A Welch Calypso: A Soldier of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in the West Indies, 1951-54 (Stevens Tom)(Paperback)

In March 1952 Tom Stevens sailed from Southampton aboard the troopship Dilwara, one of the last generations of British soldiers to serve in the West Indies. 'How did I get here?', he asks. Tom's candid memoir describes his wartime childhood, disrupted by evacuation, the Swansea blitz, patchy schooling, his father's absence at war and his parents' separation. He evokes with an engaging honesty the life of an infantryman in the garrison of Jamaica, the pleasures of tropical service and the temptations faced by a young man in uniform. Vividly recalled, Tom's memoir reveals how a young Welshman grew up in the final years of colonial Jamaica, recalling the complex relationships he enjoyed with its people. Tom candidly recounts the two amorous adventures that make his account of his time in the West Indies unique: his infatuation with Elvira, the Belize beauty for whom he risked all by
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