Edward Casey [pseud. John William Roworth], The Misfit Soldier, introduced and edited by Joanna Bourke (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999)
Edward Casey, an underfed, undersized, and semi-literate Irish Cockney from Canning Town (London), was no war hero. His account of four years of war service with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers is a remarkable chronicle, revealing his personal and sexual insecurities, his remarkable experience of Irish unrest during periods of training and leave, and his excitement as a military tourist in France, Salonica, and Malta. The memoir was written in 1980, six decades after his departure for New Zealand, yet retains a strong Cockney accent. It is both hilarious and deeply poignant, as he describes combat, visiting prostitutes, coping with military discipline, malingering, shell shock, and the everyday life of privates during the 1914-1918 war.