The Donkeys

by Alan Clark

A study of the Western Front in 1915, this book is a stinging indictment of incompetent generalship. The author explores the truth of the observation that British troops were "lions led by donkeys" and shows how appalling losses almost completely destroyed the old professional army.

Genres: History, Military History, World War I, War, Nonfiction, European History, Military Fiction

216 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1991

About the author

Alan Clark was an English Conservative MP, historian and diarist.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's Armistice Day - 11 November 2018.

Rewritten review to mark the exact one hundredth anniversary of the end of World War One.

The question has always been : were the British troops in World War One lions led by donkeys? This book says : yes. The generals were donkeys. Here's an account of one British attack

One of the German battalion commanders spoke later of the revolting and nauseating impression made on them all as they watched the slaughter; so much so that after the British retreat had begun they ceased fire… dozens of khaki-clad forms rose up once again and began to limp and crawl back to their own lines. “No shot was fired at them from the German trenches for the rest of the day, so great was the feeling of compassion and mercy for the enemy after such a victory.” There had been twelve battalions making the attack, a strength of just under ten thousand, and in the three and a half hours of the actual battle their casualties were 385 officers and 7861 men. The Germans suffered no casualties at all.” p173

There was a pre-fight build-up to World War One, lasting from 1905 to 1914, just like there is when two big name heavyweights are scheduled for a title fight these days. Everyone from street-sweepers to Emperors was gagging for this war, they did not fear it at all! It was a great game, and it would be fought with pluck, and the right spirit, and bright fashionable uniforms which fitted in all the right places. Also, with horses!

From this book I hoped to learn why the grisly slaughter, once it had begun, was allowed to persist, why men volunteered to be cannon fodder, why officers led these men directly into the machine guns of the enemy. And I did discover that the Donkeys (the British high command) had an entrenched, immovable optimism which reality could not dislodge.

And that everyone did not realise that just because the British shells threw up giant plumes of earth and mud and foliage, this did not mean they were actually doing much damage to the German troops, who had dug tunnels fifteen feet or more under their trenches, and sat out the bombardments, which only penetrated three or four feet.

So yes, I got that. but still, the horror of it all remains beyond me, ungraspable, out of reach. Like many things in life, I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book comes from a conversation by the German High Command..........."The English soldiers fight like lions.............True, but they are lions led by donkeys"

This book deals with only the first year of the Great War when the army of lions of the UK was called upon to attempt the impossible. It is a stern indictment of the Generals (the donkeys) who sent their men "over the top" into the withering fire of the German machine guns which mowed them down like wheat in a field. Sir John French who was holding on to fighting tactics that were outmoded even in the Crimean War, is blamed by the author for the carnage although other Generals are held responsible. It makes one wonder how the leadership of the UK Army could use their men as cannon fodder and count victories by the number of their men killed.

But this was a totally different war than those that went before, especially in the area of technology and weaponry and the leadership was obviously somewhat baffled as to how to approach the battles. Are the Generals to blame or was it the government which couldn't keep their hands out of the military strategy?

Regardless,this is a very disturbing book and terrible in its scope.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alan Clark's The Donkeys is a short, angry, highly influential polemic about the first two years of World War I, focusing on the British Expeditionary Force's ill-treatment and death in the battles of 1915. Clark (a decidedly iconoclastic MP) spends the balance of the book on the feud between Sir John French, commander of the BEF, and his second-in-command Douglas Haig, both depicted as prickly, arrogant men without an ounce of tactical sense between them. The consequences were obvious enough: in the battles of Second Ypres and Loos, arguably the low point of the war for the British, what remained of the veteran BEFs were massacred in increasingly pointless attacks on German trenches. Even for those familiar with the First World War, some of the carnage displayed is mind-boggling; in one attack at Loos, the British lose over 7,000 men without inflicting a single casualty on the Germans. Clark's book is persuasive through sheer vitriol, but it's also a rather limited work for the same reason. While not without foundation, Clark's view of the generals depicted is caricatured at best; Haig in particular has received convincing defenses in recent years, as a conservative general who slowly but painfully adapted to the realities of modern warfare (of course, the cost of that adaptation was measured in human lives). Clark's approach tends to exceptionalize British incompetence to a degree that makes it appear unique (as if the French, Germans and other belligerents weren't similarly wasteful in their tactics). The book inspired such antiwar landmarks as Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder Goes Forth, ensuring its permanence in cultural memory despite its mixed merits as history.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a Grandfather and two Great Uncles killed on the Western Front, I have more than a passing sympathy with Alan Clark's thesis and with the final Blackadder series. I know there are revisionist interpretations which make Haig a great strategist but he and his officers were still butchers, careless of the lives of the common soldiery. That carelessness for the private soldier's life goes deep in the British ruling classes - Wolf saw no great mischief in the slaughter of the Scottish regiments at Quebec for example.

[Janelle V. Dvorak · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book furnishes documentary proof of the rightness of Clemenceau's statement that war is too important to be left to the generals.

[Andy Hart · Rating 1 out of 5]

Academically discredited nonsense and a despicable assault on the reputations of the deceased (And therefore defenceless) men who led the British Army to victory in the Great War.

[Matt]

I've read this book a number of times and whilst it is an interesting account of the era I remain convinced that it's purpose is to pour scorn upon the senior officers of the 1915 British army & does so with a limited intellectual rigour or understanding of the 1915 situation facing the commanders of that era. It is written and led by the author's hindsight from a different era (the nuclear era no less!) and insufficient rigour is given to examining the crippling limitations of large scale military operations of this kind in 1915. This was a world before radio, before coordination of an all arms battle and was conducted at the speed of a walking man, under fire from industrial scale weaponry which those in uniform had yet to come to terms with. It's rather akin to heaping criticism upon the captain of a newly formed rugby team, whose players have only before played football in a local league, and on being propelled into international competition have found it difficult to adapt. To continue the analogy, that these so called 'donkeys' then went on to not only master the game but to win the 'world cup' in no more than 3 years, by 1918, with the most complete military victory of the era is in fact a stunning success story. That it cost so many lives is the tragedy of embarking upon a course of warfare, and the blame for that rests with the politicians and the politicians alone, not with the soldiers and officers who were thrust into the cauldron and had to adapt to survive and succeed.
Haig and his officers made this victory, not Tommy Atkins, yes the humble Tommy fought & died often bravely, but it was not Tommy who devised the tank or it's tactics and organised the fledgling Royal Tank Corps, nor the flying machines and their ability to coordinate artillery fire and aerial photographs, nor did Tommy develop the numerous training schools which grew in western France to train the newly formed armies. No, this work was done by the officers, it was they who developed the new tactics, learned how to use the new weapons and to coordinate the battles into the tactics & strategies which won the war.
Clark's book misses these facts, I can only assume because his aim was to pour scorn upon those senior military men in command upon whose shoulders fell the responsibility for fighting a war which the politicians had started but who had not ensured that the military men had the means to fight it.
So little is made of how successfully the British army, RN and RAF developed during the period of 1914-18 and who was responsible for driving that development. Any intelligent comparison of the battles of 1914-16 and those of 1917-18 shows this development and the incredibly short time in which these war winning developments were made is worthy of praise even amongst the most narrow minded of pacifists - who would do well to remember that there is no pacifist so ardent as he who has seen war at first hand!

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short series of detailed accounts about very bad battles fought on the western front in 1915 . Clark’s central theme seems to be that the Generals - French . Haig , Rawlinson - wasted the finest army ever assembled by the British in a series of disastrous attacks that gained little but cost huge numbers of dead and wounded .

Clark’s view is that this was the great professional army of the 19c that was wasted along with Kitcheners recruits - volunteers - who were the finest breed of soldiers . He contrasts these armies with the conscripts that arrive later during the war .

The battles - Neuve Chapelle , Aubers Ridge (Ypres) and Loos - are analysed in considerable detail.
The consistent theme is poor analysis and planning by the generals set against striking bravery bordering on mad heroism by the ranks and junior officers. The armies are asked to undertake offences in broad daylight in exposed positions against an enemy in a superior position with strong machine gun fire enfilading our walking infantry and - in the second battle of Loos - taking out 80% of our soldiers ( dead of wounded )

The other theme is the disconnection of order giving eg by Gen French 25 miles behind the lines with no understanding of the actual state of things on the front line . Not only does this result in mad and fatal hopeless attacks - but also the commander at the front would be unable to maximise any gains he might make because he would not be able to take any initiatives based on the unfolding of the battle . Any initiative would be taken in isolation and without coordination with other parts of the attacking forces .

Alan Clark paints a compelling picture of appalling fumbling generalship that wastes many thousands of lives needlessly. Except that it is difficult to follow the intricacies of battle from the rather poor maps provided, this is a compelling account of the western front in 1915. Only Smith Dorrien emerges - of the senior generals - with any credit : he, who in 1914 had told a training camp of public schools officers that “ war in Europe will solve nothing “ and “ war should be avoided at all costs “.

Alan Clark is not to my mind an admirable author - try reading his diaries - and the mean spirited petty side of his stature helps him to make great play on the squabbling personal animosities between these generals vying for position and glory whilst their men live appalling lives in the trenches . However that side of things - the animosity between the generals - cannot be ignored and certainly undermined the effectiveness of battle planning and execution.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reputation of British field officers in WWI has taken quite a beating over the years and Alan Clark's 1961 book The Donkeys (1961) has played no small part in this image. The Donkeys was the first of Clark's five books on military history; its title was taken from a comment that while British soldiers were lions, their leaders were asses.



The Donkeys (1961) was soon followed by Barbarossa (1965), Clark's history of the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Both were decent sellers and the first has found a comfortable place in British consciousness. Clark also wrote three additional military histories (Crete, Vietnam, and the WWI Air War) and several novels, all forgettable. After his last book he turned to politics, where his reputation spread beyond the pages of his books.

The thrust of The Donkeys is the charge that the massive devastation of British manhood in WWI was largely due to the incompetence of the commanders of the British Expeditionary Force—had their leadership, strategy, and tactics been better, such bloodletting as the Battle of the Somme (July-November, 1916), and Passchendaele (August-November, 1917) might have been would have been far less costly. (Note: Passchendaele is also called the Third Battle of Ypres.)

As we will see, Clark's first book was received with a hail of gunfire from historians and, of course, the families and friends of the generals he charges with incompetence and brutal wastes of life. Among the most vigorous of his opponents were those who did not share Clark's view of Lt. Gen. Sir Douglas Haig, dubbed "Butcher Haig, who had helped form the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

Haig served as second-in-command to Field Marshal Sir John French, and became BEF commander after Field Marshal Sir John French was sacked—a sacking due in large part to Hai's covert machinations. Haig was BEF commander at both the Somme and at Passchendaele.

Who Was Alan Clark?

Alan Clark was the son of the British art historian Kenneth Clark. He was a writer-turned-politician who was briefly blacklisted by the Conservative Party in 1971 for being too right-wing. In 1974—after the publication of his last military history, Clark stood for member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton and won, serving until 1992.

He was elected MP for Kensington and Chelsea in 1997, serving until his death in 1999. In the Thatcher government he was a junior Minister for Trade, then junior minister for Defence Procurement. In 1991 he became a Privy Council member until he left Parliament in 1997, when Thatcher left the Prime Ministership.

Clark's vigorous blame-laying begins at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915—there were three Battles of Ypres, each intended to disperse the German forces massed in Belgium on the French border. For evidence, Clark relies primarily on the British Official History of WWI and related sources, as well as his own knowledge of military strategy and tactics, a knowledge gained from self-education and from six months serves in the Household Cavalry.

But a disturbing thing happened on my way into the book. Right up front, in the prelude, Clark reports the following exchange between Sir John French, CIC of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in 1914-15, and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, French's second-in-command and commander of the BEF's Second Army at the Ypres salient.

French: The British Army will give battle on the line of the Condé Canal.
Smith-Dorrien: Do you mean take the offensive, or stand on the defensive?
French: Don't ask questions, do as you're told.

This is such a ludicrously inane exchange as to set alarm bells ringing, so I checked the Wikipedia entry for "Alan Clark" and found that Clark was often pressed about the source of this exchange. Each answer he gave was different, and each was found false. In 2007 one of Clark's friends reported that in 1965 Clark told him that the source was—Alan Clark. He had "made it up."

Wikipedia also cites historians who say that The Donkeys is "poor scholarship," "slovenly," "a streak of pure deception," and so on. A fellow Conservative MP described Clark as "the most politically incorrect, outspoken, iconoclastic and reckless politician of our times." Historian Basil Liddell Hart, who served as Clark's advisor on The Donkeys is said to have been concerned by Clark's "intermittent carelessness."

The Daily Telegraph's obituary for Clark (09/05/1999) follows a policy of saying nothing good about the dead. Clark is revealed as a womanizer who had a 14-year affair with a woman who knew that he also had it on with her two daughters.

Clearly, Clark was a man who stepped on toes and made enemies. Perhaps they wrote the Wikipedia article; it certainly wasn't friends.

The Donkeys

Given the reputation noted above, why is this book considered by many as an accurate description of the BEF's commanders in the Great War? Was Clark a fabulist and, if so, to what extent is his take on the BEF's leadership a fable? I have no answers and only God knows the truth. Still, I forged ahead and I certainly found the book's contents disturbing.

Yes, there was a lot that went wrong, including the BEF GHQ's failure to pass down the line the news that the Germans had a new weapon—chlorine gas, against which there was no meaningful offense at that time. Yes, there were orders countermanded and then reissued, only to be countermanded again, an indecision that created troops exhausted from being moved around like pawns Yes, the French under Marshall Foch and General Joffre repeatedly promised support, and then repeatedly reneged and left the BEF unprotected. Yes, BEF bodies were thrown into repeated and repeatedly failing attacks on German breastworks. There is no writer I've ever read who thought that the BEF's performance in WWI was cracker-jack.

Was this all due to incompetence? Or was it a fundamental principle of warfare in action:

No plan survives first contact with the enemy!

Or was the remarkable bloodshed a sign of the times and the technology? My guess is that the last—of which Clark makes no mention—plays an extremely important role in the high casualty rates of WWI.

Consider the advances that had been made in military technology and its consequences for military tactics and loss of life. Artillery is probably the most important single advance. Before 1914 artillery was composed of relatively short-range flights of inert cannonballs, where damage was limited to the kinetic energy of the projectile. But now it was the source of long-range flight with explosive warheads.

And with artillery came trench warfare. Distances between front lines increased, creating the phenomenon of "No Man's Land." Now an attack on an enemy position no longer was a short rush toward an enemy's line with brief exposure to a hail of rifle fire; it was a time-consuming run across open land into a continuous hail of machine-gun bullets.

The implications for loss of life are obvious. But Clark makes no mention of these advances in his explanation of the great increase in loss of life during WWI.

[David Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

One can read this book in at least two ways: 1/ follow the detail and try to understand the strategy of the leaders, 2/ skim over the lists of regiments and just feel for the lives of the soldiers going over the top to certain death.

One hopes today's wars are better led by professional soldiers who know their every action is going to be analysed by scores of journalists and experts.

It's definitely an eye-opener and should be read by every soldier before they commit their lives to the potential prat in charge. "I'll be right behind you Blackadder" - "About 35 miles behind me sir"

[Erik Prime · Rating 2 out of 5]

A brutal reassessment of British war tactics during World War I, specifically the year 1915, going so far as to call out the culprits by name in the preface: four generals named Sir John French, Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir Henry Wilson. This slim volume effectively argues that one would be hard-pressed to find a quartet of bigger incompetents within the annals of 20th Century conflicts.

Tens of thousands of English troops died unnecessarily due to the use of horribly outdated military tactics, and this book has the receipts to prove it. During the early months of the War to End All Wars, the British High Command was still deploying antiquated calvary forces, failing to realize that horse soldiers were no match for armored tanks and sustained artillery barrages. Also, the line of demarcation between the Allied and German armies, the so-called Western Front, weighed heavily in the favor of the Germans, who held the best strategic positions all along the line. To quote from the book, the Germans held the “little areas of high ground, or groups of buildings at road junctions, or other sorts of positions that offered unusual advantages to the enemy.”

A dry, pedantic book that makes for a laborious read unless you are an undergrad at West Point, it delves deep into the military tactics of the war on a day-by-day basis, enumerating the endless incoherent orders given and the countless mistakes made. What with the inept leadership, bungled advances, mismanaged supply lines, outdated equipment and unreliable munitions, it’s a wonder the Germans ever lost the war.

One particularly disturbing section describes the aftermath of mustard gas attacks that the Germans perpetrated against the Allies. During the first few engagements, despite warnings from outside intelligence sources, British soldiers were not equipped with gas masks or any other type of rudimentary breathing equipment. Instead, they were told that in the event of exposure to mustard gas, they should simply hold a wet handkerchief over their noses and mouths, and dip the cloths in bicarbonate of soda if available. Many agonizing deaths ensued, soldier and civilian alike.

[Elliott · Rating 2 out of 5]

The First World War is best understood as one large event complete and whole. The reason is that for the Western Front the endings of battles are rather arbitrary. There are the official end dates, but with the nature of trench warfare the fighting in say the Ypres Salient or the Somme could be just as fierce after the official conclusion of an offensive as it was during. This difficulty in any demarcation means that an author highly critical or highly supportive can simply choose whatever brief window they desire to prove their point.
My personal opinion on the upper command of the BEF seems to vary from one day to the next and so I’m neither totally hostile or completely sympathetic to Alan Clark’s thesis. The chief issue I have with this book- and this is not Clark’s fault at all- is that this book is tragically dated. Since 1961 a newer edition of Haig’s Diaries has emerged, in addition better primary sources from the German Army have also come to light. These don’t necessarily invalidate or support Clark’s judgments- merely they show that the study of the Great War has evolved quite a bit.
A secondary concern is that there is plenty of evidence during the latter portions of the War to make the same case on the British leadership but that for these early campaigns warfare on this scale was unknown. 1915 found the armies of Europe literally entrenched in the largest war in history to that point. Nothing before had come close. John Terraine, who made the rehabilitation of Haig his life’s crusade, draws parallels to the American Civil War in his landmark The Smoke and the Fire but even then that war was only similar on a superficial level. It also should be noted that while Falkenhayn’s snide comment on the BEF leadership did spawn this book’s title- the German Command could be equally callous to the lives of its men. Which brings me to my final point: the book is vague on German perspectives outside of their high command and while this is not exactly Clark’s fault, it does cast back on the dated quality of this book.

[Dave Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Clark’s “The Donkeys” describes the destruction of the professional British Army at Neuve Chapelle, Loos, and “2nd Ypres” in 1915. In the first two hours of Loos, the British dead exceeded the total number of casualties on both sides on D–Day, 1944. In the same battle the German gunners ceased firing, so great was the slaughter. Clark’s portrayal of the commanders, particularly Kitchener, French and Haig, is devastating. Although subsequent research has questioned some of the author’s interpretations and conclusions, Clark amply documents the folly, stubbornness, and incompetence which was palpable from the discharge of the first guns of August.

But the underlying theme of the book transcends the decisions of the generals. It is the concatenation of factors that lead to the fog of war, and dwarf human comprehension: poor communication, the failure to effectively concentrate troops, a confused command and control structure, the friction inherent to coalition warfare, faulty intelligence, and an inability to advantage terrain for tactical benefit. Factors that plagued every army in Flanders. In short, the Great War was an historical anomaly which squandered the moral and physical capital banked since the Treaty of Westphalia. The nation that produced Churchill could not undo the disaster of Kitchener, French and Haig.

Clark has written an important brief against hubris. A concise, but important work.

[Tony Styles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lions led by donkeys polishing perceived laurels more like..

An engaging and absorbing read. The plain fact that does shine through is that the British General Staff, blighted by petty prejudices and political infighting had a total inability, or dare I say unwillingness to look facts in the face. Due to a wholly inadequate communications framework, French, Haig, Foch et al made decisions about the committing of reserves based on nothing more than speculation grounded in the bedrock of their own perceived infallibilities. Blaséd attitudes toward casualties was, even by contemporary standards, criminal. Clark’s narrative reminded me very much of Blackadder’s sarcastic but shockingly accurate portrayal of Haig using a dustpan and brush to sweep up fallen soldiers from a sand table, epitomising a totally uncaring manner towards the lives of their men. I have docked a star from my review based on the author’s inaccurate information regarding C.Sharpe VC who Clark claims was killed later in 1917, when in fact he survived the war and died in 1963. This aside the book does encapsulate the bumbling ineptitude and villainous irresponsibility of The Donkeys.

[A D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating and tragic story, superbly told by Clark, detailing the incompetence, vanity and toadying of many of the leading British generals in the second year of World War One. With a few exceptions almost all of them are shown to be completely unable to grasp basic military facts and to have thrown away golden opportunities to make a breakthrough on the western front. Compounding these glaring errors is their willingness to then throw away literally, tens of thousands of the lives of their own men in trying to then force the breakthroughs that they had already squandered, despite their own officers on the ground and their intelligence warning them were no longer possible. A sad, sad book.

[ben c · Rating 3 out of 5]

calling them donkeys not much help to the guys in the trenches of course

[Mark Suffern · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even allowing for the difficulties of communication it's hard to understand some of the decisions and the sacrifice of so many lives for nothing

[Lynn Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A refreshing alternative look at WW1

[Shaun Helsby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ah Clark. More interested in this book in telling a heavily one-sided polemic with a clear intent to convince the reader that all leaders in the British forces during the First World War were incompetent fools more concerned with point scoring against each other with the political forces at Whitehall rather than fighting Europe's biggest war since the Napoleonic era. Such is the title, 'The Donkeys', not something more objective, like 'The Leaders'? No, that wouldn't get the point across.

This book is selective history at its best: cherry picked battles where Britain suffered heavy losses with quotes taken out of context to present the speakers in the most damning light possible. This work is not even a complete tale - it is solely concerned with only some British leaders (mainly Douglas Haig and John French) and stops short once it reaches the end of 1915 rather than carrying on and showing how the war progressed afterwards. Such was a surprise, especially considering the Somme (1916) and Third Ypres (1917) offensives are where Clark would have had more of a case to make.

Perhaps going further would have meant Clark would have had to offer the other perspective of the conflict, whereby the leaders started to learn from their mistakes and perform much better against the Germans, thereby debunking his one-sided argument that the leaders were inept, inconsiderate, inflexible donkeys? Maybe, in truth, the British leaders did go on to learn and oversee a resounding victory over the Germans and their accompanying central powers by the war's end in 1918?

Speaking of, this book doesn't even bother sharing the German leader's actions (not least Falkenhayn) or French (the French, not John French), or wider forces of the British Empire for that matter. It doesn't aknowledge how the British leaders were constained to fall in line and support the French. For instance, the book only makes passing reference to Joffre and the Champagne offensive that was concurrent with the Loos offensive, where Clark commits much of the later half of his polemic crafting a tale presenting Haig as a bumbling, gas-obsessed fool. In short, the work lacks perspective, or even an admittance that the First World War was proving a tough nut to crack for every leader on the Western and Eastern fronts, not just the British.

If you want to be told that Britain's leaders were donkeys and let down a nation, then give this is a read. If you are after an objective narrative history about these leaders, their decision making and a narrative of the entire conflict, turn elsewhere.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Donkeys" details the British army's futile offensives on the western front of World War I in 1915. Alan Clark reveals just how unprepared the British high command was for the realities of trench warfare, as wave after wave of young soldiers were hurled into the nightmares of "No Man's Land," with most of them killed or maimed within minutes of going over the top. Clark points out that this is not an "indictment" of the British generals at this time (although the title refers to a derogatory nickname for said leaders, coined from a German general's quote -- "the British are an army of lions led by donkeys"), but rather a simple narrative of the impossible tasks that were given to the men in the field and how they ended in utter defeat. Particularly eye-opening is a section of a British captain's diary, from a week in August 1915, which is reproduced at the end of the book. Here is an in-the-trenches perspective that unveils the true horrors of the front line, and how ordinary men attempted to cope with what they experienced on a daily basis. While "The Donkeys" is now more than 50 years old, and much more critical (and less harsh) analysis been done on this period, this book still offers an unforgettable look at the horrific events early in the Great War, when the fighting was "not war, but murder."

[Avis Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 'donkeys' refers to the British High Command in World War I, and Clark savages them in this book. The author served as a minister in Margaret Thatcher's government, and he was also the son of the well-known art historian Kenneth Clark.

[Mike Kershaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth reading alone for the title, often attributed to a German General Officer on the British Army's leadership in World War I. The book chronicles the decimation of the pre-war BEF in 1915 and the inability of the Army leadership to understand the changes that caused it.

[Juan Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read and a very enlightening description of what was happening behind the scenes of the leaders of the main combatants. Highly recommend!