Download or read book Eye Deep in Hell written by John Ellis and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1989-09 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed reconstruction of life and death in the trenches of World War I, describing the construction and physical and spiritual environment of the trenches and the soldiers' daily routine.
Download or read book Weapons of the Trench War 1914 1918 written by Anthony Saunders and published by Alan Sutton Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first book to cover First World War trench weaponry in detail and as such will appeal to everyone with an interest in this landmark conflict of the twentieth century. It sheds new light on the war and shows that the development of these weapons had an impact on the conduct of the fighting."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Western Front A History of the Great War 1914 1918 written by Nick Lloyd and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A tour de force of scholarship, analysis and narration.… Lloyd is well on the way to writing a definitive history of the First World War.” —Lawrence James, Times The Telegraph • Best Books of the Year The Times of London • Best Books of the Year A panoramic history of the savage combat on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 that came to define modern warfare. The Western Front evokes images of mud-spattered men in waterlogged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts and machine-gun fire by a few feet of dirt. This iconic setting was the most critical arena of the Great War, a 400-mile combat zone stretching from Belgium to Switzerland where more than three million Allied and German soldiers struggled during four years of almost continuous combat. It has persisted in our collective memory as a tragic waste of human life and a symbol of the horrors of industrialized warfare. In this epic narrative history, the first volume in a groundbreaking trilogy on the Great War, acclaimed military historian Nick Lloyd captures the horrific fighting on the Western Front beginning with the surprise German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 and taking us to the Armistice of November 1918. Drawing on French, British, German, and American sources, Lloyd weaves a kaleidoscopic chronicle of the Marne, Passchendaele, the Meuse-Argonne, and other critical battles, which reverberated across Europe and the wider war. From the trenches where men as young as 17 suffered and died, to the headquarters behind the lines where Generals Haig, Joffre, Hindenburg, and Pershing developed their plans for battle, Lloyd gives us a view of the war both intimate and strategic, putting us amid the mud and smoke while at the same time depicting the larger stakes of every encounter. He shows us a dejected Kaiser Wilhelm II—soon to be eclipsed in power by his own generals—lamenting the botched Schlieffen Plan; French soldiers piling atop one another in the trenches of Verdun; British infantryman wandering through the frozen wilderness in the days after the Battle of the Somme; and General Erich Ludendorff pursuing a ruthless policy of total war, leading an eleventh-hour attack on Reims even as his men succumbed to the Spanish Flu. As Lloyd reveals, far from a site of attrition and stalemate, the Western Front was a simmering, dynamic “cauldron of war” defined by extraordinary scientific and tactical innovation. It was on the Western Front that the modern technologies—machine guns, mortars, grenades, and howitzers—were refined and developed into effective killing machines. It was on the Western Front that chemical warfare, in the form of poison gas, was first unleashed. And it was on the Western Front that tanks and aircraft were introduced, causing a dramatic shift away from nineteenth-century bayonet tactics toward modern combined arms, reinforced by heavy artillery, that forever changed the face of war. Brimming with vivid detail and insight, The Western Front is a work in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman and John Keegan, Rick Atkinson and Antony Beevor: an authoritative portrait of modern warfare and its far-reaching human and historical consequences.
Download or read book Trench Warfare 1914 1918 written by Tony Ashworth and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2000 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The shock and slaugter of the battlefields of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendale is well documented. However, during the smaller battles soldiers could, and often did, make personal decisions. From these evolved a culture of live and let live, which constrained that of kill and be killed.
Download or read book Dominating the Enemy written by Anthony Saunders and published by History Press (SC). This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saunders presents British weapons and equipment that were specifically designed for use in the trenches along the Western Front. These include body armor, helmets, sniper-scopes, periscopes, wire-cutters, muzzle and breach covers, close-fighting weapons, automatic rifles and sub-machine guns, and a selection of weird and not-so-wonderful devices that increased the infantryman's chances of survival in the trenches. Contains many previously unpublished photographs.
Download or read book The Secret History of Soldiers written by Tim Cook and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been thousands of books on the Great War, but most have focused on commanders, battles, strategy, and tactics. Less attention has been paid to the daily lives of the combatants, how they endured the unimaginable conditions of industrial warfare: the rain of shells, bullets, and chemical agents. In The Secret History of Soldiers, Tim Cook, Canada's foremost military historian, examines how those who survived trench warfare on the Western Front found entertainment, solace, relief, and distraction from the relentless slaughter. These tales come from the soldiers themselves, mined from the letters, diaries, memoirs, and oral accounts of more than five hundred combatants. Rare examples of trench art, postcards, and even song sheets offer insight into a hidden society that was often irreverent, raunchy, and anti-authoritarian. Believing in supernatural stories was another way soldiers shielded themselves from the horror. While novels and poetry often depict the soldiers of the Great War as mere victims, this new history shows how the soldiers pushed back against the grim war, refusing to be broken in the mincing machine of the Western Front. The violence of war is always present, but Cook reveals the gallows humour the soldiers employed to get through it. Over the years, both writers and historians have overlooked this aspect of the men's lives. The fighting at the front was devastating, but behind the battle lines, another layer of life existed, one that included songs, skits, art, and soldier-produced newspapers. With his trademark narrative abilities and an unerring eye for the telling human detail, Cook has created another landmark history of Canadian military life as he reveals the secrets of how soldiers survived the carnage of the Western Front.
Download or read book Mud Blood and Poppycock written by Gordon Corrigan and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of how Britain won the First World War. The popular view of the First World War remains that of BLACKADDER: incompetent generals sending brave soldiers to their deaths. Alan Clark quoted a German general's remark that the British soldiers were 'lions led by donkeys'. But he made it up. Indeed, many established 'facts' about 1914-18 turn out to be myths woven in the 1960s by young historians on the make. Gordon Corrigan's brilliant, witty history reveals how out of touch we have become with the soldiers of 1914-18. They simply would not recognize the way their generation is depicted on TV or in Pat Barker's novels. Laced with dry humour, this will overturn everything you thought you knew about Britain and the First World War. Gordon Corrigan reveals how the British embraced technology, and developed the weapons and tactics to break through the enemy trenches.
Download or read book A French Soldier s War Diary 1914 1918 written by Henri Desagneau and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pattern has been given to the history of the events between 1914 and 1918 which is called the 'Great War'. To Henri Desagneaux and to thousands of others, there was no pattern to be seen from the trenches where he executed orders which ensured that dozens of men had to die attempting to achieve impossible objectives worked out at a headquarters in the rear. His diary, one of the classic French accounts of the conflict, gives a vivid insight into what it was like to execute those orders, and to live in the trenches with increasingly demoralized, unruly and mutinous men. In terse unflinching prose he records their experiences as they confronted the acute dangers of the front line. The appalling conditions in which they fought and the sheer intensity of the shellfire and the close-quarter combat have rarely been conveyed with such immediacy.
Download or read book Defending the Ypres Front 1914 1918 written by Jan Vancoillie and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2018-08-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[This] book examines how trhe German army developed field fortifications to hold what can loosely be described as the Ypres Friont. With the decision by Falkenhayn in 1915 to concentrate Germany's offensive effoets largely in the east, the German defenders around Ypres set to developing their lines for semi-permanent occupation. The subsoil around the Salient generally made it difficult to construct and maintain mined (i.e. deep) dugouts - unlike, for example on the Somme, with easily worked chalk not far below the surface. The only practicable alternative was to use reinforced concrete. The authors... have used [a] ... range of primary sources to provide a narrative of what the Germans built, how they built it (the logistical challenge was enormous) and how the designs and requirements of types of bunkers, such as forward medical bunkers, artillery shelters, machine gun and observation bunkers, changed as the war progressed and as the military situation on the front dictated. "--Back cover.
Download or read book The Great War Generals on the Western Front 1914 18 written by Robin Neillands and published by Constable. This book was released on 1999 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Great War histories tell the reader what happened on the Western front but few spell out why. In this book, the author looks at the battles through the eyes of the generals who were charged with winning them and examines the accusations that have surrounded them for over 70 years. The tragedy of the death toll on the Western Front gives weight to the argument against them, but what were the near unsurmountable problems that stood between the generals and final victory? How much of what the general public believes about the First World War is really true? This book aims to illuminate the bitter controversy.
Download or read book World War One 1914 1918 written by Alan Cowsill and published by Campfire. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our time." -Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary The First World War, also known as the Great War, involved over thirty nations and resulted in the deaths of millions of young men. This stunning new book brings history to life as we see the war through the eyes of the young conscripted servicemen on all sides of the conflict. Introducing the advent of tanks, airplanes, air raids, submarines and gas attacks, we take a close look at the first modern war of the 20th Century. From the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo to the Treaty of Versailles we see for ourselves what life was like in the trenches, on the home front, at sea and in the air. This is more than just a history book; it is a fully illustrated journey into another age. We follow the fortunes of a group of young conscripts and volunteers to discover what life was really like in the trenches and how they coped with returning home after the horrors of the front line.
Download or read book A World Undone written by G. J. Meyer and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Drawing on exhaustive research, this intimate account details how World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world “Thundering, magnificent . . . [A World Undone] is a book of true greatness that prompts moments of sheer joy and pleasure. . . . It will earn generations of admirers.”—The Washington Times On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War: four long years of slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and the near collapse of a civilization that until 1914 had dominated the globe. Praise for A World Undone “Meyer’s sketches of the British Cabinet, the Russian Empire, the aging Austro-Hungarian Empire . . . are lifelike and plausible. His account of the tragic folly of Gallipoli is masterful. . . . [A World Undone] has an instructive value that can scarcely be measured”—Los Angeles Times “An original and very readable account of one of the most significant and often misunderstood events of the last century.”—Steve Gillon, resident historian, The History Channel
Download or read book Sepoys in the Trenches written by Gordon Corrigan and published by Spellmount, Limited Publishers. This book was released on 1999 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indian corps arrived in Europe just in time for the First Battle of Ypres. Regular soldiers all, they fought an enemy of whom they knew little, and in a cause not their own. This full history draws on a range of sources, including interviews.
Download or read book Letters from the Trenches written by Jacqueline Wadsworth and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-11-30 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the First World War told through the letters exchanged by ordinary British soldiers and their families.??Letters from the Trenches reveals how people really thought and felt during the conflict and covers all social classes and groups Ð from officers to conscripts and women at home to conscientious objectors.??Voices within the book include Sergeant John Adams, 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers, who wrote in May 1917:'For the day we get our letter from home is a red Letter day in the history of the soldier out here. It is the only way we can hear what is going on. The slender thread between us and the homeland.'??Private Stanley Goodhead, who served with one of the Manchester Pals battalion, wrote home in 1916: 'I came out of the trenches last night after being in 4 days. You have no idea what 4 days in the trenches means...The whole time I was in I had only about 2 hours sleep and that was in snatches on the firing step. What dugouts there are, are flooded with mud and water up to the knees and the rats hold swimming galas in them...We are literally caked with brown mud and it is in all?our food, tea etc.'??Jacqueline Wadsworth skilfully uses these letters to tell the human story of the First World War Ð what mattered to Britain's servicemen and their feelings about the war; how the conflict changed people; and how life continued on the Home Front.
Download or read book Montreal at War 1914 1918 written by Terry Copp and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2021-12-08 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Montreal at War tells the story of how citizens in Canada's largest city responded to the challenges of the First World War. Drawing from newspapers, journals, government reports, and archival records, Terry Copp - one of Canada's leading military historians - raises important questions about how the Canadian war experience has been interpreted, and the ways in which hindsight has privileged some voices over others. Painting a picture of life in Montreal during the first years of the twentieth century, Montreal at War addresses responses to the outbreak of war in Europe and the process of raising an army for service overseas. It details the shock of intense combat and heavy casualties, studies the mobilization of volunteers, and follows the experience of battalions from Montreal to the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The crisis of conscription is described in the context of national and local developments, and great attention is paid to the experiences of both the army overseas and civilians at home. Challenging long-held assumptions, Montreal at War aims to understand the war experience as it unfolded, approaching history from the perspective of those who lived through it.
Download or read book Beneath Flanders Fields written by Peter Barton and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2005 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The product of over twenty-five years of research, Beneath Flanders Fields illustrates the evolution of military mining, leading to its deployment in the greatest siege in military history - in the trenches of the Western Front." "In the words of the tunnellers themselves, and through previously unpublished photographs - many in colour - as well as contemporary plans and drawings, this book reveals how this most intense of battles was fought - and won. Few on the surface knew the horrific details of the tunnellers' work, yet this silent, claustrophobic conflict was a barbaric struggle that raged day and night for almost two and a half years, and one which generated mental and physical stresses often far beyond those suffered by the infantry in the trenches. On 7 June 1917 at Messines Ridge, the tension was broken with the opening of the most dramatic mine offensive in history."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book In the Line of Fire written by Teofil Reiss and published by . This book was released on 2016-08-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As usual, the medic, Wiatr, hid himself, the doctor had a panic attack and I decided do go by myself to the next trench in spite of the hellish artillery and canon fire. In the trench was Corporal Gorgel, who helped the officer. The scene on the front line was terrible. Blood, pieces of flesh, heads, arms, legs and intestines all around -an awful sight." Almost 100 years have passed since the end of World War I, also known as "the Great War". At the time, it was the largest war to date. Over 16.5 million people were killed in the war; more than 6 million among them were civilians. During the Great War, a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army fought at the frontline trenches and wrote daily in his diary, documenting his experiences there. This man, Teofil Reiss, was an Austro-Hungarian patriot, a professional soldier, a charming ladies' man, and a proud Jew. His practical perspective, trustworthy innocence and open heartedness, merge the details of this diary into a fascinating human document - a rare testimony of a frontline soldier and a picture of an honest man in a senseless war (though, not senseless to him).Almost 100 years after the war, his grandson Tuvia (who was named after him) made the decision to translate and publish his handwritten German diary, adding photos and letters, as well as an epilogue that tells the remarkable story of Teofil Reiss's life during the Nazis' rise to power, and until his death in 1942.
