To the Last Man: Spring 1918

As poignant as Niall Fregusson's The Pity of War, as powerful as John Keegan's The First World War, this is an engrossing eye-witness history of World War I. From the trenches to the battle lines, in bold advances and fighting retreats and courageous stands, this oral chronicle of World War I by award-winning historian Lyn Macdonald brings to life the massive German offensive of Spring 1918 that became the Second Battle of Somme. As moving as it is monumental, the volume recounts the devastating assault in the words of the men who survived it -- from the commanders to the war-weary British Tommies, the eager German foot soldiers, and the as-yet-untested doughboys fresh from the U.S. Unforgettably, To the Last Man puts a human face on the armies in the field as it gives voice to the soldiers who together held their position against the foe-resisting, as the Allied command had ordered, "to the last round and the last man."

This has been a good year for books on the First World War. Macdonald's oral history of the last German offensive of the war is a great complement to John Keegan's comprehensive The First World War and Niall Ferguson's revisionist The Pity of War. Macdonald (They Called It Passchendaele, etc.) has spent many years interviewing British and Canadian veterans of WWI. Her large archive alone is an important achievement, but from this raw material she has gone on to cobble a number of remarkable books. This, the latest, focuses on one of the most deadly and strategically important confrontations of the war: the Second Battle of the Somme, in which the Allied command ordered the field commanders to resist the German attack "to the last round and the last man." Macdonald is particularly skilled at presenting war from the standpoint of those directly involved in its bloody business. At the same time, she never fails to set events in their proper historical, political and military context. Unlike her previous books, this volume includes a significant amount of first-person testimony from German soldiers culled from an impressive private collection of accounts gathered by American publisher Richard Baumgartner in 1981. As Macdonald points out, "the stories of some of those German boys are mirror images of those of their British counterpartsAsome of whom, indeed, must have been literally within yards of them." Macdonald's uncompromising narrative brings the bloody dawn of the century into vivid, humane relief. 60 b&w photos; 17 maps. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Beautifully written, spectacularly researched account of the almost end of the Great War by the author of 1915: The Death of Innocence (1995). Macdonald, who has written six other books on aspects of WWI, weaves together the forgotten voices of the war to create a comprehensive picture that offers a perspective unlike the ones provided by such contemporary historians as John Keegan or Niall Ferguson, both of whom focus on the larger activities and implications of the war. Macdonald uses the official history only as background to the accounts of the enlisted men, and often their stories run counter to the official record. To the Last Man concentrates on the massive German offensive of March 1918, an attempt to turn the tide of the war. Freed up from hostilities on the Eastern Front by a Russia that was wracked by revolution and threatened in France by a soon-to-arrive American army, the Germans launched what was to be their last effort to break the stalemate in their favor with a massive attack on France. Throughout the narrative the oral testimonies of the officers and soldiers punctuate MacDonald's clear recounting of the history and present haunting memories of the war to end all warstales such as the memory of a British brigadier general walking through a portion of the battlefield where his son died and questioning ``how it was possible that any troops could attack such a position in broad daylight on a lovely July morning.'' The ultimate account of the end of the Great War and a poignant reminder that the best military history doesn't forget the soldiers who fought and those who died. (16 pages photos, not seen; 17 maps) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Like Macdonald's They Called It Passchendaele and The Roses of No Man's Land, this book draws on the accounts of eyewitnesses and survivors of World War I and is told in their own words. Each story is complemented by Macdonald's historical narrative. As the book opens, the Germans launch a massive offensive that became known as the Second Battle of the Somme, which left thousands deadAand still the war dragged on. Through these accounts, we see war not as history but as personal experience; Macdonald successfully shows us the suffering of soldiers and civilians on all sides. This creditable study of personal survival explains how individuals endured terrible hardships and soldiered on. Recommended for academic and public libraries as well as special collections.ADavid M. Alperstein, Queens Borough P.L., Jamaica, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.