Official History of The Great War: Military Operations France & Belgium 1915: Volume 2

New Edition with all Maps Reproduced in Full Colour. The Official History of the Great War was the grandest official history ever produced in Britain. Its purpose was to provide "within reasonable compass an authoritative account, suitable for general readers and for students at military schools." Due to the number of full-colour maps bound in each volume previous attempts to reprint this valuable reference ether floundered, or were produced with the maps in monochrome. At last the acclaimed work of the official cartographers who had ninety thousand maps at their command can be examined as they intended in full colour. This is part of a multi-volume work and is one of two volumes covering 1915. This volume completes the unhappy (for the BEF) year of 1915, one described with good reason as a year of disappointment. Its special interest is that it records the first employment of the Territorial and New Army divisions as complete formations in a major offensive and the first British employment of gas. It describes the Battles of Aubers Ridge, a disaster that cost 11,500 casualties in a day; Festubert in which initial success could not be exploited; and Loos (including the Hohenzollern Redoubt) in which we first used gas, with mixed results, and in which we failed to make progress. Our casualties in the battle (25 September-16 October) amounted to nearly 50,400. Total battle losses for 1915 were 285,000 compared with 90,000 for the five months of 1914.