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Life, death and growing up on the western front / Anthony Fletcher.

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"This book was inspired by the author's discovery of an extraordinary cache of letters from a soldier who was killed on the Western Front during the First World War. The soldier was his grandfather, and the letters had been tucked away, unread and unmentioned for many decades. Intrigued by...

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Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Full Text (via ProQuest)
Main Author: Fletcher, Anthony (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: New Haven : Yale University Press, 2013.
Subjects:
Great Britain. > Army > History > World War, 1914-1918.
Great Britain. > Army > Military life > History > 20th century.
Great Britain. > Army. > British Expeditionary Force.
World War, 1914-1918 > Social aspects > Great Britain.
World War, 1914-1918 > Social aspects > Europe, Western.
World War, 1914-1918 > Personal narratives, British.
Soldiers > Great Britain > Correspondence.
Great Britain. > Army.
Armed Forces > Military life
Social aspects.
Soldiers.
Western Europe.
Great Britain.
History.
Personal narratives.
Personal correspondence.
Table of Contents:
  • Going to war
  • 'Quiet earnest faces': the national cause
  • 'Glad to go': patriotic idealism
  • 'Ready to go': training
  • At the front
  • 'Write as often as you can': letters and parcels
  • 'Sticking it out': fear and shell shock
  • 'A certain sense of safety with him': leadership
  • 'Such a hopeless lot of babes': care for the men
  • 'Drops of his blood on my hand': horror and endurance
  • 'I merely did my duty': discipline and morale
  • 'Very gallant in every way': early losses
  • 'Blighty, oh blighty in about a week': leave
  • 'I am serene, unafraid': the Somme
  • 'Capable of finishing the job': battles of 1917-1918
  • 'The men cannot grasp it': armistice
  • Sacrifice
  • 'We will remember them': remembrance and commemoration
  • 'All the best and choicest and unblemished': war heroes
  • 'Among the happiest years I have every spent': survivors
  • The Great War in perspective.

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