Here is a book about Pioneers for Pioneers and written by a Pioneer. Pioneers, mark you, not Royal Pioneers; the difference is touchingly drawn and is a fitting climax to memoirs which for the most part are the escapades of a Pioneer.

It don't cost a penny is written in the familiar cockney style of ex-batman who wrote a number of articles in the Corps Magazines. Eddie Harwood is in fact ex-batman who is in fact none other than Major E H (Edward Harwood) Rhodes-Wood who for so long hid his identity. It was revealed only on publication of this book.

It don't cost you a penny records events that are true and one of its minor appeal is the amusement to be had in identifying the characters - some thinly, other heavily veiled- which abound. Since these memoirs are true, they are history and history of the Corps at that. But read it not as history but as a damned funny account of a private soldier's soldiering.

It is written with a sincere, authentic ring; clearly the author has an abiding understanding of Ex-Batman and portrays him as the honest to god, loyalty to his unit and to hell with the rest man that is the British Private Soldier.

It don't cost you a penny when published actually cost one hundred and fourteen pennies and you get good value for every one of them ! It is profusely illustrated by Sillence of Punch who captures the spirit the author so ably writes about.