More Than Just a Life

Young Eddie Wilson was a footballer on the threshold of a professional career with a prominent club. Then came the Great War of 1914-1918. Once called up into the Army he was sent without completing his training into the frontline in Belgium. There he was subjected to the horrors of trench warfare at Passchendaele. Within a very short space of time nearly all the friends and comrades that he had gone to the Front with had either been killed or injured. Dazed and confused he wandered away from the action having had a breakdown.Eventually a young, attractive French widow took him into her home. She nursed him back to health over the next year or so until he was captured in Calais by a Military Policeman, Frank Shipley. The two men travelled back to Belgium for the Court Martial and during this eventful journey they formed a friendship that was to have a great significance more than 75 years later.Many of Eddie's friends and supporters thought him more hero than coward. The outcome of his Court Martial was to depend on crucial evidence relating to his state of mind and, more importantly, likely confirmation of his previous heroism awaited from England.The story deals with the highly emotive aspect of the ordeal of the ordinary soldier and the wanton waste of young lives together with the effects of the harsh discipline of the Army.