edited by Hugh Malcolm Roberts

Hugh Malcolm Roberts was born on 3rd January 1945, in Birmingham, the second child to William and Amy Roberts whose first son John had died aged thirteen on 15th December 1943. Following the death of his father on 13th June 1963, while searching through his papers, he discovered a small paper bag which contained a pocket address book and many scraps of paper. These turned out to be the diary of his time in the Great War. Fifty-three years later, having retired the previous year, Hugh began the challenging task of transcribing them into this book. As can be seen within the text, William’s writing is very small and hence the need to make regular use of a magnifying glass!
Hugh left school in the summer of 1961 and secured a position as a trainee quantity surveyor. This led to his attaining qualification as a chartered surveyor and later, having switched careers in 1977, as a chartered loss adjuster. Between these two choices came a period of working in Jamaica and London before a return to the second city and the move to loss adjusting. Upon qualifying in this second career, promotion followed together with a move to Cheltenham where he now lives.
Upon the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in 2014, Hugh was interviewed by the BBC for both television and radio when he took the opportunity of explaining not only his father’s role in that conflict but also that of his regiment, The Durham Light Infantry.