TO THE LAST MAN : Spring 1918 by Macdonald, Lyn

London 1998, Viking, 2nd printing, English edition, hard bound in dust jacket, Fine/Fine condition, 6x9, xxxvi, 382 pages, numerous illus & maps, bibliog, index. This is the seventh in a series of acclaimed histories by the leading chronicler of the First World War. It describes the first momentous months of 1918 when the long stalemate of the trenches was brought to an end by a massive German assault on the Western Front. It broke the British line and it almost broke the British Army.This is the account of the historic battle, the long fighting retreat and the vital stand at Amiens which saved the city, secured the fragile line and caused Ludendorff to call off his first ambitious offensive. But, above all, it is the story of the men who were there the commanders caught in a maze of perplexing dilemmas, the weary, resolute British Tommies, the German boys exulting in their victory, the French poilus rushed up to stiffen the defence, the nonchalant Aussies and Kiwis, and the still-unblooded doughboys from the USA.They were ordinary people caught up in great events, but the actions a soldier experienced as an individual seldom earned even a footnote in the history books the defence of a wood or a hill whose name, if it had one, few people would ever remember; snatching back abandoned guns beneath the noses of the enemy; or holding a position, as ordered, 'to the last man'. Nevertheless, their irrepressible high spirits always found some outlet even in unlikely circumstances. It was the jokes and the bravado, as much as comradeship and gallantry, that enabled the troops to stick it out and see it through.