Where Poppies Blow: the British soldier, nature, the Great War
John Lewis-Stempel

Using eyewitness accounts recorded in diaries, letters, published articles and medical records, John Lewis-Stempel sets himself the task of telling the “unique story of the British soldiers of the Great War and their relationship with the animals and plants around them”. By animals, he means birds, insects, amphibians and mammals, both wild and domesticated.

Much of his book is a deeply moving anthology of amateur naturalists in khaki. Cecil Baring, a teenaged second lieutenant and keen birdwatcher, had won a silver medal in the RSPB school essay competition, and when he went to war he took his hobby with him. Having spent the spring of 1917 finding kingfisher nests and watching common sandpipers as his regiment waited to march up to the front-line trenches, he was finally called to battle in June.