B. Marsh
United States
Georgia
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Can anyone recommend a WWI first person account?
Thanks!
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Mike E.
United States
Iowa City
Iowa
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Thought this might be worth your while investigating--don't know if this is what you're looking for exactly, but it does a great job of framing Graves' experience in WW1 against the backdrop of English society.
Here's the link to it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Bye-That-Autobiography-Robert-Gra...
Good luck with your reading. World War 1 is a hugely important topic in terms of what the world looks like today, and is sadly fading from our historical memory.
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Pelle Nilsson
Sweden
Linköping
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Rommel's Infantry Attacks
Jünger's Storm of Steel
In general I enjoy reading unit histories better than personal memoirs. There is just that many ways you can describe how horrible a muddy trench was, and it does get a bit repetitive after a few books.
There are probably some good ones on archive.org (107 books (some duplicates though) in the Personal Narratives English 1914-1918 category). (But they also have hundreds of unit histories and other books I am more interested in.)
EDIT: Figured out how to make an ü on an Apple keyboard. 
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B. Marsh
United States
Georgia
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Mike31 wrote: Thought this might be worth your while investigating--don't know if this is what you're looking for exactly, but it does a great job of framing Graves' experience in WW1 against the backdrop of English society. Here's the link to it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Bye-That-Autobiography-Robert-Gra...Good luck with your reading. World War 1 is a hugely important topic in terms of what the world looks like today, and is sadly fading from our historical memory.
Yes, this one looks good, thank you!
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Andy Beaton
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
I have a cunning plan
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Mike31 wrote: Thought this might be worth your while investigating--don't know if this is what you're looking for exactly, but it does a great job of framing Graves' experience in WW1 against the backdrop of English society. Here's the link to it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Bye-That-Autobiography-Robert-Gra...Good luck with your reading. World War 1 is a hugely important topic in terms of what the world looks like today, and is sadly fading from our historical memory.
Graves' book is probably the best memoir of WWI I have read, and is in the top 20 books I've read in my life. If the whole poet's eye view of the trenches appeals to you, you might also try Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man, Blunden's Undertones of War, or T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
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B. Marsh
United States
Georgia
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pelni wrote: Rommel's Infantry Attacks Jünger's Storm of Steel In general I enjoy reading unit histories better than personal memoirs. There is just that many ways you can describe how horrible a muddy trench was, and it does get a bit repetitive after a few books. There are probably some good ones on archive.org (107 books (some duplicates though) in the Personal Narratives English 1914-1918 category). (But they also have hundreds of unit histories and other books I am more interested in.) EDIT: Figured out how to make an ü on an Apple keyboard.
Wow, that is a lot to take in, I'm sure I can find a couple of good reads in here.
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Jim Ransom
United States
Forest
Virginia
"Tenacity, Dick. Stay with the bastard until he's on the bottom." Morton to O'Kane, USS WAHOO (SS 238), 1943
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Mike31 wrote: Thought this might be worth your while investigating--don't know if this is what you're looking for exactly, but it does a great job of framing Graves' experience in WW1 against the backdrop of English society. Here's the link to it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Bye-That-Autobiography-Robert-Gra...Good luck with your reading. World War 1 is a hugely important topic in terms of what the world looks like today, and is sadly fading from our historical memory.
Can't agree more. A must read.
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B. Marsh
United States
Georgia
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Im also interested in any accounts regarding chemical warfare agents.
I haven't researched WWI yet and this is all uncharted territory for me, so thank you for any assistance. I've been wanting to dive into this subject for some time.
This coincides with my tactical gaming of WWI: Landships! Tactical Weapons Innovations 1914-1918
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Ian Wakeham
United Kingdom
Chester
Cheshire
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If you like oral history, then Forgotten Voices of the Great War and Last Post: The Final Word from Our First World War Soldiers, both by Max Arthur, are excellent reads. The latter I read when it first came out; unfortunately all of the veterans featured are no longer with us.
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Chris Carnes
United States
Woodbridge
VA
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Here's a list I put together for Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/lm/RQFFQO7DAYPNL/ref=cm_pdp_lm_title_1...
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Pelle Nilsson
Sweden
Linköping
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sgtstinky wrote: Im also interested in any accounts regarding chemical warfare agents.
I haven't researched WWI yet and this is all uncharted territory for me, so thank you for any assistance. I've been wanting to dive into this subject for some time.
CARL (Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library) has a few documents on that subject, eg:
http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/p4013coll7...
http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/p4013coll7...
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B. Marsh
United States
Georgia
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Blackhorse wrote:
Thanks!!! Very helpful.
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I also recommend Ernst Jünger: Storm of Steel.
He fought the complete war, he was a lieutenant and storm troop leader, he became a poet and writer after the war, he received the Iron Cross and the Pour le Merite, he was wounded 16 times, he was at the Battle of Somme, Ypres, Cambrai and others.
Quote: "This area was meadows and forests and cornfields just a short time ago. There's nothing left of it, nothing at all. Literally not a blade of grass, not a tiny blade. Every millimeter of earth has been churned up and churned again, the trees uprooted and torn apart and ground to sludge. The houses shot to pieces, the bricks crushed into powder. The railway tracks turned into spirals, hills flattened, everything turned to desert. And everything full of corpses who have been turned over a hundred times. Whole lines of soldiers are lying in front of the positions, our passages are filled with corpses lying over each other in layers."
Ernst Jünger, 28 August 1916
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Alfred Wallace
United States
State College
Pennsylvania
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This is a different direction, but I recommend (on top of Good-Bye to All That, a ripping yarn) Your Death Would be Mine, an edited collection of letters between a French soldier and his wife. Honestly, you're not going to learn much about the technology of the war from it but it's an achingly human story about love and war. We always use it in our WWI class, partly because it gets the French involved (the Brits dominate in English texts, for obvious reasons) and it gets the home front involved.
But you should read Robert Graves, too.
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B. Marsh
United States
Georgia
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pelni wrote:
I've down loaded these, these should be very informative
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John Kovacs
United States
Elyria
Ohio
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Umm, All Quiet on the Western Front, or is that too lame these days? I hear they are filming a remake with Daniel Ratcliffe (Harry Potter) in the title role.
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Jim Ransom
United States
Forest
Virginia
"Tenacity, Dick. Stay with the bastard until he's on the bottom." Morton to O'Kane, USS WAHOO (SS 238), 1943
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This does not meet the OP's specific request for a first person account. But Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory does evaluate the writings of many first person accounts of WW1 by exploring the work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, and many others. A respected, award-winning book.
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Was George Orwell an Optimist?
United States
Corvallis
Oregon
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The Patton Papers are a great read. They deal with what went before and after as well, but include his WWI experiences and are fascinating throughout.
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Tim
United States
San Antonio
Texas
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We got this far and nobody mentioned the air war?
Eddie Rickenbacker's "Fighting the Flying Circus" (Available on Kindle for 99c) is a fantastic read. It's not a stuffy historical account, but rather like you and your old pal "Rick" are sitting down at a little French villa and he's telling you all his was stories. He's not afraid to be self-effacing or talk about the mistakes he made. A fantastic read (and humorous too)
Manfred Von Richtofen's "Red Battle Flyer" was heavily edited by German PR for propaganda before it was translated into English, but it's still a worthwhile read, if nothing else just to get some insight as to how things were perceived on that side of the line.
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Cpl. Fields
South Africa
Hopelessly Surrounded
Isandlwana, Zululand
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Martin Middlebrook's The First Day on the Somme is not a first-hand account per se, but it includes the recollections of many of the participants. It was published in 1971, so Middlebrook had access to many veterans, and some of the passages are riveting.
Lyn MacDonald's works are written in a similar style and are highly readable.
For true first-hand accounts, I second the recommendations for Goodbye to All That, Storm of Steel and All Quiet on the Western Front. And the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon captures the despair and bitterness of his generation better than any prose.
Lamentations
I found him in the guard-room at the base.
From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.
And, all because his brother had gone west,
Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief
Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling
Half-naked on the floor. In my belief
Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.
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Steve Trauth
Australia
Pretty much everywhere
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Amazon has the author down incorrectly for this one --it is Edwin (I think) Lynch - they have the editor down as author.
It is about an Australian who was sent to the Western Front ( I am pretty sure it goes to the end of the war, despite its title).
Rephrasing this-- - it was from postwar written diaries by the participant -- it was edited posthumously - a few years back it was only available in Australia.
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Eric Neff
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
"A good soldier obeys without question. A good officer commands without doubt."
"Just once, I'd like to face an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets!"
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I don't know if you want an audio book, but In the Field (1914-1915) is available for free from Librivox:
http://librivox.org/in-the-field-1914-1915-by-marcel-dupont/
Or you can get the ebook from Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18177
It's the memoir of a French cavalry lieutenant.
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B. Marsh
United States
Georgia
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lesulm1 wrote:
audio books are great, I can listen to them while I work in my lab!
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mark feldman
United States
cary60013
Illinois
are you pointing at ME!!
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I 2nd Lyn MacDonalds books on WW1. http://www.bookfinder.com/author/lyn-macdonald/
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M@tthijs
Netherlands
NOT
Holland
Earn tons of geekgold:...
...go to VGG and add videogames to the database
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Infomanohio wrote: Umm, All Quiet on the Western Front, or is that too lame these days? I hear they are filming a remake with Daniel Ratcliffe (Harry Potter) in the title role. This is my recommendation too. A roman, but AFAIK based on the writer's experiences
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