The Somme

Cover Type: Softcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Jacket Condition: None Issued
Publisher: Papermac
Publisher Place: London
Publisher Year: 1984
Edition: Reprint

Description: 384 pages. Book is in Very good condition throughout.

Publishers Description: Somme, July 1916. For almost seventy years the very name of the battle has epitomised all the horror and hardship of the First World War. There was hardly a family in the land who had not seen at least one son join up in the heady innocence and enthusiasm that swept the country in 1914. The Battle of the Somme was their baptism of fire. A hundred and fifty thousand of the Somme, July 1916. For almost seventy years the very name of the battle has epitomised all the horror and hardship of the First World War. There was hardly a family in the land who had not seen at least one son join up in the heady innocence and enthusiasm that swept the country in 1914. The Battle of the Somme was their baptism of fire. A hundred and fifty thousand of the soldiers they proudly called 'our boys' died in it; three hundred thousand more were maimed or wounded.No modern battle had ever been more meticulously planned. But the front-line soldier knew little of the strategy. His object was to survive, if he could, the relentless punishing shellfire, the ordeal of attack and counter-attack, and to get out again to the dubious comfort of a billet in a broken-down barn. There might be a village girl to ogle, an estaminet where the drinks were cheap and the songs bawdy, and there was always the hope of scrounging a meal that would break the monotony of 'His Majesty's Stew'.Somme is a human chronicle of life as well as death, a vivid blend of military history and the immediacy of personal recollection that puts us uniquely in touch with ordinary people caught up in momentous events.This is the third book in Lyn McDonald's vernacular history of the First World War. Like They Called it Passchendaele and The Roses of No Man's Land, it is the result of prodigious research and the collection of original material, full of little-known episodes and telling details. But for the reader the overwhelming impression is of the indomitable character of the men who fought and endured. (less)

ISBN: 9780333366486