They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 - Tapa dura

This is the sort of book you pick up and wish you had found it twenty years ago. The experience of the French Army during the Great Wa is still not very well covered in English and even less has been published on the indidivual thoughts and experiences of the roughly 8.5 million men who were eventually mobilized. For anyone who is interested in such of things and has wished for years that someone would write about them, this one is for you. Ian Sumner is to be applauded for this work, which is highly recommended. It is about time the stories of the millions of Frenchmen who fought in the First World War were told in an accessible English-language book, and thanks to this volume from Ian Sumner that is now the case for this book tells the history of the French Army and its battles mainly using countless translated snippets from the letters and journals of French soldiers never published before in English. An absolute must for any English-speaking students of the First World War looking to expand their understanding of the conflict beyond the narrow British view. - Experts Column Bruce Officer

This graphic collection of first-hand accounts sheds new light on the experiences of the French army during the Great War. It reveals in authentic detail the perceptions and emotions of soldiers and civilians who were caught up in the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen. Their testimony gives a striking insight into the mentality of the troops and their experience of combat, their emotional ties to their relatives at home, their opinions about their commanders and their fellow soldiers, the appalling conditions and dangers they endured, and their attitude to their German enemy. In their own words, in diaries, letters, reports and memoirs - most of which have never been published in English before - they offer a fascinating inside view of the massive life-and-death struggle that took place on the Western Front. Ian Sumner provides a concise narrative of the war in order to give a clear context to the eyewitness material. In effect the reader is carried through the experience of each phase of the war on the Western Front and sees events as soldiers and civilians saw them at the time. This emphasis on eyewitness accounts provides an approach to the subject that is completely new for an English-language publication. The author's pioneering work will appeal to readers who may know something about the British and German armies on the Western Front, but little about the French army which bore the brunt of the fighting on the allied side. His book represents a milestone in publishing on the Great War.