Armchair warriors have a tremendous urge to know what being in battle is really like. This book goes some way towards filling that requirement. It contains fifty gripping, often horrific, First World War episodes from the first month of the war to the last - all told in the words of private soldiers, non-commissioned officers and infantry officers - all of them at the sharp end. You will endure with them the German bombardments and attacks and share their unimaginable experiences. These experiences are drawn from numerous unpublished or obscure contemporary sources, each piece with its own introduction and biographical notes on the author. There is also an outline of the arrangements of the army medical services in the war, an account of the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and a useful glossary of trench and military terms.