From Pontefract to Picardy by Derek Clayton
Hell at the Front: Combat Voices from the First World War by Tom Donovan
Call to Arms: The British Army 1914-1918 by Charles Messenger
The Civil Service Rifles in the Great War: All Bloody Gentlemen by Jill Knight
A Tribute to Jill Knight by John Lee
The First World War: The Essential Guide to Sources in the UK National Archives by Ian F. W. Beckett
The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell
Cromwell’s War Machine: The New Model Army 1654-1660 by Keith Roberts
Napoleon’s Army by Colonel. H. C. B. Rogers
Bonaparte in Egypt By Chris Herold
Fisher, Churchill and the Dardanelles by Geoffrey Penn
Massacre on the Marne: The Life and Death of the 2/5th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment in the Great War by Fraser Skirrow
From Pontefract to Picardy
The 9th King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the First World War
By Derek Clayton
Tempus paperback (2004) £17.99
ISBN: 0 7524 3165 X
Reviewed by John Lee for the Centre for First World War Studies, University of Birmingham
There were many hundreds of unit histories published in the 1920s and 30s - most divisions of the British Army were covered, some in substantial two volume sets, some quite briefly, most in a good solid volume. There were some notable exceptions, including the division in which this battalion served (of which more later). Then there were the general regimental histories, covering all battalions in all theatres; necessarily in less detail but still of considerable value. And then, of course, there was the battalion history, usually written by one or more officers who had served and drawing heavily on the battalion's war diary. These can vary enormously in detail and style, but always yield something of value about the nature of the army and the way it adapted to modern industrialised warfare.
Some years later there was a new rush of battalion histories, of the 'Pals' battalions, usually with an unhealthy obsession with the disaster of the 1st July 1916. Some of the later ones got over that hang up and were more useful. The more fortunate writers worked on the units with a highly literate rank and file, none more so than the 'class' battalions of the London Regiment (TF) and we were presented with the pioneering work of Bill Mitchinson on the London Rifle Brigade ("Gentlemen and Officers" IWM 1995) and most recently the magnificent new book by Jill Knight on the Civil Service Rifles (to be reviewed for this journal by Peter Simkins, but let me tell you now it is the best unit history I have ever read).
It is especially useful to get a good solid battalion history for a unit where the divisional history doesn't exist. We thank Derek Clayton for giving us the 9th KOYLIs who served throughout the war in 21st Division. This was a splendid formation that overcame an early disaster, was blessed with a first rate commander, and went on to become a thoroughly reliable division, and one that badly needs a modern history. (I would love to do it but I have pledged myself to the 58th Division -'my boys', the London Territorials!)
The 9th KOYLIs was a classic 'Kitchener' battalion of the New Army, recruited from the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire, with a stiff contingent of Durham miners joining up with large numbers of Yorkshire colliers. As John Bourne reminds us, these are trade unionists in uniform and they start grumbling about their 'rights' from the minute they join up! Their early marching songs say it all: "The more we work the more we may, It makes no difference to our pay". These are men used to doing as they are told in the work place, and you only need to start worrying about them if they stop complaining.
Officer-man relations were of the greatest importance. Clayton reminds us that every single original battalion commander of the 21st Division was a 'dug out', a former regular officer brought out of retirement for war service. Future studies will, no doubt, tell us how long they lasted. The 'temporary gentlemen' that made up the bulk of the officer corps learnt their duty at the same pace as their men. The battalion's first commander was a ferocious martinet, which might have stood them in good stead in the greater scheme of things, but made him detested even by the other officers (they refused to toast him on the eve of the Somme attack). He had that sarcastic tone 'up with which Tommy Atkins will not put'! He was killed on the 1st July 1916 and the battalion passed into the hands of two excellent lieutenant colonels, one of whom won a well-deserved Victoria Cross as he led them to victory in 1918.
What do we want from a 1914-18 unit history?
- A good sense of the social composition of the battalion and how it reflected the
society from which it sprang.
- A suitably detailed battle history, showing how the unit was introduced to the routine
of trench warfare and how they performed in battle. This should always include
accounts of their training and how this was adapted to new conditions of warfare. (A
note to future writers - this is not boring, it is important!)
- A sense of how the battalion fitted into its brigade and division, and how those units
figured in the BEF at large.
- An ongoing assessment of the morale of the unit and how it absorbed drafts after its major actions, how it rested and played, and how it kept going though the attritional battles of 1916/1917, the crisis of March/April 1918 and the new conditions of the final march to victory.
Derek Clayton scores high on most of these issues. He makes a good use of the war diary for the basic narrative and is fortunate to have a collection of letters from perceptive officers to bring the whole thing alive. It is very interesting to read their remarks on the way they conduct warfare in late 1918, compared to the bludgeoning style of 1916/17. We get many themes familiar from all battalion histories - how unpopular the trench mortar teams are when firing from your bit of trench; how 'live and let live' systems are quite prevalent; the importance of football in the life of the unit; what a blooming nuisance formal parades were, even visits of the King! And a number of useful reminders of important things that are often neglected - how excellent regimental officers went on to staff work at brigade and higher levels; the importance of battlefield salvage work; just how novel were the problems of the later stages of the fighting in 1918 (not just outrunning ammunition supply, but advancing off the edge of your maps, having to care for civilians along the way, etc.)
In this age of the PC we are now blessed with excellent analysis of casualties based on the CD ROM 'Soldiers Who Died'. No unit history is complete now without its bar chart of losses for the whole war. You run your eye along it and intone - battle of Loos, first day of the Somme, first day of Arras, Third Ypres, spring offensives 1918, etc.
As a published author myself I know that, however carefully you read those galley proofs, a few errors will creep in. The copy editors should have picked up most of them - don't worry, there are only a few, they are not earth shattering, and you can contact me through the Centre if you want to know what they are.
Instead I want to heartily recommend this unit history to you. It is, to use Peter Simkins' immortal phrase, another 'brick in the wall' to help us understand the experience and evolution of that war-winning machine, the British Expeditionary Force. With a slight tilt of emphasis it could have been an even more useful addition to our understanding of the sadly neglected 21st Division - that the French civilians liberated by it in 1918 automatically assumed to be an elite formation
Hell at the Front: Combat Voices from the First World War
By Tom Donovan
Published by Tempus £12.99
ISBN
0 7524 3940 5
Reviewed by John lee for the Centre for First World War Studies, University of Birmingham
Tom Donovan is a prince amongst booksellers. His printed catalogues often find their way onto my permanent library shelves, thanks to the excellence of his bibliographical and historical notes.
He and/or his paperback publisher have gone for a ‘sexy’ title to appeal to the general reader. Don’t be put off by it. This is a profoundly important and useful book.
This is a new paperback edition of ‘The Hazy Red Hell’ (Spellmount H/b1999) and is a fine anthology from scarce or out-of-print books, and some never-seen-before items from the author’s own remarkable collection of First World War material.
As the sub-title explains, these extracts concentrate on the actual combat experience of British troops on the Western Front from Mons to the final advance to victory. They do not shrink from the grimmer aspects of war and the writing is always powerful.
But the pacifist reader – looking for ‘the horrors of war’ from the mouths of its victims – will be disappointed. This is the story of men with a job to do, and they get on and do it. They are sustained throughout by a firm faith in what they were fighting for, by the comradeship engendered by the British regimental system, and by a grim and pretty much unquenchable sense of humour.
The first chapter, ‘1914:The Contemptible Little Army’, shows us the highly trained regulars of the BEF getting a bit of a shock as they go into the first great, industrialised war. Their superb rifle skills take a terrible toll of the enemy, but the unprecedented levels of artillery fire on the battlefield cause grievous losses of irreplaceable professionals.
‘1915: The Arrival of Attrition’ takes us from Neuve Chappelle to Loos, and sees the Territorial Force and the Kitchener volunteers arriving to shoulder the burden carried by the shrinking Regular units. This was a year of terrible fighting for very little gain. I found myself warming to a young runner of 2nd Black Watch who kept apologising to his corporal for trembling when under fire. The battalion had come in from India and he insisted it was the cold that was getting to him, not his nerves. The war gets more ‘frightful’, with gas and flamethrowers joining the fray, but it is still machine-gun and artillery fire that does the most damage.
‘1916:When the New Army Bled’ starts with the fighting at Vimy Ridge in May, when British troops encountered an effective box barrage for the first time – the most graphic description of being under sustained shell fire is provided by a member of the London Regiment. We then read of the particular misery of so-called ‘diversionary’ attacks, and get several accounts from different phases of the Somme battles, tracing the improvements in artillery techniques, the ongoing problem of battle communications, and the vital importance of good officer leadership. The advent of the tank is seen as a less-than-glorious, but potentially useful, infantry support weapon.
‘1917: Year of Arras and Passchendaele’ covers a time of grim attritional warfare that puts the German Army under the most enormous pressure. We are reminded of the great successes of 9th April that saw British attackers get into the German gun lines, and discovering the underground wonders of the ‘Hindenburg Line’ for the first time. There is a real improvement in British infantry tactics, and in co-operation with artillery and tanks. The victory of Messines in June, the routine excitements of working parties and the less routine thrill of trench raids, and the problems of working with Portuguese allies are all covered. Lengthy sections cover Third Ypres and Cambrai. Through success and failure there is an enduring stoicism, sense of duty and pride in comrades.
‘1918: Darkest Before Dawn’ takes us from the shock of the German spring offensives, and the violent resumption of open warfare (in the wrong direction!), with the collapse of command structure, supply lines and communications. But the Germans run out of steam quite quickly and the French stabilise the line. From 8th August onwards the Allies press the Germans back skilfully and relentlessly. The attackers had learned their lessons well. Standard battle drills could meet all eventualities and absorb quite raw recruits into fast-moving units. Now sergeants were perfectly able to command platoons. Tanks were proving ever more useful, but were never the decisive breakthrough weapon. The last entry, by a Lieutenant Blacker of the Rifle Brigade describes a confident infantry tearing through the Germans on 4th November 1918. How he didn’t qualify for a Victoria Cross I shall never know!!
Call to Arms: The British Army 1914-1918
By Charles Messenger
Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, £30
ISBN: 0 297 846 957
Reviewed by John Lee for the British Commission for Military History.
What a very interesting book this is! As an exercise you should stop what you are doing for ten minutes and try and think what would be involved in turning a small professional army engaged mainly in imperial policing, into a mass citizens' army engaged in a worldwide, industrialized struggle with the greatest military power of the day. Oh, and for good measure your government, and the people it represents, resent paying any and all taxation, especially when 'wasted' on defence.
Where would you begin? How to cope with the flood of volunteers and then, when they dwindle away, how to direct the human resources of the nation to best effect? Where to find the directing brains for all this effort? How to cope with the sudden demand for more of everything on scales that beggar belief and defy all previous predictions? How to cope with the myriad and wholly new demands of a new kind of warfare that seems to spring from the lurid writings of that Mr H. G. Wells?!
Our fellow BCMH member, Charles Messenger, has given us a valuable study of the British Army in the First World War as seen by the Adjutant General's department. He covers most thoroughly everything organised by the 'A' side of the Staff; all matters relating to personnel (and not 'G' side -Operations- or 'Q' side - logistics). He again makes the point elucidated by Ian Malcolm Brown that the 'G' Staff was invariably run quite separately from the 'A and Q' Staffs; something that did not begin and end at Gallipoli!!
Everything relating to recruitment is here, from pre-war regular volunteers to the mobilization of the reserves, the extraordinary doubling and tripling of the Territorial Force and that wholly unforeseen creation of the New Armies. Every aspect of unit organization is discussed. An appendix lists 35 different organizations to which an 'infantryman' might be posted, from Agricultural Companies to Young Soldiers' Battalions. He covers the demand for new specialists to be organized and trained; shows the important role of women in the uniformed services in releasing men for active service; treats fully the enormous problem of the need for labour forces on the Western Front (whose numbers rise from 100,000 in 1917 to 395,000 in Jan. 1919).
There are excellent chapters on officer selection and training, both regimental and staff, and on aspects of discipline, the medical services, welfare and morale of the troops (give them plenty of food, leave and mail - we score well on two out of the three) and on the contentious issue of honours and awards.
Did you know that in April 1917 the Army Postal services were handling 125,000 parcels a day for the BEF (which total went down as the canteens increased and improved); that while American and Australian units had one dentist per 1,000 men, the British 'got by' on 1 per 10,000; that 25% of the entire medical profession was in uniform by July 1915?
He treats all the controversial issues - executions, mutiny, conscientious objection, homosexuality, racism - with massive amounts of sanity and reason. The mix of official sources and personal memoirs to illustrate the points he makes throughout is finely balanced, and encyclopaedic.
I urge you to add this to your library a.s.a.p. In its whole 574 pages I only noted that Tim Harington should be spelled with one 'r', not two!! And, of course, I have my own reasons for wishing that he hadn't called the infamous Aragon 'Ian Hamilton's headquarters ship'! It was principally the location for the Naval Transport Officers and their sybaritic staff.
And what about an appendix that lists 14 pages of acronyms, from AA (Army Act and/or Anti Aircraft) to ZMC (Zion Mule Corps). How useful is that?!
The Civil Service Rifles in the Great War: All Bloody Gentlemen
By Jill Knight
Published by Pen and Sword, Hardback £19.99
ISBN 1 84415057 7
Reviewed by John Lee for the British Commission for Military History
Those of you that know me well will believe me when I say that I have read over a hundred unit histories relating to the BEF in the Great War, and that in the course of my research work I have partially read at least another hundred. The rest of you will have to take me at my word or check me out in your own time! What I want to say at the start and without equivocation is that Jill Knight has produced the best unit history I have ever read or am ever likely to read.
Jill, while a graduate, is not an academic historian; she is that perfect kind of writer who, in her work as a civil servant, became intrigued by a war memorial to civil servants who died in the war and set about finding out what she could about them. In a genre not famous for its literary elegance, we are doubly blessed by someone who can actually write well and make the story especially riveting.
Now, like the pioneering work of Bill Mitchinson on the London Rifle Brigade, Jill is fortunate to have worked on one of the ‘class’ battalions of the London Regiment, whose ranks were filled with the most literate and educated men that Edwardian society could offer. While these units were routinely plundered for officer material, there is still a rich vein of personal reminiscences from the other ranks to make these books especially valuable.
In another unit history review I wrote recently for the Centre for First World History, Birmingham University, I said:
What do we want from a 1914-18 unit history?
- A good sense of the social composition of the battalion and how it reflected the society from which it sprang.
- A suitably detailed battle history, showing how the unit was introduced to the routine of trench warfare and how they performed in battle. This should always include accounts of their training and how this was adapted to new conditions of warfare. (A note to future writers – this is not boring, it is important!)
- A sense of how the battalion fitted into its brigade and division, and how those units figured in the BEF at large.
- An ongoing assessment of the morale of the unit and how it absorbed drafts after its major actions, how it rested and played, and how it kept going though the attritional battles of 1916/1917, the crisis of March/April 1918 and the new conditions of the final march to victory.
I had actually just read Jill’s book when I devised that list and it will therefore come as no surprise that she scores 100% on every point. In particular I was impressed by the regular assessments made of the state of morale within the battalion, showing how even an excellent unit like the 15th Londons could ‘get the blues’ after a costly battle or a period of bloody awful weather, but how some rest, reinforcement (by recruits drawn so clearly from the same pool as the originals – not always an option), some entertainment and the restoration of cleanliness and pride in appearance soon gets the unit back in form.
The sub-title comes from an officer’s groom who transferred in from the 60th Rifles. He didn’t like the new assignment as “This mob’s all bloody gentlemen”!
The First Battalion, as part of 47th (2nd London) Division, is followed through all the great battles of the Western front. Jill has an excellent grasp of the evolution of infantry tactics as the war progressed; indeed she does quote some particularly reliable sources in this respect (!!!)
The Second Battalion is equally well covered as it joins the 60th Division and goes from Ireland to France to Salonika to Palestine and back to France.
A word of praise for the publishers, Pen and Sword. The book is physically attractive, with excellent use of maps, illustrations and repro documents. And, as I have welcomed in other reviews, they leave a wide inner margin that is absolutely perfect if, like me, you are an inveterate scribbler of notes.
If you are remotely interested in the BEF and/or the Western front you must have this book. If you think you are not interested in ‘mud crunchers’ but want to know what makes a ‘good’ regiment good at any stage in history, then you still must have this book.
As I said in an e-mail to the author, “Well done, Jill. Well done indeed!” She has set a new standard that the rest of us have to live up to.
PS: The other unit histories referred to above are:
K. W. Mitchinson Gentlemen and Officers: The Impact and Experience of War on a Territorial Regiment 1914-1918 Imperial War Museum 1995
Derek Clayton From Pontefract to Picardy: The 9th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the First World War Tempus 2004
This review was reprinted in the London WFAs journal, Firestep, with the following introduction.
A Tribute to Jill Knight by John Lee
To my lasting regret I never met Jill Knight. It is a sign of the times that we did, however, engage in a good-natured exchange of e-mails. It began out of the blue when she got in touch, really to enquire from my wife Celia if she could tell Jill anything more about Hugh Warrender. He appeared in Celia’s biography of Jean, Lady Hamilton as a friend of the family, and we discovered Jill’s interest in that Warrender went on to serve with the 15th Battalion, The London Regiment (Civil Service Rifles).
I next heard from her nearer to publication when she, having learned of my ‘proper job’ (in the sales department of one of our major publishers), asked if I could give any advice on the marketing of the book, making sure it got reviewed and what have you. I helped as best I could, assuring her that she was with a good publisher who would do a professional job of it, and suggesting some good reviewers.
In particular I promised to review it myself, either for John Bourne’s Centre for First World War Studies journal (Pete Simkins beat me to it!), or for the Newsletter of the British Commission for Military History. What I am so pleased about is that, having read the part covering the 1st Battalion on the Western Front, I paused and immediately fired off a congratulatory e-mail to Jill. I told her it was absolutely brilliant, and that reading it had been a pleasure. It was then I employed the phrase used below: “Well done, Jill, well done indeed!” She replied quickly saying I had really ‘bucked her up’. I didn’t know that she was dying, and that she would soon leave us. I wonder if she realised how much she would be missed.
On 17th March 2005 I joined a good crowd of people for a service of remembrance at the Civil Service Rifles memorial on the Embankment at Somerset House, on the ninetieth anniversary of the day the battalion left for France. Jill could not attend but sent a message of support.
The review for the BCMH Newsletter is reprinted below. I mean every word of it. The book deserves the widest possible readership, and is a model to be followed by all future unit histories.
In 2007 I hope to conduct a new Holt’s Tour, entitled: “All Bloody Gentlemen! The Civil Service Rifles on the Western Front”. Using Jill’s book as a guide, we shall follow in the footsteps of this excellent battalion of the excellent London Regiment. Do join me, and we can give thanks over and over again for the work Jill Knight left behind.
The First World War: The Essential Guide to Sources in the UK National Archives
By Ian F. W. Beckett
(Public Record Office, 2002, £19.99
Reviewed by John Lee for the Centre for First World War Studies, University of Birmingham
The first question I would like to ask Professor Ian Beckett is why the devil didn't he write this book some fifteen years ago when I was starting my serious research work at the PRO. He would have saved me such a lot of time and energy chasing down files and references.
This book is a masterpiece at various levels. The introductory essays and the linking narratives between chapters and sections are a model of cool, rational and authoritative discourse. It occurred to me that if they were extracted and bound up as a pamphlet they would represent the last word in scholarship on all the main issues concerning Britain's role in the First World War. They make this tome of reference a pleasure to read in its own right.
Before I discuss the content by section, there are two further points of a practical nature deserving of praise. The index is quite excellent in its comprehensive attention to detail. The most fleeting reference to a single ship, munitions factory, individual or committee is carefully noted. I tested a couple of sections of text 'to destruction' and could not fault it. Whoever designed the layout of the book had the great good sense to leave two-inch wide inner margins on every page. These will rapidly fill with pencilled notes (in your own copy, of course!) on matters of interest to be followed up and with your own cross-references. We should start a campaign for wider margins for that very purpose!
There are four major sections to the book - the Higher Direction of the War; New Ways of War; The Nation in Arms; War, State and Society. After an essay introducing each of these themes there are anything from four to ten sub-sections that explore their subject by directing the reader to the relevant papers of no less than sixty-one departments and institutions. This thematic approach makes more accessible and manageable the huge series of papers such as Admiralty 1, Air Ministry 1, Home Office 45 and War Office 32, as well as making practical use possible for the first time of some series that do not yet have detailed catalogues (such as Treasury 1 and Ministry of Labour 2).
Whole books have been written discussing whether Great Britain should have engaged in the First World War at all. The introductory essay to The Higher Direction of the War has a paragraph of just seven lines concluding that this was "a necessary war" which is a model of cool, rational and, it has to be said, courageous judgement about Britain's true national interest. The sub-section Cabinet Government and War explains the approach of the governments of the day to directing the war through various increasingly small committees. Within the various references to series of papers there are useful commentaries, such as that on page 6 directing the researcher to CAB23 and explaining what might and might not be found there and why. In the sub-section War, Strategy and International Politics there is a connecting essay linking the comprehensive coverage of all wartime political affairs to the separately treated impact of the two Russian Revolutions of 1917 that had such an alarming (for British ruling circles) effect throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The subsection Dominions and Colonies introduces into its opening essay the use of important statistical information to help us understand the total war effort; a feature that is so useful and interesting that I can see it being much-cribbed in the future! The subsection The Peace Settlements runs to nearly fourteen pages, reminding us that the war ended in a series of armistices, not surrenders, which had to be converted into peace agreements.
New Ways of War is divided into Science and War; The War on Land; The War at Sea; The War in the Air; and Absorbing the Lessons. There are very good short summaries of tactical developments during the war, and the role of science in intelligence gathering. The War at Sea sub-section breaks down in an interesting way, suggesting the relative importance of aspects of the Navy's work in wartime - nine pages on the blockade of Germany and economic warfare, six pages on submarine warfare, six pages on fleet actions, three on air power at sea and one on the German bombardment of British coastal towns.
The treatment of the important series WO95 (the War Diaries) will be the only discordant note in this adulatory review. There is nothing to fault in the basic description of the content of this series but it is such a vital source that future researchers should be told more about it. (This reflects the interests of your reviewer -an historian of military operations - as opposed to the author - more of a 'war and society' man himself). Besides containing the daily diary of events for the relevant unit or formation, WO95 contains a mass of other important documentation. Chief amongst these are the narratives of operations and the after action reports, so important for the analysis of battle and of the learning process that was a constant feature of the war. The files are bursting with detailed maps, operation orders, artillery fire plans, reports on strength, training, and intelligence assessments of the enemy. It is very instructive to follow the development of operational techniques from the early, experimental stages of the war and compare them to the deadly killing machine that was the BEF in the later stages of the struggle.
The Nation in Arms covers the question of recruitment, the recording of war service (this sub-section being vital to a large contingent of PRO users researching the service of individual members of the armed services), and the treatment of casualties, veterans and their dependants, and the commemoration of the fallen. There is, of course, an excellent piece of the whole question of discipline and military justice, and a balanced appraisal of the question of executions.
War, State and Society covers in a very comprehensive way the whole question of mobilising the nation for total, industrialised war, including the growth of government control on society, finance, industry, agriculture and food supply, the role of labour and women, and the social impact of the war on various aspect of national life. We see how companies are compensated for government 'interference' and certain profit levels were guaranteed, to remind us that this was a thoroughly 'capitalist' war. Conversely, while pointing up that Britain had the worst record of any belligerent power for labour militancy, the author also reminds us that this was as nothing compared to the turbulent period 1910-1914 and that over 8,000 arbitration judgements were accepted by the workforce without protest. It is interesting to note, in a sub-section on Aliens and the Enemy Within, how certain events assumed such importance to the government. The documentation relating to the Irish rebellion in 1916, the Casement trial and subsequent troubles runs to five pages and includes papers from eighteen ministries and departments!
This is a work of the highest importance, of the greatest practical value to student and researcher alike, from the pen of one of our best historians of this truly decisive period in the history of Great Britain and the world.
The Great War and Modern Memory
By Paul Fussell
Oxford University Press: £8.99
Paul Fussell is an American Professor of English. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an historian, still less a military historian. In his personal view the First World War was an exercise in futility in which "eight million people were destroyed because two persons, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, were shot". His view of the idyllic nature of British society in the summer of 1914 is as selective as his reading of the war itself. This is loosely based on the only historical work cited, the 'History of the First World War', by that "prince of military critics", Basil Liddell Hart. Liddell Hart would not thank him for the astonishing factual errors he makes in his short narrative of the events of the war, all of which have been pointed out in previous reviews and none of which are corrected in this latest edition.
The book is interesting as literary criticism of some British writing in 1914, and of some of the writing produced by the war. It can be read with pleasure as he describes some of the literary norms of the day - the constant references to pastoral images, birdsong, flowers, dawn and sunset, the intense bonding between men at war (which he insists on calling homoeroticism, but no harm in that), the demonising of the enemy. All this adds to our understanding of the cultural world that produced these writings and for this we are grateful. He is also surely right to point out how the war has impinged on our national consciousness in a way no previous war did. It has certainly invaded our everyday language.
For him the war is the life in the trenches, but only of the frail and helpless infantry in the trenches, and only as portrayed by the writings of a select band of poets. Just as there is no place here for gunners, engineers, tank crews, logistical troops or sailors, nor any combatants from any other theatre of war, neither is there room for war writers who do not fit neatly into his scheme of an "innocent army" made knowing by irony. He does discuss, and is clearly irritated by, David Jones' 'In Parenthesis' because this front line poet equates the experience of the infantry with that of previous wars. But you will search in vain for any discussion of Frederick Manning or Charles Carrington (a.k.a. Charles Edmonds), or any other writer who might imply that the men had a job to do and got on with it, enduring whatever came their way and refusing to quit until they won.
His hostility to the very fact of the war, which explains his lack of concern over historical accuracy, leads to other blind spots. He just doesn't understand the concept of love of country. He certainly doesn't understand the sardonic humour of the rank and file soldiery. Infamously foul-mouthed, they are not being ironic, they are simply taking the p**s!! A little more thought about the lives of the ordinary working-people of Britain in 1914 and what they felt about going to war would have made this a much better book.
When Fussell was described above as an American writer, it was deliberate in that he hails from a country that has never had to fight for its very survival as an independent nation in the way that many European countries have had to do this century (twice) in the face of rampant German militarism. It is simply not good enough for him to dismiss as naive and misguided any writings that smack of firm intent to see the war through until the enemy is defeated. The men of 1914 -18 knew what they were fighting for, and they suspected that the consequences of defeat would have been very much worse than the hardships endured while battling their way to victory.
It is important that you read this book. It is hugely influential, especially amongst students. It is your duty as military historians to understand its arguments and expose the way it reads back certain aspects of post-war disillusion and distorts the experience of the war as history.
Short Reviews by John Lee For BCMH Journal Mars and Clio
Cromwell’s War Machine: The New Model Army 1654-1660
By Keith Roberts
Published by Pen & Sword 2005, £19.99
ISBN: 1 844 150941
Keith Roberts is a man seriously in control of his subject where the English Civil War is concerned. This book has a much wider agenda than the title suggests. He sets the whole of the war and its contending armies in the context of contemporary Dutch, Spanish and German military theory and practice. It is very well illustrated with formation diagrams that help our understanding of the battlefield tactics of the time.
He takes us through the whole experience of the armies on both sides of the Civil War – recruitment, organisation and equipment, training, tactics, professionalism, and military life in general.
The New Model Army itself appears quite late on the scene and promptly settles the first civil war on the fields of Naseby and Langport in 1645. After imposing its will upon London in no uncertain terms, it goes on to win the second and third civil wars before peace at home was secured. It had a brief and turbulent history, and was marked out by its aggressive ethos. It relentlessly sought out battle to settle the issue once and for all. In a wonderfully modern-sounding phrase from its own lips, “Noe other Army could doe the Business”.
My only complaint is that there is not enough on the New Model Army itself. I would have liked a lot more on its regiments and its battles. That would, I suppose, have needed a much bigger book and this is such good value at £19.99. An excellent primer on the armies of the ‘English Revolution’.
Napoleon’s Army
By
Colonel. H. C. B. Rogers
Pen & Sword, 2005 (1974), p/b £12.99
ISBN: 1 844 15310X
Full marks to Pen & Sword for making available again this timeless classic study of the basic workings of Napoleon’s Army.
After a brief history of the wars from 1792 to 1815 to put everything in context, there are fine detailed studies of the cavalry, infantry, artillery, engineers and signallers, administration, the medical services and the workings of the Imperial headquarters.
There are two detailed studies of the Napoleonic corps system working at its best. The superb III Corps d’Armee of the ‘Iron Marshal, Davout, during the campaign in Prussia in 1806 and in the much-neglected campaign in Poland in 1807, is a paradigm of the Napoleonic system.
There is excellent use of first hand accounts and fine black-and-white illustrations throughout.
Bonaparte in Egypt
By Chris Herold
Published by Pen & Sword, 2005 (1962) p/b £14.99 424pp
ISBN: 1 844 152 855
Another useful addition to any Napoleonic library courtesy of Pen & Sword’s reprint programme.
The Directory accepted Napoleon’s grandiose scheme for conquering Egypt as a preliminary to operations against the British in the East in order to get him out of France, where he was getting much too big for his boots! His large plans included the taking along of 150 scientists and artists to make a deep study of the country. (A lesson for America there, before she goes invading any more Eastern nation states). This book covers all aspects of the expedition – military, political and cultural.
Despite his early military success, those British ‘Goddamns’ ruined everything by utterly annihilating the French fleet in Aboukir Bay.
When the invasion of Syria degenerated into a dreary, plague-ridden siege of Acre (whose garrison was sustained by a British fleet and its marines), Napoleon lost interest and escaped to France. Only the War of the Second Coalition saved him from a court martial.
His wretched, abandoned army was gobbled up in 1801 - by the British, of course!
Fisher, Churchill and the Dardanelles
By Geoffrey Penn
Published by Leo Cooper, London 1999 £25.00
Reviewed by John Lee for the Journal of Military History
This book, by a former naval officer, adds to our understanding of the depressingly-inept origins of the British attempt early in 1915 to force the passage of the Dardanelles and put Turkey out of the war. It was the defective mechanism for the higher direction of the war that caused the difficulties which beset the servicemen, naval and military, who had to execute the policy into the which their political masters drifted so aimlessly.
In common with many biographies that seek to restore or defend the reputation of an historical figure, in this case Admiral Lord 'Jacky' Fisher, there has to be an arch-villain who has to be vilified at every opportunity, and here the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, is in the firing line. By a careful cross-checking of Churchill's exculpatory writings in "The World Crisis 1911-1918" with Fisher's own memoranda, Penn does make a convincing case that the naval experts did try to warn against attempting to batter a way through the narrow channel of the Dardanelles with ships alone. In his enthusiasm to put the Royal Navy to some decisive active duty, Churchill repeatedly misrepresented these views to the War Council and won the politicians over to the ill-fated attempt. The subsequent Dardanelles Commission of Inquiry wondered aloud why these naval experts, through their principal representative, the First Sea Lord, Fisher himself, had not spoken up in Council more forcefully at the time. In Edwardian Britain such things simply were not done.
The Navy itself is shown to be sadly lacking in a 'General Staff' for war planning, for which Fisher must take some responsibility. When Fisher made elaborate plans for landing British troops on the northern shores of Germany, inside the Baltic, he neglected to mention the scheme to the War Office! If he wanted to use the Army as a 'projectile to be fired by the Navy' it was to be at a time and place entirely and only of his own choosing.
The book is a useful addition to the 'Gallipoli library'; his discussion challenging the alleged Turkish shell shortage in March 1915 was new to me. However this reviewer drew a couple of conclusions probably at odds with the intentions of the author. It would have been to the good if Fisher had resigned in January 1915 as he first threatened to do. Once committed to the fight it would have been better if the Admiralty had been completely behind Churchill and equally determined to 'see it through'. And it does seem as if Maurice Hankey was right when he declared that the Navy had completely lost the spirit of the offensive. That most combative of sailors, Commodore Roger Keyes, comes in for a level of abuse here second only to Churchill himself !
Massacre on the Marne:
The Life and Death of the 2/5th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment in the Great War
By Fraser Skirrow
Pen and Sword 2007 £19.99
ISBN: 1 84415 496 3
Reviewed by John Lee for the Centre for First World War Studies, University of Birmingham
It is my great pleasure to review another fine battalion history from the Pen and Sword stable. This particular one is all the more interesting for being about one of those unsung Second Line Territorial units that came out in such big numbers in 1917 and did a lot of very hard fighting along the road to final victory in 1918.
The author, Fraser Skirrow, began by researching the members of his family that served in the West Yorkshires and has ended up with an excellent study of the evolution of a unit from its wartime creation, through the difficult introduction to modern war on the Western Front, some splendid battle performances in attack and defence, and the final harsh reminder that the German army was never going to be a pushover even as it crashed to defeat.
They were certainly poor relations at the start. While trying to train for overseas service, and coping with all the usual shortages of arms and equipment, the battalion was continually plundered for drafts to send to the First Line units already in France. When they finally get their posting to France early in 1917 there follows a brutally honest assessment of the shaky start they made in the trenches. This continual reference to the state of the training and morale of the battalion (and its parent division – the 62nd) at the various stages of its development is excellent, and continues a healthy trend that I have detected in this sort of unit history of late.
They gained confidence after a bout of aggressive patrolling during the German retreat in the spring of 1917. But their first set piece battle was a cruel test – twin failures in the two battles of Bullecourt. When Australians complain that they were ‘let down’ at First Bullecourt by the failure of the Yorkshire division on their left, they should be reminded that a lot of Yorkshiremen were killed and wounded because an unknown Australian staff officer failed to notify them that a scheduled attack had, in fact, been cancelled. And some very fanciful Australian planning for Second Bullecourt also saw the 2/5th West Yorkshires hung out to dry again. I take nothing away from the Australian contribution to the Allied victory but when it comes to ‘whingeing’ about other people (especially ‘Pomms’) they would do well to be a little more modest!
What followed was a classic case of a battalion being taken in hand by a new commander, who inspired a new set of officers, and turned it into a fine fighting outfit. Note how many of these ‘new’ officers were, in fact, young but veteran Other Rankers, often wounded and decorated, and being commissioned as ‘temporary gentlemen’.
Success in a carefully orchestrated battle at Cambrai, and the brilliant defence of Bucquoy during the German spring offensive of 1918 saw this battalion at the peak of its effectiveness. It maintained a terrific reputation for aggressive patrolling and raiding.
Sent south to the Marne to help the French army roll back the last gasp of the German offensives of 1918, they were thrown rather precipitately into a doomed attack at Marfaux where the battalion was shot to pieces by concealed and unsuppressed machine-guns. It was so badly cut up that it was disbanded and its personnel distributed to other Yorkshire regiments, which gives us the doom-laden title of the book.
The author is to be congratulated on the steady analysis of the state of the battalion, its training and morale, and its tactical development. After each major action there is a thoroughly commendable study of the reasons for success or failure. As usual there are plenty of good documentary sources for these territorial units, but he really opened my eyes to the importance of the local press for piecing together the history of these intensely local units.
We must encourage more detailed unit studies like this, where the learning process (we don’t call it a learning ‘curve’ any more!) can be so clearly delineated. The Second Line Territorials deserve more recognition for their contribution to the final victory. Fraser Skirrow has done a fine job for the 2/5th West Yorkshires.