WITH A SMILE AND A WAVE

The Life of Captain Aidan Liddell VC, MC who won the fourth Air VC in the summer of 1915. Scholar, scientist, naturalist, astronomer, musician, aviator, photographer and diarist, Aidan Liddell embraced the challenges of a new century with enthusiasm. And thankfully his words live on. Daybell draws extensively on Captain Liddell's own letters and diaries, compelling and moving words supported by other contemporary documents to provide a vivid picture of the squalor and danger of war, the backbreaking hardship of trench life, and the challenges of pioneer air fighting. It is also a story of growing up in a devout and prosperous family, of a Jesuit education at Stonyhurst College, and of Edwardian Oxford before the Great War. It is about a very closeknit and patriotic family dealing with the adversity of war. Aidan Liddell was a decent, brave and intensely likeable young man and his story deserves to be told for the sake of countless others like him who fought bravely for King and Empire with a fervour that is difficult to imagine today. He served with the 3rd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and Royal Flying Corps. 'Talk of dirt and unshaveness. It's now one month and twelve days since I had a bath and have been in the trenches now for 24 days with one solitary attempt to wash about ten days ago.' (November 1914). One month later: 'It's a war with no glamour or glory... modern weapons are too deadly, and the whole art of war, and all tactics is laid down in our books, and the German dittoes, has been quite altered...' 'I thought at first a shell had hit us and knocked the tail off, a piece getting me in the process.' - 3rd August 1915. Riveting, ghastly, this gentleman was awarded the VC, the highest military award for the British Empire and seemingly cheated almost certain death. He lived on to be proclaimed a hero lying on a stretcher, cigarette in hand, smiling and waving for the camera yet despite rallying bravely, he died of his wounds a month after the action. A Pen & Sword publication, originally 2005 and here in facsimile reprint of the original. 300 pages, well illustrated.