PDF Pozieres the Anzac story Scott Bennett 9781921844836 Books
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In 1916, one million men fought in the first battle of the Somme. Victory hinged on their ability to capture a small village called Pozières. After five attempts to seize it, the British called in the Anzacs to complete this seemingly impossible task.
At midnight on 23 July 1916, thousands of Australians stormed Pozières. Forty-five days later they were relieved, having suffered 23,000 casualties to gain a few miles of barren landscape. Despite the toll, the operation was heralded as a stunning victory. Yet for the exhausted survivors, the war-weary public, and the families of the dead and maimed, victory came at a terrible cost.
Drawing on the letters and diaries of the men who fought at Pozières, this superb book reveals a battlefield drenched in chaos and fear. Bennett sheds light on the story behind the official history, re-creating the experiences of those men who fought in one of the largest and most devastating battles of the Great War and returned home, all too often, as shattered men.
PDF Pozieres the Anzac story Scott Bennett 9781921844836 Books
"Very detailed account of a battle half forgotten now that ranked with Gallipoli at the time. The wholesale destruction of Australia's youth for short term gains seems to be the overwhelming conclusion of the men involved including Bean the official war correspondent. Not many Generals come out looking good, and it changed my perceptions of Birdwood completely."
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Pozieres the Anzac story Scott Bennett 9781921844836 Books Reviews :
Pozieres the Anzac story Scott Bennett 9781921844836 Books Reviews
- Pozieres is a very well researched book about the Western Front. Americans have probably never heard about the Battle for Pozieres - or many other battles in which Australians and other nations of the British Empire fought so gallantly to gain victory on the Western Front. Names such as Pozieres, Paschendale, Fromelles, Ypes are stamped deep on the Australian pysche. The stories of these brave men must never be forgotten. Lest we Forget!
- Very detailed account of a battle half forgotten now that ranked with Gallipoli at the time. The wholesale destruction of Australia's youth for short term gains seems to be the overwhelming conclusion of the men involved including Bean the official war correspondent. Not many Generals come out looking good, and it changed my perceptions of Birdwood completely.
- UNBELIEVABLE DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE MADNESS THAT WAS THE SOMME.50 % CASUALTIES.THOSE NIEVE AUSTRALIAN SOLDIERS
AUSTRALIANS ARE MUCH REVEARED IN THIS PART OF FRANCE ,BUT ,WHAT A HUGE PRICE WAS PAID BY THOSE THAT WERE THERE AND THOSE WHO WAITED AT HOME. - A fantastic insight into the conditions that the diggers endured on the Western Front. Should be a mandatory element of the school curriculum in all Australian schools
- Meticulously researched but far from gripping reading. For such a tale of horrors, Bennet's writing lacks intimacy - the story always feels slightly aloof and distant. It's as if Bennet has all the facts but doesn't have the skill to turn them into personal stories. An excellent reference book.
- My Grandfather and Uncle wer both killed at Pozieres.. This is a first hand great description of what they went through for our freedom..
- `Pozieres - The Anzac Story' is the definitive history the battle of Pozieres has been waiting for, a great panoply of death and horror, of uselessness and caprice and the machines of war, finally made almost human through Bennett's barely moving tableau vivant of fleeting spotlit faces frozen incandescent in flare light before being blown limb from limb, only to be vomited up again and again by the relentless metal barrage that ploughed the Somme's grisly manure.
In a story that tunnels through the scant weeks that took the ANZACs from defeated glory in the dust and heat of Gallipoli to mutiny and madness at Moquet Farm, the apocalypse of the Western Front, Bennett sets out to meld that mire of man and machine into a requiem, a huge grinding funeral march of dead and returned men, of kings and career commanders and corporals, of the bereaved and the Bean of history, and be damned if he doesn't succeed.
Ninety years on, his approach is more even-handed, even more careful, more forgiving than many of the scribes of this appalling affront to civilisation. Can we explain an apocalypse? Bennett wisely doesn't try. He lays before us, in terrible detail, the events, the men, the families, the astonishing, unstoppable institution called World War One, with all the terror those three short words can contain; he even ponders the motivations of military and political leaders, and those of the tinkers and tailors drawn for myriad reasons into the death machine. The war, he leaves that to the judgment of his readers; it's Pozieres that absorbs his attention, and why, as the battlefield in which more Australians fell than any before or since, it has not been commemorated with the same heart as Gallipoli.
The answer given is clear enough while Gallipoli whetted the nation's appetite for glory through war, Pozieres burned that banquet to ashes in our mouths.
