This account of the part taken by the Grenadier Guards in the European War is, substantially, the work of the officers of the Regiment themselves. Letters and diaries full of interesting detail have been sent to me, and a vast amount of information collected by Colonel Sir H. Streatfeild at the Regimental Orderly Room has been placed at my disposal.

The military historian who writes of past centuries has in some ways an easier task than one who attempts to put contemporary events into their historical perspective. In the first place, with every desire to be accurate, the latter finds that the accounts of eye-witnesses differ so much that he is forced to form his own conclusions, and to adopt what, according to his judgment, is the most probable version. In the second place, after reading a private letter giving a graphic account of a particular part of a battle, he may easily derive a totally false impression of the whole. Moreover, he writes in the constant presence of the criticism of eye-witnesses.

A special difficulty also arises from the unequal quality of the material placed at his disposal. There is sometimes a wealth of information on unimportant incidents and no material for the history of important or dramatic events, in which the principal actors were almost invariably killed. Even the Battalion diaries, which were kept with meticulous accuracy during the early days of the war, contain less and less material as the fighting became more and more serious.

With a war of such astounding magnitude, when millions of men are fighting on a front of hundreds of miles, any attempt to give an intelligible picture of what is going on in a modern battle becomes practically impossible. Even if such a course were desirable in a regimental history, the material supplied, which consists for the most part of letters and diaries of regimental officers, would be totally inadequate, since regimental officers know little of what is going on except in their immediate neighbourhood. A tactical study was out of the question, since a battalion plays such a small part in modern battles, and to describe the movements of corps and armies appeared to be beyond the scope of a regimental history.

I therefore decided to depart from tradition, and to write a narrative giving, as far as I was able, details about companies, and even platoons. It seemed to me that this was what the officers themselves would prefer.

The absence of information concerning the German Army necessarily takes some of the life and colour out of such a record as this. In all military histories the account of the enemy's movements adds enormously to the interest of the narrative; but at present, beyond a few accounts from neutral journalists inspired by the Germans, there is no authentic information as to the movements of the German Army, and the motives which actuated the German General Staff can only be inferred.

Time will of course rectify this, and after the war detailed accounts of the German Army will be available, though it will inevitably be some years before anything worth reading about the enemy can be published. It has therefore been suggested that it might be best to defer the publication of this history for some years. But it is doubtful whether with the lapse of time any valuable additions could be made to a regimental history, though for a national history some knowledge of the enemy's plans will be essential.

The long periods of monotonous trench life, in which practically the same incidents recur daily, have been particularly difficult to deal with; and, although the greatest care has been taken to chronicle every event of importance, I am conscious that many acts of bravery and devotion to duty which have been omitted in the letters and diaries must go unrecorded.

The terrible list of casualties has made it impossible to do more than simply record the deaths of the officers of the Regiment who fell during the war. Had more space been available, fuller accounts of the circumstances under which they met their deaths and some personal appreciation of each officer would have been possible, but in a history which has necessarily to be restricted to three volumes, all this was out of the question.

The Regiment is indebted to Colonel Sir H. Streatfeild, not only for the scrupulous care with which he gathered together information from every possible source, but also for his foresight in realising in the early stages of the war the importance of all documents connected with the movements of the different battalions.

The maps are the work of Mr. Emery Walker, who has succeeded in producing not only artistic pictures in the style that was prevalent among cartographers of the seventeenth century, but also perfectly clear and accurate maps. To Sergeant West I am indebted for the military detail.

To many officers I am indebted for suggestions, especially to Lieut.-General the Earl of Cavan and Major-General Jeffreys, who found time, during their few days' leave, to make many interesting additions to this history; and to Major H. L. Aubrey-Fletcher, whose knowledge and experience both as a staff and regimental officer have been invaluable.

In conclusion, I wish to take this opportunity of thanking Captain G. R. Westmacott, Lieutenant M. H. Macmillan, Lieutenant B. Samuelson, Lieutenant L. R. Abel-Smith, and Lieutenant A. C. Knollys for the excellent work they did in preparing accurate diaries for each battalion, with extracts from the officers' letters. Without their aid I should never have had the time or the energy to complete this book.

F. E. G. PONSONBY.