Reddit reviews The First Hundred Thousand: Being the Unofficial Chronicle of a Unit of "K(1)"

John Hay Beith (aka Ian Hay) The First Hundred Thousand and the sequel, All in It : K(1) Carries On are both available for free on Kindle. Both books are quick reads and well worth your time.

The first book is a thinly-fictionalized novel of Beith's own experiences in the 10th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Beith was one of the volunteers who joined Kitchener's (in)famous New Army after the outbreak of WWII. Hence the titles "The First Hundred Thousand" and "K(1)," which refer to the hundred thousand eager recruits who were formed into the first six divisions--the K1 Army Group--of Kitchener's New Army.

Beith's writing hasn't aged well in places, he makes some dated references and uses some slang that can be a little tricky to decipher, but even if you don't understand every word, there's still a great deal to love. Beith captures the humanity, the oddity, the cruelty, and the randomness of trench warfare with incredible deftness and tenderness. He is by turns funny and profound. Every one of his characters is allegedly fictional, but they're all very clearly portraits of real people Beith knew and served with. The First Hundred Thousand is based on events Beith personally witnessed and All in It is more second-hand, as success of the first novel had gotten Beith taken off the front line and sent to America on a propaganda tour.

Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves' (better-known as the author of I, Claudius) is a much more sombre take on the war. While Beith's wartime novels were honest about the cost of war, they frame the war as a necessary struggle with necessary sacrifices. By contrast, Graves' postwar memoirs reflect the postwar bitterness of many Europeans about the high cost of the Great War. Graves' pulls no punches: the book is full of gas attacks, shell shock, war crimes, and an enormous amount of death.

War poet Siegfried Sassoon, who served with Graves and is portrayed (in somewhat controversial manner) in Graves' book also wrote his own books about his wartime experiences. Memoirs of a *F**ox-Hunting Man,** Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress tell the story of a young man, George Sherston, a thinly fictionalized self-portrait of Sassoon. Like Sassoon, Sherston goes off to war, gets wounded, has a troubled recovery in hospital, and then gets sent back into the meatgrinder.

Another Graves acquaintance was medical officer J.C. Dunn, who wrote his own book: The War The Infantry Knew: 1914-1919: A Chronicle of Service in France and Belgium. Dunn's book takes the form a diary, chronicling the day-by-day life and death of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers (the same unit Sassoon and Graves served in).

For a French perspective, check out Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918*. Barthas' diaries are frank, irreverent, and give a remarkable cross-section of fighting on the Western Front. By some miracle, Barthas survived the entire war from start to finish, even though nearly everyone her served with was killed in the fighting.

On the German side, Erwin Rommel's *Infantry Attacks***, is part-memoir and part-treatise. The most interesting parts are the ones closest to Rommel's own wartime experiences--where he discusses fighting in the rugged terrain of the Alps against the Italians.The book (and the hearty dose of self-promotion Rommel does in its pages) helped make Rommel a rising star in the German armed forces after WWI.

John Hay Beith's (aka Ian Hay) The First Hundred Thousand and the sequel, All in It: K(1) Carries On are both available for free on Kindle. Both books are quick reads and well worth your time.

The first book is a thinly-fictionalized novel of Beith's own experiences in the 10th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Beith was one of the volunteers who joined Kitchener's (in)famous New Army after the outbreak of WWII. Hence the titles "The First Hundred Thousand" and "K(1)," which refer to the hundred thousand eager recruits who were formed into the first six divisions--the K1 Army Group--of Kitchener's New Army.

Beith's writing hasn't aged well in places, he makes some dated references and uses some slang that can be a little tricky to decipher, but even if you don't understand every word, there's still a great deal to love. Beith captures the humanity, the oddity, the cruelty, and the randomness of trench warfare with incredible deftness and tenderness. He is by turns funny and profound. Every one of his characters is allegedly fictional, but they're all very clearly portraits of real people Beith knew and served with. The First Hundred Thousand is based on events Beith personally witnessed and All in It is more second-hand, as the success of the first novel had gotten Beith taken off the front line and sent to America on a propaganda tour.

Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves' (better-known as the author of I, Claudius) is a much more sombre take on the war. While Beith's wartime novels were honest about the cost of war, they frame the war as a necessary struggle with necessary sacrifices. By contrast, Graves' postwar memoirs reflect the postwar bitterness of many Europeans about the high cost of the Great War. Graves' pulls no punches: the book is full of gas attacks, shell shock, war crimes, and an enormous amount of death.

War poet Siegfried Sassoon, who served with Graves and is portrayed (in somewhat controversial manner) in Graves' book also wrote his own books about his wartime experiences. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress tell the story of a young man, George Sherston, a thinly fictionalized self-portrait of Sassoon. Like Sassoon, Sherston goes off to war, gets wounded, has a troubled recovery in hospital, and then gets sent back into the meatgrinder.

Another Graves acquaintance was medical officer J.C. Dunn, who wrote his own book: The War The Infantry Knew: 1914-1919: A Chronicle of Service in France and Belgium. Dunn's book takes the form a diary, chronicling the day-by-day life and death of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers (the same unit Sassoon and Graves served in).

For a French perspective, check out Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918. Barthas' diaries are frank, irreverent, and give a remarkable cross-section of fighting on the Western Front. By some miracle, Barthas survived the entire war from start to finish, even though nearly everyone her served with was killed in the fighting.

On the German side, Erwin Rommel's Infantry Attacks, is part-memoir and part-treatise. The most interesting parts are the ones closest to Rommel's own wartime experiences--where he discusses fighting in the rugged terrain of the Alps against the Italians.The book (and the hearty dose of self-promotion Rommel does in its pages) helped make Rommel a rising star in the German armed forces after WWI.

One set of books which do a great job covering the war day by day from a personal perspective are Matt Kersley's 1914: These Are Our Masters and 1915: The Pale Battalions. He does a great jobs borrowing from Barthas and other WWI diarists to weave a narrative of how the conflict unfolded for individuals around the world.