The First World War explained

In advance of next year’s mass-media assault on the centenary of the First World War comes Frank White’s 195-page chronicle in everyday language of Britain’s involvement from August 1914 to November 1918.

Let me say straight away that probably it is the most accommodating, accessible pocket history of this momentous series of events that I can recall reading.

There is little or no jargon, no footnotes in microscopic print, and the author’s summation of complex causes and effects, rendered in plain English, means that the general reader is able to understand at first reading the unfolding pattern of events on the Western Front.

We tend to think of the 1914-18 war as a bloodbath in muddy trenches from start to finish.

This book trenchantly reminds us that the imploding structure of alliances that consumed Russia, Germany, Serbia, France, Austria, Britain and its Empire started out as a war of movement, of attack and counter-attack.

“The French had left large armies in and around Paris to defend the city and, once it became clear that the Germans were going to by-pass it, these armies became available to fight elsewhere.

“For the first time in history troops were motorised, piled into buses and taxis and driven to join their comrades on the Marne. It was because they were now supported by additional troops that the allies were able to fight the Germans to a standstill at last.

“Indeed, after only a few days’ fighting, the Germans were driven back from the Marne as far as the River Aisne. But there, large-scale movements finally ceased. Everything bogged down. A stalemate set in.

“As always in that sort of situation, both armies tried to outflank each other, stepping to the left, stepping to the right – but always coming face to face with each other.”

Two years later, in July 1916, this dance of death killed and maimed more than 1,500 Bradford Pals and many more from Pals battalions from Manchester, Leeds and especially Accrington.

Frank White has written novels, stage plays and has researched the First World War for both the BBC and Granada television. His father was one of the Old Contemptibles, the British Expeditionary Force that stopped the Germans at the first battle of Ypres in Belgium in November 1914.

Mr White has not organised his book into chronological ranks of information; he is more of a storyteller who employs passages of poetry, song, military facts and anecdote to highlight particular aspects of the war.

In those four-and-a-half years the war went through various stages: mobile war, trench war, gas war, tank war, aerial war and U-boat war.

Frank White’s opening chapter describes a galloping cut-and-thrust skirmish between a squadron of British dragoons and German lancers. It seemed to be the start of a glorious and short adventure.

But in 1914 the Germans had 12,000 machine guns, each with the equivalent rapid fire power of 80 rifles. The systematic killing and maiming of vast numbers of men from a distance changed the dynamic, exploded expectations.

Heavyweight centenary tomes are already beginning to land like howitzer shells. This little book has arrived almost unnoticed.