We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About A Storm In Flanders: The Ypres
Product Description A close-up analysis of a pivotal battle of World War I revisits the four-year-long Battle of Ypres, an engagement that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, marked the use of terrible new military tactics and technologies--including poison gas, mines, tanks, and air strikes--and forever changed the way that war would be waged. 50,000 first printing. Amazon.com Review Novelist Winston Groom ( Forrest Gump) brings his considerable skills as a storyteller and researcher to this gory tour of "the most notorious and dreaded place in all of the First World War, probably of any war in history." The Ypres salient, a small, hilly section of Belgium, witnessed the wholesale destruction of the old British professional army, "the Old Contemptibles"; it was the place where the great armies of England, France, and Germany were locked in a dance of death for four years, where "more than a million soldiers were shot, bayoneted, bludgeoned, bombed, grenaded, gassed, incinerated by flamethrowers, drowned in shell craters, smothered by caved-in trenches, obliterated by underground mines, or, more often than not, blown to pieces by artillery shells." Extraordinary moments occurred in that vast hell, including the renowned Christmas truce of 1914, when the armies set aside the killing for a few short hours, crossed the trenches, and celebrated together. But mostly the scenery was unbeautiful mud and blood, the makings of Groom's chilling canvas, one populated by the famed generals and ordinary soldiers who met in Flanders fields. The stuff of Groom's story will be familiar to readers of Liddell Hart, Keegan, and other scholars, and readers new to the history of the Great War will find it a memorable introduction. --Gregory McNamee From Library Journal Groom wrote Forrest Gump, but this is no whimsical novel. Here, he studies World War I's infamous Battle of Ypres. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Booklist *Starred Review* In many ways, the four-year slaughter in Belgian Flanders is representative of the most horrifying aspects of World War I. It was there that the futility of trench warfare was "perfected," as the daily meat grinder chewed up thousands of lives to gain a few yards of real estate. It was there that the destructive power of new weapons--including poison gas, flamethrowers, and airplanes--was fully realized. Groom is best known as the author of Forest Gump (1986), but he has also written extensively on military history. In this moving and oddly inspiring chronicle, Groom captures the absurd waste and sickening brutality of a conflict that had no redeeming moral purpose. Groom pulls no punches as he conveys an atmosphere of hell on Earth, made all the more outrageous by the political blunders of men ensconced safely behind the lines. Yet Groom, a Vietnam veteran, finds true nobility in the ordinary soldiers who fought in Flanders, both killers and killed, who managed to remain decently human under intolerable conditions. This is an important and brilliantly written work that is a vital addition to twentieth-century history collections. Jay Freeman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
