Published by Heinemann 1917

HB 336 pages £20+

Philip Gibbs, was the Daily Chronicle’s correspondent on the Western Front for the duration of the Great War. This one volume draws together all of his daily dispatches from the Somme. The Book starts on 1^st July 1916 and runs to the 8^th October 1916.

Gibbs writes in the patriotic manner and style of the day, referring to glorious and heroic exploits of “the many” who were to lose their lives on the battlefields. Throughout the book Gibbs writes in the manner of one who is writing about right defeating wrong. Time may well judge him as being one who helped to glorify the War for the greater good of the establishment. But one should remember that everything he wrote was subject to the scrutiny of the Army Command.

The dispatches take the reader through all of the major engagements of the Somme. Gibbs covers in detail each action refering on numerous occasions to his chats with soldiers fresh from the front. He refers to his discussions with the prisoners of war. Gibbs paints his honest and mainly accurate picture of the battlefields in a time when journalism relied on the written word. The time of the photograph and movie camera was yet to come.

In his introduction to the Book Gibbs says of the dispatches, “ I might have rewritten them, polished their style, put in new facts here and there, and written a narrative of history with a more considered judgement than was possible day to day. But I have thought it best to let them stand as they were written at great speed, sometimes in utter exhaustion of body and brain, but always with the emotion that comes from the hot impress of new and tremendous sensations”.

Gibbs, with his honest dispatches provided the readers of the Daily Chronicle with an accurate picture of what was happening at the Front. For those seeking to understand what it was really like, reading this book will help enormously.

Reviewer: Martin Hornby