"AT THE SHARP END" BY TIM COOK

[jtreve]

A quick search of "Book Reviews" revealed nothing on this volume...if a string already exists, please advise.

This book is new this year and is written by Canadian Great War Historian Tim Cook.

It has taken me a few weeks to move through this book, pausing on occasion to reread a few chapters. Although I am far from well read, I find Cook's blend of first person narrative and dispassionate almost clinical observation very compelling.

His accounts of the Canadian battles at 2nd Ypres, Festubert and St Eloi Craters contain a great amount of detail. The political situation within and around the command structure, the evolution of things from combined arms tactics to field medicine to the personal equipment of a private in the line are all examined.

His exploration of our involvement in the Somme campaign contains a similar wealth of facts and is a very absorbing part of the book. The observation that the Battle of the Somme was a necessary support action to draw enemy resources from the battles at Verdun is one I have read before several time...I would appreciate a recent link to this topic.

Woven everywhere through the historic facts and references are personal accounts from the survivors of those horrors... the history lesson is tempered, made wholly human and all too real.

Ever seeking perspective....

Jake

arte et mart

[Nathan Greenfield]

I am probably a bit biased since Tim is a good friend and, as I mention in my book on 2nd Ypres, Baptism of Fire: The Second Battle of Ypres and the Forging of Canada, April 1915, Tim was extremely helpful, but I feel I can say that his book is a powerful addition to our knowledge both of the Canadian Army in the first half of the war (a second volume is due out next year) and of the first half of the war itself.

As a practioner of the dark art, I am very much impressed by Tim's blending of first person and technical accounts. His writing is vivid and the information he presents on "thematic questions" (e.g. trench raids and medical care) is extremely interesting.

Cheers,

Nathan M. Greenfield

[MartinWills]

Can I also recommend Tim's earlier book on Gas and the CEF (The title eludes me, though I think it was something like "nowhere to run". It had very little exposure in the UK which was sad as it was a brilliant read.

[Nathan Greenfield]

Tim's book is No Place to Run: Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War; it is a most read.

You also might like his Clio's Warriors, which is about the history of Canadian military histories. Both are published by University of British Columbia Press.

N.

[jtreve]

Hi Nathan

In fact I bought both Tim's book and your's at the same time although I have yet to start yours.

As a lay person interested in our military history and having read accounts and republished personal memoirs by many authors, I quickly grew weary of much of the readily available information. I found some of it clinical, biased and presented with way to much late 20th century hindsight. For me, the best and most enlightening reads were those that offered the human aspect solid footing within the raw facts of history.

I have often wondered how historians and authors such as yourselves see your role in presenting our history.... I am gratified to see a movement toward more balanced and humane presentations of our stories. I believe that history must be made real and personal... especially for us who are so far removed from it... if we are to do any service at all to those who gave us the chance.

Looking forward to my next read,

ever seeking perspective.

Jake

arte et marte

[Nathan Greenfield]

Jake:

At this distance, 90 years, I don't think much is gained by reading that the Nth Battalion held out during a 3 hour barrage and then counter-attacked and took position 3545. We know who won WWI --and though we here may debate some of the finer points, we generally know who won each battle. What does matter to me is the human toll. What conditions did the men struggle through? How were they commanded (and by whom)? Who rose to the top and why? What does this last tell us about national character and the human spirit? What went through the minds of the men who unleashed the 1st gas attack --and those who had the presence of mind to pee on their handkerchiefs to survive it? What are the sights and sounds of battle --not for the sake of what might be called "battle pornography" but so that we can understand that battle is not --at the sharp end -- a game of chess.

I hope this list of questions gives some idea of what my aims as an historian are.

Cheers,

Nathan

[AlanCurragh]

Just had an email from Amazon.ca - the second volume of Tim Cook's study of Canadian forces in the Great War has now been published - called "Shock Troops" and covering 1917 and 1918. From Amazon -

"Shock Troops follows the Canadian fighting forces during the titanic battles of Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele, and the Hundred Days campaign. Through the eyes of the soldiers who fought and died in the trenches on the Western Front, and based on newly uncovered Canadian, British, and German archival sources, Cook builds on Volume I of his national bestseller, At the Sharp End. The Canadian fighting forces never lost a battle during the final 2 years of the war, and although they paid a terrible price in the killing fields of the Great War, they were indeed, as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George exclaimed, the shock troops of the Empire."

Alan