Sir Winston Churchill is generally credited for remarking that ‘history is written by the victors.’It is a well used phrase so whether Churchill said it or not is of little consequence, the truth is that when we read non-fiction history we assume what we read is true. It is perhaps not that history isn’t accurate but that it doesn’t include every fact and every perspective.
In a world of official military histories, learned academic tones and soldiers’tales it is possible to find contradictory accounts of campaigns. The recent rash of SAS men’s memoirs is evidence of this.
Other books - even when written from the winning side’s point of view - can offer a different perspective and nowhere is this truer than with ordinary soldiers’accounts which are often devoid of the constraints of class and private education.
One such book is particularly appropriate here as Remembrance Day, marking the centennial of the end of World War One, approaches.
With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, originally published in 1969, is a noted account of serving with the Machine Gun Corps during that war by Corporal George Alfred Coppard MM (1898–1984). Coppard was an ordinary lad of 16 who lied about his age in order to volunteer and …
