Lord Edward Gleichen commanded the 15th Infantry Brigade during the British Expeditionary Force’s earliest and most desperate months on the Western Front. His account covers the retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Marne, the stabilisation of the front, and the first winter of trench warfare — a period when the BEF was small enough that a single brigade’s experience captures the whole army’s ordeal.
Written by a participant with an officer’s professional perspective and an aristocrat’s literary ease, the book is a valuable primary source on the opening campaign of the First World War and the transformation of mobile warfare into static attrition.