Customer Reviews

Somme

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I read this magnificent and chilling book several years ago. The voices of the men who recalled with absolute clarity the destruction of their youth is a lesson that everyone should take to heart. World War I is not generally taught in US schools - we were only in it for a very short time. But for those countries that were - Great Britain and its Empire, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy to name the principal players - the war forever changed them. In Britain's case (where I was born and grew up) the country has never recovered from that war. Its current economy bears the scars of the terrible losses that were exacted during the four bloody years of continuous combat - the Somme being the worst of all nightmares.

To put Britain's losses from the four years of fighting in WWI into perspective, it would be equivalent the US today losing 6.5 million dead and another 13 or so million wounded - a couple of million of whom might never be able to work again. The effects on us all and on the world would be obvious.

Somme prompted me to purchase and read all of Lyn MacDonald's books on that era. Having read the books, particularly Somme, I came away with a deeper appreciation of the futile sacrifices that were made all those years ago. While no pacifist and appeaser of tyrants, I would highly recommend Somme to every school and any member of Congress, prospective politician or Presidential candidate.

Ian McDonald apparently developed a passion for WWI somewhere along the way. Her other works - 1914, THEY CALLED IT PASSCHENDAELE, THE ROSES OF NO MAN'S LAND - along with this one form a tetralogy of points of view. WWI has long interested scholars in its possiblities and implications. By any measure, Germany, the strongest power, should have won. This would have taken care of Hitler, finessed Marxism and maintained the status quo of related royal rulers. Instead it was a prelude to a conflict that dwarfed the first war in every way imaginable.

The author provides us with testimony from witnesses and participants. Therefore we visit battlefields, nursing homes and churches. We hear the ribald military humor and experience the hell of war. The social context - politics, manners, the mood and demeanor of the people - all of this is presented with humor, clarity and verve. This is a testament to a time that ended a civilization that was the freest in the history of the world. The liberal (classical, not modern) idea of education, civility, honor, duty and country would soon give way to darker and more "modern" themes. These are hinted at throughout as even the common soldier realizes that the world is changed forever. Photographs, maps and drawings are included.

Havin read "The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War" by Martin Gilbert, "The Somme" by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, and "The Somme" by Lyn MacDonald, I found MacDonald's book to be the best of the three.

While Gilbert's book is a general history which provides a broad overview of the battle, it is not able to convey the movement of the battle. MacDonald's use of maps, as well as her step by step approach in describing battle is much easier to follow.

In addition, MacDonald lavishes the book with detailed accounts by survivors. It is not a rarity to find entire paragraphs, rather than sentence long quotes, taken directly from the individual soldier's words. This is incredibly welcome as it gives the reader a better understanding of what actually happened on the ground.

Prior and Wilson's book is great if one is interested in tactics. In addition, their book debunks several Somme myths which I will not go into here. Yet their work does not bring the reader into the lives of the troops or their experience outside of citing casualties.

MacDonald's book describes the establishment of the "Pals" battalions, their training and their general experience prior to the battle. In addition, she also discusses the role of the ANZAC on the Somme and gives an excellent account of their history from Galipoli to their attack on Pozieres.

While Wilson and Prior focus on tactics, Gilbert vacillates between tactics, general history and the soldier's own experiences. Wilson and Prior succeed in showing the immense planning, terrible cost and miscalculations of the battle, but fail to craft an comprehensive narrative.

While touching with its poetry and its frequent, tragic recitation of "he is listed on the Thiepval memorial," or "he is listed on the Gommecourt memorial," Gilbert's book does not make the battle more comprehensible.

MacDonald on the other hand gives a wonderful start to finish narrative of the battle in which she uses the survivor's own words to draw the reader in. In addition, MacDonald also discusses a variety of different roles from the soldiers to the Pioneer battalions to wireless operators.

Overall, while each book is worthwhile in its own right, MacDonald's is the best read for both the amateur and the historian alike.

I found this book very impressive. It is not so much about strategy, but it is about how the soldiers fought and endured these masacres. This is one of the very few books on the first world war,where one can really get to know how this was for the men who fought it. How they suffered, and felt afraid. How they tried to stay alive and coped with these terrible terrible experiences. It is a very sad and intense book, but an important rememberance of all those young men dying in the dirt.

The Battle of the Somme is one of the most famous battles in history, and one that changed nothing. July 1, 1916 was the day that 20,000 British soldiers went over the top and were killed or simply ceased to exist. That was only the first day. The battle went on periodically for several more months with thousands more sentenced to death by their superiors and the terrain. This is another excellent history of WWI but much of what is shared comes from those who were there. Knowing how fruitless this battle was makes for heartbreaking reading, but it is important that the sacrifice of the British forces be honored.

For those interested in the First World War, this is an excellent and moving account of the battle and the conditions under which the PBI and other soldiers had to fight. Lyn MacDonald has written several books on this war - "1914", "1915" and "They Called it Passchendale", all of which are excellent.

Few battles are as seared into the British historical consciousness as the battle of the Somme, the months-long offensive against the German trenches during the First World War. There the newly-trained divisions of "Kitchener's Army" suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, all for advances that were often measured in yards. It was a baptism of blood, one that often depopulated villages back home of an entire generation of young men and left an indelible impression on the minds of its survivors.

Lyn Macdonald's book is a chronicle of the battle from the viewpoint of the British soldier. She begins by describing how so many of the soldiers came to be on the Somme battlefield, through their recruitment into the ranks in the weeks and months that followed the outbreak of the war. Many of them joined in groups, retaining a collective identity from their civilian life even after they put on the uniform. From there she details the meticulous preparations for the offensive, the training and planning that went into preparing these soldiers for a battle that its planners believed would break through the German lines and pave the way for victory.

The confident expectations were little match for the horrors of trench warfare, however. Instead of a dramatic breakthrough the British "Tommys" faced unrelenting slaughter, struggling to even make modest gains on the battlefield. In the weeks that followed the initial assault, the British high command threw division after division into the battle, hoping to achieve progress. Throughout each of these efforts, Macdonald captures the experience of combat - the dusty marches, the gory advances, and the reaction of the survivors to their experience. Such struggles continue, over and over, until the offensive petered out in mid-November, with Kitchener's Army all but spent as a fighting force.

Throughout the book Macdonald writes of the battle in gripping prose, supplemented throughout by a generous use of quotes from interviews with veterans who survived the battle. Together it combines to recount the experience in a manner that grabs the reader's attention, focusing it on the experience of the ordinary soldier and never letting go. Oftentimes the engagements can blur together; while this can make it difficult to distinguish one battle form another, it conveys something of the grinding nature of warfare on the Western Front. The broader strategy is also subordinated, something that further reflects the perspective of the average Tommy, who was unable to look past the enemy trenches. A more glaring absence, however, is the German side. While largely excluding the views and experiences of German soldiers helps to define them as the nameless, faceless "Jerries" that many British soldiers viewed them to be, it deprives readers of a valuable perspective of the battle, with the ability to establish just how unique the British experience was.

These criticisms should not deter readers seeking to understand the battle of the Somme. Macdonald's book is an engaging account of this seminal battle, one that engages its reader throughout the months of struggle and slaughter chronicled within its pages. It is unlikely to be bettered for the drama of its narrative, or for its ability to relate the battle as how the thousands of Tommys fought it - a valuable perspective that gives identity to the soldiers who are often reduced to mere numbers in all too many accounts.

This book is a very good work on the Somme. Its highest virtue is that its focus is telling the story of the men who fought the battle as much as the story of the battle itself. Its the story of the mass army formed at the outbreak of war and how that army was put to use in the Somme. The book never gets caught up in politics, arcane tactics or the feuds at the top. The single word that comes to mind is "respectful".

The author has a unique gift of being able to tell the story of the battle at a low level while still constructing a very readable narrative of the battle. Every account is carefully drawn out. Every map serves a clear purpose. And as always, her use of quotations from the experiences of men in the battle brings the whole book to life.

I was quite disappointed in this book. I had not read a detailed history of the battle, and only knew the basic outline from general histories of the war. This book added little to my knowledge. It gives little overall perspective of the battle. Much of it essentially an oral history, based on a number of interviews with participants. Because of this, it gives the reader a fairly good feel for the experience of the soldiers in the field, while imparting little information about the big picture. The author's background is in radio, and it shows in this book. If you know all about this battle and would like an oral history, this book may be of interest. For me, it was a major disappointment.