Contains: Beaten Down By Blood & Crumps and Camouflets
Crumps And Camouflets
Below the shattered ground that separated the British and German infantry on the Western Front in World War I, an unseen and largely unknown war was raging, fought by miners, tunnellers as they were known. They knew at any moment their lives could be extinguished without warning by hundreds of tonnes of collapsed earth and debris.
Beaten Down By Blood
Beaten Down by Blood: The Battle of Mont St Quentin-Peronne 1918 charts an extraordinary journey from the trenches facing Mont St Quentin on 31 August 1918 through the frenetic phases of the battle until the final objectives are taken on 5 September. This is the story, oftentold in the words of the men themselves, of the capture of the ‘unattackable’ Mont and the ‘invincible’ fortress town of Péronne, two of the great feats of Australian forces in the First World War. The Author places real men on the battlefield, describing their fears and their courage and their often violent deaths. The struggle for control of the battle, to site the guns, to bridge the Somme and maintain communications are portrayed in vivid detail. The story also offers a glimpse of the men’s families at home, their anxiety and their life-long grief.