There have already been a great number of arts and media looking at World War 1 and its long-lasting impact on the modern world, including books, television shows, movies and more. I can definitely say you can add Tommy's War to the list of works that are worthy of note.
Richard van Emden, who has already written several books about World War 1, looks this time at the battles through the eyes of the average Tommy soldier. He has put together more than 300 pages of first-hand accounts, diary entries and photographs taken by soldiers in the field.
The book is divided into five year-long sections, dealing with how soldiers saw out the start of the war, the major battles, events and the final days before the Treaty of Versailles was signed.
Of particular note is that the majority of pictures in the book were taken with the Vest Pocket Kodak camera. These photographs have been usually taken on the fly and show the British soldier in his unguarded moments.
From 1915 onwards, military brass banned the use of private cameras, mostly in response to British soldiers' pictures of the informal truce on Christmas Day 1914. Many of the pictures also show the increasing devastation of the landscape and the soldiers as war took its toll.
This book shows how the front-line soldier coped and endured the hellish conditions. Trench warfare was a slow and grinding business but there was also humour and humanity to be found.
Sapper Albert Martin, of the Royal Engineers, wrote in 1916 that a black and white kitten that lived in a soldier's dugout was not only able to recognise the sound of shellfire but ''... what is really remarkable is its ability to differentiate between ours and the enemy's ... as soon as she hears its whistle she is off ... she will even leave her dinner and won't come out of the dugout until the shelling is finished''.
Some of the entries are very dark and describe how soldiers coped with death or injury of their comrades. Many of the writers in the book did not survive to the end of the war.
However, you will come away from this book inspired by the writers' tenacity in surviving such places as Ypres and their heroism, such as that of Corporal James Parr, of the Queen's Westminster Rifles, who wrote: ''What do we gain? I think we gain the one thing that every man has wanted from his boyhood up - opportunity. Opportunity to show what he is made of. Opportunity to show himself what he's made of ...''
- Doug Anderson is a former public service worker, recently returned to Dunedin.
