Recommendations for novels on WWI??

Thanks for all the replies, guys :thumbup: Does anyone here know the poem "In Flanders' Fields"? (or, is it "Flandrous Fields?) The poem is recited in the Charlie Brown Memorial Day cartoon, "What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?" It's a beautiful, haunting, tragic poem, but I don't recall who penned it.
 
"In Flanders Fields" is well-known in Canada as it was written by a Canadian, John McCrae. His house is a museum: http://guelph.ca/museum/

My grandmother carried a news clipping of that poem in her purse until the day she died. Her brother was killed in the war and her husband also served.
 
maximus otter said:
I think you're looking for factual works, rather than novels?

Some I can wholeheartedly recommend are:

1. Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War

http://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Men-So...ef=sr_1_1/105-7050130-1884413?ie=UTF8&s=books

2. First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War

http://www.amazon.com/First-Few-Fig..._bbs_sr_1/105-7050130-1884413?ie=UTF8&s=books

And the one indispensable book about WW1:

3. The First Day on the Somme: 1 July 1916

http://www.amazon.com/First-Somme-J..._bbs_sr_2/105-7050130-1884413?ie=UTF8&s=books

(Yes! World War One began before 1917! :rolleyes: )

Other top stuff:

4. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon

http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Infan...=pd_bbs_1/105-7050130-1884413?ie=UTF8&s=books

5. Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography by Robert Graves

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Bye-All-...=pd_bbs_1/105-7050130-1884413?ie=UTF8&s=books

6. They Called It Passchendaele by Lyn Macdonald

http://www.amazon.com/They-Called-P..._bbs_sr_1/105-7050130-1884413?ie=UTF8&s=books

7. A Rifleman Went to War by H. W. McBride

http://www.amazon.com/Rifleman-Went..._bbs_sr_1/105-7050130-1884413?ie=UTF8&s=books

maximus otter
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First Day on the Somme is amazing. My grandfather bought it for me 25 years ago. For historical works, anything my Holger Herwig and Jack Tunstall on the Easatern Front (yes, the war was fought in places other than France)
or old stuff, Churchill is a great read.
Eye Deep In Hell by John Ellis.
Although he is poo-pooed by "serious" historians, John Keegan is very good. Read his WW1 book and the chapter on the Somme battles in Face of Battle.
 
Read ALL the the big Brit war poets and ignore the attendant revisionist commentary about their alleged poofery, etc. What they are documenting is the death of an entire philosphy (Enlightenment/Romaticism) political system, and culture. Amazing stuff. i did a paper in grad school on these guys. Their shock and horror of seeing everything they believed in an held dear is gut wrenching,
 
Thanks for the link, Buckman#10 :thumbup:

I can't wait to get started on some of these books. I'm gonna wait for surgery (in March), then tear into 'em.
 
I can recommend two that haven't been mentioned:

"Eye-Deep in Hell" (Trench Warfare in WWI) by John Ellis

It details daily life and death in the trenches and on the battlefield from food and fighting to sex and death. ISBN 0-394-49664-7. May be out of print but undoubtedly available from booksellers on the internet.

and

"War Birds" (Diary of an Unknown Aviator) - may be out of print but, again, readily available from booksellers on the internet.

It's a somewhat famous first-hand account (diary) of the numbered days of a WWI "flyboy" to which I have a personal, though distant, connection. My family was aquainted with a friend of one of the flyers in the "Unknown Aviator's" squadron. The flyer/aquaintence was Andy Anderson, an RAF pilot who flew with Elliott White Springs (the editor of War Birds), Billy Bishop, and the Unknown Aviator (since identified as John Macgavock Grider) until he, Anderson, was shot down and captured in Germany.

Anderson retired to Hawaii and was the composer of such ukelele classics as "Little Grass Shack" and "Hula Moon". He appears in "War Birds" under his real name charged with serenading some young lovelies to put them in "the proper frame of mind".
 
panella said:
I can recommend two that haven't been mentioned:

"Eye-Deep in Hell" (Trench Warfare in WWI) by John Ellis

It details daily life and death in the trenches and on the battlefield from food and fighting to sex and death. ISBN 0-394-49664-7. May be out of print but undoubtedly available from booksellers on the internet.

and

"War Birds" (Diary of an Unknown Aviator) - may be out of print but, again, readily available from booksellers on the internet.

It's a somewhat famous first-hand account (diary) of the numbered days of a WWI "flyboy" to which I have a personal, though distant, connection. My family was aquainted with a friend of one of the flyers in the "Unknown Aviator's" squadron. The flyer/aquaintence was Andy Anderson, an RAF pilot who flew with Elliott White Springs (the editor of War Birds), Billy Bishop, and the Unknown Aviator (since identified as John Macgavock Grider) until he, Anderson, was shot down and captured in Germany.

Anderson retired to Hawaii and was the composer of such ukelele classics as "Little Grass Shack" and "Hula Moon". He appears in "War Birds" under his real name charged with serenading some young lovelies to put them in "the proper frame of mind".
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Already got ya on the Ellis, my man. Flanders Field is a war cemetary. Also grab anything you can on Verdun. That battle more than any other, has become mythological, because it was such a critical campaign for the French from the perspective of morale and arguably, national survival. I went there this summer and before i set foot in the Ossuary, i didn't think that anything coud be MORe overwhelming than Arlington or Omaha Beach cemetary of Pont Du Hoc, but it was.
 
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