1914. War had been declared, the armies mustered; battle would soon be joined.

Whilst hoping that he'd soon be in the thick of it, F. P. Crozier, then a Major in the Royal Irish Rifles, spent much of 1914-15 readying his battalion for the task that lay ahead of them.

Part of the 107th (Belfast) Brigade, they crossed the Channel in November 1915; in July the following year they entered the Battle of the Somme, at Thiepval.

Promoted a year later, Crozier proceeded to command the 119th Brigade until the war's end, where he continued to display his defining trait: that he was no ordinary brass hat.

A hands-on commander, he carried out personal reconnaissance in close contact with the enemy for, he reasoned, how else could he make plans unless he could see for himself?

Crozier was also unflinching in his acceptance of the ruthlessness required in their profession, and does not shy away from describing the suffering that soldiers inflicted upon each other.

A Brass Hat in No Man's Land is his uncompromising memoir of the First World War.

C.B. C.M.G. D.S.O. (1879-1937) was a British Army officer. He served in the Boer War, the First World War, the Lithuanian Wars of Independence and finally in Ireland. During this last posting he became disillusioned with the British regime and subsequently became a pacifist, writing a number of controversial books.