Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh (1897–1980) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

writer, primarily of text books. He was born in Harlesdon, London, and died in Stogumber, Somerset. He was married in Battersea, London in 1921, and had 3 daughters and 1 son. Mellersh had published about 25 books, including 3 novels in 1926 – 1931, and an autobiography about his experience of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. The autobiography, ''Schoolboy into War'' is an account of his recruitment at the age of 18, directly from school as an officer in the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...

. He was commissioned into the

East Lancashire Regiment The East Lancashire Regiment was, from 1881 to 1958, a line infantry regiment of the British Army. The regiment was formed in 1881 under the Childers Reforms by the amalgamation of the 30th (Cambridgeshire) Regiment of Foot and 59th (2nd Nottingh ...

in 1915, served on the

Western Front Western Front or West Front may refer to: Military frontiers * Western Front (World War I), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (World War II), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (Russian Empire), a maj ...

, and was wounded three times (once each in 1916, 1917 & 1918). His family then lived in St Alban's, Hertfordshire, where they took in 2 refugees from Belgium, a mother and her young daughter, with the surname of Louwage. Quote: "I and my like entered the war expecting an heroic adventure and believing implicitly in the rightness of our cause ounds like Cather's hero Claude we ended greatly disillusioned as to the nature of the adventure, but still believing that our cause was right and we had not fought in vain." A later non-fiction book was about "Fitzroy of the Beagle," because a midshipman aboard Darwin's famous voyage round the world had the same surname of Mellersh (though no direct genealogical connection could be made). In 1921 Mellersh joined the

Inland Revenue The Inland Revenue was, until April 2005, a department of the British Government responsible for the collection of direct taxation, including income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, corporation t ...

as a tax inspector.

Books

;Novels Let Loose (Selwyn and Blount, 1926) Ill Wind (1930) The Salt of the Earth (Chapman and Hall, 1931) ;Autobiography ;
''Schoolboy into War''
(William Kimber, 1978) ;Ebooks To mark the centenary of Mellersh's joining the army in 1915, three of his books were published as Ebooks in 2015. These are: *''Schoolboy into War: Book 1, The novel'' (previously published in 1930 as Ill Wind) *''Schoolboy into War: Book 2, The autobiography'' *''Poet into war: A life of Siegfried Sassoon'' The novel has been renamed to make it clear that it tells the same story as the autobiography. The novel is a young man of 30's view, the autobiography that of a man in his seventies.

(Njeanius Productions, 2015) ;Non fiction *''From Ape Man to Homer: The Story of the Beginnings of Western Civilization'' (Hale, 1962) *''Charles Darwin: Pioneer of the Theory of Evolution'' (A. Barker, 1964) *''Minoan Crete (Life in ancient lands)'' (Evans Brothers, 1967) *''Sumer and Babylon'' (Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1965) *''Fitzroy of the Beagle'' (Mason and Lipscombe, 1968) *''The Destruction of Knossos (The Rise and Fall of Minoan Crete'' (Mellersh Estate, 1970)

References

H. E. L. Mellersh's Rootsweb profile
1897 births 1980 deaths 20th-century British writers British autobiographers British Army personnel of World War I Charles Darwin biographers East Lancashire Regiment officers {{England-nonfiction-writer-stub