A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front by Winston Groom Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front
Book Review: Nonfict War Book for female history-lover's reading at pool
Summary: 5 Stars
In response to one of the reviewer's comments that this book "dumbs down" the information, that is what I love about this book. I enjoy history, especially historical fiction, and this book is light enough for me to read at the pool. It's emphasis on how the war affected people makes it more interesting reading for us stereotypical females than many war books(I hated reading Red Badge of Courage in high school). As to the comment that the dumbing down was done to attract American readers, I think that's necessary. Most of us relate to the Revolution, Civil War and WW II, but see WW I as a footnote in history. One of my husband's scientific colleagues in Great Britain assures him that is not the case there! I had absolutely no interest in WW I, even though my grandfather fought in it, until our family went to Yper to see the Cat Parade in 2000. There our daughter(then 4) and I became much more interested in this particular part of WW I. This book is an enjoyable light summer read which will educate many of us about a topic of which we are woefully ignorant.Book Review: Not too deep, but enjoyable and interesting
Summary: 4 Stars
Winston Groom's narrative history about the fighting that centered around the Belgian city of Ypres throughout the First World War is a very good, if pretty light, account of the terrible nature of WWI on the Western Front. While Groom simplifies certain issues and jams into 262 pages events about which volumes have been written, he never fails to bring the reader back to what many people find to be the greatest lesson of Ypres: the terror, wastefulness and outright futility of war.Groom recounts the major details of each major battle around Ypres, primarily from the perspective of the British, whose professional army was virtually annihilated in the first year of fighting. His cheif protagonist is General Sir Douglas Haig, who led the British Army through most of the war. Groom's treatment of haig is pretty fair; he praises the General and faults him when necessary, though most of the other commanders around Ypres are not given the same treatment. They are generally characterized as competent (Plumer) or incompetent (Gough). The German command, as deadly as their defense was against repeated British attacks, are typically considered emotional and less than competent for the job they were sent to do.
In general, Groom doesn't present any new ideas about these men, finding (as many other historians do) fault in the commanders for being uncreative, unrealistic (in that even after years of stalemate, many thought that one great assault could break the enemy lines and win the war) and wasteful, though he does seem to realize that there wasn't much alternative to attrition, and that attrition strategy is what ultimately won the war, albeit at a terrible cost.
Groom does his best work when recounting the plight of the common soldier, particularly the Kitchener armies that manned the front after the British regulars and territorials were ground up by the salient. Their story, and those of their German counterparts (who included many of Germany's college students), shed light on the true tragedy of Ypres. Hundreds of thousands of common men blown to smithereens by artillery or hurled against enemy positions across barely-traversable no-man's land, all while seeing neither gain in ground nor possiblity of survival. Groom's descriptions of the terrible conditions in the salient is amazing, it is described as a place where men lived in mud and filth, the dead lay unburied, all while the high probablity of death by any one of a number of means hung overhead. The personal accounts of soldiers and other personnel (there is one from a woman who sponsored a hospital that was absolutely horrifying) make for some very compelling reading.
The one complaint I have with this book is Groom's willingness to dumb things down, which is possibly an attempt to educate his American audience on matter which they may know little about, but is not at all necessary.
Ultimately, this book is pretty informative. While it is basically the short version of the battle from a military standpoint, it more than makes up for this with its description of life in the trenches and the toll Ypres took on the common soldier.
Book Review: A Decent Narrative With Little Depth
Summary: 2 Stars
Winston Groom may well be a fine novelist (I have never read any other book by him), but as a historian he is lacking. His narrative style is fairly smooth and can be very gripping, but it occasionally stumbles over his often peculiar word choice and several grammatical errors. I often wondered where his editor was."A Storm In Flanders" offers no new perspectives on the war, a point made by another reader review here, but that shouldn't really be an automatic point against it. It is rare to see such a light treatment of so specific a topic. For readers seeking a light overview of the First World War, I most certainly recommend A.J.P. Taylor's "Illustrated History of the First World War" over this.
A true failing here is Groom's undisguised bias that makes an accolade on the back cover of the book about 'even-handedness' laughable. Groom never fails to lump togther every German at the Western Front under the title 'barbarian.' Groom also makes no effort to hide his disdain or admiration for some important figures of the time, and offers the reader little to justify his favoritism.
Groom is at his best when he is describing the conditions of the trenches and the experiences of the individuals, but there's very little of this that isn't just regurgitation from previously published memoirs and journals.
All in all, this book is at best an often entertaining light read, but not for someone seeking an in-depth analysis of the fighting at the Ypres Salient.
Book Review: Ypres Salient
Summary: 5 Stars
I thought this book was excellnet and highly recommand it for anyone intrested in the First World War. It gave equal treatment to the big picture of world statagy and the common infantryman at the front so one could understand what was going on in the larger context of the war. It never fails to amaze me that the useless slaughter was allowed to continue for all those years to really no purpose. When one considers that the British accepted 1,000 casualties a day on the Western Front to be simple "wastage" and calculated this figure into the number of replacements required, its difficult to understand how the army kept fighting. A well written and fast paced book.Book Review: A Battle Too Far
Summary: 2 Stars
How much you enjoy and benefit from this book depends entirely on what you bring to it. If you, as I, are a World War I "buff" and have read just about anything you could get your hands on about the great conflict, it will be a disapppintment. On the other hand, if you are just getting started on the subject and wish a solid overview of the tragic Flanders fighting which devoured more men than any other sector, this may be the book for you. But be warned, Groom's treatment is entirely derivative, obviously relying entirely on secondary sources. Consequently, he offers no fresh insights either into the fighting or the respective strategies behind it and, in general, betrays a relatively amateurish approach to the subject. Overall, a decent stab at a complex story by a non-historian, but one that evidences its author's shortcomings throughout.