One Night on the Somme is one of the most poignant and well-researched books on the Western Front that I have read. Extremely powerful account of the Lonsdale Regiment being virtually annihilated on a badly planned attack on the German lines. Their brutal treatment by the unsympathetic and uncaring British General Staff after the heroic attack is appalling.
I really loved the way that the author researched several soldiers' families, discovering their living relatives and former homes. The Pal's Battalions were a dreadfully thought-out concept, resulting in many villages and small towns losing most of their menfolk. Some families losing sons and Fathers.
Highly recommended for military history buffs.

I received a ebook of “ One Night on the Somme” from Goodreads free to read and review. My thanks to Goodreads, the publisher and author for giving me the opportunity to read this engrossing and vey moving book.
The author presents the reader with a very personal of the “ small picture” ( as opposed to the Big Picture” ) the Great War (1913- 1918) one that is focused on a single unit, one of the “ Pals” regiments. These consisted of men from some British counties where the soldiers were encouraged to join up with their friends and co- workers in to serve together -pals”united to play their part. As a recruiting pitch, it was ingenious, relying on camaraderie as a cohesive binding thread to keep morale high .One wonders, in hindsight of course, if the people who conceived the idea ever had inkling that the wholesale slaughter of trench warfare would that mean entire villages’ casualty rolls would mean the winnowing of entire families in one battle. That is what happened, and the book records that.
It is a very moving book . Here the horrors of trench warfare are told, as they have been related many times before, but on a very personal level. The reader reads of this attack and that one, a raid to get prisoners, or ‘ straighten up the lines “ , and reads the names of the casualties, and then sees the photographs of the men some boys , really, bravely looking back across the hundred years that have passed. There were the “ other ranks”, teens not old enough to shave and their officers, sporting thin moustaches that were supposed to make an impression of resolve. The reader senses their courage, ,but also senses of so much loss.
The incident around the “One Night on the Somme” referred to in the title, is when orders are given to send out a nighttime patrol across no man’s land to determine the strength and readiness of the enemy. Some of these British troops were already drained by constant shelling and were staggered by significant combat losses of their “Pals”. Some of these men lined up at the medical tents to plead shell shock. They had reached a breaking point. But “ Shell Shock’” was ,to officers safely back away from the front, merely cowardice. The “ other ranks” involved , and some of the officers who could see the blank-stares of their faces were arrested and punished.They could have been shot, but they were degraded, put at hard labor and disgraced. Eventually returned to service. Ironically, the incident help bring about a better understanding that even brave men have only so much to give.
I liked that author continues his story beyond the end of the war, relating how and his visited the English villages in question. There he traced the families, hearing memories, seeing the proud bronze memorials of a people who sent their sons, father and husbands off into a maelstrom that wiped away everything but a few medal ribbons and memories. Of widows who had to fight to get the small pensions allotted them, or of men physically and mentally scared forever, by what they suffered.
“ That Night on the Somme” is beautifully written history, worthy of the attention of anyone interested in the “ War to End War” . It is the story of how the glitz and silken finery of the Edwardian age ended in the trenches where men suffered more than they could bear,, yet kept on , for King and Country - and their Pals.
Recommended highly. The book is very well written. In focusing on a small part of “ The Great War” he gives his narrative greater impact than recitations of campaigns and general, of statistics .