Product Description

The shells are nothing in comparison to the everlasting torture of lice and the loathsome mud. To see me trudging along one would take me for an old man of sixty. Stuart Chapman was one of the lucky ones. A young soldier suffering staunchly through the nightmare of trench life in World War One, he returned to his native shores after the Armistice in one piece, unlike so many of his generation, many of whom never reached majority age. Chapman faithfully recorded his day-to-day life in France from 1916 to 1919, touching upon not only the squalor, violence, sheer exhaustion and astonishing discomfort but also the valour, comradeship and sacred moments of frivolity. This diary offers a unique perspective - of one who felt, lived and saw what history books can only recount from much-repeated facts. The fight was for the greater good, but set the tone for a century that darkened from there onwards.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16104 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

Customer Reviews

an excellent read

I highly recommend this book. This is a day to day diary evoking all the smells, horror and mundaneness of war. A fascinating read, so interesting; as among all the horrors are the simple things that Stuart Chapman did, like going to explore villages or going to the cinema, things that would not have occurred to me happened in a war situation. Each time I read it I find something new to ponder on. Stuart Chapman's experience of hunger, exhaustion , at times fear and "getting on with the job" brought up a mixed bag of emotions - at times funny, at times sad, at times filled with horror.

Eyewitness Source
Curiously both the reviewer who has given this five stars and the one that has given only one are broadly correct. This is a first hand source - and soldiers in war, particularly junior ones, do not get to see 'the big picture'. For the many war consists of walking backwards and forwards, hunger, lack of sleep, carrying ungainly objects, getting wet, seeing the bloody results of an action or explosion, being ordered about, and taking whatever small pleasures or witicisms as they find them. Neither do the majority engage in hand to hand combat, and quite a few of those that do are not around to complete their diaries afterwards.

Briefly therefore this is not a polished or literary work with benefit of hindsight, like say Edmund Blunden's 'Undertones, or anything by Sassoon or Graves. Its a simple diary, and from it you get some notions of how the artillery and mortars worked, and of the banality of the life of one cog in a big machine. Perhaps frighteningly 1914-1918 will almost certainly have been the most exciting, terrifying, and interesting episode in this man's life. Here is both the danger and the pleasure of the 'social history' of the ordinary man, which is now the politically correct orthadoxy adopted by so many who teach the subject.

Recommended as an authentic document, not recommended as a scintillating read !

Tedious
Ok so it's a front-line account written by a man who was there but it is terribly boring.

The author has little, if any, literary ability and doesn't seem to have had an interesting war. His account is told without any insight and dosn't include any of the detail that would make it interesting.

To be fair to the author I doubt he ever envisaged publication and wrote his diary to remind himself of his time in the war - not to explain anything to others.

There are far more interesting and informative first-hand accounts (Richards, Manning etc).

Don't buy this, buy those instead