world war i

Field surgeon and poet, John McCrae, was inspired to write "In Flanders Fields" after the death of a young friend in early 1915 on the battlefields of Ypres. Within months of the poem's December 1915 publication it had become part of the collective consciousness around the English-speaking world. It's extraordinary power has endured for decades and across generations and it is Canada's most famous poem. This book contains reflections from an assortment of people on the poem and their thoughts on war.

World War I was war and death on an unprecended scale. At first it was viewed by the British as a glorious adventure and the conflict that began in August 1914 was said to be over by Christmas. Even when that was no longer true, thousands of British boys lied about their ages so they could join up. This book contains stories about young men who were not yet twenty when they won the highest awards their country could bestow. Some did not survive the war, some did, some went on to serve in World War II. Their reckless indifference to death inspired the title of this book.

At the start of World War I, Arthur Beecroft was a recently qualified British barrister (lawyer) in his twenties. He volunteered for military service and was offered a commission in the Royal Engineers. In 1915 he saw action at Gallipoli. He was lucky to survive and wrote a detailed memoir of his experiences. Discovered by his grandaughter, it has now been published, a century after the events, and perhaps more meaningful today in its discussion of comradeship, devotion to duty, fear, and facing death.

World War I is often viewed as a war fought by armies of millions living and fighting in trenches, aided by brutal machinery that cost the lives of many. But behind all of this an intellectual war was also being fought between engineers, chemists, code-breakers, physicists, doctors, mathematicians, and intelligence gatherers. This hidden war was to make a positive and lasting contribution to how war was conducted on land, at sea, and in the air, and most importantly, life at home.

Beatrice Hopkinson was a British World War I nurse. She worked closer to the Front Line than women could have ever previously imagined. She was selected for the most onerous type of duty in the bitterest phase of the war. Arriving in St. Omer in the summer of 1917, the town and hospital was being continuously bombed. Beatrice continued to do the job she had come to France for--saving lives and easing dying soldiers on the Western Front. Her diary gives rare insight into the realities of front line nursing.

What was it like to be a field gunner in the Great War? Find out by reading this book which takes the reader through enlistment in late 1914, training camp, to the Somme, Passchendaele, the Hundred Days Offensive, and home again. Posted just behind the front lines, field gunners spent grueling months supporting the infantry in the trenches. A wrenching, insightful account of a tight-knit band of soldiers swept up in some of the most important battles of the war that shaped the twentieth century.

Discover what life was really like for the soldiers in the trenches in World War I. Discover how ordinary people coped with war. The majority of the letters and diaries in this book have never been published and tell the true story of what World War I was like for those who lived through it.

During World War I, thousands of women donned uniforms and took an active part in conflict for the first time in history. Through their diaries, letters, and memoirs, meet the women who defied convention and followed their convictions to defend the less fortunate and fight for their country.

Dr. John McCrae, a Canadian doctor, enlists during WWI to run a field hospital. The hospital staff struggles to keep up with the hospital's demands.