Mons; The Retreat to Victory

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960. First American Edition [stated], Presumed First printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. 224 pages. Illustrations. Maps. Appendix. Index. , slight soiling inside rear flyleaf, boards stained. John Alfred Terraine (15 January 1921 - 28 December 2003) was an English military historian, and a TV screenwriter. He is best known as the lead screenwriter for the landmark 1960s BBC-TV documentary The Great War, about the First World War, and for his defense of British General Douglas Haig - who commanded the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war - against charges that he was "The Butcher of the Somme". Terraine had 16 books published, most of them dealing with aspects of the great European wars of the 20th century, and numerous articles and book reviews. His major study of the First World War, Mons: The Retreat to Victory was published in 1960. In 1964 Terraine edited a collection of diaries written by General James Lochhead Jack during the First World War, which became a best-seller. The Right of the Line: The Royal Air Force in the European War 1939-45 (1985) won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year award. His last book was Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars, 1916-1945. One obituarist wrote that for sheer scholarship, the quality and accessibility of his writing and for his debunking of historical myths, Terraine was one of the outstanding military historians of the 20th century. Terraine was a member of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies. He was awarded the Institute's Chesney Gold Medal in 1982. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1987. Four years of warfare lay ahead, but the gallant stand of a small division of The British Expeditionary Force at Mons, in 1914, halted the German offensive at a crucial moment. Their fighting retreat from Mons to Le Cateau laid the groundwork for later victories. It was a matter of two weeks before this army went from the dejection of retreat to the exhilaration of victory at the Battle of the Marne-one of the more decisive battles of the world. John Terraine, noted military historian made his debut here with this account that has become a classic.