Bradford Pals

[John W]

Bradford Pals by David Raw

THis arrived this morning, and I have just finished it. For such an anticipated book I was a little disapointed. as with the other books in this series a large amount of the book is given to the creation of the Battalions which is very interesting from a local point of view and to get a feel of the composition. THe time in Egypt is covered followed by a quick chapter on " The international Sportsmen" and later a chapter on "Shot at Dawn"

Perhaps my real disapointment starts from the point where the attack on Serre is described. there is some nice quotes taken from interviews and Oral histories, but ther seems to me to be a lack of narative about what actually happened. It is nice to see in the subsequant chapter that some attempt at analysis of the casualties has been done and this makes intetresting reading as the numbers have been crunched to give some meaningfull statistics. I personally would have liked more to have been made of this section in the book.

The book then takes 50 pages to romp from late 1916 to the end of the war in a superficial haste.

To be fair to the author I suspect the shortcoming in this book are more about limits placed by the publisher and his hope to do a follow up book with some of the medal rolls etc is expressed in the forward. The author has without a doubt ammassed a great deal of information on the subject and spent years researching the book, unfortunatly his best efforts seem to have been frustrated by the publisher and the format of the series.

JOhn

[CROONAERT]

The book then takes 50 pages to romp from late 1916 to the end of the war in a superficial haste.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As you mention , this ,unfortunately, seems to be the case with most of the books in the series which prevents them from being considered as serious battalion histories. However, seeing as most of them ceased to be true "Pals" battalions as such after the Somme battle, maybe it is only right that this is the case?

Dave.

[Bernard_Lewis]

The Swansea Battalion - like many others - did cease to be almost purely 'town' battalions after the Somme. The Swansea Bn suffered 400 casualties out of an attacking contingent of less than 700 at Mametz Wood in 1916. Little wonder that the replacements came from far afield diluting the 'Swansea' element. However, officers remarked that newcomers were seen as 'adopted' sons of the town abd the town authorities took an interest in the doings of its Bn until the end of the war.

Bernard

[bernardmcilwaine]

i bought the above gentlemans book the swansea pals,so if your considering buying it,then you will not have wasted your money,there are the names and addressess of the men in lists at the back,which is a great piece of helpful research material in itself,i am half way through it for the second time,bernard

ps.i am not related to him,ime not his agent,i dont get 10% of sales and i have no connection at all to the author,ime merely saying its very good

[bernardmcilwaine]

john,sorry,i meant to ask if there is a casualty roll in it or perhaps a nominal roll,bernard

[Bernard_Lewis]

Bernard - thanks for the kind words and I am glad you enjoyed the book.

I set out to try and portray the general make up of the battalion, its relationship with the town and the general thrust of the actions it took part in. For the really in depth battle analysis I guess people need to look at the official histories - its the macro versus the micro view of history I think and a Bn's view is necessarily often limited to what the enemy puts in front of it..

Bernard

[harribobs]

at the risk of changing the nature of the thread, i can second Bernards review

[John W]

john,sorry,i meant to ask if there is a casualty roll in it or perhaps a nominal roll,bernard

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I am afraid there is no casualty role or nominal role , which is the part that made others in the series so usefull.

To be fair to the author, I belive he has them, but the change in size from massive book to normal hardback probably means there is a rather big loss in the amount of text that can be put in, the other real loss is the number of photo's.

John

[bernardmcilwaine]

thanks john,ive ordered mine off tom morgan,ime still buying it because i have them all up to now,i think your right about the author,i dont think he would leave one of the important bits out,it sounds like the publishers doing,many thanks,bernard

[Guest david raw]

Bradford Pals by David Raw

THis arrived this morning, and I have just finished it. For such an anticipated book I was a little disapointed. as with the other books in this series a large amount of the book is given to the creation of the Battalions which is very interesting from a local point of view and to get a feel of the composition. THe time in Egypt is covered followed by a quick chapter on " The international Sportsmen" and later a chapter on "Shot at Dawn"

Perhaps my real disapointment starts from the point where the attack on Serre is described. there is some nice quotes taken from interviews and Oral histories, but ther seems to me to be a lack of narative about what actually happened. It is nice to see in the subsequant chapter that some attempt at analysis of the casualties has been done and this makes intetresting reading as the numbers have been crunched to give some meaningfull statistics. I personally would have liked more to have been made of this section in the book.

The book then takes 50 pages to romp from late 1916 to the end of the war in a superficial haste.

To be fair to the author I suspect the shortcoming in this book are more about limits placed by the publisher and his hope to do a follow up book with some of the medal rolls etc is expressed in the forward. The author has without a doubt ammassed a great deal of information on the subject and spent years researching the book, unfortunatly his best efforts seem to have been frustrated by the publisher and the format of the series.

JOhn

[Guest david raw]

You are right about the commercial limitations imposed by publishers. What was a book of 450 pages was cut to 320 pages simply because the price for the hardback would have been £ 40 instead of £ 25. It's always going to be a no win situation on what is left out and what is included but Pen & Sword could not go beyond 320 pages on commercial grounds. Nevertheless, I'm happy with the reviews it has received.

We are hoping to produce a companion edition follow up with muster rolls, medal rolls, casualty list , index to the main book and of course many more maps and photographs..

It's impossible to produce a general narrative about the murderous chaos and confusion at Serre simply because of the nature of the event itself - it was chaotic and it was confused. In a matter of minutes two previously quite well organised battalions were reduced from coherent units to dead, wounded or shaken individuals by a combination of (especially) heavy artillery fire from Pusieux and machine gun fire from the Quadrilateral.

David Raw