David Woodward has produced many good books in the past. His Field Marshall Sir William Robertson: Chief of the Imperial General Staff in the Great War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998); Lloyd George and the Generals (London: Frank Cass, 2004); and Trial by Friendship: Anglo-American Relations, 1917–1918 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993) have all been well received and critically acclaimed. He is one of the few leading American historians who has bothered to put in enough time in British archives to be considered expert in those records relating to the British Army in the First World War. It is, therefore, most unfortunate that this latest product does not live up to that previous record of sound, analytical scholarship.

There is a solid archival basis to this work. Woodward has gone through many private and departmental papers of the British Army related to the Middle East. To his credit he has gone beyond the officer class and looked at the archival materials related to the common soldier, to try and find out what the experience of the British soldier in this remote campaign was. His knowledge of the European experiences from his previous works allows him to make some interesting comparisons and give the reader a peek at what being a lower or middle-class Englishman in the Middle East must have been like. Strange food, strange customs, a strange enemy, far from home, hot, tired, scared, and thirsty, it does not take much to imagine what a hell it truly must have been for the bulk of these men who for the first time in their adult lives found themselves more than twenty miles from their village. There are many interesting snippets of that sort of “life of” history to be found in Woodward's story and he is to be congratulated for telling the simple soldiers’ tale of life in this World War I theater.

But it is in the connection of the various parts of that story, and indeed trying to find a focus of “the story” that is difficult for the reader. Woodward spins the reader in and out of the various levels of the British Army, and indeed other viewpoints such as the Turkish opponents, with little transition or explanation of what the intended outcome of the information about to be given is. From dangers at sea in the transportation process, to high level operational debates about likely enemy intentions and the distribution of British units, the study whirls around these bits of debris in sandstormlike fashion. There are some interesting discussions about logistics and supply to be gleaned from these pages, the building of pipelines and railways, the use of camels and native troops and civilians to manage these transportation methods, but too often the reader is left to try and guess what the relevance or connection of these parts is to the whole. If the intent is to place this unique experience alongside that of the usual historical concentration on the European theater of war, more must still be made of the dislocation caused by the culture shock, the lack of any sort of predeployment preparation by officers for their men, and indeed by the War Office for its officers. The British Army's experience of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia was extensive. If there is a theme to be followed through Woodward's work, it could possibly be along such lines, of once more British preparation for war being an amateurish and ad hoc affair where the needs of both soldiers and officers alike were neglected and that neglect led to operational ineffectiveness as well as unnecessary suffering of all concerned. Here the work of Jeremy A. Crang, The British Army and the People's War, 1939–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) or David French, Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People c. 1870–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) is relevant. It must be suspected that there is a sneaking matter of presentism at work here.

If the intent is to provide a historical lesson, a case study of “those who have gone before,” that can be linked to current events in the Middle East and the deployment of American and British troops to that region, then the utility of this work is marginal. Yes, war in that area given its climatic and geographic realities is and was hell. Yes, the use of local forces to help win any conflict is necessary, especially if that theater is not the main theater of operations and operations in that theater are being conducted with “limited” forces. Yes, the enemy is a capable and worthy foe and not one that can be ignored or underestimated due to cultural arrogance or ignorance. These are all elements that come out of the study, but they are to be constructed (in best literary critic fashion, the Edward Said approach one could say) or guessed at because of the structural weaknesses of the book. There is very little though on why the soldiers were in that part of the world.

There was disappointingly little on the soldier as tourist, one of the main themes that Woodward is attempting to convey. Passing references were made, but much more could have been done with this theme. Within chapters, the text jumps around a lot between tactical and strategic levels, thus confusing the personal stories of the individuals. More use could have been made of existing social/cultural historiography. Specifically articles written by David Englander and John Bourne as well as books by Timothy Bowman, Irish Regiments in the Great War. Discipline and Morale (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), Janet Watson, Fighting Different Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), would have been useful. In all Woodward's book could most usefully be read in conjunction with something like Helen McCartney's Citizen Soldiers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) in order to help give direction to the large amount of data provided in his book.