War Classics – Old Soldiers Never Die

Frank Richards holds a unique place in military writing, for several reasons. His book Old Soldiers Never Die is reckoned to be among the finest war memoirs ever produced, and one of very few to be written by a private soldier. Richards was himself a rarity, having survived active service from the beginning of the First World War in 1914 right through to its conclusion in November 1918. He was never seriously wounded, yet picked up a Distinguished Conduct Medal and Military Medal in the process.

Officers’ memoirs of the First World War are well known: Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That, and Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel are just some examples. All are carefully shaped literary narratives written by well-educated men.

Richards’ account, by contrast, is raw, unfiltered, and direct. He wrote the book in 1933, when memories were still relatively fresh. This is significant, because later ‘memories’ harvested by journalists and popular historians in the period preceding the deaths of the last trench veterans can be problematical – men whose faculties were fading would fall back on a shared ‘mud, blood, and rats’ narrative that very much aligned with their audience’s expectations.