Charley Bourne- The central character and hero of the series. A working-class London lad from a close-knit family, he enlists in the British Army in 1916, age sixteen and arrives in the trenches on the Western Front shortly before the start of the Somme Campaign. Naive and not too bright, Bourne nonetheless gets much hard-earned worldly wisdom as he experiences and survives the horrors of the Great War for the next three years and beyond. Exceptionally brave, loyal to his comrades and quick to defend those who are suffering bullying or injustice, Bourne makes friends and enemies in equal numbers. His fundamental decency and conscientious sense of duty are sometimes at odds with his anger at the many injustices of military life and his growing disillusionment over the conduct of the war.