Back to the Front recounts a walk along the WWI Western Front, from the Channel coast in Belgium to the Swiss border. This is partially a not bad history (although organized by geography rather than chronologically) and partially author Stephen O’Shea’s travel monologue:


"The icy glares turn the summer morning cold; the animosity is almost palpable … how else could I have offended all of these people? One reason is war; not just the Great War, but every war. This fertile swath of France has known the tramp of armies since its forests were first cleared by the farmers of Gaul. This morning’s route, for example, was not only the trace of the trenches – it also carried Henry IV’s (sic) men to nearby Agincourt in 1415, and who knows how many other wild-eyed armies on their way to binges of the id. … Such a legacy must seep down into some murky collective well, from which people instinctively draw when confronted with the unfamiliar. Here, at the Somme, the well must be bottomless."


The aforesaid bottomless well is difficulty O’Shea overcomes. All wars have their share of military and political stupidity, but WW I must have gotten its own allotment plus all the extra pieces that were left over from the others. The first major battle (we are reminded that the British army lost 7000 men a week during “quiet” periods when there were no major battles) O’Shea walks through is Ypres (in fact, First, Second and Third Ypres, which gives some idea of the futility). The British Army spent weeks dropping shells on the German trenches (107 kilotons, to borrow a term from a later war) then sent soldiers forward through the now explosively impassable terrain, in the rain, in the face of countershelling and machinegun fire. Then they did it again. Then they did it again. And they did it at the Somme. And the French did it at Verdun. And at Chemin des Dames. Thus, the problem is once you get through describing what happened at Ypres (and you’re not even out of Belgium yet) how do you have enough words left to go on without horror overload? Mostly O’Shea avoids this by interspersing his own comments on travel in modern France with the history (as said, mostly; he does run out of unpleasant epithets for Douglas Haig).


O’Shea doesn’t provide any details on tactical engagements – it’s just the big battles. Surprisingly, that makes the book a pretty good history of the Western Front, especially if it’s your first one. Armchair military historians tend to get interested in weapons and tactics, individual battles and unit names; O’Shea’s switching between a walk through peaceful, if not scenic, countryside and a landscape Dante would have rejected for Hell as too implausible gives a perspective that will stay with you through any number of scholarly military histories. ( )

Stephen O'Shea doesn't claim to be a historian. He is up front about his anti-militarism/anti-war stance, but that isn't necessarily unusual for an author writing about war. What makes O'Shea's book stand out from books by historians and scholars is the unique perspective he acquired by walking the length of the Western Front from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. Passchendaele, Ypres, Loos, the Somme, and Verdun are not just dots on a map to O'Shea. He has walked the fields, hills, and trenches where these battles were fought and has seen the remnants of battles that still scar the landscape. Interestingly, military historian John Keegan provided one of the cover blurbers . His history, The First World War, was published a couple of years after O'Shea's book. Maybe O'Shea's observations from the summer he spent walking the Western Front had at least a small influence on Keegan's bestselling history of the war. ( )

3042 Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I, by Stephen O'Shea (read 21 Dec 1997) (Book of the Year) This most excellent book is by a Canadian whose two grandfathers fought in World War One. In 1985 and since O'Shea walked the trenches in France and this is an account of what he saw, combined with an account of the events related to what he saw. He is very anti-war and his condemnation of Haig and other generals is so harsh as to appear over-done. But certainly one can understand his view and it may be totally true. It is amazing how much remains of signs of the war, especially at Verdun. This book tells the story of what he sees so well that it makes for a supremely interesting account. The "Further Reading" notes are priceless. He names The Guns of August, The Price of Glory, and In Flanders Fields (all of which I read and each of which won my Book of the Year award) "a holy trinity of superb popularized histories." This is an assessment with which I totally agree. This has been a great, great book. ( )

Oddly, now that I've been south of Flanders, I like this less. He lost me on the Chemin des Dames. His view just didn't sound the way it actually looked to me. ( )