Saturday, May 16, 2015

Book Review: To The Last Man by Jeff Shaara






 
Published: 2004
Genre: Historical Fiction, War

Kitch’s Rating: 9/10
 

Jeff Shaara, the son of a writing gun most famous for the bookends in a Civil War trilogy begun by his late father, Michael (whose fictional account of Gettysburg, seen through the eyes of a few major players including Robert E. Lee and Joshua Chamberlain won the Pulitzer Prize), has turned his hand to the First World War, and with stunning success.

Don’t get me wrong, I love everything that Shaara has done with regards to the Civil War, including his continuing 4-part saga on the western theatre of the war that divided the United States, and the stories he’s told from the Mexican War and the Revolutionary War as well, but I think that To The Last Man might be the very best of them all.

Heavily researched and using diaries, memoirs and other first-hand accounts, To The Last Man is by no means a full account of the war, instead picking up in spring of 1916 – after a harrowing prologue about an unnamed British soldier arriving onto the Western Front for the first time – and, not surprisingly given his heritage, Shaara focuses on some Americans. 

You may wonder how, given that America didn’t enter the war until 1917, but a group of men, either adventure seekers or idealists, formed a fighter pilot squadron that was later and famously known as the Lafayette Escadrille, named for the Frenchman who fought alongside George Washington in the American Revolution, before France had officially joined the war.

The French-American pilot, Raoul Lufbery, is Shaara’s main focus for most of the book, as is his competition on the German side, Manfred von Richthofen, better known now as the Red Baron. Lufbery was probably an easy choice, but Shaara’s decision to include Richthofen was surprising, but definitely welcomed. It’s an interesting look at the German hero, and his usefulness to the German war effort.

In a nice departure from most World War One novels (and history books, for that matter) that tend to focus mostly on the men in the trenches, reading about the aviators was a nice change of pace. Obviously, both Lufbery and Richthofen are amongst the most recognised pilots from the Great War, and certainly pioneers in the early stages of the age of aviation. Shaara’s treatment of both is sensational.

As are the chapters where the focus switches General John Pershing. He is given command of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), which seems to have been something of a poisoned chalice for the man known as Black Jack. He and his army, desperately needed reinforcements after the French and British had taken a battering for years, were political pawns in a behind-the-scenes struggle between those two shaky Allies. 

Pershing has to stand firm and resist all attempts to convince him to turn his men over to British or French forces for training, and insertion into shattered regiments already on the line. Pershing and President Woodrow Wilson refuse to budge from their desire to have American forces fighting under their own flag.

Other chapters in the narrative are seen through the eyes of men like George Patton and Erich Ludendorff, but the last third focuses nearly exclusively on Roscoe Temple, a farm boy turned Marine from Florida, who arrives in France and proceeds to be caught up in some of the bloodiest and most costly fighting the AEF is involved in, seeing horrible things in ghastly places like Belleau Wood, the St Mihiel salient and the Argonne Forest.

Shaara is said to be a meticulous researcher who pores over as much source material as he can find, and will not write a passage of speech for any given character historical figure without being as sure as possible that that person would speak in such a fashion. It’s this sort of attention to detail that has won Shaara legions of fans. Shaara is as much at home writing Pershing’s struggles with French and British generals and politicians as he is writing about Roscoe Temple’s frightening experiences in Belleau Wood.

To The Last Man is brilliantly written. I highly recommend it.

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