BOOK REVIEWS
![[Image]](pict48.jpg) |
St. Julien |
The battlefield around St. Julien, near Ypres, is one of the most visited of all, yet many of those who go to the area know little of what happened there in 1915. They drive quickly through this extensive battlefield in orer to visit just one feature of it - the "Brooding Canadian" Memorial at Vancouver Corner, the second most important Canadian site of the Great War. The visitor will know that this memorial is near to the place where the first gas attack took place, because the wording on the memorial says so, but there is nothing in the way of an explanation of how the attack developed or even where the opposing sides were situated. This new book in the "Battleground Europe" series remedies this.
In "St. Julien" Graham Keech does a very good job of setting out the history of the fighting here in late April, 1915. It's an important site because this is where the war "turned nasty" as they say, where the chivalry typified by the stories of the Christmas Truce four months earlier, gave way to the horror of poison gas. The fighting was complex, as was the battlefield itself, a "busy" part of the Ypres Salient with many farms, crossroads, villages and smaller settlements. Afterwards, the area quickly returned to its pre-war life and appearance, and there is little today to help identify where the various little parts of the fighting took place. Graham Keech has found out, though, that many of the geographical features which determined men's actions in those terrible days still exist, and by careful research has been able to use them as markers in identifying the main places around which the story unfolds. He obviously has a great knowledge of the area and through this book, passes on this knowledge to the reader.
This idea of locating the events of the war years and placing them within the framework of the battlefield as it exists today is the very essence of the Battleground Europe series, of course, but I think that this book illustrates this concept extremely well. All credit to Graham Keech for having achieved this in respect of such a large area of modern-day countryside.
The book has lots of photographs and maps, of course, which illustrate the story being told and there are the other usual features of the series, the car and walking tours of the area. This book came to me for review just before Christmas, which is not the best time of year for battlefield visiting, but the St. Julien tour suggestions are ones which I will certainly be following in the Spring.
St Julien
is published by Pen & Sword Books
Soft Covers
144 pages, maps and photographs
ISBN: 0-85052-839-9
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