BOOK REVIEWS
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Montauban |
This book, one of the most recent in the "Battleground Europe" series, devotes itself to the history of what was a rare event in on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme - a part of the battle where all the objectives were taken in good time, and where there was good reason to claim victory. The village was the only one of the nine fortified villages on the Somme battle-front to fall, as planned, on the first day. The fighting around Montauban is often neglected in the mythology of the battle because it doesn't fit in with the story of costly failure which was an element of the attack in most other places.
The area around Montauban was also the place where the British army joined the French Army, and this is another timely reminder that the Somme was not quite an all-British event. In fact, the book begins with details of Montauban's fortunes in the early days of the war, when this was a sector of the line held solely by the French.
Graham Maddocks has researched his book very well and I was impressed by the completeness of the picture he gives of what happened here. For the purposes of his explanations, he takes the Montauban battlefield in sections from the West to the East, and all the sections of the book follow this pattern. First of all there are details of the British Divisions and their constituent battalions which fought in the area, with brief notes on the history of each, followed by similar details of the German regiments who opposed them on 1st July, 1916. This section accounts for about one third of the book.
The middle third deals with the battle for Montauban itself. Again, the details of the attack follow the West-to-East, battalion-by-battalion pattern already set earlier. This section is very detailed and informative, and the account is made easier to follow by the inclusion of enlarged sections of maps in the borders of many pages. This section gives details of many of the isolated events and actions which took place on the day. The most famous of these is the story of Captain Nevill of the East Surrey Regiment, who brought footballs from England for his men to dribble across No-Man's Land, but Graham Maddocks has included many other human touches to remind us that the battle was not just a question of little coloured blocks moving across maps.
The third part of the book is of great value to anyone visiting the Montauban battlefield today. As the battle engulfed Montauban quickly and moved on beyond the village, there is not much visible evidence in the surrounding fields to help the visitor locate his or her position. Here, Graham Maddocks gives a very detailed and all-embracing series of tours over the whole of the battlefield described earlier, relating places on the ground today with the events he has already related earlier in the book. He devotes the remaining third of the book to this very valuable resource.
All in all, "Montauban" is an excellent guide to this often-neglected, but strategically and historically important section of the Somme battlefield and it serves as a fitting and respectful memorial to those who fought and died there.
MONTAUBAN
is published by Leo Cooper, Pen & Sword Books, Ltd.
ISBN 0-85052-579-9
Paperback, 160 pages - maps, photographs
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