Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War (Penguin History) [Paperback]

Denis Winter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 1985 | Series: Penguin History

The story of the Great War, told by the soldiers themselves.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 6, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140168222
• ISBN-13: 978-0140168228
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #308,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book, January 7, 2002

By 

J. Thomas Dyess (Jacksonville, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War (Penguin History) (Paperback)

This is an amazing historical book. The author collected memoirs from British soldiers from WWI and organized them into various chapters: The Kitchener Armies Form, The Training of `Other Ranks', Coming to Terms With The Army, Training the Officers, Over to France, Trench Life, The Weapons of Trench Warfare, The Strain of Trench Warfare, Into Rest, Home Leave, Battle, After Battle, Attitudes to the Germans, Attitudes to the War as a Whole, and After the War. Though not all of them are superb, all of them are very good. The most gruesome are Trench Life, The Weapons of Trench Warfare, and The Strain of Trench Warfare. After the War was an excellent close up chapter with some great commentary.

The entire book is from the British perspective. Though the majority of the Allied soldiers of World War I's Western Front were French, this captures the experience and affects of World War I brilliantly. The picture of the cover is an exquisite choice; all throughout the book I would read horrific things of the war and look at the picture on the cover and think, "you poor ..." The only negative thing I have to say about this book is the small print. The margins are more than enough to allow a larger print and still fit in the same existing dimensions. There is only one map and the British slang isn't defined, but you can find most of it ...

Some of the more gory details concern snipers, machine guns, decomposing body, the deplorable conditions of the trenches, the horrific affects of phosphene gas and mustard gas (and of course tear and chlorine), mortar and artillery fire, and rats. This isn't an action story. Although there is plenty of action in it, it's an accumulation and narration of memoirs of World War I organized in a well manner. I highly recommend this to historian hobbyists, true historians, or people who just like understanding war. It won't be a dissapointment.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent account of the Great War, March 9, 1999

By 

Aussie Reader ""Rick"" (Canberra, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War (Penguin History) (Paperback)

If you want to read a true historical account of the Great War and how it affected the men & women involved this is the book. The author does not hide the gruesome accounts of the survivors of artillery fire and the affects upon mens body of the modern weapons of war. He tells the story of what men went through as soldiers in WWI, from training to the end of the line. This is a story about the soldiers not the Generals and their doomed tactics. Its a must read if you want to understand the Great War fully.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Personal history of the Western Front., October 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War (Penguin History) (Paperback)

Denis Winter has cut a reputation for his incisive reworking of First World War material, and this book is an excellent example of a social history for an era where most works concentrate on the "big picture". The First World War attracted a great mystique and supply of myths, such as the "fifteen minute subalterns", and Winter to a large extent has debunked some whilst extending our knowledge of what the trenches were really like. Winter has meticulously analysed the structure, social organisation, and evolution of the Great War armies to reveal that each was in, large part, a mirror on their own society. Recommended.