Philip Gibbs was one of five official British war correspondents during WWI who spent his time observing various battlefields and the effects the fighting had on the men.
I think the best way to describe this book is to use the author's own words, found at about 92% of the way through: "I have here and in other books shown the light as well as the shade in which our men lived, the gaiety as well as the fear they had, the exultation as well as the agony of battle, the spiritual ardor of boys as well as the brutality of the task that was theirs." It says it all.
At 644 pages, it's a bit long, and I felt it. Being a journalist, I understood where the long-windedness came from, but there was some repetition in there and a bit of rambling. I had some trouble getting through some of it. On the other hand, it gave me a real insight into how the war affected a lot of different kinds of people: from civilians to officers to infantry. At the end, Gibbs also spends a little time talking about the aftermath of the war and how coming home wasn't a homecoming for everyone.
With the amount of disgust I felt coming from Gibbs regarding the first World War, I kept wondering how he would have felt about the second one. This book was written in 1919, when the wounds were still fresh, and minds hadn't recovered. As I neared the end of the book, I found a quote that gave me a glimpse of what he might've thought: "They will have been betrayed if the agony they suffered is forgotten and "the war to end war" leads to preparations for new, more monstrous conflict." Gibbs died in 1962, and he must've been so disappointed with the way the world turned out. If you want a thorough overview of what it was like for different people during WWI, this is a great place to start. Good Book!
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