Philip Guest Books

After the First World War, how many thousands of British families would have proud or bitter reason to remember the name St Quentin? At least eight Divisions, 23 Brigades, 74 Battalions an enormous number of fighting men, a weight of experience, courage, defeat and victory, all to be traced through these fields and villages round the city. There is much to honour here: exhausted British troops marching south in the Retreat from Mons in August 1914, resistance attacks on the Hindenburg Line in 1917, desperate feats of arms in the final German onslaught in the Spring of 1918. Many impressive individual and collective achievements, captured guns, Victoria Crosses richly earned. The ancient city itself suffered too - bombardment by French and British artillery, its citizens subjected and exploited by the occupying German forces, then evacuated ahead of the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line - before its final liberation in October 1918. The book gives details of positions, redoubts, attacks, lines of advance and retreat, with many illustrations provided from local sources. Most of the positions described can still be traced and the sites of some epic events located.

Focusing on the wartime experiences of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, this guide highlights their roles as officers in the Royal Welch Fusiliers during World War I. It connects their literary works to real people and locations, providing insights into their lives and careers after the war. Additionally, the guide features a comprehensive bibliography, making it a valuable resource for both literature enthusiasts and history buffs interested in the authors' contributions beyond their military service.

This is a guide to the battlefields that inspired the young and sensitive poet, whose poems are probably the twentieth centuryÕs best-known literary expressions of experience of war. Detailed maps, military diaries, photographs and modern roads guide the visitor through the battlefields. Owen\'s letters are used extensively, together with his poetry, linking specific places events, vividly describing the suffering of the trench.

The book follows the war career of this first world war poet. Details of maps, military diaries, photographs and modern roads to guide the visitor through the events, describing the sufferings of battle and trench life.

The horror of the Western Front trenches is a well-worn theme but what was life like on 'the other side of the Western front' in the First World War? This account, based on original sources including diaries, memoirs, family records, secret diaries written during the war, vivid memories and official records, show how the rich agricultural and industrial areas of northern France were invaded, occupied and exploited between the summer of 1914 and the Armistice in November 1918. Factories were stripped, household furniture and fittings requisitioned, food supplies taken, the population maltreated and malnourished and even taken to forced labour camps; the population lived in terror. Starvation loomed and contact with the outside world vanished until Herbert Hoover set up his scheme of aid which kept the population alive during the war. This fascinating account describes how - in the struggle to survive - French civilians responded in ways familiar in the Second World War: escape networks, espionage, clandestine news-sheets, help for British soldiers trapped behind enemy lines.