Description: The First World War was an unprecedented crisis, with communities and societies enduring the unimaginable hardships of a prolonged conflict on an industrial scale. In Belgium and France, the terrible capacity of modern weaponry destroyed the natural world and exposed previously held truths about military morale and tactics as falsehoods. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers suffered some of the worst conditions that combatants have ever faced. How did they survive? What did it mean to them? How did they perceive these events? Whilst the trenches of the Western Front have come to symbolise the futility and hopelessness of the Great War, Alex Mayhew shows that English infantrymen rarely interpreted their experiences in this way. They sought to survive, navigated the crises that confronted them, and crafted meaningful narratives about their service. Making Sense of the Great War reveals the mechanisms that allowed them to do so.
Brief description: Alex Mayhew is Assistant Professor in Modern European History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Review Quotes: 'The book is well researched, accessible and scholarly. Its conclusions are provocative ... it is a major contribution and deserves to stand in the canon ... as a 'standard work' on the morale of the British soldier in the Great War.' Tom Thorpe, The Western Front Association