Enter The Author

On 13th May, Major F.W.O. Maycock DSO arrived from England to assume command of the reduced, but shortly to be reborn 1st Battalion.
In the days that were to come, the Battalion, which was by then in billets in the ancient town of Poperinge, had increased in size from just 3 officers and 27 other ranks, to 11 officers and 286 other ranks. Its re-birth was well underway.
Although the lions share of these new ranks came direct from England, many were pulled-in from the other depleted battalions in the 84th Brigade which had taken a battering along the Frezenberg Ridge on the 8th May.
Maycock, the man sent to take command, was a much admired and respected officer. Born in 1877, Frederick William Orby Maycock was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion in 1897. He had served out the years following the Boer War on secondment in South Africa, earning himself a DSO for actions in Kenya in 1907 whilst serving with the King's African Rifles.
A profound military scholar, he was when war was declared, stationed at the Royal Military College, Camberley, where two years previously, he had published his first book "The Napoleonic Campaign of 1805" which became an instant success and was at the time, the basis for British military teaching on the period. He followed this success with "Marlborough's Campaigns" in 1913 and just as war was declared, his third book "The Invasion of France 1814" was being printed.
Maycock arrived when the Battalion was being reborn. It would take many a month for it to become once more the superlative force it had been, but would Maycock still be there to see it returned to its former glory?

---