A battle whose brutality and carnage are nearly beyond imagining, the Somme can all too easily become an abstraction. Having interviewed 270 veterans of the Great War, Richard Van Emden reveals how the 1916 struggle was seen by the soldiers who were asked to undertake impossible missions. Included here are dozens of rare, candid photographs that testify to the comradeship of the troops and the devastation caused by the war, while the text is both a history of the Somme and a collection of anecdotes and letters that shed further light on these valiant men and their families.