Somme (1983) By Lyn Macdonald
 
Somme, July 1916. For almost seventy years the very name of the battle has epitomised all the horr 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 has ever been more meticulously planned. But the front-line soldier knew little of the strategy. his object eas 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.
 
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
366 pages
In Good Condition