Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The United Kingdom sent 5.7 million men to the front in World War I, about one-quarter of the adult male population, and 2 million more than it did in World War II. In ``Tommy'' (HarperCollins, 717 pages, 20 pounds), historian Richard Holmes tells their story.

The war was, at least in the popular imagination, a tragic slaughter, a horrible waste of lives, the subject of novels like Erich Maria Remarque's ``All Quiet on the Western Front,'' memoirs like Robert Graves's ``Goodbye to All That,'' the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. The lot of the soldiers in the trenches was disillusionment, melancholy, madness. What more could be said about World War I?

Actually, lots. The problem with the First World War, Holmes writes, is that ``it usually enters our minds not as history, but as literature.'' That literature, inevitably of individual loss and trauma, has hijacked the war, as the participants knew it.

``By studying the war as literature, we do not simply color our view of the past and make it all but impossible to teach the war as history,'' writes Holmes. ``We go on to tint our picture of the present and our image of the future too.''

Dearly Won

The literary cult treated the war as ``waste built on futility and compounded by human error.'' Certain strategists supported this view, that the Western Front was unassailable, and that the allies might look elsewhere for a breakthrough. They didn't win the war, but they won the historical argument in the 1920s and 1930s, says Holmes. Finally, the 1960s encouraged an iconoclasm that held up the generals to ridicule and abuse.

``And so we remember the war not as we might, through the eyes of 1918, as a remarkable victory so very dearly won, but through the eyes of 1928 as a sham which had wasted men's lives and squandered their courage,'' writes Holmes.

Holmes is here to reclaim the true story of the war and those who fought it, based upon the facts, and using the historical evidence contained in contemporary documents like diaries, letters, field message books and the like.

Engaging Style

``Tommy'' -- the title refers to the generic name for the British soldier, ``Thomas Atkins,'' a name first used in a War Office publication of 1815 detailing how to fill out a soldier's pay book -- thus offers a bracing corrective. The officers weren't all incompetent, the morale of the troops was generally high, an entire generation of young poets, philosophers and politicians wasn't lost.

Here's how Tommy dressed, here's what he ate, the equipment he carried, how he spent his days. Here he is in the trenches, in the dugouts, and on the battlefield.

Holmes, whose ``Redcoat'' (2001) told the story of the British solider ``in the age of horse and musket,'' from 1700 to 1900, here takes on the various myths that have grown up about the First World War. Widely known as a presenter on British television, having done nine series on battles and wars for the BBC, Holmes writes with empathy and style.

The Cavalry

More than four million men went to France during the war, writes Holmes, ``the greatest collective endeavor in the whole of British history.'' Nearly three quarters of a million remained there forever. At the end of a moving section about the bravery of officers, who suffered an appalling casualty rate, he writes, ``Regular officers, temporary officers, ex-rankers: gallant gentlemen indeed.''

Holmes is enthralling in his asides: ``Another great myth is that generals were always remote from their men and free from their risks. Although Lloyd George cannot be blamed for starting this hare, he hallooed it on its way with more gusto than honesty, as was his way.''

Much of ``Tommy'' is rehabilitation. Consider, for example, the cavalry. Their reputation remains low: ``In part this is another damaging legacy of some historians always ready to nudge a chuckle from their readers at the spectacle of silly men on funny horses galloping about amongst the mud and trenches. In part it reflects a tendency, still alive and well, to associate the British army's wartime performance with its social composition, a process bound to reflect badly on the cavalry, which demanded a substantial private means for its officers. And in part it embodies the very real problem of making sense of the changing role of horsed cavalry as the military revolution gusted across the Western Front.''

Dash and Judgment

He goes on to correct one memoirist's story about cavalry charging machine guns and being slaughtered: ``I must begin by declaring my admiration for anyone who fought on the Somme, but it has to be said that this vivid and compelling quotation illustrates the dangers of relying on uncorroborated oral history. Although Second Lieutenant Beadle tells us precisely what we expect to hear, it is something that did not actually take place.''

Holmes goes on to describe the surprising number of cavalry engagements that did take place throughout the war, some of them very successful. ``The secret, in 1918 as it had been in 1854, was tempering dash with judgment,'' he writes. And later: ``These charges, in the very last days of the war, underline the fact that cavalry could be very useful if it moved fast, snatched fleeting opportunities, and made good use of the ground and supporting fire.''

The war began 90 years ago this month. ``Remember'' is the word chiseled on so many memorials. Richard Holmes helps us to remember the fighters as they were, not by poems or books they never read.

To contact the writer of this review: Joe Mysak in New York at jmysakjr@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 26, 2004 00:13 EDT