A diary of the Great Warr (1890)

It was revised and annotated by Henry Williamson and his share in the collaboration was so considerable that it . . . should be considered as a Williamson item.

That is being somewhat unfair to Captain Douglas Bell, MC, whose story is told in the book through his own diary entries. HW certainly helped in preparing and editing Bell’s manuscript for publication, and sent it off to his friend Richard de la Mare, then at Faber & Gwyer, with his personal recommendation; and indeed, he wrote a substantial fourteen-page introduction for the book; but to claim it as 'a Williamson item’ is being perhaps a little perverse.

Douglas Herbert Bell had been a fellow pupil of Colfe’s Grammar School although somewhat senior to HW, having been born in 1890, and their paths would not have crossed there. After leaving school Bell went on to Christ’s College Cambridge, and was shortly employed in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. At the time the First World War broke out he was already enlisted in the London Rifle Brigade as a Territorial soldier (as was HW), and went out to France on 4 November 1914 on the troopship Chyebassa – as did HW. They parted company when HW was invalided back to England with severe gastroenteritis and trench feet in January 1915.