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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9781435301573
ISBN number: 1435301579
Label: IndyPublish
Manufacturer: IndyPublish
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 56
Printing Date: June 12, 2007
Publishing house: IndyPublish
Studio: IndyPublish
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
July 1st 1916 is a date that remains embedded in the British folk memory. It was the very first day of the Battle of the Somme, the day on which British and Empire troops suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, a third of them fatal.
In this evocative classic memoir John Masefield, the future Poet Laureate, describes the battleground over which the armies were to fight. He had spent months at the front and was familiar with the men, the trenches that they inhabited and the conditions they endured. 'The Old Front Line' was written shortly after the battle, and this elegant account will still move the modern reader as well as providing a valuable guide for the many 21st century visitors to the battlefield. This edition has a powerful new Introduction by Martin Middlebrook.
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Rated by buyers 
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This is an interestingly different battlefield memoir, describing the scene of the infamous 1916 battle rather than the battle itself. Although beautifully written, readers should be forewarned that the text contains only incidental references to the bloody fighting, which is described in more detail in Masefield's later "The Battle of the Somme" (Heinemann, 1919.)
Masefield says of the old front line "It is a difficult thing to describe without monotony, for it varies so little." You will enjoy this book if you enjoy elegiac prose. His tone is subdued but nevertheless he is celebrating the heroism of the British forces: not surprising since Masefield was writing at the behest of Charles Masterman, the head of Britain's War Propaganda Bureau, for whom he was working by 1917.
John Masefield was an author and poet laureate of Great Britain, most famous for his poetry collection "Salt Water Ballads." He was 37 when he joined the Red Cross to serve in France during World War I. Masefield went on the Dardanelles expedition with an ambulance unit and witnessed Britain's disastrous Gallipoli campaign on the Turkish coast. When he returned to England, Masefield was recruited by Masterman and produced a number of texts and lectures putting a positive face on the challenges faced by British troops in the war.
The battle of the Somme began July 1st, 1916 and produced over a million casualties. Masefield declares "It very first gave the enemy the knowledge that he was beaten." However he is exaggerating, since the result was merely a strategic withdrawal of the German forces to a better fortified line (the Siegfried Stellung) from which they launched their final offensive two years later. Masefield makes much of the German's superior position, but it should be borne in mind that they were subjected to the most massive artillery barrage of the war, taken by surprise, and vastly outnumbered. Anyone interested in a fuller account of the battle should try a more recent text on the Western Front or for personal memoirs of the battle try Siegfried Sassoon's "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" or Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All That."
Rated by buyers 
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I found this book of interest only as a contemporary description of the Somme battlefield as it existed shortly after the battle. The language used is poetic to be sure, but the description is repetitive and frankly a bit boring. There's only so many ways you can describe a tree-lined stream. The introductionary chapters contain a brief history of the battle of the Somme, and Masefield's tour guide makes up less than half the pages.
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