Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The tunnellers of the Western Front tapped picked shovelled and listened fully aware that the enemy was doing the same somewhere in the dark morass of earth in front above or below them. They knew that they could die slowly and alone in the dark. They waged an unseen war – the war only they knew the terrors of which only they were conscious. As the highly decorated tunnelling officer Oliver Woodward wrote in 1916 ‘fear was my quiet companion’ for every waking moment of the war. The Great War was particularly hideous in both scale and suffering and its history was characterised by grand plans and strategies that hurled armies of men into battle with appalling losses. Yet the immense scale of the war itself can obscure the personal war the war of the volunteer stockmen labourers butchers civil engineers teachers and miners – the ‘tunnellers’ of the Western Front. Within the vast array of Great War literature there is scant reference to the Australian tunnelling companies. Crumps & Camouflets seeks to redress that by telling the story of the tunnellers who like their brother soldiers. fought a daily duel with the enemy over the wire and the enemy within – the gnawing paralysing fear of a sudden and violent death. (MP)