All Valiant Dust: An Irishman Abroad by Peter Ross

For many of its participants, the Second World War was the most intense period of their lives – with horizons widened by grief, strangeness and excitement. Peter Ross, graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, to become a troop commander in Montgomery’s Eighth Army. He took ship to Egypt and was active in the Western Desert campaign, concluding with El Alamein, a memorable and historic battle which marked the turning-point of the war. Hospitalized and awarded the Military Cross, Ross returned to take part in the D-Day landings, the liberation of Brussels and the advance on the Rhine.

All Valiant Dust is a young Irishman’s experience of war, vividly recounted with compassion and humour. Its painfully realized remembrance of the din and tempo of desert conflict, and much besides, documents extraordinary times.

‘A great read.’ – Customer review

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PETER ROSS was born in India in 1914 and educated at Repton and Trinity College, Dublin where he won the Philosophical Society silver medal and founded the Squash Club. He joined the Royal Tank Regiment in 1940, won the Military Cross in North Africa and ended the war with the rank of Captain. He established Brook House preparatory school in south County Dublin in 1952 and was headmaster there until his retirement in 1977. He is author of To the Stars (1946), a history of Sandhurst Military Academy, and The Old Story, a book of poems. He died in January 1991.