Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden both saw action and survived into the late twentieth century as successful men of letters whose styles were quite different. This chapter looks at their literary friendship and compares their work, clarifying where they stand in relation to the Georgians and other war poets, while putting them in a broader cultural perspective. It shows how experience of the trenches led them to twist traditional forms, and examines the stylistic and personal challenges they faced as survivors, their writings ever more retrospective. It argues that Blunden’s complexpoetry may feel archaic but has Modernist elements and has been unjustly neglected by comparison with Sassoon’s more accessible but less subtle verse. With close analysis and comparison, and some redefining of key texts, the chapter emphasises their contrasting approaches: Blunden the troubled pastoralist, exploring profounder shades of meaning; Sassoon deliberately ‘anti-poetic’, but with satirical designs on us.

Leading lesser allies is a classic feature of coalition warfare. That was Britain’s task in the Entente. Through diplomacy and blackmail, London tried to reconcile Rome’s national interests with the needs of the Entente.

Many of the war’s leading generals rose or fell during 1916. Germany refocused on the west, where Falkenhayn, chief of the high command since the initial defeat at the Marne, attacked at Verdun, seeking a bloodletting that would drive France from the war. The French persevered through ten months, during which generals Pétain and Nivelle eclipsed Joffre, who lost his post as commander late in the year. In the summer Haig’s British and Imperial forces, with French support, attacked the Germans at the Somme, where in September tanks first saw action. The battle there ended in a draw but also ensured the French a draw at Verdun. Meanwhile, on the Italian front, Conrad von Hötzendorf launched an Austro-Hungarian offensive from the Tyrol. This attack, like the German effort at Verdun, used troops pulled from the east, allowing a summer Russian offensive under Brusilov to break the weakened front. The Germans returned troops to seal the breach, but the debacle forced Falkenhayn to relinquish the high command to Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Amid the crisis the Central Powers made William II their supreme commander, sealing Austria-Hungary’s subordination to Germany. Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire joined them late in the year in crushing Romania shortly after it joined the Allies.

No sooner had the barrage lifted from the Australian trenches on the night of 5 May 1916 than two German raiding parties entered the shattered remnants of the Bridoux Salient and began searching through the smoke and debris for underground mining galleries. They picked their way through the tangle of sandbags and smashed timber, lobbing grenades into makeshift shelters where the surviving Australian garrison sought refuge. Three grenades were lobbed into a dugout and exploded, after which five stunned and terrified figures emerged with hands raised above their heads. After eight minutes, three sharp whistle blasts signalled the raiders to return across No Man’s Land. With them went two 3-inch Stokes mortars and eleven men of the 20th Battalion, who had the misfortune of being the first Australian soldiers taken prisoner by German forces on the Western Front.