1915: The Death of Innocence

Rating:
Summary: 1915: The Death of Innocence
Review: By Christmas 1914, the wild wave of enthusiasm that had sent men flocking to join up a few months earlier began to tail off, and though the original British Expeditionary Force had suffered 90 percent casualties, most people, particularly the soldiers the

Rating:
Summary: The BEF in 1915
Review: First and foremost, this book is an account of the experiences of British soldiers on the Western Front in 1915. It's not, and does not purport to be, a general history of 1915 - the focus is firmly on the British. Having said that, Lyn Macdonald does give some attention to events on the "Home Front" but only in so far as they affected directly the lives of the soldiers. She also draws attention to the fact that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France was in fact a multi-national affair - for example, there were (among others) Indian and Canadian troops in the BEF - indeed the latter, among with French Colonial troops, were the first to be subjected to German gas attacks.

The main battles covered are Neuve Chapelle, Ypres and Loos, but there are chapters on the Gallipoli campaign. Although the Gallipoli chapters are well-written, they are subsidiary to the descriptions of the Western Front, and therefore might disappoint readers who are looking for a more detailed examination of that campaign.

The success of Lyn Macdonald's method of writing about World War One is her skilful use of first-hand accounts: the ordinary soldiers and officers are "allowed" to relate their experiences to the reader, with Macdonald linking those accounts with her own narrative - acting as a guide, as it were. Therefore the reader is given the opportunity to get closer to an real appreciation of what it must have been like (although given the horrors the troops went through this can only, thank goodness, still be an very distant approximation).

There were things in my edition which were irritating: several sloppy grammatical and spelling errors; and some unfortunate, unsubstantiated assertions, such as "... the Guards [were] the best of all the soldiers in an army that ws generally acknowledged to be the best army in the world." Although I was full of admiration of the British (and other) soldiers after reading the book, I thought that trotting out a sentence like that and asking people to take it as a self-evident truth was overdoing it.

Having said that, this is still a fine, and at times, moving book.

Rating:
Summary: A good read, if you're dedicated.
Review: I hate to see a book I liked so much get a poor review. Itoo have read a number of the other narrative histories ofWorld War One by Lyn MacDonald, specifically "Somme" and "They Called It Passchendaele." I like the use of first person narrative sources to illustrate the history, because it places such colossal, overwhelming events as battles and campaigns on a more human, personal level. Rather than focusing on a single campaign, MacDonald focuses on the entire year of 1915 in this book, as she did in her previous book, "1914." While the scope of the book is large, it is not unmanageable for the reader. You just have to be dedicated to following the action and the narrators. While the job is easier if you have a passing knowledge of the history already, it is not completely necessary to enjoy the book. "1914" and "1915" are more inclusive developments of the style she used in her earlier books. I hope that she is someday able to complete her chronicle of the war years by covering 1916, 1917, and 1918. I would buy, read, and display the entire set if I had the chance. Now, if only I could find a copy of "1914"...