Derek Smith was born in a village on the edge of Salisbury Plain in 1945, the middle child of five whose father was a farm labourer. After attending the village school, Derek worked in the building trade from the age of fifteen until the end of his working life. He says he has always been a daydreamer with an active imagination and was told off on more than one occasion at school for this. During his working life Derek met many weird and wonderful characters and heard many stories from them, before being forced to retire after an accident at work in his fifties. Being a fan of western films, he had always wanted to write a cowboy book but was always too busy; he then seized the opportunity and, whilst walking his dogs, Derek started to daydream. He gradually developed stories and started to put them down on paper for his grandchildren to read after he was gone. His cowboy book is still a dream, but his present book was inspired from some of the men he worked with who fought in Korea.