A Field Battery in the Great War

'Many changes of battery positions were made, and we burrowed down into the ground, as the enemy's heavy pieces were out after our blood.' The artillery was the war winning element which shaped the reality of combat on the Western front from 1914-1918. However, there are surprisingly few surviving accounts by the men who served the guns. C. A. Rose saw service on both 18-pounder field guns and also the heavier howitzers which provided the devastating power which eventually broke the will of the German armies to continue to resist. Rose describes the fighting at the most important battles of the Great War including Ypres, Messines, the Somme and Cambrai. This book is now recognised as one of the most important primary source accounts of the day to day experiences of a British field battery in action during the Great War from 1915-1918. C. A. Rose has left us a vivid and detailed account of the fighting in France and the reality of the artillery at the front, fighting in this most terrible of wars. The artillery battle was always a fiercely fought contest as the batteries themselves were constantly hunted by enemy aircraft ever ready to bring down a torrent of counter-battery fire. The dangerous lives of the Forward Observation Officer and his team of signallers who operated in the front line trenches are highlighted in this detailed and highly readable memoir which was first published in 1919 under the Title 'Three Years In France With the Guns - Episodes in the Life of a Field Battery.'