Die Hard, Aby! Abraham Bevistein - The Boy Soldier Shot to Encourage the Others, by David Lister
Published by Pen & Sword in 2005, 186 pages. Hardback with Dust Jacket (N3481)
Recommended Retail Price (Inside front fly leaf): £19.99
Brand New Book
This book highlights the shocking case of a young British soldier in the Great War who was executed by his own side, after a cursory trial and flimsy evidence. The book examines in depth the case of the young Jewish boy, Aby Beverstein who enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment. Aby was by all account an exemplar soldier who was wounded and then hospitalized. On his premature release from hospital he made the mistake of not returning immeadiately to his battalion, and the authorities arrested and tried him. He was then shot.... This fascinaitng book tells Aby's story, rather than that of the historic times through which he lived. If a well known battle rages while Aby sits in a trench several miles away, writing to his mum - we are with Aby. We follow him from the Russian occupied land of his birth, across Europe to his East End home, and then through school days and the events that led to the Great War. One of the first to join, we see him through training and on to duty at the Front. We are with him in the mud of the trenches and share his deprivations through the cold of the winter of 1915. After 10 months in France, we see what led him to leave the Front without authority. We are with Aby again when as a 17-year-old boy he walks to his fate on a cold, March dawn in 1916. Finally we examine the impact his short life had on his times and on ours.
| Condition | New |