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Title: Three Cheers for Me

Subtitle: The Bandy Papers, Book 1

Author: Donald Jack

Narrator: Robin Gabrielli

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-19-17

Publisher: Prelude Books

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

With his disturbingly horse-like face and a pious distaste for strong drink and bad language, young Bartholomew Bandy doesn't seem cut out for life in the armed services, as we meet him at the start of World War I.

Yet he not only survives the dangers and squalor of the infantry trenches, he positively thrives in the Royal Flying Corps, revealing a surprising aptitude for splitarsing Sopwith Camels and shooting down the Hun. He even manages to get the girl.

Through it all, he never loses his greatest ability - to open his mouth and put his foot in it.

Donald Jack's blackly humorous Bandy memoirs are classics of their kind. Against an un-shrinking depicted backdrop of war and its horrors, his anti-hero's adventures are both gripping and shockingly funny.

Members Reviews:

Interesting view of The Great War

Interesting, contemporary view of World War I recounted by a fictional participant. A little dated of course but an enjoyable story with engaging characters.

Five Stars

WWI as it might have been

Yes, It's him again

I have remembered this series since I read it many years ago. What I didn't know was how deeply it had sunk into my being. I have re-read the first three books and am amazed at how much of Bandy I see in myself. As the main character, Bartholomew Bandy, developed and grew, he learned many lessons about life, living, and social interaction. It is only now, after many years, that I realize I have taken to heart many of the lessons Bandy learned. This was and still is a very funny story and I am forever grateful to its author.

Surprisingly good

I enjoyed Three Cheers For Me a good deal more than I expected to. I tried it because P.G. Wodehouse thought highly of it, but I didn't really know whether I would like it. In fact (after a rather tedious opening chapter or two), I found it readable, funny in places and genuinely touching in others. It had elements of Wodehouse himself, Jerome K. Jerome, Siegfried Sassoon and Cecil Lewis; to my surprise, as well as the humour it gave a powerful, exciting and sometimes moving picture of fighting in the First World War.

The story begins in 1916. It is narrated by Bartholemew Bandy, a nave, gauche Canadian who enlists in the army to fight in France. He is, of course, hopelessly incompetent, but eventually enlists in the RFC and becomes a pilot. He remains socially inept but finds that in the air he is a brilliant flyer. This gives rise to both comic and genuinely exciting situations.

Although this is billed as a comedy and some parts are genuinely funny, it is the descriptions of life and action at the Front at the Somme and Ypres, and of aerial combat which I found the best parts of this book. These episodes are, in a way, partly comic, but all the more affecting for being so. "Bandy" talks in some places about out-and-out farcical events like wrestling with ancient plumbing in a country house, which reminded me strongly of Three Men In A Boat. In other parts, he uses a similar tone to describe a group of bewildered infantrymen fighting their way into an enemy trench and not knowing what to do, his own terror-induced clumsiness and ineptitude when taking off for his first flight into genuine action and the thrill of flying once he has become extremely skilled at it.