Sepoys in the Trenches: Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914-15 [Illustrated] (Hardcover)

The sepoys were put into the front line the moment they arrived, often issued with rifles they had no experience of handling before, facing, for the first time, artillery and, later, gas. They did remarkably well, plugging up the gaps in the First Battle of Ypres and counter-attacking with gusto at Neuve Chappelle.

This book is particuarly strong on how the Indian troops - totally ill-prepared for high intensity warfare - dealt with the Western Fornt on an individual and cultural level. Extensive, and effective, use of letters and diaries from the Indian troops themselves is used throughout.

The author, formerly an officer in the Ghurkas, clearly has a great empathy with his subject and his contemptous dismissal of one oft-quoted source which, completely wrongly, has Indian troops cowering under fire shows his completely understandable, partisan leanings. The book is the better for it.

My quibbles (minor, I'm a pedant)is that the descriptions of combat can read more like a military report than a narrative and without a decent grasp of the battles of late 1914 and early 1915, you might wonder quite why it all matters so much, but the sweep of the book overcomes these minor failings.

I would recommend anyone with an interest in World War One, or the Indian Army, to buy this book and read a truly fascinating, and neglected, story of a war that has attracted so much attention.

The book is well written and covers a large range of material and subjects concerning the Indian units who served on the Western Front as part of the BEF until they were re-deployed to Mesopotamia in November 1915. Not only are the battles covered in detail but the make-up and performance of the Indian Corps is assessed and a number of myths and stories are clarified and laid to rest.

The author takes the time to give you the background of the Indian Corps and how it was organized and recruited to function under much different circumstances than the attritional warfare of the Western Front. He then shows the problems encountered by the Indian Army on the Western Front due to it being raised, trained and equipped to fight skirmishes on the Indian frontiers and not a modern European war.

At the end of the book you feel that the officers and men of the Indian Corps did an outstanding job during that first year of the Great War and that they might not have received the credit that they were due. That they had fought in every major British battle during that period and suffered horrendous casualties fighting in a country they knew little of and in a war that had nothing to do with them and still retained their loyalty and faith in the British Empire was quite amazing.

The author has utilised a number of first-hand accounts throughout the narrative, which give you a small idea and feeling of the Indian troops fighting in France. A number of black & white photographs and detailed maps are provided throughout the book and are of a decent standard. Overall this is an excellent account covering a little known and sparsely written about aspect of the First World War. I am sure that any student or reader of this period of history will enjoy this book and will learn something new to take away after putting the book back on its shelf.