Book review: Fire and Movement: The British Expeditionary Force and the Campaign of 1914, by Peter Hart

With the avalanche of books on the Great War currently descending on booksellers, buyers have a bewildering choice. Peter Hart's Fire and Movement: The British Expeditionary Force and the Campaign of 1914 is one well worth buying. Hart has established himself as a respected historian on the Great War.

His books are never dry academic tomes. Pitched at the general reading public and Great War buffs alike, they deliver a clear, engaging and easy to read narrative, interspersed with analysis, and laced with chunks of quotes from participants that add colour and substance to the incidents he relates.

In Fire and Movement he covers a subject that is largely forgotten, and ignored in the myriad of books and documentaries that agonise over the sacrifice and catastrophe of the Great War. While the subtitle indicates it is primarily about the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), that "contemptible little army' that fought so gallantly, and contributed much during the first five months of the war, Hart also includes his assessment of and accounts from German participants who fought opposite the Tommies.

In doing so, he convincingly overturns some of the myths that abound about both armies. Thus at the opening Battle of Mons we see the fighting unfolding between the 4th Royal Fusiliers and the 4th Middlesex and their opponents of the German 84th Regiment, and learn how an oft quoted British soldier's view of what happened to the German infantrymen opposite him was mistaken, and has distorted perceptions ever since.

This is no hyperbolic glorification of a BEF that outshone all other armies, a feature we see too often about the AIF, now referred to pejoratively as Anzackery. Hart's analysis is balanced and fair, and he presents an objective view that highlights the strengths and weaknesses, the successes and failures, and mistakes of the BEF and their German foes.

Commencing with a study of the sweeping doctrinal and structural changes in the British Army following the Boer War, Hart takes the reader on the journey from mobilisation to the opening Battles of Mons and the Great Retreat, and culminates with the BEF's greatest test, the gigantic First Battle of Ypres, where the old British Army was largely destroyed in a successful and bitterly fought defence that ended the war of manoeuvre, and set the stage for the great catastrophe of trench warfare. It ends with an interesting account of the famous Christmas truce. Reading this book one gains a real feeling for what the participants experienced, and at the same time gets a clear understanding of the events as they unfolded in an un-emotive but absorbing narrative.

In a short epilogue, Hart reviews the performance of both the British and the Germans, making well-judged comments, including the parsimony of a British government, which before the war was unwilling to fund an army they were so ready to commit to a continental commitment. He debunks the view the BEF were the arbiters of the destiny of 1914, and notes that British pride in the very real achievements of the BEF should not be allowed to slip into the denigration of the efforts of other armies – a comment that some shallow Australian writers would do well to observe.

Overall, this is an excellent book which provides an engaging account of the British Army's contribution to the campaign of 1914, and of their German opponents. It deserves a place on the 'good reads list', and one will not go wrong slipping a copy into a loved one's Christmas stocking. The recipient won't be disappointed.

Chris Roberts is the author of The Landing at Anzac, 1915.