Rating: 
Summary: A travel guide to the horrors of WWI in Europe
Review: This book is a fascinating combination of a travel guide, synopsis of World War I, and
blistering tirade against the stupidity of military leaders during that war.
When one thinks of France or Belgium, one usually thinks of fine food, a beautiful and
peaceful countryside, and an Old World elegance and culture far removed from the crudity and
barbarism of the rest of the world. When one thinks of a toxic wasteland, so devastated by the
ravages of mankind as to become uninhabitable, one thinks of Chernobyl or the Love Canal, or
Lake Erie, before the cleanup. When one thinks of a landscape of pure horror, still disgorging
the skeletons of the dead slain on that spot, one thinks of the killing fields of Cambodia, or the
mass graves of Babi-Yar or the Katyn woods. When one thinks of an army attacking in massed
human waves, with the resulting slaughter of tens of thousands of soldiers in a single day, one
thinks of the Communist Chinese in Korea, or the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980's.
In fact, as this book demonstrates in its truly unique way, the countryside of Belgium and
France was and still is all of these things.
As a travel guide, the book takes the reader to the places in France and Belgium that formed
the entire length of the Western Front of WWI. These are for the most part little traveled and
little known to the usual tourists to Europe, and definitely not the first thing to come to mind when
most people think of traveling to France or Belgium. It is easy to imagine that after eighty years,
nature would have healed the scars inflicted upon the countryside of France and Belgium by
World War I, and yet there it is in this book, descriptions of places in both countries where even
today, unexploded artillery shells and the bones of soldiers from the Great War continue to
emerge from the earth, to be casually stacked at the roadside by farmers for pick up by the
authorities. In Ploegsteert Wood in Belgium is a gigantic unexploded mine still left over from
the 1917 Passchendaele offensive; a second mine had exploded in 1955. In France there are
the "Zones Rouge" that remain so heavily filled with unexploded ordinance and so deeply
cratered that they remain uninhabitable. And then there are the endless numbers of military
cemeteries and memorials all along the length of the former Western Front. Most horrific of all
are the gigantic ossuaries around Verdun. The author writes: (p.163) "At the base of the beacon
is an ossuary containing the remains of 150,000 soldiers whose blasted skeletons were found
scattered around the vicinity after the war. You can walk around inside the base, peering
through the windows at the heaps of bones piled high. Femurs go with femurs, tibias with tibias,
skulls with skulls, and so on. Off in the woods, wild boars dig up unrecovered skeletal parts and
make a meal."
The author's retelling of the events of World War I blends seemlessly with the tour through
the present day landscape. It is a rather simplified account, boiled down to one thesis, that
World War I was an endless string of military stupidity of such magnitude as to be beyond
comprehension. An example: (p.129) "The Ypres campaign ended in the ghastly slime of
Passchendaele. Now...perhaps the true scale of the crime can be better understood. Field
Marshal Haig advocated frontal assaults, devoid of surprise, in the rain and the mud of the
Salient, and even spoke of his cavalry breaking through into the open country. He promoted
these tactics after the Chemin des Dames, after Verdun, after the Somme, after Loos, after
Neuve Chappelle, after the Kindermord at Langemarck. It is astonishing that his name did not
become a verb meaning "to learn nothing"."
The author leaves a great many things unsaid, however. In reading the book, swirling along
with the time travel of the author, one cannot but help but link the events of World War I with
later events. The author, a devout pacifist, leaves one large wormhole unexplored in his time
travels. From his retelling, it is apparent that a great many of the surviving soldiers, like his
grandfathers, became confirmed pacifists as a result of the horrors of the war. And yet, there
were many others, like Corporal Adolf Hitler, who drew the opposite conclusion; that yes, there
were military blunders, but the answer was not to avoid war next time, but to do it right the next
time.
The endless suicidal human wave attacks of the European forces during World War I would
seem to be utterly inexplicable to modern-day Western thinking, with our emphasis on the value
of each individual human life. And so, conveniently, we have forgotten that it occurred at all,
and have also forgotten that this senseless slaughter was brought about entirely by the strategy
and tactics of military leaders who were given carte blanche to run the war as they saw fit.
Remember that, next time anyone tries to compare the Vietnam War with the Gulf War - the
moral of that story was not that military leaders should be given control of military operations,
free of constraint by political leaders. The real moral is that military leaders usually try to re-fight
the last war, hoping to do better the next time. Sometimes the lessons of the last war turn out to
be useful for the next war, as it was in the Gulf War. Sometimes the lessons of the last war, in
this case the war of 1870 between France and Germany, turn out to be hopelessly out of date.
In thinking about all this, I have this theory that the real reason for warfare in
modern times is no longer territorial gain, but simply that modern societies with an expanding
population of young males need to periodically explode off a big chunk of this population.
Otherwise the excess numbers of these young males, with their inborn drive for establishing
primacy through conquest, become too much of a societal burden. Witness the problems that
modern Western societies are having today with gangs ("hooligans" in Europe). Gangs never
seem to be a problem during a major war; the potential gangsters are all in the army, and put to
work killing each other in a socially acceptable fashion. Maybe there really is a reason for
massively stupid military leaders to exist after all.
One final link to modern day events. In this book are descriptions of endless numbers of
monuments and plaques scattered throughout Europe with the inscriptions of hundreds of
thousands of names of the individuals - husbands, fathers, brothers, sons - who died in the
battles of World War I. At one time, it was very important to a great many people that these
monuments be put up and that the names of those killed in battle be engraved into stone or
metal and thus be remembered for posterity. Eighty years later, as the last of the living
memories of World War I die out, hardly anyone visits these graves, and no on grieves over the
inscribed names on the monuments. And I think then also of the Vietnam Memorial in
Washington, D.C. What a sad thought.
Rating: 
Summary: A must read for all interested in history
Review: A great book for anyone interested in World War One. I just returned from the area and this book was a great companion on my trip. This book brings it all to life
Rating: 
Summary: Accidental Historian?
Review: Accidental yes. Historian no. I accidently bought this book. That decision is history. If I cannot sell it on the used market I may use it for TP at deer camp.
Rating:
Summary: Accidental Historian?
Review: Accidental yes. Historian no. I accidently bought this book. That decision is history. If I cannot sell it on the used market I may use it for TP at deer camp.
Rating:
Summary: Great Geography of the Great War
Review: An excellent introduction to the geography of the Great War. Until reading Back to the Front, I hadn't had a good mind-picture of the countryside that formed the stage for WW I. Whether reading fictional accounts or the occasional history, I found myself quite familiar with the names but not the spatial relationships of one great battle to the next. By actually walking the Western Front, O'Shea becomes a human reference point: his simple walking pace brought Ypres, Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge, Messines and all those familiar names into proportion. For example, Passchendaele is withing walking distance of Ypres; maybe 10 km away. The passage of time also is quite interesting. O'Shea walked and visited the Western Front some 70 to 80 years after. The Essex Farm Cemetery where McCrae was inspired to write "In Flanders Fields" is "almost in the shadow of a traffic cloverleaf."
Rating:
Summary: Very Well-Done
Review: An excellently written, thoughtful, and sometimes passionate. I do not accept the author's personal view completely, but he is a sincere observer and a skilled writer. A highly recommended book.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written book; a pleasure to read
Review: An incredibly well written journal of the author's walk along WWI's Western Front. O'Shea doesn't pretend to be a historian, and makes no bones about being a pacifist who distrusts the military. He stumbles upon his interest in the Great War, when a friend takes him to the former front, and the author is shocked to see the land still shows the ravages of the war, 70 years earlier. He is an avowed Baby Boomer, whose mindset must have been shaped by living in a peaceful time and when it was normal to look at authority in a negative light. However, even with his pacifist views, his conclusions about WWI are right on the mark. To those who know anything about the history of WWI, like it or not, O'Shea places the blame on the old world generals who allowed their men to be slaughtered and never changed their strategy. Some have read the book and come away feeling that O'Shea holds the men who fought it in contempt. I found completely the opposite, as he mentions several times how few war memorials commemorate the real heroes of the War, the men in the trenches. But because he feels that their lives were wasted in a meaningless conflict, it is natural to come away with the feeling that he is painting all in uniform with the same brush. His anti-military, pacifist views DO get a little heavy at times, but in all, I found this book to be: poetic in nature; always interesting; and an excellent companion to all who are interested in WWI history as well as those who simply enjoy literate discourse. Seeing how other readers have found his pacifism impossible to deal with, I noted several times in the book how he almost purposely avoids mentioning WWII. There are several spots when he mentions areas prominent in both wars, namely the Argonne forest. References to WWII are not made, although you'd think they were there for the making. His only fleeting remarks refer to his dismay upon noting Jewish-German graves, saying that these men died in service to a country that would work to exterminate their ancestors only 20 years later. It might be that O'Shea believes WWII to be a more justified war. While there were still debacles, the Allies certainly showed more concern for their men than they did in WWI. But who knows; maybe O'Shea will surprise me a come out with a diatribe against WWII as well.
Rating:
Summary: a light hearted romp throug the fruitlessness and cost of wa
Review: an interesting insight from the advantage of time and defines the cost and obserdity of war, especially this war to end all wars. Some personal family conections/losses make this a search through time to connect with family lost in the war.
Rating:
Summary: Back to the Front
Review: As so many of the other reviewers of this book have so correctly stated, the First World War is a subject of imaginable complexity and fascination, indeed as we get further away in timew from the events, it appears that the greater the 'remembrance' and fascination becomes. The First World War was a grisly and horrendous conflict, which wasted the lives of an entire generation. Wives were left as widows, children as orphans, and parents saw their entire offspring killed in 4 years of slaughter. How much we owe who gave their yesterdays for our todays is umimaginable. I do not wish to go on about my 'pedigree' or competance to write this review. I know a little about the war and have visited the battlefield on occasions. In this book however, I found the narrative painfully ignorant and the sentiment false and shrouded in crocodile tears, clearly written by someone who thought the First World War would make a good book. The narrative is dramatic beyond belief "Why are you in Albert ? '1916' I simply replied" (I paraphrase)and while the author tries to convince us of his expertise on the War with his cold figures, one feels that he fails to really understand what went on their, and is merely walking along contemoplating his next piece of 'genius pose'. What is even more infuriating, however, is that he clearly belives that he is the only person who remembers the war and above all, the only person who has ever taken the time to visit these 'forgotten' fields. The result a completely patronising approach. As a travel guide this book only touches briefly on the most blatantly obvious aspects of any particular area - such gems as the Somme was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. As a historical document it is misinformed, lacks any sort of analysis or depth and really fails to understand the era, the sense of nationhood and the fact that in those areas scarred by the fighting, life does go on today. All in all a well conceived although patronising and ill informed insight into something which the author clearly does not understand - this book could have been written on a whim in an office in Toronto. To get an exellent picture of the nature of the war, both socially and historically I would thoroughly recommend Martin Middlebrook's 'First Day on the Somme' and the Lyn MacDonald books form 1914 through to 1918. emnichthompson@hotmail.com
Rating:
Summary: Misguided Hiker
Review: At least on the book jacket the publishers had the accuracy of noting that the author is a pacifist. His leftist arrogance is astounding, with his condescending views of those who are interested in history (geeks). His sneering little commentaries, including that regarding United States Veterans objections to the apologetic Smithsonean exhibit on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, demonstrate a typically adolescent and shallow-minded view of actual historical facts. I'm sure he his anti-military colleagues are quite thrilled with this volume. He needs to grow up, leave behind his 1960's emotionally-laden logic, and examine actual facts. And because you had a couple of great uncles who made a great sacrifice during the Great War, does not place you in any sort of elevated position in which to judge the military with 20-20 hindsight. I'm glad he found a reason to justify his hiking trip.
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