was the family washday. Their parents could only afford one set of clothes for them.

By 1935, the family had progressed from ‘lodgers’ to ‘guests’,- in a small private hotel. That enterprise, backed by a local entrepreneur, was not a bonanza for the entrepreneur but generated sufficient resource for the family to leave the West Country in 1937 and look for work in the London area.

JJ’s father found a job as a salesman of chemicals used in the making of perfumery some six months before JJ’s brother was killed in a road accident.

That death had a traumatic effect on the stability of the family but the man responsible for it offered, by way of compensation, to pay for JJ, who had only been taught at home, to be educated privately at boarding schools until the age of 18. The last of these was The King’s School, Canterbury and from there JJ went on to study law at Queens’ College, Cambridge with the benefit of a scholarship awarded by the University supplemented by a grant from the Ministry of Education.

JJ's Career

JJ left Cambridge with a law degree in 1952, took a job with the British branch of Philips, the Dutch electronics company and in 1953 took a further Cambridge law degree and qualified as a barrister.

JJ stayed with British Philips full time for 29 years, joining its board in 1966 and leaving it in 1981 to start a new career as a self employed consultant. In that role he joined the boards of a number of companies, both public and private in different industries, becoming chairman of many of them.

In 1981 he organised the rescue of the popular history magazine History Today. That experience intensified his interest in small businesses, particularly those in difficulty, and cemented his belief in the importance of personal freedoms and the dangers in pressures to conform.

In 1992 he became the first non-solicitor chairman of the law firm Mishcon de Reya, a position he holds today.

JJ's Campaigning Work

In the 1990’s he helped to create the Countryside Alliance which, under his chairmanship, campaigned vigorously for liberty and livelihood in the countryside. During that period also, he chaired a working party of employers, trade unionists, academics and journalists studying the impact of new technologies, particularly web based technologies, on the work place. Their report was published in 1996 by the Fabian Society as ‘Changing Work’.

At that time he also became a trustee of One World Action, a charity which campaigns and works for the rights of women, particularly in developing countries.

In 2001 he became one of the first directors of the global web based publication openDemocracy.

In 2011 he founded JJ Books.

Reviews

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Jackson's memoir stands in high contrast to most of the well-known and popular WWI memoirs. Where Sassoon and Graves are filled with a mixture of candidness and irreverence, John Jackson is frank throughout. He is a common man, unlike many of the popular memoir writers, and his experience is even more interesting for that. Not a particularly poetic writer, Jackson is still very informative and the memoir is indeed more a journal-like memoir rather than a heavily pontificating look back. Both kinds of war memoirs have merit. Jackson's recording of facts leaves room for the truth of his war experience to affect the reader without overwhelming his audience with an onslaught of the typical criticism of the war.

I wouldn't think those with little knowledge of the WWI era and the war itself enjoy this as much as they would the usual suspects, but if you have a background in WWI and have read the top billed memoirs, please read this one too. All the recorded experiences of the Great War create a more complex and dynamic image of how it was lived by the men who fought it.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

No rhetoric.
No criticism.
No complaint!
No attempt to apportion blame.
No overtly political opinion.
No great literary merit.
Just a blow by blow, honest account of an ordinary, rock steady tommy's experience in WW I.
...and, for all of the above, this stands apart!