BOOK REVIEWS

Bringing Uncle Albert Home David P Whithorn

This was my holiday reading this August.  Put briefly, the book tells the story of how the author finds that a relative (whose existence he didn't previously know of) was killed on the Somme in 1916, and how he sets out to find what had happened to the soldier. It isn't exactly an unusual theme, but this is a very unusual book.

Starting with only a name, David Whithorn's excellent research makes a compelling story.  And the story of the research is as much a part of the book as the story of the soldier - part genealogical research, part history lesson  (for him and for us) and part detective story. A very interesting mix.  

The action in which the soldier - the "Uncle Albert" of the title - was killed was the attack by the 3rd Battalion, the Worcestershire Regiment at Thiepval towards the end of August, 1916. It's an area which I know fairly well, though I don't have anything like the familiarity with it which David P. Whithorn had achieved by the time he started the book, and I knew very little about the action in which Uncle Albert was killed. This didn't matter however, as one of the book's strongest points is that the author has researched the event so meticulously, and presents the reader with a finely-detailed (but always readable) account of the action, with maps covering the development of the attack and its aftermath. So it's of little consequence if the reader isn't familiar with the places described; the author provides plenty of background material to enable one to follow events closely.

To make the picture even clearer, there are photographs of the most important locations seen from a present-day viewpoint.  Incidentally, the sections of the book dealing with the author's own visit to Thiepval, when he took the photographs, are very poignantly written.

There are some nice touches written into the story as it unfolds.  Some are the result of sheer luck in the research stages, such as the monumental discovery that a piece written by one of the war's most famous war correspondents must have been written after witnessing the  very attack in which Uncle Albert lost his life. Others are the result of the author's own feeling for the story he was telling.

Writing this book was a most praiseworthy act of Remembrance - a personal thing for David P. Whithorn.  For us, it's very good read, and one which I recommend.

Bringing Uncle Albert Home

is published by:

Sutton Publishing

Hard Covers

207 pages, 32photographs, several maps

ISBN: 0-7509-3287-2

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