'Fifteen Rounds a Minute' : The Grenadiers at War, August to December 1914, Edited From Diaries and Letters of Major 'Ma' Jeffreys and Others

Overview: To many, the First World War conjures up exclusively a picture of trench warfare, in which the armies of both sides remained locked in the mud and despair of their static positions. The war of movement with which the conflict opened and closed is less well remembered. This book, originally published in 1976, is an attempt to correct that situation, by providing a detailed daily account of the actions of one of the finest of the battalions of the original British Expeditionary Force that crossed over to France in the summer of 1914, the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards - The Models. The story is told in the words of the officers of the Battalion, few of whom survived the war, taken from their diaries and letters, and covers all the major actions of the first five months of the War - Mons and the Retreat, the Marne, the Aisne, culminating in the dark and desperate days of First Ypres. By the end of that battle the Battalion had lost 959 men killed, wounded and missing - practically its entire strength. For the most part the story is told by Major 'Ma' Jeffreys, later General the Lord Jeffreys, whose diaries, supplemented on occasion by the diaries and letters of some of his brother officers and others, provide a very complete, graphic and deeply moving picture of those turbulent days as seen by an ordinary regimental officer of the old school.

This book, originally published in 1976, is an account of the first five months of the First World War, as seen by members of a battalion of the Grenadier Guards and told in their own words and a classic of military writing. Contrary to the popular view of that war, this was a period of movement as the Allies sought first to block the German's apparently irresistible march on Paris, then to push them back to the Belgian border until finally both sides engaged in the 'Race for the Sea' in an attempt to find and exploit the open flank. It was a phase that included the retreat from Mons, the Battles of the Marne and the Aisne and finally and most devastatingly the First Battle of Ypres.

The book is based on the diary that was kept by the Battalion Second in Command, Major George (subsequently General the Lord) Jeffreys, known to everyone as 'Ma'. Described by Harold Macmillan as one of the greatest of commanding officers, he was one of only three officers who went to war with the Battalion in August 1914 who survived with it to the end of the year. Supplemented on occasion by the letters and diaries of his brother officers and others, it provides a very complete picture of those turbulent days.