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The Great Push An Episode of the Great War Patrick MacGill Books

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“He’s hit,” said Pryor. “There, the beastly machine gun is going again. Who is he?”
We stared tensely at the shell-hole. No sign of movement. . . .
“’E’s done in,” said Bill.

Patrick MacGill’s semi-autobiographical account is a vivid depiction of life in the trenches before, during and after the Battle of Loos.

As a ‘navvy’ on the front, Pat and his comrades had the unenviable job of digging drains and constructing trenches while constantly being under threat from shells and snipers.

Although interspersed with soldier’s humour, the men in the dugouts never truly escaped the full horrors of war.

Written with stark characterizations of common soldiers and superiors and with dialogue taken straight from the mouths of the subalterns, it is one of the greatest anti-war novels to have been written.

Published in 1916, its authenticity is explained by MacGill “I have tried in this book to give, as far as I am allowed, an account of an attack in which I took part. Practically the whole book was written in the scene of action, and the chapter dealing with our night at Les Brebis, prior to the Big Push, was written in the trench between midnight and dawn of September 25th; the concluding chapter in the hospital at Versailles two days after I had been wounded at Loos.”

Patrick MacGill, who died in 1963, was an Irish journalist, poet and novelist, known as ‘The Navvy Poet’. During the First World War he served with the London Irish Rifles and received a ‘blighty wound’, which is documented in The Great Push.