This volume constitutes another significant contribution to looking afresh at ‘religion and war’ which the editor has been making in other books. It consists of two parts. The first is an introduction of a hundred pages in which he both discusses the text and then writes generally and informatively about the relationship between the YMCA and the British army (in France, Belgium and occupied Germany ). In spirited fashion, he mounts a strong case for the work of civilian religious welfare organisations, in particular for the YMCA. The second part consists of the memoirs and letters written by Barclay Baron, an Anglican layman who before the war had been prominent in the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission and afterwards became a major figure in Toc H. He was not a YMCA man through and through. His memoirs were probably written in the early 1960s and from memory. The editor, in his exemplary notes identifying people and places, has spotted some inaccuracies, but the text as a whole, together with the selection of letters, comes across as a vivid account of the varied support activities in which he and his colleagues were engaged, and it is also interspersed with deeper reflections.