IT was one of those typically British summer days when the rain clouds hung around like a threat, low and grey, poised to drench all attempts at recreational endeavour on the ground.

There is something desperately tragic about the Brits and their love-hate affair with the weather. We do not enjoy, merely endure.

It is ingrained in us. Like water stains on wood.

So there we were at this garden party full of media people and their partners. It was a typical gathering of those who ply more-or-less the same trade and, for some reason, assume they will have much in common.

It doesn't follow.

The conversation veered between relaxed and tense. Strangers made polite noises to each other, old friends stumbled over their words, trying to cram years of fate, fortune, success and disaster into too few sentences.

I glanced across the patio beyond the drinks table and the sardines sizzling on the barbecue griddle. Two people were saying their hellos. I recognised both of them, immediately.

Heavens above. It's Peter Rhodes and his wife Sally.

Time for a bit of honesty. Peter and I were never really bosom pals when we worked together during the early 1970s in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. He always seemed such a pompous young man.

But there again, there were few bigger idiots than Phillpott The Younger. Stags in the clearing, always locking antlers, foolish youths with everything to prove. Such a sad waste of time and effort. Oh, go on. Let's have a chat for old times' sake . . .

I'm so glad I had that talk with him on that blustery day in June. For I soon discovered we had much in common, not only in outlook, but also in shared experiences.

We'd both been researching the lives of relatives who had fought in the First World War.

I'd been following the bootsteps of a great-uncle who had survived two years of battles from the first clash at Mons to the quagmire of the Ancre in 1916.

Peter had been tracing the short life of his great-uncle Alvin, blown to pieces in his first action on the Somme.

I'd been carrying my relative's shilling talisman as I visited the old killing fields in northern France and Flanders.

Ypres is known well enough, but some of the places have almost been forgotten. There are few today who understand the significance of names once bywords for British valour.

Nimy, Jemappes, Villers Cotterets. The rivers Marne, Aisne and the bloodstained heights of Chemin des Dames. Meanwhile, Peter had also been performing his own symbolic acts. Like a moth to a flame, the plains of north-eastern France and Belgium also tugged at his soul.

Here was a truly kindred spirit.

One day, he bought two white Yorkshire roses. One was placed on the war memorial in great-uncle Alvin's home village, and the other was taken across the Channel, bound for Thiepval on the chalky uplands of the Somme.

Middle-aged men. What sentimental, romantic fools we are indeed.

However, Peter's now gone one better. A book of his interviews with old soldiers and expeditions to battlefields has just been published by the Black Country Society.

And although a fair proportion of the stories are about Staffordshire veterans, there are also many references to soldiers from Worcestershire and their exploits in foreign fields.

Entitled For A Shilling A Day, these are the tales of ordinary men who were called upon to perform extraordinary feats of courage and endurance. But it is a not just a book. This is a social document of real worth.

There are the reminiscences from men such as Kidderminster's Hadley Harris, a teenage conscript serving with the Middlesex Regiment at the outbreak of the Korean conflict. Korea was a dirty, killing war. And Hadley Harris was 19.

Then there is the story headed Hurricanes Over Murmansk, recounting the experiences of Eric Carter of Chaddesley Corbett.

"Ginger" Carter was a sergeant pilot in an almost forgotten theatre of war. For a few hectic months in 1941, he was one of a handful of British pilots fighting for the Russians.

Peter tells his story with the trademark clarity of a man who has won several major awards for his journalism in the Midlands.

Not content to just talk to the men who actually took part, he has also sought out various historical experts who cast light on campaigns now beyond living memory. One such case is the charge by the Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars at Huj.

His interview with author Colin Smith, a foreign correspondent for The Observer, gives a fascinating insight into the last classic cavalry charge by the British Army on November 8, 1917, to the east of Gaza, then occupied by the Turks.

Peter writes: "Brandishing swords and spurred on by their officers' hunting horns, this motley assortment of ploughboys and factory hands from the heart of England charged into the blazing muzzles of a battery of Turkish guns . . . "

The yeomanry attacked with no supporting fire. The Turks, with German and Austrian advisers stood their ground, firing shells at point-blank range.The carnage was appalling, yet the Worcestershires sabred the gunners and carried the day.

But the story that has the most resonance for Worcestershire is that of the Battle of Kohima in 1944.

The narrator is an old sergeant who served in a Territorial battalion of the Worcesters, one of the units rushed into the fight to halt the Japanese invasion of India.

The Japanese laid siege to the garrison at Imphal and drove on to Kohima, a hill station. And it was here that the Imperial Army of Japan met its match.

"It was a bloody awful, vicious battle," recalled the sergeant, who wished to remain anonymous, out of respect for his mates who never came home.

"It was more like the First World War than the Second, fought mainly by the infantry from dug-outs and trenches. And it was fought over hills, like the Long Mynd, only covered in trees."

"Very strong and well disciplined," a Japanese officer noted of the British. Praise indeed.

And speaking of accolades, this is a book that richly deserves them in copious amounts.

Peter says: "Someone once described journalism as 'the first draft of history'. It is also the draft most likely to be turned into firelighters or a lining for the budgie's cage.

"The words of those old soldiers deserved better than that." Amen to that.

I wish Peter well with his book. As one 50-something to another, I'm sure he'd agree that we should both count our blessings that the generation to which we belong was spared the awful reality of the circumstances that so fascinate us.

For A Shilling A Day is published by the Black Country Society, PO Box 71, Kingswinford, DY6 9YN and is priced £6.50.