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.

On the night of 7 June 1916, while supervising a group of soldiers setting up barbed wire in no man's land, Adams was shot in the forearm by a German sniper. The wound was serious, and Adams was evacuated to England to recover — thereby missing the regiment's futile assault a month later on Mametz Wood as part of the Battle of the Somme.

During his convalescence, Adams wrote his memoirs of trench life, Nothing of Importance. Similar to Canadian chaplain Frederick George Scott's The Great War As I Saw It, Adams' book was not about grand strategies or major battles — Adams simply told the story of his day-to-day experiences on the front lines. In keeping with operational security while the war was still being fought, Adams changed all the names of his fellow soldiers, and even referred to his regiment simply as "a Welsh battalion."

Nothing of Importance One of Adams' sisters shepherded her late brother's manuscript through publication, and Nothing of Importance: A Record of 8 Months at the Front with a Welsh Battalion, October 1915–June 1916 was published in 1917 by Methuen Publishing in Britain, and in 1918 by Robert M. McBride & Co. in New York. It became the first published memoir about life in the trenches, and the only one published in Britain while the war was still being fought.

The Daily Telegraph also gave a good review, noting "With exemplary modesty the title of this book completely belies its contents. So far from containing 'nothing of importance,' it will rank, beyond question, among the most significant records which the war has produced. For it is a work of the rarest vividness and distinction; and at every turn it is marked by a radiantly sincere determination to tell the truth about things which have generally been grossly distorted by sentiment and cant. Nothing more real or more poignant has been written about the war, while a quiet sense of humour, playing over the narrative, continually keeps the writer upon the safe side of exaggeration."

Siegfried Sassoon, who had also been badly wounded on the same day as Adams and had been invalided back to England, received a copy of the book and annotated it, noting on the fly leaf that Adams had renamed him "Scott". In August 1918, when fellow war poet Wilfred Owen told Sassoon he was being returned to the front after convalescing from a serious wound, Sassoon gave Owen his annotated copy of Nothing of Importance. Owen was killed in November 1918, less than a week before the end of the war. The copy of Nothing of Importance given to him is now held in the Wilfred Owen Collection in the Bodleian Library, at the University of Oxford.