Prose & Poetry - Charles Carrington
Charles Edmund Carrington (1897-1990)
served as a British officer during World War One and wrote a noted memoir,
A Subaltern's War, under the pseudonym Charles Edmonds in 1929.
Born on 21 April 1897 in West Bromwich, Carrington was both keen and prompt in signing up for war in 1914. Enlisting at 17 years of age he found himself commissioned in 1915 to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment's (1/5th) Territorial battalion.
During the course of his service Carrington served on both Western and Italian Fronts, during which time he was awarded the Military Cross.
Following the war Carrington completed his studies at Oxford (gaining a BA in 1921 and MA in 1929) and spent the remainder of his career in teaching, writing and publishing. He served as Assistant Master at Haileybury College from 1921-24 and 1926-29. He lectured at Oxford's Pembroke College between 1924-25.
Between 1929 and 1954 he was also Educational Secretary to the Cambridge University Press.
With the advent of the Second World War in 1939 he returned to service in France in 1940. From 1941-45 he was a Lieutenant-Colonel on the General Staff. From 1954-62 he served as Professor of British Commonwealth Relations at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Between 1964-65 he was a visiting Professor in North America.
Carrington published two memoirs of his wartime service. The first, A Subaltern's War, was published under the pseudonym Charles Edmonds in 1929. An expanded account was subsequently published in 1964 as Soldier From The Wars Returning.
Unlike numerous other memoirists of the era Carrington chose not to view the war as butchery wrought upon unknowing soldiery by a callous government and military high command. He viewed with dismay such views expounded by others such as Sassoon and Graves.
Carrington firmly believed that those who signed up for war were aware of the cause for which they were fighting and were fully capable of making their own moral choices.
He also published widely on the subject of British history and published several volumes on Rudyard Kipling, including his official biography.
He died on 21 June 1990 aged 93.
"Beachy Bill" was the name given to one of the Turkish guns which regularly shelled Anzac Cove.
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