Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #169330 in Books
• Published on: 1991-10-31
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Synopsis
This book uses personal accounts and illustrations, mainly from the author's own archives, to cover all aspects of World War I - from departure of the Old Contemptibles to fight the Kaiser in 1914, young men eagerly enlisting, high hopes of 1915 that fizzled out at Gallipoli, to the bloody fields of Flanders. It runs through the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele to the coming of the Americans, fighting in the closing months of the war, joyous celebrations of Armistice Day and burial of the unknown warrior in the aftermath. The authors have drawn on the experiences of the men who fought, touching on subjects as diverse as propaganda, fear, morale, bravery, bawdiness, filth and frivolity and the stark contrast between attitudes of civilians at home and the men at the front. Newspapers, magazines, letters, diaries, songs, poems, as well as a wealth of first-hand anecdotes and personal accounts by the soldiers themselves are included in this book. The author also wrote "They Called it Passchendaele" and "The Roses of No Man's Land".

Customer Reviews

A tribute to a lost generation.
Macdonald at her best. Arguably the most influential compendium of WW1 from the allied perspective. No self respecting armchair historian should be without a copy.

Good Lord, deliver us
True to her very personal and well-tried approach, Lyn Macdonald's 1914-1918 Voices and Images of The Great War stands out in the oral historiography of the War as a feat only she herself might ever be able to parallel. Unlike J.C. Dunn in his The War the Infantry Knew, Macdonald draws her material from the widest scope of testimonies available. Aside from the direct appeal of the eyewitness account, she intersperses her survey with the naiveté of soldier's poetry, press ads and pics, jokes and cartoons, songs and letters sometimes highly intimate, to mention but a few.

In so doing, her approach becomes decidedly essayistic, and it is up to the reader to decide which impression will prevail from his reading experience: the one of a heightened sense of life or commitment to whatever specific cause one was involved in, or of an increasing numbness triggered by the sheer impossibility to cope with such turn of events one was dragged into.

What will stick in my memory, is the eloquence and appeal of the ordinary man and woman's attempt to bend the inconceivable into appropriate shape of text or image. In its directness this is a superb instance of alternative history in its own right; it easily surpasses much of the canonized history of the ominous onset of a dark century.

An enlightening read
I have a great interest in The Great War, and have read all of Lyn Mcdonalds previous publications. This book follows the previous strings of her other titles in so far as it comprises mainly of letters, correspondence and recollections of people who were actually present during the conflict. I found it to be an interesting and compulsive read and a book that you could read over and over again. It is a must for anyone who has an interest in this dark period of human history.