Download or read book Somme written by Lyn MacDonald and published by Viking. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1916 was one of the great turning-points in British history as the youthful hopes of a generation were crushed in a desperate struggle to survive. Although on paper, the Battle of the Somme was meticulously planned, 150,000 were killed in the punishing shellfire, the endless ordeal of attack and counter-attack; and twice that number were left maimed or wounded. Here, Lyn Macdonald lets the men who were there give their own testimony.

Download or read book Somme written by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rescuing from history the heroes on the front line whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Battle of the Somme in all its glory and misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.

Download or read book The First Day on the Somme written by Martin Middlebrook and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the British Army’s experience at the Battle of the Somme in France during World War I. After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7:30 AM on July 1, 1916, the British Army went over the top and attacked the German trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on that day, the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on D-day, July 1, 1916, was the blackest day in the history of the British Army. But, more than that, as Lloyd George recognized, it was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered Kitchener’s call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could any longer think of a war that might be won. Martin Middlebrook’s research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality that it was for front-line soldiers. Praise for The First Day on the Somme “The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words.” —The Guardian (UK)

Download or read book The Missing of the Somme written by Geoff Dyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Missing of the Somme is part travelogue, part meditation on remembrance—and completely, unabashedly, unlike any other book about the First World War. Through visits to battlefields and memorials, Geoff Dyer examines the way that photographs and film, poetry and prose determined—sometimes in advance of the events described—the way we would think about and remember the war. With his characteristic originality and insight, Dyer untangles and reconstructs the network of myth and memory that illuminates our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.

Download or read book The Sixteen Trees of the Somme written by Lars Mytting and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing literary novel about a family mystery, revenge, and forgiveness by the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and The Bell in the Lake The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is an intricately plotted and enthralling novel by the award-winning author of Norwegian Wood and The Bell in the Lake. An international bestseller and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize, it tells the story of Edvard and starts at his family’s tree farm in Norway, where he was raised by his grandfather. The death of Edvard’s parents when he was three has always been a mystery but he knows that the fate of his grandfather’s brother, Einar, is somehow connected. One day a coffin is delivered to the farm for his grandfather, long before the grandfather’s death––a meticulous, beautiful, and unique piece of craftsmanship with the hallmarks of a certain master craftsman––raising the thought that Einar isn’t dead after all. Edvard is now driven to unravel the mystery of his parents’ death. Following a trail of clues from Norway to the Shetland Islands to the battlefields of France and sixteen ancient walnut trees colored by poison gas in World War I, Edvard ultimately discovers a very unusual inheritance. Spanning a century and masterfully navigating themes of revenge and forgiveness, love and loneliness, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme displays the rich talents of Lars Mytting––whose novels have sold over a million copies worldwide––in a story that is utterly compelling and unforgettable.

Download or read book The Somme written by Robin Prior and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Despite superior air and artillery power, British soldiers died in catastrophic numbers at the Battle of Somme in 1916. What went wrong, and who was responsible? This book meticulously reconstructs the battle, assigns responsibility to military and political leaders, and changes forever the way we understand this encounter and the history of the Western Front"--Publisher description.

Download or read book The Somme written by Peter Barton and published by Constable. This book was released on 2011-02-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Barton's landmark volume presents over 50 original panoramas of the battlegrounds of the Somme. They show what no other photographs can: the view from the trench parapet, and a great deal more. This revised edition also includes stunning new details of the use and misuse of an extraordinary network of 'Russian Saps' installed during the two months prior to battle. These tunnels beneath no man's land often brought the British - unseen - to within 10 metres of the German trenches, yet over-secrecy and poor communication led to most being left unexploited. In the sectors where they were employed, success was dramatic. Plus a host of previously unpublished personal testimony, and a fresh look at several unseen and forgotten aspects of the battle such as the Royal Engineers' Push Pipes, Bored Mines and huge Livens Flame Projectors. Here is the Somme as you have never seen it before. Praise for The Battlefields of the First World War: 'An extraordinary set of panoramic photographs that reveal the battlefields of the Western Front as never before.' The Times 'Astonishing ... made my heart sigh.' Independent 'Without doubt the best publication on the Great War in many years ... a superb piece of work.' Western Front Association

Download or read book Ghosts of the Somme written by Jonathan Evershed and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once assumed to be a driver or even cause of conflict, commemoration during Ireland's Decade of Centenaries came to occupy a central place in peacebuilding efforts. The inclusive and cross-communal reorientation of commemoration, particularly of the First World War, has been widely heralded as signifying new forms of reconciliation and a greater "maturity" in relationships between Ireland and the UK and between Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland. In this study, Jonathan Evershed interrogates the particular and implicitly political claims about the nature of history, memory, and commemoration that define and sustain these assertions, and explores some of the hidden and countervailing transcripts that underwrite and disrupt them. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Belfast, Evershed explores Ulster Loyalist commemoration of the Battle of the Somme, its conflicted politics, and its confrontation with official commemorative discourse and practice during the Decade of Centenaries. He investigates how and why the myriad social, political, cultural, and economic changes that have defined postconflict Northern Ireland have been experienced by Loyalists as a culture war, and how commemoration is the means by which they confront and challenge the perceived erosion of their identity. He reveals the ways in which this brings Loyalists into conflict not only with the politics of Irish Nationalism, but with the "peacebuilding" state and, crucially, with each other. He demonstrates how commemoration works to reproduce the intracommunal conflicts that it claims to have overcome and interrogates its nuanced (and perhaps counterintuitive) function in conflict transformation.

Download or read book The Somme written by Gary Sheffield and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 1 July 1916, after a stupendous seven-day artillery preparation, the British Army finally launched its attack on the German line around the River Somme. Over the next four and half months they continued to attack, with little or no gain, and with horrendous losses to both sides. This book, written by the world's foremost expert in the subject, describes in chilling detail everything from the grand strategy to the experience of the men on the ground. Illustrated throughout, it is a stunning and absorbing depiction of the horror that was the Somme in 1916.

Download or read book Springboks On The Somme South Africa in the Great War 1914 1918 written by Bill Nasson and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great War of 1914-18 was a conflict which engulfed the whole world, directly or indirectly. It was an imperialist world war that tugged the new Union of South Africa and its people into a series of separate but connected conflicts - from the domestic Afrikaner Rebellion on the highveld, through the sands of German South West Africa, the steamy bush of German East Africa, and on to the mud and blood of France and Flanders. This book is the first general study of the complex ways in which South Africans experienced the impact of the First World War, and responded to its demands, burdens and opportunities. Told with his customary narrative energy and ironic style, Bill Nasson's new history is a lively account not only of how South Africa fought the war, but also of the miscalculations and illusions that surrounded its involvement, and of how South African society came to imagine and remember that great and terrible conflict.

Download or read book The Battle of the Somme written by Alan Axelrod and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: offensive to be waged against Germany even as France poured incredible numbers of men into the slaughterhouse that was the desperate defense of Verdun. élan vital” of the French people, a quality, he argued, that set the Gallic race apart from the rest of the world. French losses were just under 200,000. The Germans lost at least 650,000. Just as the French refused to give up ground at Verdun, the Germans held on stubbornly at the Somme—so stubbornly that General Ludendorff actually complained that his men “fought too doggedly, clinging too resolutely to the mere holding of ground, with the result that the losses were heavy.” The only thing “conclusive” about the Somme was the ineluctable fact of death. No battle ever fought in any conflict provided a stronger incentive for all sides to reach a negotiated peace—the “peace without victory” that Woodrow Wilson, still standing on the sidelines, urged the combatants to agree upon. Instead, the Kaiser, appalled both by Verdun and the Somme, relieved Falkenhayn and replaced him with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who had achieved great success on the Eastern Front. The new commanders created two new defensive lines, both well behind the Somme front. On the one hand, it was a retreat. On the other, it was a commitment to draw the French and British farther east and invite them to sacrifice more of their soldiery. The modest advance the British made was but the prelude to additional slaughter.

Download or read book Somme Mud written by Edward P. F. Lynch and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Somme written by Richard van Emden and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic and brutal WWI battle is vividly recounted through the words and photos of the soldiers who lived through it. One of the most famous battles of the Great War, the offensive on the Somme took place in 1916, from July and November. It was there that Kitcheners famous Pals Battalions were first sent into action en masse. It was a battlefield where many of the dreams and aspirations of a nation, hopeful of victory, were agonizingly dashed. Because of its legendary status, the Battle of the Somme has been the subject of many books. Yet this volume is the first of its kind, in which the soldiers’ own stories and photographs are used to illustrate both the campaign's extraordinary comradeship and its carnage.

Download or read book The Somme written by Martin Gilbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our most distinguished historians, an authoritative and vivid account of the devastating World War I battle that claimed more than 300,000 lives At 7:30 am on July 1, 1916, the first Allied soldiers climbed out of their trenches along the Somme River in France and charged out into no-man's-land toward the barbed wire and machine guns at the German front lines. By the end of this first day of the Allied attack, the British army alone would lose 20,000 men; in the coming months, the fifteen-mile-long territory along the river would erupt into the epicenter of the Great War. The Somme would mark a turning point in both the war and military history, as soldiers saw the first appearance of tanks on the battlefield, the emergence of the air war as a devastating and decisive factor in battle, and more than one million casualties (among them a young Adolf Hitler, who took a fragment in the leg). In just 138 days, 310,000 men died. In this vivid, deeply researched account of one history's most destructive battles, historian Martin Gilbert tracks the Battle of the Somme through the experiences of footsoldiers (known to the British as the PBI, for Poor Bloody Infantry), generals, and everyone in between. Interwoven with photographs, journal entries, original maps, and documents from every stage and level of planning, The Somme is the most authoritative and affecting account of this bloody turning point in the Great War.

Download or read book Bloody Victory written by William Philpott and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1 July 1916: the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The hot, hellish day in the fields of northern France that has dominated our perception of the First World War for just shy of a century. The shameful waste; the pointlessness of young lives lost for the sake of a few yards; the barbaric attitudes of the British leaders; the horror and ignominy of failure. All have occupied our thoughts for generations. Yet are we right to view the Somme in this way? Drawing on a vast number of sources such as letters, diaries and numerous archives, Bloody Victory describes in vivid detail the physical conditions, the combat and exceptional bravery against the odds but it also, uniquely, captures how the Somme defined the twentieth century in so many ways. This is an utterly gripping new analysis of one of the most iconic campaigns in history.

Download or read book The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme written by Gavin Stamp and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-08-06 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edwin Lutyens' Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval in Northern France, visited annually by tens of thousands of tourists, is arguably the finest structure erected by any British architect in the twentieth century. It is the principal, tangible expression of the defining event in Britain's experience and memory of the Great War, the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, and it bears the names of 73,000 soldiers whose bodies were never found at the end of that bloody and futile campaign. This brilliant study by an acclaimed architectural historian tells the origin of the memorial in the context of commemorating the war dead; it considers the giant classical brick arch in architectural terms, and also explores its wider historical significance and its resonances today. So much of the meaning of the twentieth century is concentrated here; the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing casts a shadow into the future, a shadow which extends beyond the dead of the Holocaust, to the Gulag, to the 'disappeared' of South America and of Tianenmen. Reissued in a beautiful and striking new edition for the centenary of the Somme.

Download or read book Three Armies on the Somme written by William Philpott and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, the Battle of the Somme has exemplified the horrors and futility of trench warfare. Yet in Three Armies on the Somme, William Philpott makes a convincing argument that the battle ultimately gave the British and French forces on the Western Front the knowledge and experience to bring World War I to a victorious end. It was the most brutal fight in a war that scarred generations. Infantrymen lined up opposite massed artillery and machine guns. Chlorine gas filled the air. The dead and dying littered the shattered earth of no man’s land. Survivors were rattled with shell-shock. We remember the shedding of so much young blood and condemn the generals who sent their men to their deaths. Ever since, the Somme has been seen as a waste: even as the war continued, respected leaders—Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George among them—judged the battle a pointless one. While previous histories have documented the missteps of British command, no account has fully recognized the fact that allied generals were witnessing the spontaneous evolution of warfare even as they sent their troops “over the top.” With his keen insight and vast knowledge of military strategy, Philpott shows that twentieth-century war as we know it simply didn’t exist before the Battle of the Somme: new technologies like the armored tank made their battlefield debut, while developments in communications lagged behind commanders’ needs. Attrition emerged as the only means of defeating industrialized belligerents that were mobilizing all their resources for war. At the Somme, the allied armies acquired the necessary lessons of modern warfare, without which they could never have prevailed. An exciting, indispensable work of military history that challenges our received ideas about the Battle of the Somme, and about the very nature of war.