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wodin -> RE: WWI Novels, memoirs, and the like. (9/4/2004 1:31:49 AM)
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RICHER DUST
A novel based on the author’s six months on Gallipoli with the RN Division from May 1915 to the evacuation in January 1916 This is a novel about Gallipoli in which the central character is a young officer, Sub-Lieutenant Rodney Wilmot, serving in the [fictitious] Vernon and Keppel Battalions of the Royal Naval Division. The author himself served in the Drake Battalion and the vivid account of the fighting and life in the trenches of Gallipoli is based on personal experience; he was there for six months and spent the last ten days in the front lines, getting away on the last night of the evacuation (8th/9th Jan 1916). Following Gallipoli he served six months in France where he commanded ‘A’ Company of the Drake Battalion before being invalided home from the Somme. But this story, in which all the names of the characters, except in minor instances, are fictitious, is concerned only with the Gallipoli campaign, from when Rodney lands at the end of May 1915 to the evacuation six months later, thus the story mirrors the author’s experience. It may be a novel but it has all the authority of one who went through that terrible campaign and is describing his own experiences - it is real!
WAR THE INFANTRY KNEW 1914-1919
I have been waiting for a long time for someone to republish this classic.It is one of the most interesting and revealing books of its type and is a genuinely truthful and fascinating picture of the war as it was for the infantry” John Keegan “A superb mosaic of war” London Review of Books
“Sometimes, through word of mouth and shared enthusiasm, a secret book becomes famous.The War the Infantry Knew is one of them.Publihed privately in a limited edition of five hundred copies in 1938, it gained a reputation as an outstanding account of an infantry battalion’s experience on the Western Front’
“A remarkably coherent narrative of the battalion’s experiences in diary form...a moving historical record which deserves to be added to the select list of outstanding accounts of the First World War” Times Literary Suppleme
“STAND TO” A Diary of the Trenches 1915-1918.
A classic! Memorable account by an officer of 2nd Leinsters who fought with them in the trenches from May 1915 to the armistice. A tribute to the Irish soldier. This is one of the classic memoirs of the Great War, written by an officer of the 2nd Battalion the Leinster Regiment, who joined his battalion in the trenches in May 1915 and served with them to the end of the war. It is a truly memorable account and a great tribute to the soldiers from the South of Ireland, for the Leinsters were one of the five infantry regiments from Southern Ireland that formed part of the British Army; they were disbanded in July 1922. It is a vivid account, supported by some wonderful sketches and examples of the spirit and humour of the Irish soldier. This is one of the best of its kind that I have read.
OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE.
One of the finest of all published memoirs of the Great War, truly a classic of its kind. The author had enlisted in 1901 in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers (spelling changed from ‘Welch’ to ‘Welsh’ in 1881 and back to ‘Welch’ in 1920) and was a reservist when war broke out. He rejoined his old, 2nd Battalion and landed in France with them on 11 August 1914. He went right through the war with the battalion, never missing a battle, winning the DCM and MM and ending up still a private. Here is a typical soldier of the pre-1914 regular army, one of the ‘Old Contemptibles’ and this book is a delight, written in his own unpolished manner. Fighting, scrounging, gambling, drinking, dodging fatigues, stolidly enduring bombardment and the hardships of trench warfare, always getting his job done. A tribute to the army that died on the Western Front in 1914
THERE'S a DEVIL in THE DRUM
A classic. Lucy enl, with his brother in the RIR 1912, 2nd Bn. in France & gives a very fine account of the 1914-1915 campaign.His brother was killed at the Aisne & Lucy was eventually sent home for a rest: “My leave... was a nightmare.My sleep was broken & full of voices & the noises of war.The voices were those of officers & men who were dead... One morning was discovered standing up in bed facing a wall ready to repel an imaginary dawn attack.” Lucy was commissioned, returned to his bn. and fought at 3rd Ypres & Cambrai until wounded.
WAR LETTERS TO A WIFE
One of the very best of its kind, by a Coldstream Guards officers who served in his 1st Battalion and later commanded 6th Connaught Rangers and 1/15th Londons (Civil Ssrvice Rifles). Brilliant descriptions of the fighting on the Western Front The Feilding family has close associations with the Coldstream Guards and Rowland Feilding, who was a captain in the City of London Yeomanry when war broke out, transferred to them and was appointed to the 3rd Battalion (4th Guards Brigade) which he joined in May 1915; ten days later he was transferred to the 1st Battalion. Following an accident in November he spent four months back home, returning to France in April 1916 to the Guards Entrenching Battalion near Bray-sur-Somme. On 7th September he took command of the Connaught Rangers (16th Irish Division) which he held for the next 18 months before again being incapacitated in an accident and invalided. In August 1918 he returned to France and was given command of the 1/15th London Regiment (Civil Service Rifles), a post he retained until demobilization in 1919.
This is a brilliant book, one of the finest personal accounts of war on the Western Front I have yet read. Feilding was a front line soldier, a natural leader, and these letters, written so closely after the events they describe, give a vivid picture of the sights and scenes on and off the battlefield and lucidly express his own thoughts and feelings. Visiting Mametz three days after its capture on 1st July 1916 he writes: Scarcely a wall stands, and of the trees nothing remains but mangled twisted stumps. The ruins present an appalling and most gruesome picture of the havoc of war, seen fresh, which no pen or picture can describe. You must see it, and smell it, and hear the sounds to understand. It brings a sort of sickening feeling to me even now, though I consider myself hardened to such sights.
FOUR YEARS ON THE WESTERN FRONT
The author (real name Aubrey Smith) served with the London Rifle Brigade (1/5th Bn London Regt) throughout the Great War. The LRB was among the first Territorial battalions to land in France (November 1914) and 'Rifleman' joined it at the end of January 1915 in Plugstreet. He served in the trenches and in the battalion Transport Section. This is one of the classics among memoirs of an other rank, one to be counted with 'Old Soldiers Never Die' and 'There's a Devil in the Drum'. He saw action at Second Ypres (gas attack), Gommecourt, the Somme, Arras, Third Ypres, Cambral, in the German 1918 offensive and in the final advance. He was awarded the MM in August 1917 and a bar in November 1918. An enthralling picture of life in an infantry battalion on the Western Front.
DEVIL DOGS: Fighting Marines of World War I
30,000 American Marines fought in World War I, suffering over 10,000 casualties in six months of struggle against sophisticated German defences and experienced German troops. This is the full history of that bitter fighting, from the Marines’ training and embarkation to their baptism of fire in the mud and mire of French trenches and the hellish fighting that followed. Engaged throughout 1918, the Corps saw heavy fighting all along the lines and took part in the Chateau Thierry offensive. Howeve, the Marines’ finest hour came in the struggle for Belleau Wood, in the summer of 1918, when the 4th Marine Brigade stormed hitherto impregnable German defences and earned themselves the accolade of ‘Devil Dogs’ by their sheer determination and fighting prowess. It was one of the finest hours in the United States Marine Corps’ history and one of the most captivating and exciting episodes in American military history.
JOURNAL OF PRIVATE FRASER, Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1918
This has to be one of the finest personal accounts of war in the trenches that I have ever read, it ranks with such as Old Soldiers Never Die and Storm of Steel. Born in Edinburgh in 1882 he immigrated to Canada in 1906 and was working in Vancouver when he enlisted at the Recruiting Depot, Calgary, on 24 November 1914, and became a private soldier in the 31st (Alberta) Battalion. He arrived in France with the 2nd Canadian Division (6th Brigade) in September 1915 and first went into the trenches on the lower slope of the Wytschaete Ridge. Over the next two years and two months he fought in every major battle - St Eloi Craters (graphic description of the appalling conditions there), Mount Sorrel, The Somme, Vimy Ridge, Hill 70 and Passchendaele where, in November 1917, he was badly wounded and was evacuated to the UK; he never returned to France. This is a truly gripping account with vivid descriptions of the horrors of that war. In September 1916 he joined the brigade MG company with which he served out the rest of his time on the Western Front. Although offered promotion more than once Fraser always declined, preferring to remain a private. This book is strongly recommended to anyone who wants to know what it was like to fight in the trenches of the Western Front.
Tommy - Richard Holmes
Amazon.co.uk Review
Tommy is Richard Holmes's tribute to the ghosts of the millions of ordinary soldiers who fought in the First World War. The book also reflects the dissatisfaction he feels at the way we still remember it. Too often we approach World War I through the literature it inspired. The poems of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and others have their own truths to offer, but Holmes would dispute the assumption that they represent the experiences of the majority of those who endured the trench warfare of the Western Front.
To discover new voices and new perspectives on the war he has trawled through the rich archives of letters, diaries and memoirs that still exist, most of them written while the fighting still continued. From these he has constructed an extraordinarily vivid and moving picture of what it felt like to be one of the millions of men who served in the British army during the four years between August 1914 and the armistice on November 11, 1918. From Private Albert Bullock rejoicing in the discovery of 200 Woodbines in the pack of a fellow soldier who had fled the front line, to Private Eric Hiscock describing the horrors of finding himself entangled in barbed wire. The Tommies, whom Richard Holmes rescues from obscurity, prove powerful witnesses to the diverse realities of the war. Beneath the stereotyped images of the First World War that we all carry in our heads, the real lives of the men who fought it are still there to be discovered and Holmes’s book brings them forcefully to our attention. ––Nick Rennison
Most of the above can really only be got from Naval & Military Press. Many were published in the 1920's.
Ive also read all the famous novels. However it is with these Ive found the most enjoyment from.
A fantastic buy is War the Infantry Knew by Capt Dunn. Superb.
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