Bernard Adams

John Bernard Pye Adams (15 November 1890 – 27 February 1917) was a British army officer during World War I and a writer. His book of memoirs, Nothing of Importance, was the first published book about life in the trenches, and the only one published before the end of the war. Adams did not live to see its publication, dying in France of wounds suffered while leading an attack in February 1917.

Early life and education

Bernard Adams was born in Beckenham, Kent, the third of four children and the only son of Harold John and Georgina Adams. He attended Clare House School in Beckenham for his primary education. Then from 1904 to 1909 he attended Malvern School, an English public school in Worcestershire. He proved to be a brilliant scholar, and won prizes for Shakespeare recitation, ancient history, Greek and Latin prose, and in Divinity. He then attended St. John's College, Cambridge, where he earned Browne Medals for Latin ode and Greek epigram in 1911, and Greek epigram in 1912 before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (First Class) in 1913.

War

After graduation, Adams worked for a year as Warden of the House for Indian Students in London, with a plan to become a missionary in India. When England declared war against Germany in August 1914, Adams was torn — as a prospective missionary, his life's work would be to promote peace, but he also felt it was his duty to enlist. He joined the 1st Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, commissioned as a lieutenant; it was the same regiment in which poets Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and David Jones also enlisted. He was assigned to a reserve battalion in England.