The Hazy Red Hell - Fighting Experiences on the Western Front 1914-18
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 participants: 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.
The contents include soldiers going over-the-top in all the big battles of the war, as well as in raids on the German trenches and patrols in No-Man's-Land. Whilst emphasising the combat experience, The Hazy Red Heil reflects war conditions as they changed and evolved from the open warfare of 1914, through the middle years of stalemate and attrition, to the final, wholly successful, Allied Advance.
These experiences are drawn from numerous unpublished or obscure contemporary sources, each piece with its own introduction and biographical notes on the author.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.