Beneath the Killing Fields is a study and description of the subterranean remnants from WWI (tunnels,
\nmines, etc.) that for the most part were covered up and forgotten in the post-war period. This is
\nactually a pretty interesting book if you can get past the author\u2019s obvious contempt for every other
\nbranch of historical study beyond modern conflict archaeology. The author waxes eloquent at several
\ndifferent places about how his particular field of study is the only one that illuminates the lived
\nexperience of conflict on the western front. I am not going to argue here, I will simply point out that
\nwithout the work of those other branches of historical study modern conflict archaeology could not exist
\nas a discipline.
\nThe book itself consists of 7 chapters with ephemera, endnotes, and a bibliography. There are 154
\npages of text, 12 pages of notes, and a 6 page bibliography. There are also rather copious photos
\nscattered throughout the work.
\n3 battlefields are covered in some detail, Loos, Vimy Ridge, and Verdun. The battlefields are covered
\nquite well with, wonder of wonders, a historical treatment of each battlefield beginning the respective
\nchapters and then a discussion of the archaeological findings of the author\u2019s own Durand Group of
\nresearchers in their explorations of the various mines and tunnels still extant. The discussion of each
\nsystem is very interesting and the narrative of the battle chapters is quite readable. The author quite
\nrightly points out the dangers of untrained people accessing these systems and strongly cautions against
\nit.
\nOverall this is a very interesting look at an aspect of life on the western front that is mentioned but not
\nreally detailed in contemporary campaign histories. Modern conflict archaeology has an important role
\nin expanding and illuminating the new trend of micro history but like micro history itself, cannot answer
\nthe big questions of why the big events happened. If you want to know how the common soldier lived
\nmicro history is great, but if you want to know what decisions shaped nations and wars then you must
\nturn to macro history. Together, micro and macro history paint an overall picture and that is what the
\nauthor seems to forget. The fighting went underground due to events on the battlefield but those
\nevents were determined pre-war by developments in doctrine and weapons technology beyond the
\npower of the common soldier to control.
\nI recommend this book because it examines a very interesting aspect of trench warfare. I caution you to
\nbeware of the authors\u2019 bias and the way he disparages other historical disciplines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beneath the Killing Fields is a study and description of the subterranean remnants from WWI (tunnels, mines, etc.) that for the most part were covered up and forgotten in the post-war period. This is actually a pretty interesting book if… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1225],"tags":[31,1008,21],"class_list":["post-10158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-modern-global-conflict","tag-book-review","tag-world-war-i","tag-wwi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10159,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10158\/revisions\/10159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}