Forgotten Voices Of The Great War

The so-called Great War was an inglorious affair, and will always make painful reading because of the terrible cost of young lives, millions of them, and the utter senselessness of starting it in the first place. The causes of this criminal catastrophe have never been satisfactorily explained, and in this book we have a selection of transcribed recordings and wireless broadcasts made by men who went through it all, up at the front. The immediacy of this anthology makes harrowing reading. To select and arrange this collection of observation and comment left by the war's survivors, the editor has opted for a chronological approach - the only possible pattern, if you think about it, since that was the way it happened. It is a compelling and disturbing book, with one horror piled upon another and leavened by a grim humour that only serves to expose the hopelessness of the whole tragic affair. By far the best commentator in the book is Rifleman Henry Williamson, who must be the same man who went on to write one of the great novels (and certainly the longest, at 16 volumes!) of the First World War, A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. The military historian Max Arthur has made his selection with care, and has produced an anthology of on-the-spot reports which is at once revealing and unsettling. Most of the soldiers featured here were simple men who had acts of heroism thrust upon them and behaved with magnificent valour, often at the cost of their lives. (Kirkus UK)