The Advance From Mons

[SMG65]

For those of you who are interested in personal memoirs I can thoroughly recommend this book.

At present we have a number of books being published from the British perspective, (Diary Of an Old Contemptible, Private 12768, The Crofton Diaries, etc). This book is the personal memoirs of Walter Bloem, a Captain in the German 12th Grenadier Regiment. First printed in 1930 it has now been reprinted by the Helion Library of the Great War. There are plans to print his two other volumes in the future.

He writes about his regiment's mobilisation, advance, fighting the BEF and the German retreat.

His opinion of the British Army before and after meeting them is very interesting,

He writes 'Enemy cavalry were reported in the neighbourhood; English, so it was said. English? Good God! The very thought was enough to make one die with laughter.' and later ' English soldiers? We knew what they looked like by the comic papers, short scarlet tunics with small caps set at an angle on their heads, or bearskins with the chin-strap under the lip instead of under the chin. There was much joking about this, and also about Bismarck's remark of sending the police to arrest the English Army'

You get the impression that this is the general opinion that the German Army holds about the British Army.

However after his unit are badly mauled by the British Army at Tertre his opinion changes: ' Then they apparently did know something about war, these cursed English, a fact soon confirmed on all sides. Wonderful as we marched on, how they had converted every house, every wall into a little fortress: the experience no doubt of old soldiers gained in a dozen colonial wars'

This is an excellent book and gives you an insight into what life was like on the other side of the line.

[andigger]

Is there an ISBN?

Andy

[SMG65]

The ISBN is 1 874622 57 4

SEAN