First Shots, Last Shots: The Opening and Closing Campaigns of the First World War

The two campaigns on the Western Front that began and ended the Great War

Although he became something of a controversial figure towards the end of the First World War, Major-General, Sir Frederick Maurice (1871-1951) was an experienced soldier (having already served in the Tirah Campaign and Second Boer War), an erudite historian and a fine author whose written works had been published from 1905. This Leonaur edition draws together two fascinating accounts by Maurice (previously published separately) which outline the Great War in Europe during those campaigns when it was most fluid. The German perspective of both of these events is given considerable attention. These were of course, the opening campaign which saw the virtually unstoppable German Army in its advance upon Paris in 1914 and-as the title suggests-the final four months of the conflict as the Ludendorff Offensive failed and the allied armies drove the retreating German enemy back to the borders of their Fatherland in 1918. Both periods of warfare are explored and analysed in these pages in remarkable detail. In fact, Maurice saw the Battle of Mons at first-hand, since he was a staff officer with the Third Infantry Division. Maurice was forced into retirement in 1918 having criticised David Lloyd George in a letter to The Times newspaper, though he went on to found .'The British Legion' in 1920. These two accounts include useful campaign maps, together with photographs and illustrations which did not accompany original editions.