1914 - 1918. For three generations, members of the Btackwood famity served the Royat Marines with distinction. With the outbreak of Wortcl War I, at tast comes Jonathan Btackwood's turn to carrv the famil.v name into battle.

But as the young marines embark for the Dardanettes, and a new kind of warfare, it dawns on them that the days of scartet coats and an unchanging tradition of honour and gtory have gone for ever. First in Gattipoti, and two years tater at Ftanders, comes their horrifying initiation into a whotesate staughter for which no training coutd ever have prepared them.

Caught up in the savagery of a conflict beyond any officer's controt, BI.ackwood's future rests on the 'horizon' - the dark Lip of the trench which was the I.ast fatefut sight for so many.

It was as long ago as the Sixties, when I was writing the book called H.M.S. Saracen, that my late father really began to talk of his own experiences at Gallipoli and on the Somme. As a boy I had sometimes iistened to him speaking about them to his close friends, who had shared the same nightmare of trench warfare, but he never mentioned them directly to me.