The events of the Second World War do not need another text book. However, the personal account of an ordinary man, an airman in the RAF, is not common. Alfie Holland left school in Newmarket at the age of thirteen, no qualifications and little prospect of gainful employment. Nineteen years old he was back in his parents’ home town of London, to where his mother had returned leaving his father in Newmarket.

In 1938 he joined the RAF and remained in military service until 1946.

His book, My Eight Year War, is his memoir of the momentous events of which he was a small part like millions of others. This saw him in northern France, as part of the ill-fated British Expeditionary Force, mentioned in dispatches for shooting down enemy aircraft with an adapted Browning machine gun, a narrow escape through Boulogne in May 1940, the Battle of Britain, north Africa, the invasion of Italy at Salerno, the year long fight to capture Italy, Yugoslavia, Austria, finally being demobbed and life in post-war London.

This rare account of the war by an ordinary man in the ranks is a noble endeavour. Alfie died in 2004

ISBN: 9781912978014