I read this book when it first came out 50 years ago. I thought it was a wonderful book then and I still do.It is the definitive work about the Somme and was the catalyst for a host of later First World War genre books. Telling the events of 1st July 1916 from the perspective and experiences of 10 individual soldiers who went over the top at different parts of the line gives it an authenticity that would not otherwise be possible. I actually knew one of the 10 men whose experiences the book is built round (Lieutenant Phillip Howe) when he was an old man on his 80s and lived only a couple of hundred yards from me
A very well written book on this subject, indeed the best I have read. I would have liked to have read it before my trip to the WW 1 battlefields, it would have been easier to understand the traumatic situation that those lads found them selves in. Well worth every penny.