The Museum of Military Medicine is pleased to offer copies of the newly published book Active Service Jottings, featuring drawings from the First World War sketchbooks of Douglas Arthur Chambers, a stretcher bearer in the RAMC.
In 1915, aged 20 years, Douglas Arthur Chambers trained then went out to the Somme to serve with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). He took with him three sketchbooks and in them he recorded, in pictures, the mud-caked boots, army rations, endless marching and ever-present danger of sniper fire, artillery bombardment and gas attacks. He did this with the ‘black humour’ and satire that helped him and his fellows cope with the awful conditions of the trenches.
Active Service Jottings is a compilation of the drawings together with some background to Douglas’s life before and after the war. It provides interesting information from his army records and shows how he endured his experience of war.
Active Service Jottings – Douglas Arthur Chambers’s First World War Sketches, Compiled by Sue and Chris Doyle, is available from the Museum Shop priced £12. It is the perfect present this Christmas.
More information about the sketchbooks can be found here:
https://www.forces.net/news/satirical-drawings-wwi-soldiers-show-unexpected-side-war
