With My Regiment: From the Aisne to La Bassée

This is war as lived, not as mythologized. Arthur Mills, a British officer, recorded his experiences in the first months of World War I with an immediacy that stings across a century. The book opens on the moment every young man in August 1914 dreaded and craved: the mobilization order. We follow Mills as he gathers what few possessions he can, says goodbye to those he loves, and boards the train toward a front he cannot imagine. The Aisne and La Bassée were not yet the Somme's infamous slaughter, but they were brutal enough. Mills introduces us to soldiers finding dark humor in impossible circumstances, to the strange fellowship of men who became brothers in days, and to the constant hum of fear beneath the courage. His voice is honest about the anxiety, the excitement, the guilt of leaving loved ones, and the way war both destroys and forges identity. This is a document of the war's earliest days, when the outcome was uncertain and the horror had not yet become ordinary.