1915: The Death of Innocence: The Death Of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

Overview

Lyn Macdonald's 1915: The Death of Innocence is a uniquely compelling blend of military history and poignant memories of the fighters who survived the ordeal.

By Christmas 1915, the wild wave of enthusiasm that had sent men flocking to join up a few months earlier had begun to tail off, and though the Regulars of the original Expeditionary Force had suffered 90 percent casualties, most, particularly the soldiers themselves, still believed that 1915 would see the breaking of the deadlock. Their hopes were shattered on the bloody battlefields at Neuve Chapelle, at Ypres, at Loos, and far away on the shores of Gallipoli. Generals failed to understand the importance of heavy howitzers and machine guns, convinced that wars were won by the cavalry. They could not imagine a war in which hundreds of advancing troops could be wiped out in minutes by machine-gun fire. As disillusionment began to set in and grim resolve replaced easy optimism, innocence was among the casualties in the trenches that ran through the Flanders swamps.

The story of 1915 is stark, brutal, frank, sometimes painfully funny, always human. Above all, it is history from the ground up, told from the point of view of the men themselves. Never before has any writer collected so many firsthand accounts of the experiences of ordinary soldiers, through diaries, letters, and interviews with survivors--and it is the dogged heroism and sardonic humor of the soldiers that shine through the pages of Lyn Macdonald's epic narrative.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466881099
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/09/2014
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	625
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Since leaving her job as a BBC Radio producer in 1973, Lyn Macdonald has established an unrivaled reputation as an author and historian of World War I. She has produced four volumes of superb popular history, remarkable for their extensive use of eyewitness accounts. She is the recording angel of the common soldier. "My intention," she says, "has been to tune in to the heartbeat of the experience of the people who lived through it." Besides drawing on the oceans of contemporary letters and diaries, she has captured the memories of a dwindling supply of veterans.

Editorial Reviews

Based on letters, journals and memoirs, this fifth volume of Macdonald's chronicle of the Great War as British soldiers experienced it covers the battles of Neuve Chapelle and Loos, the second battle of Ypres and the Gallipoli campaign. The author provides a detailed look at the unique trench culture of the British 1st Army and analyzes ``lessons learned,'' such as the proper deployment of massed artillery and infantry reserves during that bloody year. Her assessment of Allied strategy and tactics is unparalleled in clarity. Her statistics further dramatize the loss of life on the Western Front in 1915 (Macdonald regards Gallipoli as an extension of the Western Front): Of the 19,500 square miles of German-occupied territory fought over, only eight were recovered-an average of 200,000 casualties per mile. Macdonald's vividly rendered history evokes pity and awe at the slaughter. By Christmas 1915, she notes, there was still some hope of ending the conflict quickly, but it was no longer the hope of innocent optimism. Photos. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Macdonald presents a history of the second year of the Great War, focusing almost entirely on the impressions and experiences of common soldiers gathered from interviews over the last 20 years as well as from letters, journals, and memoirs. The author has chosen not to analyze Loos, Ypres, Neuve Chappelle, and the introduction of gas warfare in detail but rather to set the scene and let the desperate, patriotic, idealistic soldiers tell in their own words how those qualities were expunged and the desire merely to survive left in their place. The book is not a replacement for a general history, but Macdonald's considerable skill in weaving her narrative makes this an excellent addition to the literature. However, this is Macdonald's fourth compilations of World War I material; libraries holding the others may consider this one more than they need.-Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.

Library Journal

To distinguish one corpse-clogged sea of mud from another on the western front, place-names like the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele took hold on British minds wishing to believe that something militarily significant was being achieved in those spots. In reality, those interchangeable names referred to the continuously gruesome reality of trench warfare, and this author sets as her task a you-are-there description of the second year of the war. Macdonald leans chiefly on eyewitness accounts left by surviving British soldiers, all strung together with her blow-by-blow narrative of the maelstroms they passed through in 1915: the "battles" (actually, months-long exercises in attempts at strategic breakout) of Neuve Chappelle, Second Ypres, and Loos, and the Gallipoli fiasco. In this volume, replete as it is with maps and photographs, there is no trace of the British navy; the German enemy is an undifferentiated, machine-gunning mass on the other side of the barbed wire; and the French ally fights its war in some other book, apparently. For libraries, that book might be Martin Gilbert's "The First World War". Popular in Britain, Macdonald has previously applied her expository method to 1914 and the war's medical personnel, among other angles, and for readers who like this subject limited to the travails of the British army, she is "the" authority.

Gilbert Taylor

Macdonald's narrative, constructed around a succession of remarkable and fresh first-hand accounts, is both compelling and vivid.

Times Literary Supplement

By concentrating on the minutiae of life in the trenches—the daily battles with cold and damp, the endless scrounging for food, the frantic improvisation required to carry out impossible orders—Macdonald manages to convey the sheer craziness of the nightmare.

Sunday Times (London)

Macdonald's heart lies firmly with the common soldiers and junior officers who manned the trenches and followed the orders that all too often cost their lives... The reader feels at times that he is actually in the thick of the battle.

Newsday