The Western Front 1914 - 1918

[Roxy]

I have just finished reading this. Whilst it will not be to everyone's taste - it is of the Revisionist school regarding Haig - I found it very easy to read. I am certain that a large number of Pals will already have read it (it was first published in 1964); to those who may not have, I commend it.

Roxy

[Chris_Baker]

In my opinion, far and away the leading military historian of his time. And a very interesting and engaging bloke too. I was among those privileged to know him from my time as Chairman of the WFA.

[Crunchy]

Roxy,

Good to see Terraine being raised. I would think that it would not be to the taste of those who have pre-conceived ideas and who are not prepared to consider another view or understand the practicalities of trying to conduct offensives on the Western Front.

Terraine was the first historian I read who actually analysed issues and came to well founded conclusions that challenged the myths of more shallowly based accounts. His The Smoke and The Fire certainly destroyed a number of myths and showed that certain claims denigrating Haig were based on utterly false statements. He was a fine historian who changed my views.

Cheers

Chris

[centurion]

Read the book as a student when it was first published in paperback (still have the copy). It was subjected to a degree of ridicule at the time from a number of academic sources who regarded the traditional view of working class lions led to their deaths by upper class donkeys as sacrosanct and not to be questioned under pain of some tutorial fatwah for intellectual blasphemy. If anything this encouraged me to take Terraine's views quite seriously.

[MartH]

He was also a very fine Nelson expert, and his book on the subject, although good would have been very much better written if in the style of his later excellent books on U Boats "Business in Great Waters", and the RAF, "The Right of the Line", but I had several wonderful discussions with him about Collingwoods' copy of "Signals and Fighting Instruction's, 1799". The sequence of signal orders for Trafalgar he could quote from memory, explaining there significance, with great enjoyment.

He also loved finding out new things, I once caused him to research (or his researcher) why the Germans used drop tanks with the Condor Legion in Spain, but not in the "Battle of Britain", something which he loved to understand.

Greatly missed,

Mart