Product Description

Albert John ('Jack') Martin was a thirty-two-year-old clerk at the Admiralty when he was called up to serve in the army in September 1916. These diaries, written in secret, hidden from his colleagues and only discovered by his family after his return home, present the Great War with heartbreaking clarity, written in a voice as compelling and distinctive as Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon and all the more extraordinary given that it is not an officer's but that of a private. From his arrival in France and his participation in the Somme, through offensives at Ypres and eventual demobilisation after the Armistice, we see wartime life as it really was for the ordinary Tommy. In these journals, introduced and edited by bestselling First World War historian Richard van Emden, we witness the cheerful Albert Martin getting to grips with life in the trenches and, together with his comrades in the Royal Engineers, confronting the ever-present threat of injury and death. We also see the mundane reality of life at the front line - the arguments with superiors, the joy brought by the arrival of packages from loved ones at home and the appalling conditions in which that attritional war was fought.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3112 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
Praise for The Soldier's War 'Thousands of books have been written about the Great War, but perhaps none so vividly evocative as Richard van Emden's The Soldier's War an extraordinary homage to a lost generation' Daily Mail 'A remarkably distressing yet uplifting book these descriptions from a Tommy's eye-view have a gut-wrenching immediacy' Daily Mail 'In The Soldier's War, Richard van Emden has toiled in archives and hunted down caches of letters to tell the story of the war chronologically through the eyes of the Tommies who fought it, recording their days of tedium and moments of terror' The Times

About the Author
Richard van Emden has interviewed over 270 veterans of the Great War and has written ten books on the Great War including The Trench, and The Last Fighting Tommy (both top ten bestsellers), The Soldier's War, Boy Soldiers of the Great War and Prisoners of the Kaiser. He has also worked on more than a dozen television programmes on the Great War, including Prisoners of the Kaiser, Veterans, Britain's Last Tommies, and the award winning Roses of No Man's Land and Britain's Boy Soldiers.

Customer Reviews

Honour, courage and the common man.
During the first world war the sapper came into their own in this often missed and short life expectancy job on the front line. Here we get the view of the common man, who tells the tale of life in the trenches, the monotony, the repetition and existence in some of the worst trenches that the troops had to face. From the Somme to Ypres this vivid account is the type of history that I want to read. I don't like the generalisation of the war from the Generals or a Historians, I want it from the front line, from those who viewed the full horror and lived to tell the cost of not only friends and family but also of the moral boosts from home with their simple gifts alongside their letters. A true tale of courage, honour and above all bravery of the common man in the adversity of warfare. Van Emden has done a stirling job of condensing the war diaries of Albert and yet retained the voice of the common man.

122nd Brigade, 41st Division - Required Reading
As the Great War marches out of living memory, it's almost a cliché to say that there has been a steady increase in interest in the experience of the passing generation, and a steady barrage of newly transcribed diaries, memoirs, and collections of letters.

The interest of these books often rests on the nature of the author's service, the theatre of war they served in, their rank and the nature of their service, not to mention their skill as a writer.

Sapper Jack Martin's Diary, ably edited by Richard van Emden, was presumably written in secret (diary keeping was banned at the front) or with the tacit approval of Martin's superiors. It is an outstanding example of an enlisted man's war: Martin's skill as a writer makes this an invaluable addition to the genre.

Martin served in the Royal Engineers, a volunteer from a stern no-conformist background. He served in the Brigade signals of the 122nd Infantry brigade, part of the 41st Division. (His brigade included the 12th East Surreys, 15th Hampshire's, 11th Royal West Kents, and the 18th Kings Royal Rifle Corps - research into these battalions will find this book of particular interest). The Division was deployed in France in May 1916, served o the Somme (where Martin's diary begins in September 1916); in the battle of Messines in summer 1917 and on the Flanders coast. In November 1918 they were sent to Italy to stem the Austro-Hungarian advance and Martin's description of Italy is especially striking. They returned to the Western front in February 1918, enduring the hammer blows of the German Spring Offensive, and after the Hundred Day's advance, finishing the war in occupation duties in Cologne.

Martin has a perceptive and sensitive insight into his condition, and as well as his philosophical insights, his war centres on food, sleep, and companionship, enduring shelling and generally weathering life just behind the front line. Of particular interest are his views of the war, and his anger at `shirkers' as home having a cushy war. It is also interesting to read of the relationship of a well-educated soldier with his officers - Martin's interaction with Lieutenant Buchanan is especially striking.

There is no index, which is a pity - don't miss Martin's account of being sent Sassoon's `Counter-attack' by his fiancé on pages 235-6.

It's worth remembering that these are transcribed diaries, written up by Martin in the 1920s. They are an invaluable part of a Great War library, and especially valuable to the history of the neglected 41st Division.

A true Sapper's war.
Sapper Martin is a superb documented account of life in the trenches for an ordinary sapper. By reading this diary you get a better feel for the mundane activities away from trench warfare, the hardships in atrocious conditions and the camaradery of privates in conversation. It has been put together in a very professional way which Richard should take credit for. One reads and can barely turn away from this account. No sooner have you turned the page it draws you in to more incredible anecdotes of the war era now a whole generation ago. There are diaries worth reading that I have already reviewed and this is definately another that is worthy of it's place in being a must read.