Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

An outstanding work on the part of Winter. Truly the best book I have read on WWI. It is better, by far, then Keegan's Face of Battle for telling it like it was in the trenches. Winter's insight and opinions are as eagerly sought as the details he constantly unfolds for us. My only objection was the use of so much British slang, perhaps a dictionary of terms for us Americans would have helped. Also, like most works in English, and true to the saying that the victors write the history, there is virtually no reference to the suffering of the Germans and none for the Americans.

A brilliant work which describes the pitiless and aching horror of trench warfare. The finest work of its kind by far- and I have read a lot of WW1 history. Winter uses contemporary accounts of the war to reveal what the war was like for a generation of young British soldiers, many of whom would be seared by the experience for the rest of their lives.
Winter's mordant British wit and understatement are on display throughout this riveting work eg.(pg. 205):

'"In the main communication trench we passed a man carrying a sandbag full of something. Thefts of rations and minor stores from the line are increasing. I therefore ask, "What have you in that bag ?" "Rifleman Grundy,sir," came the unexpected reply.'
Highly recommended.

Death's Men gives a highly readable account of the British soldiers of WWI. The author used well placed first hand accounts along with his own well thought out views to give a very complete picture of the men who fought the war. Each chapter gives exacting insight into everything imaginable dealing with what the men encountered in their day to day. If you have any interest in the human side of WWI, this book will give you all the usable information to answer your questions.

I have read many books on the subject of WWI and found this to be something special, a must read. Denis Winter's elegant and poetic use of the English language brilliantly described the conditions endured by the common British soldier in the trenches. Pick this one up you won't be disappointed.

This book is an excellent account of the Kitchener army of WW1. This book brought me closer to the event than any book to date.Very well researched. There is also quite a few revelations about the colonial armies that I have not read before. An absolutely must read to fill some important gaps about the way in which the war was organised.

A scholarly analysis of how British soldiers lived on the Western Front. Winter explains all the aspects of the soldier's lives such as the class background, officers, education, weapons, life in the trench and back area, and the aftermath for these soldiers. The reader is meant to ponder what this war meant, but it was hell.
Winter limited his perspective to the British soldier, so one wonders how the German, Austrian, French, and Russian soldiers lived in comparison with the British. It would have been a nice chapter for a comparison. However Winter does a good job explaining all aspects of the British soldier's life.
A good read of a tragic war. Winter gives both a soldier's perspective along with a scholarly analysis of the British soldier. This book will give the reader something to think about.

The plight of the "Tommy" in World War One is vividly brought back to life for our examination in Denis Winter's Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War. Reading it can conjure up the somewhat dreadful sensation of being under devastating fire in the trenches with the British infantry. The book follows them from recruitment and training to deployment and battle, to Armistice and then, through the aftermath of the war. Although Winter includes some military statistics and touches on issues outside of the trenches, this is essentially a social history and he makes use of an abundance of sources in the form of the soldier's memoirs and diary entries, which provide the foundation of the work. Also implemented are period newspapers, military records, local histories and the like, however it is the life of the ordinary soldier and the obstacles he routinely encounters; the constant fear of sudden death, the witness to seemingly senseless slaughter, the chronic mind numbing waiting between engagements and the relationships developed with other men under the same circumstances, that provide the brunt of the work. This is not so much a soldier's story as it is the stories of soldiers. Faced with an impossible task under impossible conditions, it is an account of how they coped with the impossible; of how they survived, and of how they died.

This is not a book that generally supports great sweeping conclusions. Its value lies in the quantity and quality of the of memoir and diary entries chosen. In this type of bottom up perspective on the Great War, what emerges is a collective view of the men, who although often separated by such trivial traits as class, ideology and station in life, were united by their dedication to a common cause and in the tragic uncertainty of often brutal warfare. For this Winter deserves high praise as author yes, but also as curator. From these entries he provides a revealing picture of the lives of the front line soldiers that might otherwise pass away with the years. If one job of the historian is to remind the keepers of the present, of the actions and consequences of the past, in the hopes of learning, enlightenment and the increased capacity for reason, then this is certainly a successful work. Works such as Winter's, ensure Kipling's chosen epitaph: "Their Name Liveth For Evermore."