My
own first faltering steps at making tours of the battlefields
of the Great War were taken with a copy
of Rose Coombs seminal work, "Before Endeavours
Fade". At the time, it was just about the only battlefield
tour guide and with revisions it has deservedly managed
to retain its popularity for amateur battlefield tourists
to this day. In recent years, the Battleground Europe
series has added hugely to the availability of simple
but highly informative pocket sized guides that allow
one to progress from the first visit, to detailed studies
of particular actions and locations, and even extended
walks across fields full of significance. Tonie and Valmai
Holt have already published a fine series of guides to
the Ypres, Somme and other areas, so I must admit on
first hearing of this book to questioning whether another
guide book was really necessary. I am glad to say that
I believe "The Western Front - North" is a
good and worthwhile book, sure to find an important place
in the market.
The
book does not set out to give the visitor a step-by-step "turn
left here, turn right there" route around the
battle sites, but instead provides clear maps of a
given area, and goes on to describe the key locations,
providing some splendid photographs of each. The visitor
can easily construct their own itinerary from the riches
shown.
The guide does not take us out into the fields and
woods to get a feel of the ground, but focuses sharply
on the lasting visible legacies - cemeteries, memorials,
museums, bunkers, and so on. As such, the utility of
the book for the seasoned battlefield tourist would
probably be rather limited, but for the fact that it
covers some of the lesser known battlefields of northern
France and Flanders. Not too many go beyond Ypres and
the Somme; this book takes us into Loos, Aubers, Vimy
Ridge, Arras and other places of memory. For the first-timer,
I can think of no better presentation of the main sites.
There are some surprises. The 1915
battlefields of Artois - hugely important for the
French army - receive
very little coverage, for example. But this is balanced
by an excellent section of the little understood area
of the River Yser, the calvary of the Belgian army
for so long during the war.
The list of sites mentioned is bang up to date, with
recent discoveries and developments being covered.
Inevitably such a work is out of date almost as soon
as published, but I have no doubt that things will
be kept fresh with sucessive reprints, as this book
is bound to become a standard work on the subject.
The maps, photographs and text are models of clarity,
and I could find no obvious errors or omissions of
historical fact. Then again, with the Holt's having
been at the forefront of commercialising battlefield
tourism for many years, I would have been surprised
had I found any.
The
book is nicely produced, and at £14.99 respresents
good value. No doubt that after a couple of good
trips it would become grubby and dog-eared, but my
copy was
pretty robust and unlikely to fall to bits on the
windswept Flanders Plain.
Overall, a good buy for armchair tourists, first timers
and tour veterans alike. |
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