Our Baptism of Fire - August-December 1914, Unpublished Photos and Testimonies

Among the many works devoted to the Great War, here is a fine book that stands out for four distinctive features:

– It is devoted exclusively to the first four months of the war, the period subsequently known as the "war of movement", from August to December 1914, the deadliest months of the entire conflict.

– It brings together only unpublished images, drawn from private or foreign collections (autochrome prints, daguerreotypes, silver gelatin photographs).

– Alongside a running text that offers a historical analysis of the tactics deployed, the bulk of the text brings together soldiers' testimonies, unmediated by any commentary (letters to their families, letters from the military hierarchy, etc.) — ordinary soldiers and officers, men from the cities and the countryside, arriving at the front in those first days of August 1914. They are young and have known war only through the accounts of veterans of 1870. Between 3 August and the end of December, they will all see combat. "It is a race towards death. We run, we run without stopping. Reaching the edge of the field we are fired upon with rifles or machine guns. Men fall, we advance all the same. We are seen and we see nothing."

Contents:

• THE FRENCH ARMY ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR
• THE BATTLE OF THE FRONTIERS: CONFRONTATION WITH THE REALITIES OF MODERN WARFARE
• THE VICTORY OF THE MARNE: THE EXTRAORDINARY FRENCH RECOVERY
• THE TRENCH WAR: MOVEMENT DEFEATED BY FIREPOWER