The Somme

"What is most moving in [Gilbert's] account is the way he punctuates each part of the narrative with the tale of a single soldier's experience, a short biography that captures a lost life in surviving words . . . Easily achieves his modest goal of 'perpetuating the memory of those who fought and those who fell.'"—Robert Messenger, The Weekly Standard

"Ninety years ago, Allied soldiers clambered into no-man's land and charged the Germans at the Somme; 20,000 British soldiers would die in a single day, and 300,000 soldiers were lost on both sides in the next several months. A noteworthy historian offers what should be the definitive account."—Library Journal

"The Great War is now viewed by many as a pointless, pitiless meat grinder that sacrificed a generation of men to no worthwhile moral purpose. If one accepts that premise, then the Battle of the Somme can serve as exhibit A. Ninety years ago, Allied (primarily British) and German troops began a five-month slugfest in northwest France. The battle, which saw the first widespread use of tanks, was contested by two million troops along a 30-mile front. When it was over, it had cost both sides a combined million casualties, with virtually no territorial gain. Gilbert, a renowned historian and biographer, utilizes the journals and memoirs of the participants to convey the savagery and horror of the battle, and he also effectively explains how the battle fit into the broader strategic objectives of the adversaries. At times, the relentless slaughter conveyed in Gilbert's narrative is mind numbing, but this is a masterful work that should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the futility of the 'war to end all wars.'"—Jay Freeman, Booklist


"The four-month–long battle of the Somme epitomized the futile bloodletting on the western front, with 19,000 advancing British soldiers killed by the Germans on the very first day. From the impersonality of this mechanized slaughter, Gilbert, dean of First and Second World War historians, strives to recover the pathos of personal experience by spotlighting the exploits and travails of various small units and individual soldiers, mostly on the British side. He brings them to life through firsthand accounts, reminiscences by comrades, poignant letters home and snatches of soldiers' poetry, always ending his vignettes with a notice of where the soldiers discussed lie buried—or at least memorialized, since the bodies of 73,000 of the dead were never identified. (Many excellent, very detailed maps of both the battlefield and the resulting cemeteries are included.) . . . His superbly written, absorbing recreations of innumerable small life-and-death struggles makes the book a fitting commemoration of the tragedy."—Publishers Weekly