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The Somme The Darkest Hour on the Western Front Peter Hart 9781605980164 Books

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The Somme The Darkest Hour on the Western Front Peter Hart 9781605980164 Books

If you are feeling blue or if things have depressed you then this book will not make you feel any better! Finishing it you will thank God you live in 21st century America untouched for over 150 years by the grim reaper of wartime horror. The author Peter Hart is a director of the Imperial War Museum in London. I have read several of his readable and poignant accounts of World War I. This is one of his outstanding books.
The Somme is the river in France which was the biggest battlefield of war on the Western Front in 1916. On July 1, 1916 (100 years ago General Douglas Haig commander of the British Army directed the assault of his troops against strong trench and fortress defenses held by the Imperial German Army of well trained experienced troops. The vast majority of the lads from England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand and India were untested and raw soldiers. The result was mass slaughter. The four months of the bloody mess ended up with nearly one million casualties with little accomplished.
The story of the Somme has been told many times but what makes this book of interest is the hundreds of eyewitness accounts recorded by members of the Allied and German forces. Through their suffering eyes we see an indelible picture of the utter terror of mechanized war. Many of the troop died due to disease and the terror of artillery shells,. Medical care was primitive. Tanks were ineffective. Over 20,000 Allied troops were killed and wounded on that horrible Sunday July 1, 1916. Hart has done his research gathering these accounts and the book contains good maps and a fine bibliography. History writing at its finest. A vivid example of man's inhumanity to man.


Tags : The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front [Peter Hart] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <strong>The definitive account of one of the bloodiest battles in world history―a military tragedy that would come to define a generation.</strong> On July 1,Peter Hart,The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front,Pegasus Books,1605980161,Military - World War I,Somme (France), 1st Battle of the, 1916.,Somme, 1st Battle of the, France, 1916.,GENERAL,General Adult,HISTORY Military World War I,History,Military,Non-Fiction,Somme, 1st Battle of the, France, 1916,United States,Western Europe

The Somme The Darkest Hour on the Western Front Peter Hart 9781605980164 Books Reviews

This is a very thorough book about one of the pivotal battles of WWI. The book provides great detail on which regiment/group attacked each section, their successes and failures. It might be too much detail for some people. The excerpts from soldiers diaries and letters were very enjoyable and the reader really get the feel of what life was like in the trenches and in battle. The pain and agony, the mud, lack of materials, the difficulty creating successful battle strategies, the death all around you. It is all in this book. It is a big book with loads of detail. I would recommend it to any student of the first World War. JIM H
I am sort of stunned to see that this history of the fighting on The Somme in WW1 only has a rating of 3.78! For my mind this book cannot be rated highly enough...

Before reading Hart's book on the history of The Somme my knowledge of the fighting that took place on the Western Front was at best as murky a quagmire as the front itself. Other theatres of fighting such as Verdun seemed more comprehensible because they were more focused and concentrated affairs. But the theatre of The Somme was so vast, so widespread, so complicated that I opened this book with trepidation.

My first observation was that a lot of the book comprised verbatim diary entries by those that were at the front. This made me wince because, in my opinion, too many history books follow that format and often to ill-effect. To use diary entries effectively requires strategy and skill.

Fortunately, Hart is a master. Not only are soldiers accounts arranged to have maximum effect, but Hart as the narrator is a masterful story-teller. Hart really brings these momentous events to life in a clear and coherent manner - no small achievement considering the task at hand.

Understanding the complexities of The Somme also calls for good, detailed maps, and Hart has them as well.

The combined effect is a history of a devastating conflict as complex as a spirdersweb, made easy to understand. For the first time I could genuinely get a feel for the scale of the fighting, the life in the trenches, the failures of strategy and planning. Also, for the first time I could get a sense of the massive scale of carnage, starting with that first dark day in July 1916, a day when 20000 British soldiers were cut down.

On a final note, for anyone who wants to read this book, I found it extremely useful to have GoogleEarth open as I read so that I could trace events on the battlefield. One sees how open and even the terrain is, can go down to road level and look around, visit the sites of mass cemetaries where the fighting was particularly fierce, or look over the rim of the crater left by one of the enormous detonated mines.

This is a great read. Five stars I say!
This is the first book I've read on WWI. For some reason I had a lot of trouble getting through it. My last review was Feb 12, so it took almost 2 months to get through this book, I've had a lot of spring maintenance at my house, but still I should have been able to get through the book much quicker.

The author relies on quotes from personal diaries of common soldiers and officers. In fact in many chapter I would bet fully 70% of the written text is excerpts from letters. I think the book could have been shortened and just as impactful if the author would have cut back on the excerpted letters.

That said, the letters are very moving and paint a great picture of the brutality of life in the trenches and what it meant to "go over the top". Especially memorable for me was a chapter in the middle of the book in which a medical officer was extensively quoted on the conditions of his medical station and what it was like to try and save men there.

Good chapter on life in the trenches when there isn't any active combat - the lice, the mud, the water, the foul smells from decaying corpses and sewage, the rats gnawing on you as you sleep. Very gruesome and well depicted literature.
If you are feeling blue or if things have depressed you then this book will not make you feel any better! Finishing it you will thank God you live in 21st century America untouched for over 150 years by the grim reaper of wartime horror. The author Peter Hart is a director of the Imperial War Museum in London. I have read several of his readable and poignant accounts of World War I. This is one of his outstanding books.
The Somme is the river in France which was the biggest battlefield of war on the Western Front in 1916. On July 1, 1916 (100 years ago General Douglas Haig commander of the British Army directed the assault of his troops against strong trench and fortress defenses held by the Imperial German Army of well trained experienced troops. The vast majority of the lads from England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand and India were untested and raw soldiers. The result was mass slaughter. The four months of the bloody mess ended up with nearly one million casualties with little accomplished.
The story of the Somme has been told many times but what makes this book of interest is the hundreds of eyewitness accounts recorded by members of the Allied and German forces. Through their suffering eyes we see an indelible picture of the utter terror of mechanized war. Many of the troop died due to disease and the terror of artillery shells,. Medical care was primitive. Tanks were ineffective. Over 20,000 Allied troops were killed and wounded on that horrible Sunday July 1, 1916. Hart has done his research gathering these accounts and the book contains good maps and a fine bibliography. History writing at its finest. A vivid example of man's inhumanity to man.