To the Last Man: Spring 1918 [Paperback]

Lyn MacDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 2001

As poignant as Niall Fregusson's The Pity of War, as powerful as John Keegan's The First World War, this is an engrossing eye-witness history of World War I. From the trenches to the battle lines, in bold advances and fighting retreats and courageous stands, this oral chronicle of World War I by award-winning historian Lyn Macdonald brings to life the massive German offensive of Spring 1918 that became the Second Battle of Somme. As moving as it is monumental, the volume recounts the devastating assault in the words of the men who survived it -- from the commanders to the war-weary British Tommies, the eager German foot soldiers, and the as-yet-untested doughboys fresh from the U.S. Unforgettably, To the Last Man puts a human face on the armies in the field as it gives voice to the soldiers who together held their position against the foe-resisting, as the Allied command had ordered, "to the last round and the last man."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This has been a good year for books on the First World War. Macdonald's oral history of the last German offensive of the war is a great complement to John Keegan's comprehensive The First World War and Niall Ferguson's revisionist The Pity of War. Macdonald (They Called It Passchendaele, etc.) has spent many years interviewing British and Canadian veterans of WWI. Her large archive alone is an important achievement, but from this raw material she has gone on to cobble a number of remarkable books. This, the latest, focuses on one of the most deadly and strategically important confrontations of the war: the Second Battle of the Somme, in which the Allied command ordered the field commanders to resist the German attack "to the last round and the last man." Macdonald is particularly skilled at presenting war from the standpoint of those directly involved in its bloody business. At the same time, she never fails to set events in their proper historical, political and military context. Unlike her previous books, this volume includes a significant amount of first-person testimony from German soldiers culled from an impressive private collection of accounts gathered by American publisher Richard Baumgartner in 1981. As Macdonald points out, "the stories of some of those German boys are mirror images of those of their British counterpartsAsome of whom, indeed, must have been literally within yards of them." Macdonald's uncompromising narrative brings the bloody dawn of the century into vivid, humane relief. 60 b&w photos; 17 maps. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Like Macdonald's They Called It Passchendaele and The Roses of No Man's Land, this book draws on the accounts of eyewitnesses and survivors of World War I and is told in their own words. Each story is complemented by Macdonald's historical narrative. As the book opens, the Germans launch a massive offensive that became known as the Second Battle of the Somme, which left thousands deadAand still the war dragged on. Through these accounts, we see war not as history but as personal experience; Macdonald successfully shows us the suffering of soldiers and civilians on all sides. This creditable study of personal survival explains how individuals endured terrible hardships and soldiered on. Recommended for academic and public libraries as well as special collections.ADavid M. Alperstein, Queens Borough P.L., Jamaica, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786707976
• ISBN-13: 978-0786707973
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McDonald Does It Again, April 10, 2000

By 

Jeff Cordell - See all my reviews

This review is from: To the Last Man (Hardcover)

I was introduced to Lyn McDonald about eight months ago when I came across a British copy of her classic Somme in the local library. I have since read 1914 and now To The Last Man. She is the only World War One historian whose works I have actually ever bothered to purchase. Like Ambrose or Cornelius Ryan she captures the soldier's experience only she has done it for World War One. Like most Americans my knowledge of WW1 is sorely lacking, but after reading Somme I have embarked on a personal mission to correct that. I have since read probably a dozen different books on the war and am a semi-regular visitor to the Trenches On The Web forum and I owe it to Lyn McDonald. For the novice her books are very well written and easy to understand. All her books are very generous with detailed maps, both official and ones sketched by the vets she has interviewed. She has quite a few pictures and her pacing is excellent. For the knowledgable historian her books can still offer a fresh perspective and would make a good addition to any library collection on World War One. Also in contrast to Liddle Hart and Wolffe her books are not brimming over with anger and bitterness. No doubt due to the fact that McDonald was born after the war and has the professional historian's perspective, but it does make for easier reading. Though the anger and passion of the earlier historians is understandable it can clutter a book at times. I strongly recommend not only To The Last Man, but all of her works.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Excellent History Book from Lyn McDonald, October 19, 1999

By 

Aussie Reader ""Rick"" (Canberra, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To the Last Man (Hardcover)

Once again Lyn McDonald has produced another excellent historical account covering the last year of the Great War. This, the first volume of two, covers the German offensive in March 1918 designed to knock the Allied powers out of the war before America's might could be felt on the Western Front. As usual Lyn McDonald has made fine use of first hand accounts and draws you into the story from the very beginning. I found the book to be well researched and presented and it sits proudly in my library along side 1914, 1915, the Somme and the rest of her great books. Highly recommended!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dead Men Tell no Tales - The Eloquence of Survival, April 28, 2004

By 

Daryl Anderson (Trumansburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To the Last Man: Spring 1918 (Paperback)

Lyn MacDonald's growing collection of books about World War I are unique in many respects and all are well worth a read - for both the student of the war and for readers only casually interested in the period.

From the point of view of a military historian, the war in 1918 was itself unique with its return to mobile warfare that had otherwise only existed at the outset of the war, with the arrival of U.S. forces on the fronts, and with the incorporation of new weapons technologies and tactical approaches on the battlefield. It was also unique as the year in which many felt the war might be won by the Germans but in which, ultimately, the conflict ended with German defeat.

MacDonald's view is not that of a military historian, her book captures few of these elements. But it nevertheless casts a powerfully refracted light on the nature of the war in 1918 by the approach she takes. Hers is a "ground-level" view, seen through the many eyes of the soldiers who fought through that chaotic springtime of war.

As in many of her previous titles, MacDonald builds her history upon the actual words of combatants. These are the voices of the soldiers who fought. The book is more than an anthology of narratives, though. MacDonald does an excellent job of weaving the individual views into a well-told story. Although big-picture views are rare, she does a nice job of depicting individual experiences and local battles from many different points of view. It is rare to find the military history "microscope" focused at this particular scale.

Unlike prior books of hers that I have read, "...1918" is not limited to the perspectives of the British combatants. MacDonald has made a clear effort to incorporate the archived words of German soldiers by way of a small collection of such documents which were provided to her in translation. Nevertheless, her anglophile leanings are still quite evident and detract from the sense that the book is a balanced view. U.S., French and German soldiers are only a small part of this story.

Interestingly I found that this book offers much more of one element that you might expect the military historians to excel at - maps! There are more maps-per-page in this book than the best of John Keegan. Local details, right down to the farmhouses and roadways, abound, and add to your appreciation of the battle situations described by the combatants.

In addition to the small critique above that the book is Brit-focused, I have to note one other element of bias that might seem almost tautological in a book like this: most of the stories are those of survivors.

Just as history written by the victors is often skewed history, war as viewed by the survivors seems inevitably tempered by the reality of having "gotten through it." MacDonald does sprinkle her story with contemporaneous writings of soldiers who did survive (and some who did not), but many of the accounts are from a retrospective viewpoint that is clearly colored by time. Just as rich men often only recall their own hard work, and pontificate about generic success deriving from hard work alone, survivors of warfare can, in the process of healing physical and emotional scars, of going on with life, gloss over their own or their buddies' weaker moments.

There is also an inevitable "selection" factor that an approach like MacDonald's can't overcome. Those who came back from the war unwilling or unable to talk about what they experienced cannot contribute their silence to a book like this. In his book "Back to the Front", Stephen O'Shea can only indirectly discover the experience of his own stubbornly silent grandfathers, and his developing sense of the horror of that experience contrasts sharply with the overall tone of MacDonald's work.

If one can adapt to these limitations of approach, "To The Last Man: Spring 1918" is a fine book, excellently written and illustrated, which brings to life the desperate final months of the war that gave birth to the modern era and so many of the geopolitical ills of this new millennium.