Where Is the Number?

Bank clerks, farm workers, labourers, a thief, a former NCO, an office manager, a chauffeur, a serving officer, an artist, a poet, two young men about to go up to university, and an aristocrat…Just some of the many who answered Kitchener’s call to serve their country in the autumn of 1914, fully expecting it to all be over by Christmas.What awaited them was months of training, learning to dig trenches, drill, march… and kill. And when the time came, more than two Christmases later, they went to war on the opening day of the bloodiest battle in the history of the British Army: the Somme.What they discovered on that sunny July morning, as they took part in the lottery of combat, was that they weren’t only fighting for King and Country and for their nation’s honour, but also for their regiment and for each other, and that while friends may be lost, friendship is eternal.In this poignant and moving novel, Nicholas Temple-Smith tells the story of this handful of men, whose fictitious journey mirrors that of so many of the lost generation.