Ken Phillips enlisted at the start of World War 2 and joined the Rifle Brigade. He was sent to North Africa where he was part of an anti-tank division engaged in a rolling battle across Egypt and Libya against one of Germany's top generals and his superior panzers. Ken endured eighteen months of sandstorms and flies, supply issues and poor rations, travelling over two thousand miles of wreck-strewn desert in increasingly cannibalised battalions and vehicles.
Later, Ken would be redeployed in the shelled-out countryside of Italy before taking part in the Western push through Europe following the D-Day landings, beating back a wounded but still-fighting German line.
A powerful and intimate memoir, My Wartime Wanderings is not a sweeping, broad-swathe account of the Second World War; it is a personal account of one man's journey through the deadliest conflict in human history, the loss of life, the upheaval of nations, but also the monotony of the day-to-day and the reality and practicalities of life in the British Army.
Told through Ken's own memoirs, with snippets of his letters home, My Wartime Wanderings is a must read for those interested in the reality behind the silver-screen images of the Second World War: a story of seven years, seven months and twenty-four days in uniform.