Life, death and growing up on the western front / Anthony Fletcher.

ISBN:

9780300198560

Title:

Author:

Fletcher, Anthony, author.

Personal Author:

Fletcher, Anthony, author.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Contents:

Going to war -- 'Quiet earnest faces': the national cause -- 'Glad to go': patriotic idealism -- 'Ready to go': training -- At the front -- 'Write as often as you can': letters and parcels -- 'Sticking it out': fear and shell shock -- 'A certain sense of safety with him': leadership -- 'Such a hopeless lot of babes': care for the men -- 'Drops of his blood on my hand': horror and endurance -- 'I merely did my duty': discipline and morale -- 'Very gallant in every way': early losses -- 'Blighty, oh blighty in about a week': leave -- 'I am serene, unafraid': the Somme -- 'Capable of finishing the job': battles of 1917-1918 -- 'The men cannot grasp it': armistice -- Sacrifice -- 'We will remember them': remembrance and commemoration -- 'All the best and choicest and unblemished': war heroes -- 'Among the happiest years I have every spent': survivors -- The Great War in perspective.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Corporate Subject:

Great Britain. Army -- History -- World War, 1914-1918.

Great Britain. Army -- Military life -- History -- 20th century.

Great Britain. Army. British Expeditionary Force.

Subject Term:

World War, 1914-1918 -- Social aspects -- Great Britain.

World War, 1914-1918 -- Social aspects -- Europe, Western.

World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British.

Soldiers -- Great Britain -- Correspondence.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2013

Publication Information:

New Haven :

Yale University Press,

2013.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
940.48141 23	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A powerful account of life and loss in the Great War, as told by British soldiers in their letters home

This book was inspired by the author's discovery of an extraordinary cache of letters from a soldier who was killed on the Western Front during the First World War. The soldier was his grandfather, and the letters had been tucked away, unread and unmentioned for many decades. Intrigued by the heartbreak and history of these family letters, Fletcher sought out the correspondence of other British soldiers who had volunteered for the fight against Germany. This resulting volume offers a vivid account of the physical and emotional experiences of seventeen British soldiers whose letters survive. Drawn from different regiments, social backgrounds, and areas of England and Scotland, they include twelve officers and five ordinary "Tommies." The book explores the training, journey to France, fear, shellshock, and life in the trenches as well as the leisure, love, and home leave the soldiers dreamed of. Fletcher discusses the psychological responses of 17- and 18-year-old men facing appalling realities and considers the particular pressures on those who survived their fallen comrades. While acknowledging the horror and futility the soldiers of the Great War experienced, the author shows another side to the story, focusing new attention on the loyal comradeship, robust humor, and strong morale that uplifted the men at the Front and created a powerful bond among them.

Author Notes

Anthony Fletcher is a historian of the early modern period. He is a former professor at the Universities of Sheffield, Durham, Essex, and London.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

The predominant vision of the Great War was created by bystanders, building on the powerful denunciations of a minority of participants--most famously, Britain's "war poets." Historian Fletcher has provided a vital corrective based on some 2,000 letters from 15 soldiers; 11 of these men, including his grandfather, died at the front. The volume treats the British experience of war from mobilization to basic training to life and death in the trenches. Readers will search here in vain for cries of despair, for overpowering fear, for distrust of higher authority--in short, for the sentiments that are today most associated with the experience of the western front. Scholars will long debate whether these men's heroic endurance saved Western civilization or illustrated its attempted suicide--along with the death of a culture of deference that underpinned it. Fletcher's wonderful book makes clear, however, that modern scholars will never really understand the Great War until they examine it as much through the perceptions of its participants as from the perspectives of the postwar generation. Bottom line: an important acquisition for all modern history collections. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. G. P. Cox Gordon State College