‘A Hundred Years To Arras’ by J.M.Cobley is the tale of Private Robert Gooding Henson and his journey from being a farmer with his dad on their Somerset farm to enlisting for the Somerset Light Infantry in the First World War in 1916.

Robert is twenty-three years old, a farmer’s boy from Somerset, who joins up against his father’s wishes. Robert forms fast friendships with Stanley, who lied about his age to go to war, and Ernest, whose own slippery account betrays a life on the streets. Their friendship is forged through gas attacks, trench warfare, freezing in trenches, hunting rats, and chasing down kidnapped regimental dogs. Their life is one of mud and mayhem but also love and laughs.
This is the story of Robert’s journey to Arras and back, his dreams and memories drawing him home. His story is that of the working-class Tommy, the story of thousands of young men who were caught in the collision between old rural values and the relentlessness of a new kind of war. It is a story that connects the past with the present through land, love and blood.

I love history and this tale is told so well. I picked up this book and felt connected immediately to Robert, with a dad of the older generation and a mum who tried her best to show the love his dad couldn’t. I felt for his parents the day they discovered he had enlisted and understood the pain both parents experienced, although his dad was his stoic self.

The detail the author has gone into with Roberts time in France is superb. I could literally picture every small thing down to the barbed wire. It was a horrific time and all I felt was a deep sense of sadness that soldiers like Robert and his friends were fighting a useless war and they killed young men like themselves in the name of their country. I could not escape that feeling, at times I found myself sitting with my book on my knee, mourning these boys and men who fought, died, suffered horrific wounds or came away with ‘shell shock’ as it was known. Even the German soldiers who died… they only did this for their country, fought a useless war.

These soldiers did everything they were ordered to. They waited and waited for further orders and the conditions were terrible. My heart went out to every one of these boys and men. I could have cried for all the families waiting back home hoping and praying they never received a telegram about their boys.

The fact that the author is a distant cousin of Robert and has based his story on him makes this an even more poignant tale. The research that has been done to get every military move included and right must be an enormous undertaking. I salute you J.M. Cobley…you have done Private Robert Gooding Henson proud. This book is a captivating, emotional, thought-provoking read that I will carry with me for a long time to come.

Thank you to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours and Unbound for my gifted copy of this book.