A Subaltern on the Somme

On the first day of the Somme 60,000 British men fell and Max Plowman was there to witness it all.

From the platform at Charing Cross in July 1916 to the deck of the "Glenesk Castle" as he returned to Britain the following year, Plowman's war was fought on more than one front.

The greater fight became the struggle with his own inner turmoil, constantly bubbling beneath the surface as he faced the mud-caked nightmare of the Somme.

Capable and brave, on the outside there was a uniform, striving to present an military appearance, while on the inside there was a seething mind, ready to revolt.

Soberly recounting the routine, the boredom, the mud and the horrors, Plowman also studies the characters of the men he fought with, and for, in an increasingly mechanised machine.

Originally published in 1928 under the pseudonym "Mark VII", A Subaltern on the Somme in 1916 remains a classic memoir of the First World War's Western Front.

Max Plowman (1883-1941) was a British writer, poet and pacifist. Feeling obliged to play a role he reluctantly enlisted with the Territorial Field Ambulance in Dec. 1914, later accepting a commission in the infantry. In Jan. 1917 he was sent home to convalesce, suffering from shell shock. Becoming increasingly opposed to a continuation of war, in Jan. 1918 he asked to be relieved of his commission on the grounds of conscientious objection. Court martialled, he was dismissed from the Army but avoided a prison sentence.

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