ON THE WESTERN FRONT - SOLDIER'S STORIES FROM FRANCE AND FLANDERS by Laffin, John

Stroud 1997 , Budding books( Sutton Publ) r/p of 1985 edition, illustrated hard cover, VG/VG CONDITION, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, 277 pages, numerous illus, glossary. -----------------------------------------------A large collection of first person accounts of life and combat in the British & Commonwealth armies in France during the Great War. The official histories of World War I are accounts of strategy and tactics, political and logistical considerations, and after reading them a reader might well wonder why they rarely mention soldiers except in terms of military units. Even regimental histories devote much more space to plans and concepts than to the men who were used to implement the plans.---------------------------------------------------------- But at its lowest level the history of the `Great War' is made up of millions of trivial incidents, for something happened each day to each man – something that made him laugh or cry or sigh. The soldier laughed readily in that era and humour was simple and unsubtle. It didn't take much to make him cry either – but he choked back his tears with another joke or with an apparently callous comment, a kind of safety valve to keep him sane. As for sighs – he sighed much of the time over a variety of things, such as women, food, leave, generals and sergeant-majors, the enemy, the cold, rain and heat, and because of injustice, unfairness, stupidity and life in general.------------------------------------------------------------- And he told stories – about the things that happened to him. Those stories reveal, collectively, much about the real war. Most were for consumption within the army so they were heard only by the men in the trenches, behind the lines, at base hospitals and at the estaminets and billets during rest periods.The anecdotes which make up this collection represent, John Laffin believes, the first serious attempt to show the humanity of the soldier of the Western Front. They reflect the conditions attitudes and practices of 1914-18, revealing the soldiers' war from first shot to last.