Philip Gibbs eBooks

Now It Can Be Told. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Philip Gibbs   -  World War Classics, 2018  - 

Written by a British war correspondent who was present in and around the front lines of the western front for the entirety of WWI, the title refers to the fact that his writings here are published without the censorship that was in place during the war.   An absolutely outstanding account of the realities of war in general, WWI trench warfare in particular, with appropriate commendation of the suffering, sacrifices, and heroism, without glorification of fighting. It is clearly an anti-war treatise, but without denigrating the service and sacrifice of those whose lives were changed forever by their experiences in France and Belgium.   Now It Can Be Told is thought by many not only as one of the best WWI books, but as one of the best war/history books on record.

The Soul of the War. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Philip Gibbs   -  World War Classics, 2018  - 

Gibbs reviews the true horror of man, the true horror of war. In this book he spends much time revealing the sacrifices, heartaches and unimaginable horrors that the French and the Belgians had to endure during the Great War. He speaks of his time volunteering as a stretcher-bearer for an ambulance service and risks and dangers that he undertook to try and save as many young men as possible. His tales of the hospital wards and the wounded young men he saw is a perfect summary for why war should never be the answer.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD - A War Observer's Illumination Bomb. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Philip Gibbs   -  Edizioni Savine, 2017  - 

“ In this book I have written about some aspects of the war which, I believe, the world must know and remember, not only as a memorial of men’s courage in tragic years, but as a warning of what will happen again—surely—if a heritage of evil and of folly is not cut out of the hearts of peoples. Here it is the reality of modern warfare not only as it appears to British soldiers, of whom I can tell, but to soldiers on all the fronts where conditions were the same. What I have written here does not cancel, nor alter, nor deny anything in my daily narratives of events on the western front as they are now- published in book form. They stand, I may claim sincerely and humbly, as a truthful, accurate, and tragic record of the battles in France and Belgium during the years of war, broadly pictured out as far as I could see and know. My duty, then, was that of a chronicler, not arguing why things should have happened so nor giving reasons why they should not happen so, but describing faithfully many of the things I saw, and narrating the facts as I found them, as far as the censorship would allow. After early, hostile days it allowed nearly all but criticism, protest, and of the figures of loss. The purpose of this book is to get deeper into the truth of this war and of all war—not by a more detailed narrative of events, but rather as the truth was revealed to the minds of men, in many aspects, out of their experience; and by a plain statement of realities, however painful, to add something to the world’s knowledge out of which men of good-will may try to shape some new system of relationship between one people and another, some new code of international morality, preventing or at least postponing another massacre of youth like that five years’ sacrifice of boys of which I was a witness.”  (Sir Philip Gibbs – 1920)