Encyclopedia Of World War Ii A Political, Social, And Military History Book

So it seems that the Imperial War Museum cleverly started compiling a sound archive of the survivors of the Great War, resulting in a wealth of stories of people involved in the war in one way or another. This archive includes the voices of belligerents from all sides, nurses, farm workers, and others. Max Arthur mined this treasure trove to compile an account of the war as told by a representative cross-section of people affected by this vast and prolonged conflict.

The book is nicely structured, starting in 1914 and ending with the Armistice, all in chronological order. If you're a Canadian and want to read about Vimy Ridge, you will go to the section on early 1917, Aussies can read about Gallipoli in an earlier chapter covering 1915. if you're American, you will have to wait until late in the book to read accounts by your countrymen. Most excerpts are a page or less in length, and some sources are used more than once. In the pages you will meet amputees, soldiers who had to participate in firing squads to execute their mates, deserters, and soldiers home on leave who were given white feathers by bitches on buses. All contributors are named, so you just might read the words of an ancestor in here.

I don't know if the source material was sanitized, but there is a total absence of the type of startling rough language commonly associated with soldiery, and proper English seems to be used throughout, even when the contributor was a German soldier or a poilu. From that, I think I'm safe in making the assumption that these stories have been polished up a bit. Even so, it's an excellent account of the Great War as seen by the common man and woman who were directly affected.