Autobiography of a british soldier in ww1
•
The story of Arthur Roberts
"To run was as bad as to stand. This is war; grim, death-stalking havoc… worse than all, the moans and shrieks of the unfortunate men. Some lay in that limp, unnatural, distorted attitude that denotes death.
"Some struggled madly, thoroughly unnerved but with their wounds unable to much more than crawl; the others worked their limbs feebly, like sleepy children, while their blood dyed their khaki with big black stains.”
Arthur's diary also revealed how lucky he had been.
“One fellow in front of me had his head blew off. The chap beside him was severely wounded, the chap next to me was wounded and one of the chaps behind me was killed and the fellow beside him was wounded. I completely escaped. That was everyone around me either killed or wounded. We lost about a dozen all told.”
After Passchendaele, Arthur came through the war unscathed; he was later restricted to non-combat jobs by a bad case of trench foot. He wrote:
&ld
•
Five must-read books to discover more about the British Army during the First World War
I count myself blessed that I am old enough to have had a grandfather who served in the British Army during the First World War.
I remember him with much fondness today, 42 years after his death, and it was Walter Leonard Nixon’s experience as a gunner with the Royal garnison Artillery during the First World War which set me off on my own sökande eller uppdrag to find out more about that conflict. This quest involved much reading and also proactively seeking out Great War veterans whom inom could interview.
Find military ancestors
Much had already been written about the war when I first started my own explorations in , and a good deal more has been written about it since, but here are my own top fem books which deal with the British Army during the years and, specifically for this post, the British Army on the Western Front. I limit my scope to books written bygd those who were there.
1. Old Soldiers Never •
"Just as this war did not begin with the start of military hostilities, so it did not end with the Armistice of When the soldiers left the battlefields, they took the war with them in their heads and bodies." - Barnd Hüppauf. "War Literature" in Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War.
"Almost anyone who was alive during the years of World War I and later wrote an autobiography has some reflection to make upon the cataclysm, and on the impact of the war on the next generation." - Velma Bourgeois Richmond, "World War I Writings" in Encyclopedia of Life Writing.
Modern readers seeking to understand the nuances and subtleties of the Great War are often directed toward published diaries, collections of letters, and autobiographies of the participants. These provide a close glimpse of life from the perspective of one of the participants and can challenge or validate the accepted and official accounts - espe
"Just as this war did not begin with the start of military hostilities, so it did not end with the Armistice of When the soldiers left the battlefields, they took the war with them in their heads and bodies." - Barnd Hüppauf. "War Literature" in Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War.
"Almost anyone who was alive during the years of World War I and later wrote an autobiography has some reflection to make upon the cataclysm, and on the impact of the war on the next generation." - Velma Bourgeois Richmond, "World War I Writings" in Encyclopedia of Life Writing.
Modern readers seeking to understand the nuances and subtleties of the Great War are often directed toward published diaries, collections of letters, and autobiographies of the participants. These provide a close glimpse of life from the perspective of one of the participants and can challenge or validate the accepted and official accounts - espe