Victoria Crosses on the Western Front – Continuation of the German 1918 Offensives 24 March-24 July 1918, Paul Oldfield

Victoria Crosses on the Western Front – Continuation of the German 1918 Offensives 24 March-24 July 1918, Paul Oldfield

This is the eighth volumn in Paul Oldfield’s hugely impressive series on the Victoria Cross winners of the First World War, covering the period from the fourth day of the German offensive on the Somme on 24 March 1918 (part of Operation Michael) to the end of the Champagne-Marne offensive in July 1918, the period that saw the Germans come closer to victory than at any time since 1914.

As with each of these volumes, the author starts with a sizable narrative of these battles, which give the context to each Victoria Cross, and details of the actions that won each recipient their award. The initial successes of the repeated German attacks mean that this is a period of open warfare unlike anything seen since 1914. This is followed by a series of biographies in alphabetical order, which trace each recipient’s life and family in some detail.

Over time the books have got longer. The volume covering the period from August 1914 to April 1915 covers 59 VCs in just over 300 pages. The volume on the battle of the Somme covers 51 VCs in just over 500 pages. This volume covers 37 VCs in 750 pages! Both sections of the book have expanded, but it is the biography section that has really ballooned – in the first book each VC winner gets just under three pages, by this volume they each get over ten. In most cases the reason for this is that there is far more information of each recipient’s families – parents, siblings, children, nephews and nieces – and while this is nice to have, it does somewhat hide the material on the actual Victoria Cross recipients. While all of this information is interesting, it would be useful if each biography was more clearly split into ‘family’ and ‘recipient’ sections. For me this makes this book rather too large and unwieldy, and looking at the succeeding volumes I see that the author or his editors have come to the same conclusion, as the remaining volumes are about half this size, and cover much shorter periods and particular periods – the volume on the Battle of Amiens covers the period from 8-13 August 1918 in a much more manageable 288 pages.

Apart from that this is a very impressive book. The amount of research that has gone into the text is staggering – tracing down all of these family connections is clearly a monumental achievement, and the amount of detail of the life of each recipient is very impressive. As with the other entries in the series the idea of splitting the text into a narrative and a biographical section works very well, allowing the narrative to flow. The book is very well illustrated, with useful maps in the narrative and an impressive array of photographs for each biography. This is a very impressive series, and I can’t imagine anyone attempting to repeat the effort!

Chapters
1 – First battles of the Somme 1918 – Subsequent Operations
2 – Battles of the Lys
3 – Stemming the Tide
4 – Return to the Offensive

Author: Paul Oldfield
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 775
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
Year: 2019


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