View from the trenches

Historians can give us a big-picture view of major battles, but big-picture views don't necessarily reveal what that battle was really like for those on the battlefield. For that you need to hear from the soldiers themselves. And that is what makes Richard Van Emden's The Somme: The Epic Battle in the Soldiers' Own Words and Photographs (2016) something special.

By the time the Somme offensive against the German lines began early in July of 1917 (it continued almost until the end of the year), British soldiers were forbidden to have cameras, probably because the military did not want people back in England to see just how bad conditions were on the front lines. Still a number of soldiers, especially officers, did take cameras with them, and the photographs that survive are often stunning. Van Emden also includes photos taken by German soldiers.

Between the photographs, Van Emden shows us the progress of the battle (not that there was much actual progress) via excerpts from letters, diaries and memoirs written by soldiers on both sides.

British soldiers, being British, enjoyed their tea time even with a battle going on. "Oh, what should we do without our tea here!" one man writes. Officers often refer to their servants, whose service included doing their masters' bidding with bullets flying.

The men write about their chances of surviving the next attack (slim in the case of those ordered to advance against German machine guns), about the terrible wounds inflicted upon their fellows, about the constant noise, about the mud and the rats, and about the stink of decaying bodies (something war movies never seem to mention).

Deadly combat actually seems to have been viewed as fun by a couple of the writers. One of them says, "I say that this feeling of joy and lightheartedness does not come from any pleasure in killing — that's the rotten part — but in the risk of being killed. My days in the trenches were days of utter content; I cannot explain why, even to myself." Yet another soldier writes, "War is indescribably disgusting. Any man who has seen it and praises it is degenerate."

One man tells of being hugged by a German prisoner relieved to still be alive. Another tells of trying to take pictures of some of the men. "The snaps are not very good as I could not ask the troops to stand still and look pleasant!"

In the snaps Van Emden has collected, few of the troops look very pleasant. Still, like the written commentary by the soldiers, they are quite good on the whole, making the book something that should interest anyone with an interest in World War I in general or the battle of Somme in particular.