Somme Mud

[Guest]

Last Friday I was able to pay my respects at the 1^ST AIF Division Memorial just outside Pozieres while driving home from Amiens. Alone on the observation platform above the Gibraltar Redoubt looking out towards Thiepval on a crystal clear spring day quietly contemplating the sacrifice of the AIF this book and its irritating inconsistencies kept intruding on my thoughts.

Quiet contemplation is very difficult to achieve at the best of times on the Somme these days. Albert was full of coaches and there were six more at the Lochnagar Crater, which as anyone who has visited there will know is an impossible situation. Looking out across the Somme Valley coach after coach of school children roared past on the way to Thiepval and the shiny new visitor centre. There were no Australian children to pay their respects at the AIF Memorial, which was deserted. An Australian newspaper review reported Somme Mud is in its sixth reprint, was being snapped up by schools.

The fact it is going on High School reading lists surely is another reason for trying to establish we can trust 'Somme Mud' and that it is in the correct category of Great War literature.

Ken

I was going to try and answer some of your points until I came to the above.

Your school children do not have to spend thousands of dollars and travel 16,000 plus miles to get to the Somme.

Australian school children do go over, if their parents and schools have the resources for such an expensive undertaking.

I suspect you are are baiting or other, either way.......

After reading many accounts of soldiers, their histories and letters, I would totally agree with historian Professor Bill Gammage in his forward of Somme Mud.

Kim

[kenf48]

Whoa! Hang on a minute I said this was about the book, I'm not baiting anyone.

However in an earlier post you accused me of having a go at the AIF and the quote above was included just for your benefit to demonstrate that I do have the greatest respect for their sacrifice and acknowledge the relative mentioned in your signature. I don't know if you have had the opportunity to visit Pozieres but to see the remains of the dugout which so many died trying to capture and where their valiant attack faltered a few thousand metres from Thiepval Memorial where the 1st Division was to have linked up with other Units, gives an appreciation of that sacrifice no book can achieve.

The point you make is exactly the one that I was making that of the thousands of children who visit the Somme, and at the main sites many enlightened schools leave tributes, none are Australian. It is a blinding statement of the 'flaming' (to quote Longun, nobody really swears in Somme Mud) obvious it's a long way.

You seem to disagree but I think we have a duty to the veterans and the children who cannot visit these sites to ensure those accounts are as honest as the memorials on the Somme, which they cannot visit.

Ken

[Guest KevinEndon]

Ken, have you read the follow up book "In the footsteps of Private Lynch". I believe its out in April in the U.K. If you haven't read it please do as it points out a good few innacurracies within Somme Mud where it would appear that some of the stories written may well have came from the war diaries or from friends memories rather than from Lynch being there himself.

As for the number of coaches in Albert and at Lochnagar, I think the more the merrier, proving that the younger generation of today will at the going down of the sun remember them.

Kevin

[kenf48]

Thanks Kevin,

I'm intrigued and will look out for it, I'd like to know more about Edward Lynch having read his service record.

You have to admire the marketing though - publish a sequel to correct an inaccurate original;-)

Ken

(As for the other point I wasn't complaining, it was good to see a coachload of 15 yo all quietly paying attention as their guide put Lochnagar in context, but I do have a covering of creamy Somme dust on my drive from cleaning the car after going agricultural to avoid their coaches at various locations!)

[john jerome mcmanus]

"I'm intrigued and will look out for it, I'd like to know more about Edward Lynch having read his service record.

You have to admire the marketing though - publish a sequel to correct an inaccurate original;-)

Ken

(As for the other point I wasn't complaining, it was good to see a coachload of 15 yo all quietly paying attention as their guide put Lochnagar in context, but I do have a covering of creamy Somme dust on my drive from cleaning the car after going agricultural to avoid their coaches at various locations!)

Ken,

I have been watching your responses to posts about 'Somme Mud' with some consternation!

It appears that you have not been following this thread and its allied one 'In the Footsteps of Private Lynch' with any devotion.

I may agree with you that 'Somme Mud' is a recollection of memories of a soldier of the AIF that does not confirm that he was present at engagements professed.

This does not preclude, however, that it may have been a collaborative work i.e. written by the author in conjunction with, or utilising a collective re-telling of individual experiences.

The editor of 'Somme Mud', Will Davies, I have met and spoken to on several occassions and I was present at a library meeting where he unofficially launched his sequel. I would like to point out that whilst he was editing the former he was also taking notes that would enable him to write the latter that could lay aside or answer some of the doubts that you have raised as to the authenticity of Lynch's "memoirs'.

'Somme Mud' has been compared with Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" and it is in this genre that I believe that it should remain.

Regards

Pop

(Sean McManus)

ps

I hope that somme mud or dust did not unduly spoil your trip while avoiding children being educated about the Great War.

[Sapper Will]

Does this book or "In the Footsteps of Private Lynch" discuss the Americans serving with the Aussies?

[Waddell]

Does this book or "In the Footsteps of Private Lynch" discuss the Americans serving with the Aussies?

Will,

"In the footsteps..." does mention the 33rd American Division. Briefly (one page) talks about them arriving at Vaire-sur-Corbie in May and joining Australian battalions for training and time in the frontline.

Might be worth your while posting for other sources on the Americans. Les Carlyon's The Great War talks about events in a little more detail. I haven't seen anything written specifically about this topic but others may be able to help you more.

Scott

[Sapper Will]

Will,

"In the footsteps..." does mention the 33rd American Division. Briefly (one page) talks about them arriving at Vaire-sur-Corbie in May and joining Australian battalions for training and time in the frontline.

Might be worth your while posting for other sources on the Americans. Les Carlyon's The Great War talks about events in a little more detail. I haven't seen anything written specifically about this topic but others may be able to help you more.

Scott

Thanks. I'm researching a U.S. regiment that did all of its fighting attached to the British and Australians. There are quite a few good sources out there on relations between the three nations' fighting men. The consensus seems to be that the Yanks had an often tense relationship with the British but were very fond of the Diggers--sometimes embarrassingly so!

Here is a very detailed article: http://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j35/blair.asp

[Waddell]

That's a great article Will. I noticed the author refers to quite a few accounts as sources. I still think it would be worth your while posting a separate request for info regarding other accounts. There are plenty of other Australians on the forum who may be able to help.

It was an interesting relationship between the Aussies and the Doughboys. I have a 30th Division tunic I picked up out here last year.

I often wonder if it was sent back by a digger.

Regards,

Scott

[kenf48]

An excellent and well researched article - an antidote to the populist and superficial Somme Mud - thanks for posting

Dr Peter Pedersen in his 'Anzac From Gallipoli to the Western Front' also discusses the relationship and attitudes between soldiers of the three (sorry don't forget the Scots!) four nations although the posted article covers the issues in much greater depth.

Worthy of a separate thread imho.

Ken

[Guest]

Ken,

A memoir written by a soldier who served in the trenches, and a paper written by a senior historian at the Australian War Memorial, who has at his finger tips, a multitude of reference material, 90 odd years on, can hardly be compared.

I would suggest that your description of the soldier's memoirs as " populist and superficial" is at the least, disrespectful, and at the worst, ignorant.

Your words imply that you hold yourself above all that served in the Great War, and have such great knowledge of what happened in the trenches, that you can condemn the soldier's memoirs to be "populist and superficial".

I would say that Peter Pederson would never presume as much as you do.

I did try to point out to you that Bill Gammage wrote the forward to this book, and yet you seem to have overlooked that point.

So, going by the general thrust of your points, all the letters home, all the words recorded by the soldier's that served, and those written after the war, are "populist and superficial". ?

After all, in 2009, who is to judge if what they did and what they saw and what they recorded, was truth or not thruth??

Were you there?

What is your take on Her Privates We, All's Quiet, and Carrying On - After the First Hundred Thousand?

All "populist and superficial"?? Or what about Sassoon and other poets? Were they superficial?

Or were the words written by men trying to explain the pain, suffering and degredation of man in a war that broke new boundaries, and who tried to communicate the experiences that these men lived through, and were lucky enough to survive?

You might try to remember, when you read about the Anzacs, that they were all volunteers.

And died in their thousands, ............one might ask, ........for what?

So that many years down the track, some who think they know better than those who served, can slur their service?

You might bother to read up on the fronts they served on, and the battle honours attributed to them.

They did not skulk in the rear lines.

Yours sincerely

Kim

[stephen p nunn]

Somme Mud is the title of the recently published war memoirs of Pte Edward Francis Lynch of the 45th Infantry Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, edited by Will Davies and published by Random House; ISBN 1 74166 547 7. Lynch filled some 20 school notebooks with his memories in the 1920s, probably as a way of coming to terms with his experiences on the Western Front, where he was involved in the later stages of The Somme, Messines, Third Ypres and the German offensives of 1918.

The book is a lively read, and a fascinating insight into the sometimes violent world of the ordinary digger. There are a number of good photographs. Unfortunately, Lynch refers to many of his contemporaries by nicknames, and the dates of particular actions aren't always recorded, something that can be slightly annoying. However, the omissions are quite understandable, given the circumstances in which he wrote. Some of the comments made are slightly less than politically correct, when read from a 21st century perspective, but they reflect the attitudes of the times.

I found it interesting to look up Pte Lynch's records at the AWM and National Archives, and to then relate the information therein to the episodes in the book.

The recommended retail price in Australia is $34.95, but I bought my copy in K-Mart for $22.70, which made it excellent value!

I think that anyone who is interested in the Great War as experienced by an infantryman will find this well worth reading.

Gareth

I really enjoyed this book. My wife bought it for me for Christmas (as a remainder for £4) and I got so into it that I used to dream of being in the trenches!

Good stuff!

SPN

Maldon

[kenf48]

I did try to point out to you that Bill Gammage wrote the forward to this book, and yet you seem to have overlooked that point.

Professor Bill Gammage is an eminent and nationally honoured Australian author and historian, I agree his critical opinion and academic independence must be respected and accept it has inestimably more weight than mine. I have no expectation a publisher will offer me a consultancy fee to endorse their product.

In his short foreword Professor Gammage makes a clear distinction between Remarque and Lynch, and in doing so unequivocally says, ‘Somme Mud’ is “a memoir built on a wartime diary and a unit history”. The latter is certainly true but there is no evidence Lynch kept a diary. In the preface Will Davies, the editor, says that in his lifetime Lynch claimed Nulla was ‘based on a mate’, a common fictional device. We are also told the original exercise books were written in 1921 and asked to accept Lynch used ‘Nulla’ to distance himself from his experience. All this may be true, it may not, it is only speculation, we will never know.

A few years later the exercise books were typed up by the author for submission to publishers, how many revisions were made before he finally gave up and put it to one side? Finally, over 20 years after his death the manuscript was edited and abridged by another editor, Will Davies. If we accept what we’re told at face value then it may be the basis for a cracking good yarn, (a populist sentiment if I ever heard one) and like the best fiction potentially offer insights into an experience, but how can that be described as a diary?

Incidentally wasn’t Professor Gammage an adviser for the 1981 film ‘Gallipoli’. As I recall this film was about loss of innocence among a group of athletic, desperately keen but naive Australian volunteers and centred on the story of the young, sensitive Archie and his special friend, Frank, the ‘larrikin’ character, (Mel Gibson playing to type) together with their mates, including the inevitable ‘Snowy’. In the film women are available for sex and casual racism is displayed towards traders in the Egyptian market. On landing Archie is asked to become a runner, a pivotal role in any drama, but he asks that Frank is given the job. The battle scenes imply the British troops were lazing on the beach, while their tea drinking, dithering and incompetent officers ordered the Light Horse to sacrifice themselves in a futile and suicidal attack on the Turks to protect their landing at Suvla Bay No doubt directorial embellishment of the story to support the drama was more important than historical accuracy.

Hang on, runner, cultural stereotypes, assertion of white male identity, Snowy, incompetent British officers, film…isn’t this sounding a little familiar.

Ken

[john jerome mcmanus]

You are really spoiling for a fight mate!

Pop

[Matt Dixon]

Time out please. Everyone calm down and take a step back, or this thread will get canned.

[Nayles]

I have read and am more than happy to take 'Somme Mud' at face value. Nothing contained therein puts me off, in fact I felt that the language and how it is used was very authentic for a memoir from the period. I especially like memoirs that highlight the largely unsung hero - The Linesman.

Galipoli, whilst a brilliant film, does give the impression of 'Hollywood Treatment' on occasions and from time to time there is a nasty whiff of Gibsonesque anti-British sentiment (Let's face it, he has achieved something of a track record subsequently). However I've never felt that these minor niggles really detracted from the impact such a beautifully made film has.

The Australians are suitably proud of the efforts of their forces in WW1 - a pride bought with blood that will always be defended with the usual Aussie vigour. (Quite right too!)

'Somme Mud' is one of the best personal memoirs I have ever read... and just as in the case of my favourite memoir from WW2 (Guys Sajer's 'The Forgotten Soldier') I'm confident that the detractors will not prevail.

[Steven Broomfield]

I don't read ken's original comments as "detracting". The point, as I see it, is this: is Somme Mud a novel, a memoir, or something in-between?

Mention has been made of The Middle Parts of Fortune, which is a novel based on personal experience: probably the best work of fiction on the Great War. All Quiet ..., too, is fiction based on personal memoir. No-one disparages those books for that fact.

I suspect there is a deal of re-working in Somme Mud; the time the author spent on it, the period over which it gestated, all tend me to that opinion.

I don't see Ken as trying to disparage the book, or the Aussies - just raising a valid point about how literal we should be when reading the book.

For what it's worth, I think it's an excellent book, and I would recommend it to anyone, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ask valid questions about the background to it. Is it fact, is it fiction, is it somewhere in between? I don't know is the straight answer, but please don't necessarily jump to the conclusion I'm disparaging anything.

[truthergw]

I've never read the book and I am fairly certain I won't. I don't have time to read everything I would like to and personal memoirs are one genre I have given up. I have read the thread for the first time today and it seems to me that there was and is an awful lot of leaping to the defence of something that wasn't being attacked. Ken raised a valid question. I notice that there has been very little attempt to answer it. It so happens that manyy personal memoirs have had this type of criticism levelled at them. Graves, Sassoon, Remarque and Junger and more. The question has been raised as to the historical accuracy of their writing and it is a legitimate query. Any book can be criticised from a multitude of aspects. This book has been praised for conveying an accurate sense of what the Digger thought and how he spoke. It is also criticised as not being a true representation of how they spoke. That deserves to be discussed openly and with rational argument. The references to Americans and British, vis-a-vis Americans and Anzacs sounds a bit artificial. There was never a British soldier went to war. English, Irish, Welsh and Scots in plenty but not a Britisher among them. I wouldn't be surprised if there were no Anzacs but only Australians and New Zealanders.

[Nayles]

Apologies if I have caused anyone offence.

It was just my perception that some people were questioning the assertion that 'Somme Mud' is in fact a reliable memoir in favour of it being 'faction' or even complete fiction. This ranks as detraction to my mind. Some might use a softer term but at the end of the day this boils down to mere semantics.

A definition of the verb to detract:

"To reduce the value, importance, or quality of something.", "to make (something) seem less good, valuable, or impressive".

So hopefully you can see that I wasn't using the term in order to be offensive.

[Guest KevinEndon]

My 17 year old son is not one for big words so I will quote him after he read Somme Mud

"That's dead brilliant".

Pop's answer could have came right out of the book itself. "You are really spoiling for a fight mate!"

Pop

naughty but funny

Kevin

[john jerome mcmanus]

G'day Kevin,

Thanks for the backhanded compliment.

I have already sent a post to the Mods suggesting that I may have been 'naughty' but stand on my digs in giving Somme Mud all praise.

I have also suggested that all posts relating to 'Somme Mud', 'In the Footsteps of Private Lynch' and those of the editor/author be combined so that a hub can be established to further debate the issues raised about these works.

Regards

Pop

(Sean McManus)

[southerncross116]

I think it is more interesting that the really juvenile racist stuff is pretty much only limited to the first chapter or so and then drops away to nothing; if one can take the editor at their word about how they edited things, then that to me indicated the author maturing to the point where that stuff was not really all that important in the larger scheme of actually trying not to die in the war.

[cypresslodge]

An Australian website - http://www.booktopia.com.au/ now has this book on special for $8.37 AUD for those interested in purchasing the book.

Having just finished Somme Mud, I think its well worth reading.

Cheers

Sharon

[phil andrade]

At the risk of spoiling the party, I have to say that I suspect that there is exageration in this book. The passage that sticks in my mind refers to the aftermath of a close quarters fight between British and German soldiers, in which numerous men are impaled on bayonets, and one brave sergeant is surrounded by a circle of dead Germans who he had slain with a shovel before he himself was bayoneted. No doubt men did bayonet each other, and entrenching tools were used to hack men to death, but the desription seems more like the Battle of Hastings than the Battle of the Somme, and my suspicions were aroused. God forgive me if I'm wrong !

Phil.

[john jerome mcmanus]

G'day PJA,

I can't blame you for having some disbelief of the mentioned scenario but this is the stuff that made men standout!

It didn't only happen at Hasting where sword, spear and bow were the weapons of the day but in every field of conflict where men were pitted face to face and there was no telling who would be the last (if any) standing. Just look at the citations of the VC, MC, MM, or any other medal awarded for courage, bravery, valour etc and some remarkable tales will unfold.

I do think that the recollection in mention has been related more than once (although I can't justify this at the moment) but not all the 'glorious deeds' of men in war were witnessed.

No disparagement is intended in the above comments, I simply hope that you gained from Lynch's book an insight of the horrors and futility of war.

Regards

Pop

(Sean McManus)