Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War

This book is a real treasure -- closely argued, well researched with the deft touch of a military man with a good grasp of his subject I was very favourably impressed with both his crisp writing style and his rather curmungeonly avuncular, slightly eccentric English grandfather-type of personality that wants to "sit you right down young man and sort you out." For the moderately read scholar of WWI much of this book will not come as a surprise. Yes, amongst the masses it is a myth that British officers sat behind the lines sipping brandy whilst ordering working classes into the teeth of machine guns. Yes it is a myth for some that the American contribution was not significant or that the war was a just war. For those people this book will be a good tonic and the cold salve for their gaping ignorance. But I think that this book was not written for the general reader having a first stab at the study of WWI. As the reviews below prove, those with considerable knowledge like the book... I liked it too. I wonder if it is because it pandered quite a bit to my personal tastes... and conservative sentiments. After reading about half-way into the book I felt that it was starting to border more upon a polemical work, rather than an objective study. - whatever Corrigan writes about there is no doubt that he is right. Corrigan is really loath to offer contrasting examples from very bone fide historians and where he does, such as in the case of citing Alan Clark as a non-historian, we can do nothing but agree. I could not help but leafing through Leon Wolff's "In Flander's Field" to convince myself that there was more going on between the miliary-politico machinations than Corrigan cites. - almost all Generals seems to be either misunderstood -- really great minds that were doing the best they could under hard circumstances -- or were hobbled by the machinations of politicians. This is simplistic in the extreme, and Corrigan's stories are highly selective and slanted. It is also a easy target to round on Lloyd George, but quite another thing to question the motivations of certain members of Parliament (and while Churchill is criticised, Corrigan does not once mention his experience in the trenches and his willingness to pay for mistakes (even though they were not his). - Corrigan does rightly state that the effects of Gas and Fire weapons and tanks were greatly exagerated. Despite their perceived horrible nature, few casualties were actually inflicted by these new weapons, and even fewer fatalities. But all horrors are not created equal, and his avering that the costliest battles for Britian and the Empire, the Somme and Passchendaele, were actually "great victories" stretches the definition of victory. There are many ways to critique these battles, but by merely portraying them as inevitable and really not all that bad, he risks throwing out the baby with the bath water. He does not mention the British Army Reports from the Battle of Loos in 1915 c

Gordon Corrigan has written a vivid - and long overdue - historical work that has rolled a hand grenade of reality into the dugout of all our perceptions about trench warfare in World War I. Discarding the clichés of mud and blood of movies and novels of the period, this study explores the real world the British soldiers of November, 1918, would have recognized. High morale, advanced technology for the time, and a belief in victory flies in the face of conventional wisdom but Corrigan faithfully records it all, laced with a wicked wit. He then moves on to the anti-war movement that would, within a decade, portray the trench soldier as a hapless victim of immense folly, as "Journey's End," "Goodbye to All That" and the war poems entered the national consciousness. The British Tommy - and his 700,000 dead comrades - deserved better...and Corrigan does sterling work to redress the balance in this controversial and immensely readable history.

Only a soldier could have written this book. It is written with an understanding about the frictions of war. All too often, historians would discuss a war as if it was entirely an intellectual exercise with glaringly obvious choices that most of the time the people were involved were too stupid to choose. There was no regard for the necessities that are imposed by a multitude of factors like terrain, the state of technology, the army that you have, the enemy (yes! They don't always cooperate by being stupid enough to let you maneuvre past their flanks!), the weather, and just plain bad luck. Mr Corrigan put up a well argued case that the British Army and its generals did all right given what they had to work with. A point, however, which he did not make often enough, is that victory could only be bought with the blood of a country's soldiers. The more even matched an enemy is to one, the more likely that price will be high. If defeat is too horrible to contemplate (and Mr Corrigan make a good case for the necessity of war), then, unfortunately, the price might just have to be 700,000 deaths.

I would give them to Gordon Corrigan. Having read voraciously on WWI, I picked up this book expecting some more of the same, rather dry approach that I've found in many accounts of The Great War. (Rick Atkinson, please write about WWI after you finish your trilogy). But "Mud, Blood.." was a pleasant surprise. Corrigan has a wonderful wit and a keen insight into the myths of the most important event of the 20th century. While once again we get the English view, it's a different one, often tongue in cheek, often heart-rending, but always with fine choice of detail, clear writing, and an ability to look at events and actions from a different persecptive. The men who fought and directed the war to end all wars deserve a book of this quality to tell their story. Mr. Corrigan, please. Give us more.

Gordon Corrigan has produced a real wonder here: A history book that is thorough, readible, and even humorous! Corrigan's intent is to debunk myths and explain the realities of the First World War in terms that make sense to an audience that has little frame of reference to the realities of the early Twentieth Century. Drawing only the British experience, both from a desire to keep the material to an accessable scope, and from familiarity (Corrigan is former Royal Army), he has accomplished exactly that, and more. This is not a typical chronology of war, nor a list of battle honors, nor is it a narative in the usual sense. Corrigan sticks resolutely to his purpose, and only gives specific battle details when they serve the purpose of elucidating the conditions that existed, despite the undoubtably intense temptation to wander further afield.By approaching his material myth-by-myth, Corrigan has simplified his task, and made his lessons more accessable to the reader, even if it means that he somtimes retraces his own footsteps. This choice lends Mud, Blood, and Poppycock to use as a textbook as well as a volume of general history. You needn't read the entire book to gain value from it, you only need open to any specific chapter, and Corrigan's entire argument for debunking that particular myth is layed out for you in it's entirety, with no need to refer elsewhere. If, however, you *do* wish to refer elsewhere, there is a rather complete list of end notes to each chapter. This is one of the few items about which I might have any quibble: While the end notes are more useful if you're going to follow-up with additional research, a casual reader would find footnotes easier to read, without needing to flip back and forth to the end of the chapter.Corrigan isn't infallible, and he does make the occasional error, such as asserting that no army can plan for the 'next' war, but instead *must* plan for future wars by learning from past wars, and that no army has the resources to plan speculatively for the future. This is clearly in error: While any responsible army must indeed study the lessons of past wars, a truly responsible army also studies future trends. Now I realize that that particular doctrine is relatively new, asserting that it doesn't exist at all is a mistake. He does give himself an 'out' by noting that armies of the day had little budgetary resource for studying war from a speculative approach. Still, Corrigan would've done better to explain that doctrine changes, rather than deny its existance. This is one of the very few failed analysis I can find in the entire book, and is actually a pretty minor one (as are the few other such). On the other hand, Corrigan's dry wit permiates the book, making me smile at the oddest moments. One comment that simply cracked me up was a reference to the shape of mortar pits resulting in an increase in constipation. I won't give away the entire joke (nor any of the others scatered throughout), so you'll just