A War in Words

Svetlana Palmer, Sarah Wallis

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780743469067
• eBook ISBN: 9781471136801
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

' Deeply moving … A haunting and mesmeric work full of courage, poignancy, pain and love ' Max Arthur 16th April, 1917 France
My dear Mother. I can only write a short letter this time, but hope I will be able to do so soon. I have not written a letter for over a week and a half as I have been in the trenches for 9 days, and it is impossible to write up there. You have no doubt heard before this of the big advance of the Canadians and the capture of Vimy Ridge. I was in the whole of that battle and it was Hell.
A War in Words is the compelling and moving story of the First World War told through the letters and diaries of its participants -- whether men experiencing combat first hand in the muddy trenches of the Somme, women fighting the war at home or children writing about their hopes and fears for the future as war looms. Told from many different perspectives and featuring contributions from soldiers on both sides of the war, from the testimony of a Serbian teenager, one of Franz Ferdinand's assassins, to the final entry from a French soldier as he revisits a battlefield in 1919, A War in Words provides intimate and honest insights into the lives of those caught up in the horrors and tragedies of the First World War.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Foreword by Professor Hew Strachan
• Preface
• 1 The First Shots 28th JUNE–30th JULY 1914
• 2 Setting off to the Front AUGUST 1914–JANUARY 1915
• 3 Children at War AUGUST 1914–SEPTEMBER 1915
• 4 The Siege of Przemysl OCTOBER 1914–JUNE 1915
• 5 The Eastern Front JANUARY–DECEMBER 1915
• 6 Gallipoli APRIL–DECEMBER 1915
• 7 A Vertical War MAY–AUGUST 1915
• 8 In the Bush NOVEMBER 1914–OCTOBER 1916
• 9 The Somme and Verdun MAY 1916–APRIL 1917
• 10 Empires at War 1914–1917
• 11 The War at Sea SEPTEMBER 1914–DECEMBER 1917
• 12 In Captivity JUNE 1916–AUGUST 1918
• 13 The Brown Shirt and the Red Commissar MARCH 1916–MARCH 1918
• 14 The Final Push DECEMBER 1917–AUGUST 1918
• 15 Victory and Defeat OCTOBER 1918–MARCH 1919
• Postscript
• A Note on the Sources
• Endnotes