Description

A gripping true story which envelopes the reader on a journey that stretches from an English village, to the Canadian prairies, the trenches of the Western Front and finally to the award of the Imperial Service Medal. Born in 1892, the fourth of eight children, home was a humble cottage. At nineteen Rowland Hill emigrated to Canada, fired with ambition, hope, and the optimism of youth; but the Great War got in the way and he returned to England at its start to fight for his country. As a Royal Engineer sapper, he was thrust into the front line trenches where he endured artillery shells, machine guns, snipers, mud, lice, rats, rain, ice and snow to keep the telephone lines intact and the vital communications flowing. The narrative weaves a wider commentary of the war into Rowland’s own startling, sobering, terrifying, pitiful, funny and uplifting experiences in the trenches and their surrounds without losing any of the intimacy of his story. Holding the Line is a different account of that war through the eyes of a man who endured almost everything which life in the trenches came to represent, and almost paid the ultimate price.