The Somme Chronicles: South Africans on the Western Front

Chris Schoeman, The Somme Chronicles: South Africans on the Western Front. Cape Town: Zebra, 2014.

Large paperback, 240 pages, plates.

Owner's name on the half-title-page, 5-mm tear in bottom margin of lower wrap (barely noticeable). Very good.

'"The heavy smell of blood filled the air, and every moment you had this intense fear that the next bullet was meant for you."

So remembered William Thorne, a South African volunteer soldier who fought in the muddy trenches along the River Somme in France on Europe's Western Front. A boy of nineteen at the time, he was one of thousands of South Africans who took part in the 1916 Somme Offensive between the Allied forces and the Germans. It was one of the bloodiest and costliest conflicts of the First World War, resulting in over a million deaths.'