Unknown Soldiers

Starred review from April 3, 2006
In this powerful, painful, unforgettable story of the madness and futility of war, British author Hanson (The Confident Hope of a Miracle
) follows three ordinary warriors—British, German and American—through the logic-defying charnel house that was WWI. All died at the second Battle of the Somme in 1916 and end up among the war's nearly three million whose bodies remained unidentified. Making brilliant use of poignant, literary letters of these men and others, Hanson conjures a world that's hard for the modern reader to fathom. The casualty rate during the Great War was appalling: "Dead bodies were used to build the support walls for the fortified ditches; yellowing skulls, arms, legs could be seen packed tight into the dank, black soil...," writes Alec Reader, the British soldier. Hanson takes the reader directly into the horror of trench warfare. "Dead and wounded soldiers, dead and dying animals, horse cadavers, burnt-out houses, shell-cratered fields, devastated vehicles, weapons, fragments of uniforms—all this is scattered around me, in total confusion," writes German Paul Hub. "I didn't think war would be like this." Vivid, sobering and without macho swagger or sentimentality, Hanson lets the voices of the unknowns speak across a bloody century with lessons for the new one. 16 pages of b&w photos, map.

May 15, 2006
This book reminds us, lest we forget, of the carnage of World War I. Hanson ("The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True Story of the Spanish Armada") treats the subject in two parts. First, he traces the paths of three soldiers, German, British, and American, through their own harrowing accounts, revealed in letters and diaries. All three died in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme; their remains are lost on the western front along with those of nearly three million other missing men. Does Hanson shed any more light on the subject than did such survivors as Robert Graves ("Good-bye to All That") or Siegfried Sassoon ("Memoirs of an Infantry Soldier")? Not really, although he focuses on ordinary young men, and it is good to learn about a German infantryman's viewpoint. In his second part, Hanson moves on to the subject of remembering, mourning, and paying tribute to the dead of World War I, a process that culminated in the creation of tombs memorializing unknown soldiers. This part is fascinating social history and a good companion to John W. Graham's "The Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages of the 1930s." Hanson richly describes the outpouring of grief after this war. Of interest to both specialists and military history buffs; recommended for academic and large public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ "1/06.]" -Bryan Craig, Ursuline Coll., Pepper Pike, OH"

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