1 Edmund Dane, Trench Warfare, London, 1915, p.3
1 Captain E. G. Hopkinson, Spectamur Agendo, Cambridge, 1926, p.73
2 Corporal Amos Wilder, Armageddon Revisited, Yale, 1994, p.67
3 Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune, 1929, London, 1986 (new edition), pp.10–11
4 Gustav Ebelshauser, The Passage, Huntingdon, 1984, p.101
5 N. Fraser-Tytler, Field Guns in France, London, 1922, pp.102–103
6 Unteroffizier Hundt, ‘Reserve Infantry Regiment 17’, in J. Sheldon, The German Army on the Somme, Barnsley, 2005, p.235
7 Private C. E. D. Dunn quoted in I. Uys, Delville Wood, Rensburg, 1983, p.76
8 Report of the War Office Committee, 1922, pp.9, 44, 58–58, 62, 81, 138
9 Captain Henry Dundas, A Memoir (reprinted letters), Edinburgh, 1921, p.103
10 Corporal W. F. Lowe, eyewitness account in L. MacDonald, 1915: The Death of Innocence, London, 1993, pp.425–427
11 Herbert W. McBride, A Rifleman Went to War, Ottawa, 1935, p.160
12 Marc Bloch, Memoirs of War (English edition), Cambridge, 1988, p.140
13 Private R. G. Bultitude quoted in B. Purdom (ed.) Everyman at War, London, 1930, p.219
14 Lieutenant D. W. J. Cuddeford, And All For What? Some War Time Experiences, reprinted in T. Donovan (ed.), The Hazy Red Hell, Spellmount, 1999, pp.108–115
15 Jean Norton Cru, Témoins Essai d’analyse, Paris, 1929; Ian Ousby, The Road to Verdun, London, 2003, pp.70, 270
16 George Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, London, 1980, pp.37–38; C. E. Crutchley (ed.), Machine Gunner, Northampton, 1973
17 Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Memoirs, London, 1931, p.43. See also G. Blond, The Marne, London, 2002 and E. D. Bose, The Kaiser’s Army, Oxford, 2001
1 Edmund Dane, Trench Warfare, London, 1915, pp.33, 58–63
2 Erich von Falkenhayn, General Headquarters, 1914–1916 and its Critical Decisions, Berlin and London, 1919, p.40
3 Lieutenant F. P. Roe, Accidental Soldiers, London, 1981, p.42
4 R.E. Harris, Billie: The Nevill Letters, London, 1991, pp.61–78
5 Guy Chapman, A Passionate Prodigality, London, 1985 (third edition), pp.39–40
6 Private Edward Roe quoted in P. Downham (ed.), Diary of an Old Contemptible, Barnsley, 2004, p.54
7 Marc Bloch, Memoirs of War, (English edition), Cambridge, 1988, p.130
8 P. Witkop (ed.), German Students’ War Letters, London, 1929, p.3
9 Sidney Rogerson, Twelve Days on the Somme, London, 2006, p.65
10 Anon., A Month at the Front: The Diary of an Unknown Soldier, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 2006, p.37
11 Lieutenant John Reith, Wearing Spurs, London, 1966, pp.64–65
12 Private Edward Loxdale, A Souvnir of a Soldier, London, 1916, p.2
13 Dane, Trench Warfare, pp.47–48
14 German 3rd Army Headquarters, Experiences Gained in the Winter Battle in Champagne, 14th April, 1915, translated as ‘CDS 303’, p.2
15 John Masefield, The Old Front Line, Bourne End, 1972 (reprint), p.89
16 Harris, Billie: The Nevill Letters, p.63
17 Lieutenant N. F. Percival, manuscript journal, Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry Museum, Preston
18 Ibid.
19 Rudyard Kipling, The Irish Guards in the Great War: Second Battalion, Staplehurst, 1997 (new edition), p.37; Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel, London, 1994 (reprint), pp.92–110
20 Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War, London, 1982 (reprint), pp.105–106
21 C.T. Atkinson, History of the South Wales Borderers 1914–1918, London, 1931, pp.215–216, 349
The grave of Private G. E. Ellison, 5th Lancers, St Symphorien Cemetery, Mons. Ellison is acknowledged as the last British soldier to be killed in World War I, though many actually succumbed to wounds after 11 November 1918. By a quirk of fate Ellison is buried within feet of Private J. Parr of the Middlesex Regiment, who is believed to be the first British soldier killed. (Author’s collection)
1 Sidney Rogerson, Twelve Days on the Somme, London, 2006, p.35
2 List of stores taken by ‘C’ Company, 5th S. Lancs, August 1916. Queen’s Lancashire Regiment collection, Fulwood
3 Albert W. Andrews quoted in S. Richardson (ed.), Orders are Orders, Manchester, 1987, pp.28–31
4 J. W. Taylor, The 1st Royal Irish Rifles in the Great War, Dublin, 2002, pp.189–201; D. Winter, Death’s Men, London, 1985 (second edition), pp.42–44; E. C. Vaughan, Some Desperate Glory, London, 1981, pp.67–68; J. Peaty in B. Bond (ed.), Look to Your Front: Studies in the First World War, Spellmount, 1999, pp.89–104
5 G. D. Sheffield and G. I. S. Inglish (eds.), From Vimy Ridge to the Rhine: The Great War Letters of Christopher Stone, Marlborough, 1989, pp.63–37
6 Claude Prieur, De Dixmude A Nieuport: Journal de Campagne d’un Officier de Fusiliers Marins, Paris, 1916, p.105
7 A. Williamson, Henry Williamson and the First World War, Stroud, 2004 (second edition) pp.42, 58
8 M. Glover (ed.), The Fateful Battle Line: The Great War Journals and Sketches of Captain Henry Ogle, London, 1993, pp.13, 82, 136
9 Anon., The War History of the 1st/4th Battalion The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, Preston, 1921, p.46
10 Sheffield and Inglish (eds.), From Vimy Ridge to the Rhine, p.100
11 George Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, London, 1980, pp.262–263
12 Lieutenant N. F. Percival, manuscript journal, Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry Museum, Preston; J. Ellis, Eye Deep in Hell, London, 1976, pp.54–55; M. Brown, Tommy Goes to War, London, 1978, pp.88–90
13 Williamson, Henry Williamson and the First World War, pp.120, 122, 124–127
14 Rogerson, Twelve Days on the Somme, pp.57, 75–76
15 Glover (ed.), The Fateful Battle Line, p.136; D. Jones, In Parenthesis, New York, 1961, p.205
16 Private Edward Roe quoted in P. Downham (ed.), Diary of an Old Contemptible, Barnsley, 2004, p.78; S. Bull, An Officer’s Manual of the Western Front, London, 2008, pp.63–64, 83
17 The trench life of the Royal Welch Fusiliers is especially well recorded by not only Robert Graves, Frank Richards, and Siegfried Sassoon, but medical officer J. C. Dunn, author of the excellant The War the Infantry Knew, London, 1987
18 Private A. Stuart Dolden, Cannon Fodder, London, 1980, p.104
19 Eric Hiscock, The Bells of Hell go Ting-Aling-Aling, London, 1976, pp.37, 42; Richardson (ed.), Orders are Orders, pp.28–29
20 Ernest Parker, Into Battle, London, 1994 (second edition), preface and pp.10, 40, 42; S. Chapman, Home in Time for Breakfast, London, 2007, pp.16–17, 19, 42
21 Vaughan, Some Desperate Glory, pp.106, 169, 184–185; Williamson, Henry Williamson and the First World War, pp.41–42, 50, 105, 109–110
22 P. Witkop (ed.), German Students’ War Letters, London, 1929, pp.210–220; A. P. Linder, Princes of the Trenches, Drawer, 1996, pp.61–63
23 Sheffield and Inglish (eds.), From Vimy Ridge to the Rhine, pp.72, 86; P. T. Scott, Home For Christmas: Cards, Messages and Letters of the Great War, London, 1993
24 Downham (ed.), Diary of an Old Contemptible, pp.45, 46, 61, 67, 73, 77, 80, 83, 124, 173, 291
25 Anon., The War History of the 1st/4th Battalion The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, pp.5–21
26 Ibid., p.11
27 US Intelligence, General Staff, Histories of the Two Hundred and Fifty One Divisions of the German Army, Chaumont, 1919; H. H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary, London, 1997, pp.246–249, 421–422
1 Frank Richards, Old Soldiers Never Die, London, 1993 (second edition), pp.92–93; History of the Ministry of Munitions, London, 1921, vol XI ‘Supply of Munitions’
2 Letter reproduced in T. Donovan (ed.), The Hazy Red Hell, Spellmount, 1999, pp.157–158
3 George Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, London, 1980, pp.39–41
4 P. Witkop (ed.), German Students’ War Letters, London, 1929, pp.39–43; A. Saunders, Weapons of the Trench War, Stroud, 1999, pp.28–51
5 L. Wyn Griffith, Up the Line to Mametz, London, 1931, p.45
6 C. J. Arthur quoted in B. Purdom (ed.), Everyman at War, London, 1930, pp.179–180
7 Guy Chapman, A Passionate Prodigality, London, 1985 (third edition), p.190
8 ‘Man pack’ means flame throwers that were carried rather than mounted on the ground, see E. Koch, Flamethrowers of the German Army, (English translation) Atglen, 1997, pp.4–12
9 Captain P. Christison, memoir. Imperial War Museum, Documents, pp.66–67
10 Georg Bucher, In the Line, (English translation) Uckfield, 2005, p.157
1 Lance Corporal J. D. Keddie quoted in L. MacDonald, 1915: The Death of Innocence, London, 1993, p.194
2 See D. Richter, Chemical Soldiers, University of Kansas, 1992, pp.6–86
3 W. A. Quinton memoir, quoted in B. MacArthur (ed.), For King and Country, London, 2008, pp.97–101
4 Private A. Stuart Dolden, Cannon Fodder, London, 1980, p.160; another mustard gas victim was Henry Lawson, see Vignettes of the Western Front, Oxford, 1979, pp.53–56
5 Captain F. C. Hitchcock, Stand To: A Diary of the Trenches, London, 1937, pp.53–54
6 See C. H. Foulkes, Gas! The Story of the Special Brigade, Edinburgh, 1934
7 Captain P. Christison, memoir. Imperial War Museum, Documents, p.63. Also on this subject see A. Palazzo, Seeking Victory on the Western Front: The British Army and Chemical Warfare, University of Nebraska, 2000, passim, and G. Hartcup, The War of Invention, London, 1988, pp.94–117
8 Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War, Penguin Classics (new edition) pp.26–27
Signpost to Fricourt German Cemetery, Somme. Fricourt was a strong point assaulted on 1 July 1916, but did not fall until the following day. The cemetery was temporarily the resting place of Manfred von Richthofen, shot down in 1918. Somewhat bizarrely the ‘Red Baron’ was first interred by the Australians at Bertangles, but moved to Fricourt after the war. The remains – or at least some of them – were exhumed and transferred to Berlin in 1925. In 1975 they were moved yet again to the family vault at Wiesbaden. (Author’s collection)
1 Corporal Sidney Amatt, Imperial War Museum sound archives, transcribed in M. Arthur, Forgotten Voices, London 2002, pp.201–202
2 One of many first hand accounts collected in The War the Infantry Knew (London, 1987). Instructions of enemy items to look out for were contained in Collection of Information Regarding the Enemy, 1915
3 Captain F. C. Hitchcock, Stand To: A Diary of the Trenches, London, 1937, pp.188–189
4 Rudyard Kipling, The Irish Guards in the Great War: Second Battalion, Staplehurst, 1997 (new edition), pp.84–88
5 L. Nicholson and H. T. MacMullen, History of the East Lanacshire Regiment in the Great War, Liverpool, 1936, pp.145–146
6 Ibid., pp.209–291
7 General Staff (UK), Scouting and Patrolling, ‘SS 195’, 1917, p.20
8 Lieutenant Colonel J. S. Y. Rogers to the ‘Shell Shock’ enquiry, Report of the War Office Committee, p.62
9 Major H. Hesketh-Pritchard, Sniping in France, London, 1994 (new edition) p.16
10 Major F. M. Crum, With Riflemen, Scouts and Snipers, Oxford, 1921, p.52: Crum was the author of the unofficial 1916 manual, Scouts and Sniping in Trench Warfare
11 See Scouting and Patrolling, pp.14–18 and T. F. Fremantle, Notes of Lectures and Practices of Sniping, Leicester, 1916
12 Hesketh-Pritchard, Sniping in France, p.83; see also E. Parker, A Memoir, London 1924
1 Lieutenant Geoffrey Malins, How I Filmed the War, London, 1920, pp.162–163
2 This and other accounts appear in W. G. Grieve and B. Newman, Tunnellers, London, 1936. See also A. Barrie, War Underground, London, 1961
3. See G. H. Addison, The Work of the Royal Engineers in the European War: Military Mining, Uckfield, 2004 (reprint); and P. Barton (et al) Beneath Flanders Fields: The Tunneller’s War, Staplehurst, 2004
The French memorial at Ayette, about 16km south of Arras and scene of fierce fighting in 1918. The colouring of the figure is not usual – even for French memorials – but does hark back to similar ideas from ancient Rome and the medieval period. The meaning of ‘horizon blue’ suddenly becomes apparent, though the uniform colour was more ‘grey blue’ than that seen here. (Author’s collection)
1 P. von Hindenburg, Out of My Life, (English translation) London, 1919, p.261
2 General Gough on the experiences of V Army, see also P. Oldham, Pillboxes on the Western Front, London, 1995
3 For electrics see G. H. Addison, The Work of the Royal Engineers in the European War, Chatham, 1926, pp.271–294
4 Major E. Pickard quoted in H. C. Wylly, The Green Howards in the Great War, Regimental Publication, 1926
5 Signaller Stanley Bradbury, Imperial War Museum documents, typescript memoir, p.29
The German Cemetery, Fricourt. The plain and sober, even sombre, appearance is typical of German burial grounds, as is the presence of a mass grave with a list of known occupants. Whilst France and Belgium were happy to give plots for the bodies of their Allies, ‘German’ space was constrained to an absolute minimum. Even where individual crosses appear, these usually commemorate two, or four, of the fallen. (Author’s collection)
The grave of Congressional Medal of Honor winner Lieutenant William Bradford Turner, 105th Infantry, Somme American Cemetery. On 27 September 1918 Turner led an attack near Le Catelet in which he rushed two machine gun posts and led his men over three trench lines and on to a fourth, personally shooting or bayoneting several of the enemy. Already wounded three times he was finally killed, and was posthumously awarded the highest US decoration. Interestingly whilst British families were discouraged from taking home their dead from the theatre of war, many bodies of US servicemen were returned to the United States. (Author’s collection)
1 Many first hand accounts were published in the Tank Corps Journal between 1920 and 1924. A convenient selection is D. Fletcher (ed.), Tanks and Trenches, for Lieutenant B. L. Q. Henriques see pp.12–14
2 Ibid., pp.14–17. See also C. Duffy, Through German Eyes: The British and the Somme, London, 2006, pp.297–304
3 G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters, London, 2005, pp.195–261
4 Major W. H. L. Watson, A Company of Tanks (Imperial War Museum with N&M Press reprint, undated), p.69
5 Fletcher, Tanks and Trenches, pp.53–55
6 Ibid., pp.70–94. See also D. Crow (ed.), Armoured Fighting Vehicles of the World: World War I, Retford, 1988, and D. Fletcher, Landships, London, 1984
7 Document translated in Y. Buffetaut, The 1917 Spring Offensives, Paris, 1997, p.151
8 Frank Mitchell, Tank Warfare, London, 1933, pp.189–192
1 Harold MacMillan, in a letter to his mother Nellie, dated 13 May 1916
2 The Liddell Hart Archive at King’s College, London, remains a significant source for military history. For context of the ‘nobler end’ letter see A. Danchev, Alchemist of War, London, 1998, pp.42–68
3 P. Witkop (ed.), German Students’ War Letters, London, 1929, pp.164–175
4 Letter reprinted in A. Bristow, A Serious Disappointment: The Battle of Aubers Ridge, London, 1995, p.75
5 L. Nicholson and H. T. MacMullen, History of the East Lancashire Regiment in the Great War, pp.129–133
6 Bristow, A Serious Disappointment, p.130
7 The simplistic picture presented by Alan Clark in The Donkeys (London, 1961) has been widely challenged, initially, and probably too dogmatically, in a series of books by John Terraine. More telling has been the detailed work of Paddy Griffith, whilst Gordon Corrigan’s Mud, Blood and Poppycock (London, 2003) has brought revisionist lines of thought to a wide contemporary audience.
8 Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Memoirs, London, 1931, pp.168, 202, 217, 240–244. On shells shortages see R. J. Q. Adams, Arms and the Wizard: Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions, Texas A&M University, 1978
9 Field Marshal French in a letter to Winifred Bennett earlier in 1915, cited in R. Holmes, The Little Field Marshall: A Life of Sir John French, London, 2004 (second edition) p.286
10 Georg Bucher, In the Line, (English translation) Uckfield, 2005, p.43. See also J. H. Lefebvre, Die Hölle von Verdun, Fleury, 1997 (new edition), passim
11 G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters, London, 2005, pp.190–191. A first hand record of training in the lead up to July 1916 is contained in M. A. Argyle (ed.), Fallen on the Somme: The War Diary of Harold Harding Linzell, 7th Border Regt, Barnstaple, 1981, pp.11–44
12 For accounts of Verdun in English see Ousby Op Cit; M. Brown, Verdun: 1916, Stroud, 1999, and A. Horne, The Prince of Glory, London, 1962
13 Albert Andrews quoted in S. Richardson (ed.), Orders are Orders, Manchester, 1987, p.44
14 Ibid., p.48. For first hand accounts of 36th Ulster Division see P. Orr, The Road to the Somme, Belfast, 1987
15 E. Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserinnerungen, Berlin, 1919, translated as My War Memories, p.342
16 Corporal Amos Wilder, Armageddon Revisited, pp.67–67. For an upbeat assessment of Brüchmuller see D. T. Zabecki, Steel Wind, Westport, 1994
17 There have been a number of interpretations of pre and post Somme tactics. For example see P. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front, New Haven, 1994, pp.65–82; S. Bidwell and D. Graham, Firepower, London, 1982, pp.66–93; M. Middlebrook,The First Day on the Somme, London, 1971, pp.244–316; G. Sheffield, The Somme, London, 2003
18 W. Foerster, Wir Kämpfer im Weltkrieg, Reichsarchiv, 1929, pp.255–258
1 Lieutenant Charles E. Carrington, A Subaltern’s War, London, 1984 (new edition), pp.150–155
2 Ernst Jünger, Das Wälchen 125, translated as Copse 125, 1985 (new edition) p.3. See also S. Bull, Stosstrupptaktik, Stroud, 2007, passim
3 John Masefield, The Old Front Line, Bourne End, 1972 (reprint), p.75; see also J. Giles, The Somme Then and Now, Folkstone, 1977, and The Ypres Salient, London, 1970