To the Last Ridge : The World War I Experiences of W.H.Downing

by W.H. Downing

Written just after the heat of the battle and in the language of the time, this is the personal account of an ordinary soldier's experience of one of the most horrific series of battles ever fought. Fleurbaix, Bapaume, Beaumetz, Lagincourt, Bullecourt, The Menin Road, Villers-Bretonneux, Peronne and Mont St. Quentin. Downing describes the mud, the rats, the constant pounding of the guns, the deaths, the futility, but also the humour and the heroism of one of the most compelling periods in world history. His writing is spare but vivid, and presents a graphic description of an ordinary person's struggle to survive.

Genres: World War I, History, Military History, Nonfiction

218 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

Reviews

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a powerful addition, for me, to the World War One memoirs that have passed my way. I first saw this book at The Imperial War Museum bookshop during a trip to London in 2010 (extended by the ash cloud that spread from Iceland). I didn't buy it, but the title remained in the back of my mind and this year I found a copy on Abe books. It's my first memoir by an Australian combatant, and there's a level of engagement and ferocity in the prose that is unlike any other memoir I've read. The author is one of those few that survived a string of major and minor battles against all odds.
I found myself fascinated by his process of reconstructing events in the years after the war. He has had time to look at maps and connect his memories with geography. So there's a knowing of location beyond what he would have appreciated in the heat of battle. There's also an immediacy that has not been lost. Bodies are blown into the air by exploding shells around him in the most unsuspecting of moments. Old comrades become fragments of bodies encased in burned clothing.
When I lost the narrator and to a certain extent my ability to relate to him (instead relating to his battalion in the A.I.F. - the 57th), I would always find him again, right up through the end of the memoir. So there's a kind of counterpoint here, a moving into and out of the individual, and likewise into and out of the unit, and I think there is something for each reader to take from that.
As a Canadian, it was moving to read his descriptions of the battle of Amiens, where he describes gaps in the Australian action, when the A.I.F. infantrymen caught their breaths and watched the Canadian troops fighting on their right.
Is there a last ridge, or always one more ahead? What keeps us going when yet another ridge reveals yet another? The author offers some answers.

[Andrew Wardle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting account of the battles of the 5th Australian Division on the Western Front 1916-18. Written by a very proud Australian it sometimes gives the impression that the Australian Army won the war by themselves - but given their repeated employment, along with the Canadian Corps, as shock troops, this is not an unreasonable viewpoint.

[Barbara J. Stepens · Rating 5 out of 5]

The great War!!!

Rather difficult read,knowing the numbers that died in this war, the way they died!
So crudely directed by what appears to be such poor leadership of "upper crust" officers.
Where were the generations of accumulated lessons of previous wars by the British, French, etc??
It seems so senseless and the lives lost in a horrendous way! And what happened twenty years later??
L

[Paul Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A personal account of what one soldier experienced on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918. It reveals the camaraderie that existed between mates, the acceptance of death and disfigurement amongst the chaos of battle. It reveals how little the individual soldier can grasp of the strategic prcoess of a battle; all he can do is try to survive and if possible attain his asigned objective.

[Greg Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

unexpurgated primary source; an observant and alert author on the Western Front