VC's of the First World War :THE WESTERN FRONT 1915 by Batchelor, Peter & Christopher Matson

Phoenix Mill 1997, Sutton, hard bound in dust jacket, 7 x 10, FINE/FINE CONDITION, 224 pp, maps, illus, notes, bibliog, index.The fighting was not over by Christmas as the 1914 slogan had confidently proclaimed, and by the end of that first year of war men of the BEF found themselves trapped in the murderous stalemate of trench warfare. British troops had suffered badly in the early campaigns and by January 1915 were holding some thirty miles of trenches.General Sir John French, under pressure from the French to relieve their hard-pressed troops north of Ypres, launched an attack on a narrow frontage at Neuve Chapelle on 10 March. The main thrust of the attack was successful and broke through the German lines, but the intended rolling-up of the line from behind was not realised. This first blooding at Neuve Chapelle was to be followed that year by other, less successful, British actions from which the Germans seemed to learn lessons more quickly than the British High Command.Following Neuve Chapelle the BEF was divided into two armies, the First under Haig and the Second under Smith-Dorrien. At the Second Battle of Ypres on 22 April the Germans used poison gas against troops of the Second Army to open the way forward, causing panic and confusion in the Allied ranks. Canada's first VC of the war was won on this day.Operations quietened down after the Second Battle of Ypres while the British prepared a retaliatory attack at Loos, where they used chlorine gas for the first time. Loos was a bloody failure, as were the French battles that followed at Artois and Champagne, but the high rate of British casualties sustained in battle confirmed for Joffre the reality of Britain's commitment to drive the Germans from French soil. By the end of the summer almost 50,000 men of Kitchener's Army had been killed.The authors' narrative has been arranged chronologically to tell the stories of the sixty seven VC-winners serving on the Western Front in 1915. The recipients came from all walks of life and from widely differing racial and social backgrounds. Twenty of them received posthumous awards but those who survived came home to find equally varied fortunes in their post-war lives. The courage, determination and sacrifice of their generation should never be forgotten.