Tommy At War

Shares excerpts from the personal diaries and photographs of British soldiers to depict the daily life of a Tommy in the trenches between 1914 and 1918.

The First World War has left an almost indelible mark on history, with battles such as the Somme and Passchendaele becoming watchwords for suffering unsurpassed. The dreadful fighting on the Western Front, and elsewhere in the world, remains vivid in the public imagination. Over the years dozens of books have been published dealing with the soldier's experience, the military history and the weapons and vehicles of the war, but there has been little devoted to the objects associated with those hard years in the trenches. This book (new in paperback) redresses that balance. With hundreds of carefully captioned photographs of items that would have been part of the everyday life for the British Tommy; from recruiting posters, uniforms and entrenching equipment to games, postcards and pieces of 'trench art', this book brings to life the experience of the Great War soldier through the objects with which he would have been surrounded.

The image of the innocent British soldier (or Tommy) setting off with a spring in his step in 1914 to fight the Great War would not last long.Indeed that initial euphoria would soon give way to a deep-seated bitterness as these young men endured the horror of the First World War.In a new edition of this extraordinary book, the uncensored letters, diaries, documents and many photographs tell the story of the British soldier (nicknamed Tommy) in their own words.While there are flashes of their wit and humour, the overwhelming feeling is that of a generation who felt let down by their superiors and left to perish.There are visceral, terrifying insights into life in the trenches and agonising descriptions of the squalor and privations of war.This haunting account also looks at the aggressive drive to recruit more soldiers through the Pals Battalion or Chums Battalion. Friends from the same town or village; professional bodies, or work colleagues among others were encouraged to enlist en masse. They would fight together alongside their friends or colleagues. Many of them would sadly die together and leave communities wild with grief for a lost generation, robbed of a future having barely had a past.With a concise analysis of the British Army in the First World War, we are reminded of the terror of war, the fury, the fear and the frustration of what has been described by some as a war typified by the devastating assessment: lions led by donkeys.

On the centenary of the Great War comes this poignant look at fifty objects never far from Tommy's side – official uniform, good-luck charms, phrasebooks, a sweetheart's letter, some unexpected and others more familiar. With sumptuous original photography and thoughtful text, this is life as the ordinary First World War soldier knew it. Inside front: What Tommy Took To War tells sobering, fascinating stories that bring the ordinary Tommy's experiences back to life with poignant immediacy. With striking original photography by Chris Foster and expert text from noted historian Peter Doyle, it looks in detail at fifty objects that Tommy would have had in his kit and which would have accompanied, equipped and comforted him during his wartime ordeals: official uniform, training manual, cigarettes, good-luck charms, sweethearts' letters, foreign phrasebook and myriad others. Together, these artefacts give us a serious and informative, yet touching and even occasionally amusing, picture of the ordinary soldier's experience of the First World War.

The extraordinary diaries of Thomas Cairns Livingstone represent twenty years of gorgeously idiosyncratic daily records of a middle-class Glasgow household, over a period spanning shortly before the Great War to the early 1930s.

"I found to my delight that I had stumbled across a kind of soup kitchen. The Tommy in charge was stirring a copperful of ‘Shackles’ (soup made from the very dregs of army cooking and stirred with a stick). I must have looked in need of extra nourishment for he said ‘D’yer want a drop, son?’ ‘Yes please’ I replied if you can spare it.’ The warmth and zest from that beefy liquid, unexpected as it was, compelled me to accept a second bowlful which I drank with the same enthusiasm as the first." - George Coppard, from With A Machine Gun to Cambrai. From bully beef to Tickler’s jam, explore what kept Tommy Atkins fed in the trenches by reading recipes and learning how meals were made just yards from the enemy. In this book Andrew Robertshaw combines history, recipes and historical experiments to reveal how Army Cooks in the First World War fed millions of men everyday against the odds.

The extraordinary diaries of Thomas Cairns Livingstone represent twenty years of gorgeously idiosyncratic daily records of a middle-class Glasgow household, over a period spanning shortly before the Great War to the early 1930s.

From Ammo to Zig-Zag, many of the words we use today were invented in World War 1. They provide a unique insight into the experience of the war, and the inventiveness and humour of ordinary soldiers.