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The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War

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Came face to face together
I was but young indeed to die
And it was summer weather." Mary Emily Bradley

On 1 July 1916, more than 90 years ago, thousands and thousands of young men rose from their trenches near the River Somme in France and came face to face with death. The Battle of the Somme may be one of the bloodiest battles of one of the bloodiest wars since time began. On the first day of the battle alone the British Forces had almost 20,000 men killed and another 37,000 men wounded. The noted British historian and biographer Martin Gilbert has taken an intimate and very personal look at this battle in his book "The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War".

The book is set up as a straightforward chronological narrative. Gilbert notes that the French were being pressed severely at Verdun and pressed the British command to launch an offensive on their front that would serve to relieve pressure on the French. He goes on to discuss battle planning and the logistics of preparing for a massive assault. The plan was horrifically simple: send hundreds of thousands of men forward against entrenched positions, hope the Germans ran out of machine gun bullets before the British forces ran out of men, and open up a hole in the German lines wide enough for the Cavalry to break through the hole and mount a major offensive against the fleeing Germans. The plan's simplicity was matched only by the futility of its chance for success. From there Gilbert takes us chapter-by-chapter through the first day of the campaign, the first week, through the summer and then through the end of the battle in November of 1916 almost exactly two years before the armistice.

Those looking for an in-depth military analysis of the campaign should look elsewhere. Gilbert provides enough strategy (and maps) to give the reader some idea of the order of battle. However, this does not seem to be the point of the book. As the subtitle "Heroism and Horror in the First World War" suggest, this book seems to be an attempt to `individualize' the fighting sufficient for the reader to gain a sense of exactly how much was lost in this battle. Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said: "[a] single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." Gilbert seems to have taken this axiom to heart and attempted to remove the battle from the realm of statistic to that of tragedy.

Gilbert takes pains at every step of the way to look at the battle through the eyes of the (British and Commonwealth) officers and men who fought the battle. As Gilbert tells these stories the reader is met (too, too frequently) with this closing line: "Today his name is on the Thiepval Memorial" or "he is buried in Bazentin-le-Petit Communal Cemetery". At the same time Gilbert sets out to provide some sense of the duty and courage and honor that bound the troops on both sides of the trenches together. There were certainly incidences of cowardice and desertion but, for the most part, these men walked into the valley of the shadow of death knowing full well they would likely never return. They performed feats of bravery, they died trying to save their fellow soldiers and they fought with no small amount of fierce brutality.

In taking this approach Gilbert managed successfully to remove the battle from the realm of statistics to one of a human tragedy. He also successfully paid his very personal homage to those that died in the battle. Gilbert does not, in my opinion, over sentimentalize those who fought and died but he does pay them no small amount of homage in recognition of their sacrifice simply by bringing these individuals names back to light more than 90 years after they perished.

Martin Gilbert's Battle of the Somme may not be to everyone's taste, particularly those looking for more of a technical or strategic look at the battle. Some may feel that his repeated homage to individual soldiers detracts from the flow of the book - although I thought that this was the point of the book. However, it makes a nice companion piece for those with an interest in the Great War, those who have read broader histories of the war, including Keegan' and Gilbert's excellent treatments or those, like me, looking for a popular (rather than technical) analysis of one of the 20th-century's most apocalyptic battles. For those people, Martin Gilbert's Battle of the Somme is well worth reading.

Up until just a few years ago, books about the Great War, and there are many, seemed to be cast from the same mold. They all seemed to focus on the "big picture", detailing battle tactics, inept leadership, statistics and a few isolated acts of heroism. Recently however, there seems to be a new movement regarding the history of WWI in taking it down to a more base level of the countless soldiers left largely unidentified and all but forgotten. Sadly, writers can merely scratch the surface of the endless list of names who perished nearly a century ago, but it is a glorious thing that at least a small portion of those names are now being memorialized for posterity in such books as THE SOMME: HEROISM AND HORROR IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR, by Sir Martin Gilbert.

Not only are the details leading up to the Somme detailed here, but Gilbert also lends splendid rendition to other rather obscure components of the battle, such as the use of carrier pigeons and their immeasurable benefit, the enormous resources that went into the upkeep of over 700,000 cavalry mounts that were never used, and much more. All the while, Gilbert expertly interjects prose written by the solders themselves to lend a more personal accounting than what is normally found in similar texts. Gilbert points out that the early 20th century saw a surge in literary talents compelled to document their experiences more so than in any other war at that time. Many of which are chronicled here, as well as numerous writings from obscure soldiers. Of course, the book also details information one would expect, such as the enormous death tolls and the incompetent leadership of General Haig and others. Gilbert also interweaves his work with photographs and maps.

So many volumes of WWI accounts read like textbooks. It is refreshing to find a new aspect and presentation of the Great War being explored and developed. This is a depiction of trench warfare from a rather unexplored angle. I highly recommend this book.

Monty Rainey
www.juntosociety.com

If this is the kind of thing you're looking for in a World War I history, Martin Gilbert's "The Somme" is your book:

"Among the participants in the battle was Willie McEnglishman of the 103rd (Insert English City Here) Regiment, Fourth Army, a completely unremarkable man mentioned only this once in the entire book. He was arbitrarily chosen for inclusion in the book because the author had access to his personal effects. He died by sniper fire and his body was never recovered. His name appears on Thiepval Memorial."

OK, so that's a bit sarcastic, but mini-paragraphs of this form appear scores of times in "The Somme," many indeed featuring men who make no repeat appearances. All we learn about these soldiers is their home town, their form of death, and the location of their memorial. More to the point, I managed to make my way through more than 250 pages of a work by a distinguished historian entitled "The Somme" and learn almost nothing about the Battle of the Somme. What you DO learn about is the mind-numbing human cost of the Great War, through vignettes detailing the (mostly shortened) lives of a couple hundred British soldiers. These ranged from chilling, moving battle tales to interminable middle-school-level poetry. Interspersed between the personal stories are haphazard summaries of larger events that could have been lifted from Wikipedia. Excerpts from Haig's diaries are reproduced without comment or analysis. Maps are banished to an appendix where they are least useful.

"The Somme" was obviously a labor of love and Gilbert must have read thousands of poems and letters by soldiers. In theory it sounds good, even great, to assemble a work based on the experiences of the soldiers who participated in a great battle. Unfortunately, the final product is neither didactic, because of the incoherence of the narrative, nor compelling, because of the averageness of its subjects. War is hell and lots of people died on the Somme -- but does this book's target audience really need reminding of that?

If your great-grandfather's name is on the Thiepval Memorial, then by all means, buy this book. But if you are looking for a history of the battle with actual analysis, go for Prior & Wilson.

The new book on the Somme offensive is written in a most readable style. Mr Gilbert has done some extensive research and travel for this one. The book encompasses not just the first bloody day of the Somme battle in 1916, but the entire, sprawling campaign, its commanders and infantrymen. Often brutal, the pages are filled with interesting letters written by the men in the trenches and command posts. The book also devotes some detail on the German side of the battle with some further interesting facts about how they fought, their trench defenses.
Over all, a good book on the campaign for those seeking more knowledge on this massive and grim battle.

A better title for this book would be, "A Guide to the Military Cemeteries of the Somme and the Heroes Buried There." You can find small books like this in almost every military-themed park. However, they are seldom written by first-rate historians by Martin Gilbert, who should have had better things to do with his time.

The background information on the campaign is about as detailed as any other historical account on this scale, but I read through the entire thing without feeling I'd gained any insight as to why these generals, these soldiers, these cultures, and these nationalities put themselves through this horror. Gilbert seems unwilling to criticize, analyze, or to put any kind of scholarly context to his story. Most of the book is an endless series of he did this, it was awful, he died, he was buried here.

Even as a popular history, The Somme leaves a lot to be desired. When I read accounts of, say, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, or Shiloh, important battles in the American Civil War, I expect--and almost always get--enough description to understand or feel what made these crucial and dramatic confrontations different from each other. Almost all of what Gilbert has to say about the Somme Offensive could be applied to any of a hundred battles on the Western Front in World War I.

At a more sophisticated level, I hoped to learn something from this book about a great historical tragedy, one that had profound effects on British society and history when it happens, and, I expect, still does today. However, I will have to find another book that actually addresses those topics.

Too bad, too bad, too bad. The Somme scarred an entire generation and an entire society. This story needs to be better told and someone else will have to do the job.

The history part isn't bad, but there are all too many "XXX is buried at YYY" references -- including some about soldiers that aren't referred to in the book otherwise; the only reference to them is their burial place!

Martin Gilbert does in this book something similar to what he does in his work on the Holocaust. He does not content himself with drawing the big picture, and speaking only of the generals, and the troop-movements and the political powers behind this which dictate the operations. He instead goes down to the level of the individual soldier, to the level of the squad, to the level at which most of those actually fighting the battle see and experience it. He tells the story of individuals who were everything to their own families but of no great significance in the calculations of the Generals. He too provides us with documents containing their own eye- witness reports. He provides samples of the poetry and personal reflections. He tells stories of heroism and bravery, and gives credit to those who truly bore the brunt of the battle. He depicts the horrors of the war, and the sufferings of the soldiers.
This is a kind of history much different from that most of us grew up with while reading our textbooks. It seems somehow more humane and real.

When I first saw that this book was released, I thought to myself - another book on the Somme, why? After reading this, I can answer that question, more than any book on that battle and even on the First World War, this is a beautiful book written about and for all the brave men who fought and died in that tragic battle. This book focuses on the men who fought and the men who died there. Thousands of them died - the names of 73,355 are on the Thiepval Monument to the missing. The events that led to the death of many of them are in this book, and the reasons that they are missing are mentioned also. More than any other book that I've read on the First World War, this one led me to understand the utter waste and tragedy of this war and this battle. Also, this book clearly leads one to understand just a little the horror that was involved with trench warfare: the mud that caused soldiers to get stuck and sink into it, the rats that ate on dying men's flesh, the dead bodies that were all around causing soldiers to be numb to this. Also, this book lays out the stupidity of the generals, especially General Haig. They continual desire to slog it out to get minimal results were the cause of these tragedies. If you want to understand at least a little bit the experiences of the brave soldiers in the First World War, this book does a good job of sharing that.

Martin Gilbert is the official biographer for Churchill so when I saw this title, I knew it would be thoroughly researched and well written. The Great War really hasn't had the level of coverage for us here (USA) as subsequent conflicts, WWII and Vietnam if not Korea. Sheer manpower loss was on a scale not previously encountered. The horror of trench warfare vividly is detailed, in the narrative and in letters from soldiers at the front. We all know Pershing and the doughboys in 1918 but the preceeding 3 and a half years saw devastating combat losses.

As World War 1 fades from living memory, Gilbert writes about the battle of the Somme. From the vantage point of someone only one person removed from that war.

Unfortunately, the book has not the grace of his definitive history of the entire war. The Somme text is distinguished only by what sadly amounts to tedious recitations of soldiers going over the top, often to quickly perish due to enemy artillery or machine gunners.

The book shows the lack of originality by General Haig, who commanded the Somme offensive. A price paid dearly by British and empire troops, who fought valiently but were squandered.

One merit of Gilbert's writings is that however briefly, he recounts names and achievements of soldiers, who are unlikely to have gotten any other recognition in a published text. The equivalent of being mentioned in dispatches.