In the First World War, Ronald Skirth was an ordinary tommy. His experiences were like those of many others, save in one thing. When Skirth went out into No Man's Land after Passchendaele and saw the dead body of a teenaged German soldier, he resolved that he would never again help to take a human life. Making use of Ronald Skirth's letters and postcards to his sweetheart, Ella, his contemporary journals and the memoir he wrote in his retirement fifty years later, The Reluctant Tommy is the fascinating story of a man who stuck by his principles in impossible circumstances. With a foreword from Jon Snow, and now repackaged for paperback, it is an new classic of the war memoir genre; the tale of an ordinary soldier with a truly remarkable story.'Different from the hundreds of other memoirs about the Great War ...What he has to say was hard come by and should be heard' Daily Mail'Superb' Daily Telegraph'An important contribution to the literature of the war ... whenever I get too misty-eyed about officer-man relationships I shall reread it to remind me of how badly things could go wrong.' Richard Holmes, Evening Standard
Ella darling, There are things I have concealed from you up till now that I think you ought to know; things that have turned me from a different person from the Ronald you know.' So, in April 1918, Ronald Skirth, a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Artillery, wrote to his sweetheart, back in England. A year before, Skirth, then just nineteen years old, had been sent to fight on the Western Front. This is his story, the story of a young man who went to war a devoted servant of King and country and returned utterly convinced that war, all war, was wrong and who acted upon his convictions, making a pact with God that he would not kill. This riveting memoir was written fifty years after the end of the war, drawing on his own contemporary diary entries and letters home. Never published before, it affords a vivid, moving and surprising insight into that most dreadful of conflicts.
Suppose you were in control of $154 million dollars of legal pharmaceuticals that had been stolen, and you purchased them for $3 million. You knew that you stood to make near the normal dollar rate if they were redistributed to a legal foreign market. Would $90 million make you happy? This is a story about such temptations that begin with a missing man. In a small southern town, or a relatively medium-sized Ohio River town, there is a retired cop and, presently, a private dick looking for a missing person. He works his magic to find the man. Along the way he discovers mysterious leads that twist and turn and have him in the middle of an international drug scheme for profit. Those in power make him a fall guy for a double murder. See how this nobody skirts the law and finds the truth. Luck or ingenuity, you choose. When you read and think it is over, it is not. This reading covers a lot of territory including small towns in Kentucky, DEA, FBI, local homicide, organized crime, people so called Ohio River rats, and a donkey farm. How do some people afford those big boats on the River? Can $90 million solve all these problems? A book by Ron Carroll, a retired everything, cop, detective, narcotics, teacher, boys High School basketball coach, private investigator, and a life long college student. Oh, also, once a deputy sheriff. Awards: Mayors Award first class, for Federal Narcotics Strike Force undercover operations commander, Kentucky Amateur Softball Association Hall of Fame. Self award for extreme imagination. That means I day dream a lot, why not, go figure.
Ellen G. White who lived from 1827 to 1915 ranks with Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy among the most fascinating and influential religious figures in nineteenthcentury America. Yet only now is the story of her remarkable career as a health reformer and religious leader available for the general reader. - Abbreviations. Preface. A Prophetess Is Born. In Sickness and in Health. The Health Reformers. Dansville Days. The Western Health Reform Institute. Short Skirts and Sex. Whatsoever Ye Eat or Drink. Fighting the Good Fight. Appendix: the 1864 Dansville Visit. A Note on Sources. References. Index
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