FOUR YEARS ON THE WESTERN FRONT

SB. xvi + 409pp. 2001 N&MP Reprint of 1922 Original EditionPublished Price £14.95 First published anonymously in 1922 under the simple attribution 'A Rifleman', Aubrey Smith's Four Years on the Western Front is an outstanding first-hand account of the Great War written from the perspective of an ordinary soldier. Based closely upon letters sent home during his service, it possesses an immediacy and authenticity that make it a particularly valuable record of life on the Western Front.Smith served with the London Rifle Brigade, joining his battalion in France at Ploegsteert in January 1915. He subsequently experienced almost the entire course of the war in the west, serving first in the front-line trenches and later with the battalion Transport Section. His narrative carries the reader through the routines, hardships and dangers of active service, combining major battles with the everyday realities of soldiering.His wartime experience encompassed some of the British Army's hardest fighting, including Second Ypres, the Somme, Arras, Third Ypres and Cambrai, followed by the German offensives of 1918 and the final Allied advance. Yet this is not simply a succession of battle descriptions. Smith records trench life, comradeship, fatigue, movement, transport and the constant proximity of death with the directness of a man who experienced them at ground level.Smith's own courage is understated. He was awarded the Military Medal in 1917 and a Bar in 1918, distinctions he characteristically omitted from his narrative. This absence of self-promotion adds considerably to the memoir's appeal.For readers seeking the experience of the Great War beyond official histories and generals' memoirs, Four Years on the Western Front is an important primary source. Unpretentious, observant and remarkably wide-ranging, it records four years of warfare through the eyes of a London Rifle Brigade soldier who endured the Western Front from 1915 until victory in 1918.…