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The battle of the somme easy
Post world war 2 literature
The battle of the somme easy
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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.
Bibliography
“Beaumont-Hamel Remembered.” Toronto Star, July 2 2013, A6.
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 war correspondent is responsible for most of the ideas of battle which the public possesses … I can’t write that it occurred if I know that it did not, even if by painting it that way I can rouse the blood and make the pulse beat faster – and undoubtedly these men here deserve that people’s pulses shall beat for them. But War Correspondents have so habitually exaggerated the heroism of battles that people don’t realise that real actions are heroic.”
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.
The Courage and Strength in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
O’Brien, Tim. “How To Tell a True War Story.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2003. p. 420-429.
Ellis, John. Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I. New York: Pantheon, 1976. Print.
These soldiers lacked passion for the war. They didn't feel heroic because they did not hate the French nor the British. Therefore they lacked zeal to fight the war and did not fit the title of hero, they clung on to their life at all times.
John Keegan, the author of “The Face of Battle” is allowing the reader to view different perspective of history, from the eyes of the soldier. Although by his own account, Keegan acknowledges, “I have never been in a battle. And I grow increasingly convinced that I have very little idea of what a battle can be like.” Keegan scorns historians for pointing the finger of failure after an evolution occurs and not examining the soldier’s point of view while the battle is transpiring.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. Trans. A. W. Wheen. New York: Ballantine, 1982.
O'Neill, William L. World War II: A Student Companion. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
To write this book the author, John Toland, had to devote 15 years researching different stories from all sides of the war. He studied war memoirs, interviewed war veterans, and read military documents. While doing this he focused on both the allied and axis forces to truly understand both sides of the story and be able to write such a descriptive and accurate piece of work. This research was used in the book to describe the unlikely victory of the Americans over the Germans during the “Battle of the Bulge”.
World War One was a massive event. It affected millions of people from all walks of life, and inspired countless written pieces. Nevertheless, without being there, it is impossible to truly be able to tell what the war is like. Therefore the use of setting is very important in giving the reader an idea of the circumstance. This is not to say that everyone is in agreement over how the war should be displayed. Quite one the contrary, the two Poems “In Flanders Fields” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” use their settings to create two very contrasting images of human conflict.
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”.
6. Ward Christopher, The War of the Revolution Volume Two, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1952
From an early age, Ernest Hemingway found himself obsessed with the subject of heroism. He looked up to his grandfather, who he saw as a hero, and sought to fulfill the war legacy left behind by joining the army. Hemingway was a participant in many wars, but one in particular shaped the rest of his life and his outlook on the world. It was during the end of World War I and Hemingway was serving the Italian army as an ambulance driver. During the battle at Fossalta di Piave, Hemingway circulated the trenches with chocolates, providing them to soldiers. Out of nowhere, an Austrian trench mortar shell exploded a few feet away from Hemingway, killing one man and wounding many others (Meyers, p.30). Hemingway was one of these wounded men. It was once said by Ted Brumback that Hemingway had acted heroically, for once he regained consciousness, he picked up a wounded man and carried him to the first aid dugout despite his own serious leg wounds (Meyers, p.30). Considered the turning point in his life, Hemingway had faced death but been called a “hero” as a result of it. Even though Hemingway’s obsession with heroism was still prevalent throughout his life, and this event on July 8, 1918, made its way into many of his novels, the heroes Hemingway wrote about never forsook glory or fortune. They were more concerned with the righting of wrongs and the longing of experience (Baker (2), p.129). In Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms, the protagonist Frederic Henry is more obviously a form of Hemingway, but also a prime example of the heroes Hemingway liked to write about. Even though Henry faced danger, pain, and death throughout this wartime novel, none of it was glorified. Despite his obsession with heroism in war, while writing the novel...
Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of World War I. New York: Morrow, 1981. Print.