The opening line of this work is "The New Zealanders were on a roll". Oh, dear. Hey Daddy-o, how will that sound in ten years time? I suppose if you are writing a work of entertainment rather than history, aimed at those who wish to be entertained rather than learn anything or have access to factual information, then such phraseology is acceptable.
I was rather put on my guard by the title of the book and also (and not for the first time) by the publisher's breathless and giddy press release. "Drunken Allied troops were raping the prostitutes"; "German soldiers raped and shot by the French"; and, most laughably of all, "The Germans always denied that they were transporting their own dead to a factory to be melted down for soap. The suspicion remains that they were doing exactly that". What scurrilous, utter, rubbish. This myth was dispelled during the war itself. But I can't blame the author for this. His book does actually attempt to cover more of the events of 1918 than these carefully chosen, titillating scenes.
Best's book is a day by day account from 4 November, leading up to the Armistice. The style will be very familiar to anyone who has read the works of Cornelius Ryan: little vignettes, zipping from man in a trench, to a General in a chateau, to a factory worker in the Bronx; that kind of thing. It is undeniably pacy and engaging. The vignettes are in the main lifted from works that may be familiar to readers of this review, for they include Herbert Sulzbach's "With the German guns", Stephen Graham's "A Private in the Guards" and Vera Brittain's "Testament of youth". There is a list of documents, private papers and war diaries from the IWM, Liddle collection and National Archives added to the bibiliography so we can assume that the research consisted of more than a trip to Waterstone's, but it is very difficult to tell as the author has maintained strict secrecy and provides no references to specific quotations.
Let's now examine the closing line. "Those wretched Jews. They would have to pay for what they had done ...". Oh dear, oh dear.
Tell you what. If you have £20 to spend, you would be 1000% better off with Herbert Sulzbach's "With the German guns", Stephen Graham's "A Private in the Guards" or Vera Brittain's "Testament of youth".
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