Remembrances of Hell - The Great War Diary of Writer, Broadcaster and Naturalist - Norman Ellison: Amazon.co.uk: Norman Ellison, David Lewis: 9781853108969: Books
One of them books I picked up but never got round to reading until last week, not many I start and stick to it like glue ........maybe because he was a local lad and in the 1/6th Kings Regiment Liverpool certainly a good read.
Should you feel inclined, I would also strongly recommend Some Desperate Valour by Campion-Vaughn. You can see him becoming somewhat dehumanized/numb throughout the book. There's one passage in which he refers to making tea from frozen water in a shell-hole. Later on in the diary, he returns to that area where he had been posted a winter or two before, and the ice which had been covering up the shell-hole has melted. In the bottom is a dead French soldier, who from the uniform and their knowledge of who had held the line there when he knows has to have been there since 1914-1915. His only comment on that day is that as he recalled, "the tea had not tasted all that bad..." It's been a few years since I read the diary, but I still recall the last entry, where he is posted in Passchendaele area, looking out over the wasteland of dead trees, shellholes, mud, bodies and a nearby burned out tank with a stinking corpse in it. The entry is just about seeing only a bleak, hopeless future ahead. He was invalided out I believe.
Ed
This reminds me of the shocking paintings of WWI in the National Defense Museum in Ottawa painted by Impressionist painters serving in the Canadian army. BTW, the museum is quite stirring and a very strong statement heralding the courage and valour of Canadians serving their country.Quote:
Originally Posted by boltaction
Grab a read of The Price Glory about the French and the fight for the forts a real war of attrition over a protracted period a phase of the bleed France white policy by the German army high command