A joint operation between Britain and France in 1916, the Battle of the Somme was an attempt to gain territory and dent Germany's military strength. By the end of the action, very little ground had been won: the Allied Forces had made just 12 km. For this slight gain, more than a million lives were lost. There were more than 400,000 British, 200,000 French, and 500,000 German casualties during the fighting. Twelve Days on the Somme is a memoir of the last spell of front-line duty performed by the 2nd Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. Written by Sidney Rogerson, a young officer in B Company, it gives an extraordinarily frank and often moving account of what it was really like to fight through one of the most notorious battles of the First World War. Its special message, however, is that, contrary to received assumptions and the popular works of writers like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, men could face up to the terrible ordeal such a battle presented with resilience, good humour and without loss of morale. This is a classic work whose reprinting is long overdue. This edition includes a new introduction by Malcolm Brown and a foreword by Rogerson's son Commander Jeremy Rogerson. AUTHOR: Sidney Rogersonwas born in Suffolk in 1894. After World War I, he worked in public relations, first with the Federation of British Industries, and later with ICI. He died in 1968. MALCOLM BROWN is the author of many books, including T. E. Lawrence in War and Peace (Greenhill), and The Letters of T. E. Lawrence. REVIEWS: ?Sidney Rogerson has put down, plainly and simply, the experiences of his battalion. There is no attempt to compass drama by any device of selection or exaggeration' ? The Observer ?A more genuine and unbiased account of trench warfare would be hard to find' ? The Sunday Times ILLUSTRATIONS: 3 photos
