The Great Push: An Episode of the Great War

audiobook

The Great Push: An Episode of the Great War

by Patrick MacGill

EN·~4 hours

Chapters

Description

A gritty, first‑hand portrait of the Great War, this memoir plunges listeners into the bleak, moon‑lit night before a massive assault. The narrator, a soldier who survived the harrowing charge at Loos, recounts the uneasy march through shattered villages, the eerie glow of burning mines, and the relentless chorus of artillery that turns the countryside into a landscape of smoke and shattered stone.

Through vivid, unflinching detail, the book captures the camaraderie and terror of life in the trenches—the cramped, mud‑soaked tunnels, the whispered prayers before the “over the top,” and the fragile moments of humanity found in a shared coffee at a ruined café. As the author reflects on loss, duty, and the haunting silence that follows each bombardment, listeners are offered a raw, intimate glimpse into the physical and emotional toll of war, without revealing the later outcomes of the battle.

Details

Language

en

Duration

~4 hours (280K characters)

Publisher of text edition

Project Gutenberg

Credits

Produced by MWS, Nahum Maso i Carcases and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

Release date

2017-06-09

Rights

Public domain in the USA.

About the author

Patrick MacGill

Patrick MacGill

1889–1963

Best known as the “Navvy Poet,” this Irish writer drew on his own hard early years and wartime service to create vivid books about labor, poverty, and life in the trenches. His work has an earthy directness that helped bring working-class experience into early twentieth-century literature.

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