Andrew MacDonald: On my way to the somme

I remember them at Anzac Day parades. The World War 1 veterans, survivors of some of military history's greatest botch-ups, vigorous and upright, men (hardly any women) still with decades of life before them.

So we need books like Andrew MacDonald's, not to maintain any beliefs in glory, patriotism, courage, but to remind us of those botch-ups and their equivalents 90 years on.

In our national mythology, the Battle of the Somme remains a sideshow compared to Gallipoli. Yet Major-General Andrew Russell's NZ Division suffered over 50 per cent casualties during its 23-day involvement in September 1916: 2111 killed; 5848 wounded.

When the Division moved to the Somme, it seemed a welcome relief from the gory grind around Armentieres. The troops were in poor condition, so Russell "culled" them with route marches and courts-martial. Eight death sentences were passed; one was carried out.

It was a civilian army: "a motor agent from Carterton ... the Nelson schoolteacher ... a farmer from Riverton". Yet it fought sternly in the attacks where men were instructed to walk briskly across the gently sloping fields towards German barbed wire and machine-gun nests, breaking into a jog as they neared enemy trenches. Cheering was forbidden.

The results were always bloody and frequently disastrous. MacDonald moves steadily through the killing sites of High Wood, Switch Trench, Goose Alley, Gird Trench. The frightening fragile tanks make their appearance. The fog of war is compellingly described.

The Wellington-based journalist focuses on first sources where possible, right up to his closing account of post-war years for those who survived. So there's a good balance of overview

and minutiae. Interviews, letters, personal diaries, see soldiers — such as Cantabrian Harry Baverstock and Oswald Burnet, the "religious rifleman" who tried not to swear in battle — build into individuals.

MacDonald is meticulous in his treatment of cowardice, incompetence, the killings of German prisoners.

He neatly places events on the Somme against the background of Verdun bloodshed and Russian

Front chaos.

He lapses into faux-lyricism a few times, is tempted by hyped-up present tense, gets bogged

down occasionally in battle details, just as the

participants were. But he evokes the emotional and material immensity of the Somme and the war splendidly, and his narrative is steadily respectful and compassionate towards the men who fill it. Bring on his second book.

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.
* Harper Collins, $35