The battle of the Somme was one of the most tragic battles fought during World War I. The amount of life lost on both sides was tremendous and historians everywhere agree that this battle was one of the bloodiest battles fought. With casualties upwards of a million, it is not surprising that the Somme is often referred to as the ‘bloodbath’. Historian Martin Gilbert explores the severity of the battle in his book; The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War. In his book he attempts to pay tribute to the soldiers who fought and fell in the battle. To do this he uses excerpts from diary entries, letters and poetry written by the soldiers on the front lines to give the reader a first-hand account of what the soldiers were thinking and feeling while fighting. Gilbert is able to effectively portray the horror of the Somme and reduce the anonymity of the fallen by sharing stories from the soldier’s personal writings, however his book would have been more effective if he had a clear well-structured argument.
At the start of his book, Gilbert explains how: “every book on the Somme contributes in its own way to perpetuating the memory of those who fought and those who fell. This book seeks to make its contribution to that act of remembrance” (Gilbert, xxi). To be able to do this he begins to explain what is going on during the time before the battle took place. He gives some background on the size of the British army at the start of the war in 1914 and discusses who was eligible to fight and the formation of the battalions. An example of how battalions were started was when General Sir Henry Rawlinson “suggested that men would be more willing to enlist if they knew they would serve with those whom they knew: friends, neighbours...
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...d to the amount of men who fought and lost their lives, there are very few stories told. In conclusion Gilbert was able to effectively share some of the stories of the soldiers, but because he lacked an argument the strength of his writing was greatly weakened.
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Gilbert, Martin. The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006)
Larocci, Andrew. Review of The Battle of the Somme: The heroism and Horror of the War by Martin Gilbert. The Canadian Historical Review vol.88 (December 2007): 657-658.
Terraine, John. “The Texture of the Somme, 1916.” History Today, September 1, 1976: 559-568
Willmott, H.P. World War I. New York: DK Publishing, 2009.
Wilson, Trevor and Robin Prior. “Summing Up the Somme,” History Today, November 1, 1991: 37-43.
The Courage and Strength in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
James Hanley provides an uncommon perspective of comradeship that contrasts the usual romantic representations by other World War 1 writers. Elston is from Manchester, England, a poor industrial city and O’Garra is from the impoverished town of Dublin, Ireland (48). Both men enlist in the service to escape their poverty and squalid environments. O’Garro is physically repulsive and the more aggressive of the two but loathes Elston who contrasts him in disposition and phys...
Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front gives you detail and insight into the long, destructive “Great War”. Quickly, romantic illusions about combat are disintegrate. Enthusiastic teenage boys convinced to fight for their country by their patriotic teachers came back feeling part of a lost generation . This novel teaches us what a terrifying and painful experience World War I was for those fighting in the trenches on the front.
The Battle of Somme is marked as one of the deadliest wars we had in world war 1. The article we were presented in source 8.1 is written by Phil Gibbs an English journalist who got to see the warhead on from the side of the French and British spectrum. The war consisted of the french and British armies take on the German empire. The war had over 60,000 casualties the first day with a mass number 1.5 million deaths at the end of the war. Seeing the inside of the war from Philip Gibbs perspective really gave us a more emotional connection to the story due to the vivid and graphic scene, he set up for us such as the ending when he quotes “They were silent, grave-eyed men who marched through the streets of French and Belgian towns to be entrained for the Somme front, for they had forebodings of the fate before them. (Excerpt From: “Sources of World History.” iBooks. ) . Next, in section 8.2 we transition into a perspective from the German side in the “All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) Erich Maria Remarque Excerpt From: “Sources of World History.” iBooks. This book is written from the perspective of someone that went to war and it showed the destruction of what happen with this man during his life and it goes through the story about his life
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque displays unsettling images and symbols of war as it follows Paul Baumer, a young soldier, during World War I. The constant bombardments and escaped shells of war cause the soldier to sink into a barbaric mindset of war. By using imagery and symbols to show how soldiers sink into the mindset of war the author creates a vivid picture of the many horrors of war and its mentality.
Remarque, Erich Maria, and A. W. Wheen. All Quiet on the Western Front. Boston: Little, Brown, 1929. Print.
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
Whenever one reads or hears about World War I or World War II, you hear of the struggles and triumphs of the British, Americans or any of the other Allies. And they always speak of the evil and menacing German army. However, All Quiet on the Western Front gives the reader some insight and a look at a group of young German friends who are fighting in World War I. “This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.....” The soldiers of this war felt they were neither heroes nor did they know what they were fighting for. These soldiers were pulled from the innocence of their childhood, and thrown into a world of rage. Yet somehow they still managed to have heart and faith in man kind and could not look the opponent in the eye and kill him. For he was man too, he too had a wife and children at home, he too was pulled out of his home to fight for a cause he didn't understand.
From early in the war, in May of 1914, Blunden recalled his experience in the trenches of France. Structured with sandbag walls, the Old British Line in which the men were stationed was only a frail comfort, as the trenches were often only one row deep with no additional protection against debris caused by artillery shells. Communication between the between the front line and the Old British Line was provided some covered by through the Cover Trench, although Prior’s account of returning from The Island, the front line, states that he had to pause every two minutes to lay in a ditch along the road to avoid the infamous German machine guns. The Germans bombarded the Cover Trench with heavy fire and large shells over the farmhouse and its residents, including children. Because the Germans were known for using gas, Blunden and his men underwent training to prepare for attacks. After completing this course, he was sent to the dugout near Cuinchy Keep, which was described as “dirty, bloodthirsty and wearisome,” primarily due to the number of mines which had already been exploded, and that it was not completely finished. However, when fighting in the trenches, “There was nothing for it but to copy experience, and experience was nothing but a casual protection.”
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. Trans. A. W. Wheen. New York: Ballantine, 1982.
Grayzel, Susan R. The First World War: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.
Thomas Albert Crawford was a soldier in the fifteenth Durham Light Infantry. He joined the army when he was eighteen years old. He fought in and survived some of the worst battles, such as the battle at Loos. On the first of July 1916, he was in the middle of the Battle of the Somme, when a bullet hit his rifle, and gave him a serious injury. He was discharged due to his physical condition. He then returned to North East England, where he had grown up. Whilst working night shifts at a Scottish Power Station, he wrote his memoir, a story about the daily life in the trenches. His wife died of cancer, and both his sons died before turning thirty-five. He re-married, and had two sons. Their names were Colin and Brian. Colin died when he was twenty-five. Tommy died shortly thereafter. Brian published his dad’s memoir in 2006, and called it “Tommy”.
In ‘Anthem of Doomed Youth’ Owen shows another version of the suffering- the mourning of the dead soldiers. When Owen asks “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”, his rhetorical question compares the soldiers to cattle as they die and suffer undignified. Owen uses this extended metaphor to confront us with the truth, that there are too many fatalities in war. As such, the soldier’s deaths are compared to livestock, to emphasise their poor treatment and question our perspective about soldiers dying with honour. With an overwhelming death toll of over 9 million during WWI, Owen depicts how the soldier’s die with the repetition of “Only the...” to emphasise the sounds of war that kills soldiers in the alliteration ‘rifles’ rapid rattle.’ Owen also illustrates the conditions that the soldiers died in and how they were not given a proper funeral in the cumulation ‘no prayers nor bells,/ nor any voice of mourning.’ Owen painfully reminds us that we have become complacent with the deaths of soldiers, seeing them as a necessary sacrifice during human conflict. Thus, Owen shows us what we have overlooked about war, that is, that it brings endless death and long-lasting grief to the surviving soldiers and the people around
Keegan, John and Richard Holmes. Soldiers: A History Of Men In Battle. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1986.
of these islands. Can we afford to go on paying the same sort of price