'The million British dead have left no books behind. What they felt as
they died hour by hour in the mud, or were choked horribly with gas, or
relinquished their reluctant lives on stretchers, no witness tells. But
here is a book that almost tells it......Mr Gristwood has had the
relentless simplicity to recall things as they were; he was as nearly
dead as he could be without dying, and he has smelt the stench of his
own corruption. This is the story of millions of men - of millions.' -
H. G. Wells, from the preface
In The Somme and its companion The Coward, first published in 1927, the
heroics of war and noble self-sacrifice are completely absent; replaced
by the gritty realism of life in WWI for the ordinary soldier, and the
unflinching portrayal of the horrors of war. Written under the guidance
of the master storyteller H. G. Wells, they are classics of the genre.
The Somme revolves around a futile attack in 1916 during the Somme
campaign. Everitt, the central protagonist is wounded and moved back
through a series of dressing stations to the General Hospital at Rouen.
Both in and out of the line he behaves selfishly and unheroically, but
in a manner with which it is hard for the reader not to identify. Based
on A D Gristwood's own wartime experiences, critics have said that few
other accounts of the war give such an accurate picture of trench life.
The Coward concerns a man who shoots himself in the hand to escape the
war, during the March 1918 retreat - an offense punishable by death. He
gets away with it, but is haunted by fear of discovery and
self-loathing.
