Tommy Atkins

Overview

Tommy Atkins is the English soldier. The "Tommy this, an' Tommy that", who singing marched with the Great Duke to the Danube, who joking broke the cavalry of France at Minden, who grumbling shattered Napoleon's dreams at Waterloo, who sweating in his red coat tramped back and forth across India, who kept us his six-rounds-to-the-minute at Mons, and who died in the mud at Passchendaele, the sands of the Western Desert, and the jungles of Burma. This work is the story of the "ordinary" English soldier, covering the years 1642-1966. Here lie some of the paradoxes of the English soldier. Successive governments misused his talents and his loyalties, and he died without complaint to save them from their follies. His superiors often treated him with sickening brutality, and he repaid them with devotion, even affection. And because he fought without bitterness, because in defeat he refused to be defeated and in conquering he had compassion, Tommy won the respect and friendship of his allies and foes the whole world over.