Elegy: The First Day on the Somme

Roberts, Andrew

ISBN 10: 1784080012 / ISBN 13: 9781784080013

Published by Head of Zeus, 2015

About this Item

Dispatched, from the UK, within 48 hours of ordering. This book is in good condition but will show signs of previous ownership. Please expect some creasing to the spine and/or minor damage to the cover.

Seller Inventory # CHL6505273

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Elegy: The First Day on the Somme
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784080012
• ISBN 13: 9781784080013
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Used; Good

About this title

Synopsis

On 1 July 1916, after a five-day bombardment, 11 British and 5 French divisions launched their long-awaited 'Big Push' on German positions on high ground above the Rivers Ancre and Somme on the Western Front. Some ground was gained, but at a terrible cost. In killing-grounds whose names are indelibly imprinted on 20th-century memory, German machine-guns - manned by troops who had sat out the storm of shellfire in deep dugouts - inflicted terrible losses on the British infantry.

The British Fourth Army lost 57,470 casualties, the French Sixth Army suffered 1,590 casualties and the German 2nd Army 10,000. And this was but the prelude to 141 days of slaughter that would witness the deaths of between 750,000 and 1 million troops.

Andrew Roberts evokes the pity and the horror of the blackest day in the history of the British army - a summer's day-turned-hell-on-earth by modern military technology - in the words of casualties, survivors, and the bereaved.

About the Author

Andrew Roberts is the author of Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West (which won the International Churchill Society Book Award) and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 (which won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Book Award). His other books include Napoleon and Wellington, Eminent Chuchillians and Salisbury, which won the Wolfson History Prize. His latest book, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, won the British Army Military Book of the Year for 2010. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University.