1918 - The Decisive Year... Richard Van Emden

1918 - The Decisive Year in Soldiers' Own Words & Photographs

Richard Van Emden

Pen & Sword Books; £30

You can't blame Richard Van Emden for having one last Big Push with First World War non-fiction. Now that the centenary commemorations are drawing to a close, the opportunities to monetise the war will also dwindle. For that matter, Richard VE has authored some cracking books over the years, picking up the mantle where Martin Middlebrook and Lyn MacDonald left off, and cleverly interleaving veteran narratives with his compelling re-telling of the events. He does that very well and he must count himself fortunate to have spoken to so many veterans while there was still time.

For those familiar with Van Emden's work I don't think there will be a lot to be learned from the narrative. Many of the veterans' names will be familiar from other works, and there are also familiar accounts from long-published works by the likes of Stephen Graham, Aubrey Smith, Rudolf Binding, Lancelot Spicer... Admittedly, it takes skill to weave these narratives together and Richard is a past master at doing so.

So much for the words, it is the photographs that really stand out for me in this volume. Just as those of us whose interest was kindled in the Great War decades ago are overly familiar with War Letters to a Wife and A Medico's Luck in the War, so too are we used to seeing those same images of stretcher bearers struggling through mud or a skeleton with its arm across its skull at the bottom of a trench. Thankfully, those images do not get a re-run in this volume. What we do have are many photos that have been published for the first time and that show images not just of allied troops but of German soldiers as well. For the most part these are photographs that were "taken by soldiers on their own illegally held cameras" and they are wonderful - if occasionally shocking - to behold.

There will be those who buy this book for whom this is an entry into the Great War, and for those people this will be a terrific introduction: top authors, previously unseen photos, first hand veteran accounts and a skillful narrator in the shape of Van Emden. It has it all. I'm only giving my copy away because after four and a half years I feel somewhat battle fatigued. I can't wait for Peace to descend.

The Somme - The Epic Battle in the Soldiers' own words and photographs

The Somme - The Epic Battle in the Soldiers' own Words and Photographs
Pen & Sword, £20

There are a number of reasons why this book should earn a place on military bookshelves. Although the Battle of the Somme took place nearly a century ago, and although it has been written about and debated ever since, in many respects this is a completely new take on that grim campaign. As Richard van Emden notes in his introduction, the scale of the tragedy on the first day alone - 60,000 casualties, including nearly 20,000 dead - has been repeated so many times that it has almost lost its power to shock. Instead, what we have here in this new appraisal, is a slow building up towards that dreadful day and the months that followed. The story begins not with the whys and wherefores of the campaign – these can be found easily enough in other books – but soldiers arriving on the Somme in July 1915 and Second Lieutenant George Webb of the 1st Dorsetshire Regiment writing of “a delightful little village some way east of Amiens.”

Richard Van Emden is a skilful and passionate author who has written many volumes on the First World War. Here though, he never lets that passion interfere with the voices of the men. This is, after all, “the epic battle in the soldiers’ own words…” and it is the men who tell the story, with Richard Van Emden coordinating in the background rather than intruding.

Many of the voices will be familiar to those of us who have studied the campaign over decades, and have built up our own libraries, but there are plenty of private papers which are published here for the first time and which provide fresh perspectives on a well-worn subject. I met and interviewed Sapper Norman Skelton, one of two people to whom this book is dedicated, back in the mid-eighties, and it is good to see him recalled in this volume, even though he was too young to have taken part in the 1916 campaign himself.

But this book is also far more than simply recollections. Personal photographs, many of these published for the first time, proliferate on these pages and show the unvarnished truth of life in the front line. These are not the official photographs, re-published many times over the last 100 years, but the amateur snapshots taken on hand-held Kodaks which have never been seen before.

The Somme is compelling, the soldiers’ words and photographs haunting. Get yourself a copy.

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