Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23579 in Books
• Published on: 1992-05-28
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Superb and gripping account
I visited the Somme battlefields for the first time this year and used an excellent walking guide, "Walking the Somme" by Paul Reed. Reed's book works well if you are physically standing on the ground but in terms of style and content Martin Middlebrook's book is excellent for those who want a detailed and highly readable account of the first day of this famous battle.

The book contains much more than just a description of the first day of the battle of the Somme. A lot of detail is given to the men, their different backgrounds and the lives of the survivors after the war. It also describes the circumstances that led to the formation of Kitchener's "New Army" and provides an excellent analysis of the events leading up to the battle.

Like so many books of this genre the story is interspersed with accounts from the people who were actually there. Middlebrook moves seamlessly from his own narrative to the stories of the individual soldiers, which gives the book a really nice flow. Also, unlike other books of this genre, the maps appear in the appropriate places and contain just the right level of detail.

This is a very well written book that depicts a day in which the British Army, including the Armies of the Commonwealth, suffered 57,470 casualties. While a lot of the content of this book is difficult to absorb simply because of the unimaginable horror of the events described, it is a must-read and will stay with you long after you have finished it.

Classic Book About Totemic Battle
Middlebrook's 'First Day' is now quite an old book - but it is also a great book. It is excellently researched, particularly in terms of unit data, well written, engaging, and has a horrible but fascinating fatalistic quality. The reader knows all along what is going to happen - the British Army's bloodiest day - but suspense is effectively maintained until the tragedy unfolds.

The only real problem is that Middlebrook's work is of such high quality and drama that it has helped to focus the attention of both the public and historians on 1st July rather to the detriment of more balanced study of the remainder of the battle of the Somme - which went on four another four months. Nevertheless this is our problem, not the author's, for Middlebrook's work - with all its evocative first hand accounts and readabilty remains a classic history. Highly recommended.

Fantastic
Before Martin Middlebrook did his extensive research on the Battle of the Somme and published this book it was a forgotton about battle that people had little interest in and was just seen as a huge blunder by the British Generals. Middlebrook's dedication and great historical mind describes the battles inside the first day of the Battle of the Somme in immense detail with several detailed maps inside the book showing the position of batallions and the geography of the battlefield allowing you to know everything about the battles. He draws on official records from the time but also takes in the accounts of hundreds of survivors - the story of July 1st 1916 from the British and German soldiers and officers who were actually there.
This book describes the day that war on an industrial scale is created as old tactics are met by the realities of modern warfare. There were 60,000 British casualties - a third of them fatal.