The First Day on the Somme

Apr 20, 2025 2:48 PM

Author:Martin Middlebrook

The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words - Guardian

'For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine-gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways'

On 1 July 1916, a continous line of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches of the Somme into No Man's Land and began to walk towards dug-in German troops armed with machine-guns. By the end of the day there were more than 60,000 British casualties - a third of them fatal.

Martin Middlebrook's now-classic account of the blackest day in the history of the British army draws on official sources from the time, and on the words of hundreds of survivors: normal men, many of them volunteers, who found themselves thrown into a scene of unparalleled tragedy and horror.

Reviews

The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words

—— Guardian

A particularly vivid and personal narrative

—— Times Literary Supplement

Pioneering and hauntingly eloquent

—— Peter Parker , Spectator

The stories are atmospheric, but it is O'Neill's open-minded examination of her own position in relation to the women, the history and the writing that makes this book a work of art

—— What's On In London

Gilda O'Neill has brought to life a time when women relished simple pleasures and the close friendships formed while working alongside one another each summer

—— Sunday Express

The (pearly) queen of East End memoirists

—— Financial Times magazine

Few books on the Third Reich offer a genuinely fresh perspective on the period but Roger Moorhouse's engrossing chronicle of the plots against Hitler does

—— Nick Rennison , The Sunday Times

This book shows what a murderous place Hitler's Reich was, and that the Fuhrer had the devil's own luck

—— M.R.D. Foot

The first detailed account of the numerous attempts to kill one of history's most reviled dictators

—— Herald

Osborne has written a fluent and fascinating book.... Read and enjoy this remarkable book

—— THES

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