Toothy Goes to War: Memoirs of a Dental Officer 1939-46 By Robert Bagshaw

In Poppies to Paston Bob Bagshaw looked back to his boyhood and painted a vivid picture of life in the Norfolk countryside in the years between the Wars. His was a simple, uncluttered childhood, but soon all this was to change, and this book tells a totally different story. Even under normal conditions, departure from his native county for the first time to study dentistry in the strange surroundings of London’s Fast End would not have come easily. The fact that his arrival in Whitechapel coincided with the outbreak of War made the transformation even more traumatic. Life went on against a background of rationing and restriction, of bombing and destruction. Then, having achieved professional status, there were to come a further four years as a Dental Officer in the Royal Navy. If the nightly slaughter on the streets of London had not already done so, this latter period was destined to bring an acute realisation of the futility of War