2014 IS THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE START OF THE GREAT WAR. What was it really like to serve? Meet Private Billy Shears. In 1917 Private Billy Shears of the Lancashire Fusiliers, a man who does not know where he was born or in which year, and who grew up in a series of orphanages in and around Chorley, is a veteran sniper. He fought at the Battles of Loos and Ypres in 1914 and 1915, and distinguished himself at both campaigns. He is now part of the First Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers near Cambrai in northern France, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Julian Anglezarke. Billy seems to revel in war and killing. During one memorable raid at Ypres he shot seven Germans and took six more prisoners after hand-to-hand fighting. He had returned beaming to his troop commander, Lieutenant Pretyman. During the debriefing, Pretyman and two others who had been at the raid saw that Billy Shears was overjoyed that he had killed so many. Pretyman, a scholar of Russian literature immediately dubbed Billy, Raskolnikov the axe murderer in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Since that day Billy Shears had been known to his comrades and commanders as Raz. His lack of personal hygiene was not such an issue in the rain and mud of France; his non-commissioned and commissioned superiors, however, all tried and failed to get his hair cut and his beard trimmed. His unkempt appearance and slovenly ways were exacerbated by his gaunt face and sunken eyes. His uniform hung on him like an old suit on a scarecrow in the field. His immediate superior, Second Lieutenant Nicholas Sharples a nineteen year old who a year before was taking his Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams, despairs of ever making a true soldier of Raz. Private Billy ‘Raz’ Shears’ has one other talent, apart from killing; an uncanny knack for numbers. His superiors always first checked their calculations about gun elevations and range finding with him before issuing orders. amazon/Anglezarke-Trilogy-Book-Your-Ghosts/dp/1470046318/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378306158&sr=1-3
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 13:06:39 +0000
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