Somme. Voci dall'inferno

I read " Forgotten Voices of the Somme: The Most Devastating Battle of the Great War in the Words of Those Who Survived " by Joshua Levine a few weeks before the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. The Battle of the Somme took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of upp Leggi tutto

Devastating is the right word. Drawn from recordings in the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, this is a mind-blowing account of the human cost of the Battle of the Somme. It's taken me most of July to read because it is hard to get through more than a few pages at a time, given the level of the rel Leggi tutto

Excellent. I don't know that the U.S. has anything like this. So I found it very interesting to hear/read it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. The surviving combatants spoke to the Imperial War Museum. Recollections many years later about what they went through at Britain's most devastat Leggi tutto

"No one can describe what the Battle of the Somme was really like unless they were there. It was one continuous stream of wounded and dead and dying. You had to forget all sentiment. It was a case of getting on with the job." - Private H.D. Jackson, 75th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps (p. Leggi tutto

As with all the Forgotten Voices books this was shocking and informative in equal measure. If you want to know what war was really like these are the sort of books to read. Stories and accounts told by the people who were actually there.

This book is comprised of the writing of common soldiers and what they experienced at the Somme. It adds an extra, necessary dimension to one's knowledge when there is access to the accounts of people who took part in the event. Sometimes funny, sometimes difficult to read, this book covers the whol Leggi tutto

I learned quite a bit about The Battle of The Somme; from the mouths of those who fought it so I felt far more fulfilling and touching than reading the facts and figures as if from a school textbook. I found it satisfying, in some parts disturbing, and in some parts I actually found myself laughing

This is a carefully and sensitively curated collection of accounts of life in the trenches of the First World War. Rather than being drawn from letters or diaries, these are transcripts of accounts given by men who survived, and who were interviewed and recorded; the recordings come from the Imperia Leggi tutto