1915: The Death of Innocence - Softcover

By concentrating on the minutiae of life in the trenches -- the daily battles with cold and damp, the endless scrounging for food, the frantic improvisation required to carry out impossible orders -- Macdonald manages to convey the sheer craziness of the nightmare.

Macdonald's narrative, constructed around a succession of remarkable and fresh first-hand accounts, is both compelling and vivid.

Macdonald's heart lies firmly with the common soldiers and junior officers who manned the trenches and followed the orders that all too often cost their lives... The reader feels at times that he is actually in the thick of the battle.

By Christmas 1914, the wild wave of enthusiasm that had sent men flocking to join up a few months earlier began to tail off, and though the original British Expeditionary Force had suffered 90 percent casualties, most people, particularly the soldiers themselves, still believed that 1915 would see the breaking of the deadlock. But their hopes were shattered on the bloody battlefields of Neuve Chapelle, Ypres, Loos, and far away on the shores of Gallipoli.

Lyn Macdonald's story of 1915 is stark, brutal, frank, sometimes painfully funny, always human. Never before has any writer collected so many firsthand accounts of the experiences of ordinary soldiers, through diaries, letters, and interviews with survivors -- and it is the dogged heroism and sardonic humor of the soldiers that shine through the pages of this epic narrative. 1915 is a uniquely compelling blend of military history and poignant memories of the fighters who survived the ordeal.