Mud, Blood and Poppycock

Mud, Blood and Poppycock challenges some of the most persistent popular images of Britain’s First World War: generals indifferent to casualties, soldiers helplessly sacrificed for tiny gains and an army incapable of learning. Corrigan revisits mobilisation, trench warfare, discipline, technology and command to test those assumptions against the military record from 1914 to 1918.

The book does not deny the enormous human cost of the conflict, but argues that the British Army changed profoundly under pressure. New artillery methods, communications, logistics, tanks and increasingly sophisticated combined-arms tactics helped turn a small pre-war force into a mass army capable of sustaining the campaigns of 1918. Corrigan’s purpose is to replace inherited caricature with a more contentious, evidence-driven account of how Britain fought and eventually won.