Description
Title: To Villers-Bretonneux – General Glasgow and the 13th Infantry Brigade
Author: Edgar, Peter
Condition: Mint
Edition: 2nd Edition
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 1876439467
Cover: Hard Cover without Dust Jacket (Laminated Boards) – 284 pages
Comments: The detailed biography of General Sir William Glasgow.
On the Western Front in France, on 24 April 1918, Brigadier General William Glasgow received an order to march his brigade towards the sound of the guns.
A renewed German attack had taken Villers-Bretonneux, threatening Amiens and the Allied line of defence and the thrust towards Paris had to be halted at all costs.
Glasgow had only a few hours to get in touch with his temporary British divisional commander, reconnoiter, plan the counter-attack, brief his men and send them forward to meet the enemy.
This book traces the progress of Glasgow’s 13th Australian Infantry Brigade from its formation in Egypt in 1916 to its costly double encounter with the enemy at Mouquet Farm. The narrative then follows the brigade into 1917 with difficult victories at Noreuil and Messines and an easier advance at Zonnebeke.
The book concludes with the brigade’s halting of the largest-ever German attack on Australian troops at Dernancourt on 5 April 1918 and, three weeks later, its triumph at Villers-Bretonneux.
The author sets the brigade’s achievements in the context of war in general and the First World War in particular. Mindful of the debates about the Anzac Legend, Edgar asks: ‘What was legendary about these men?’
