Hot Blood & Cold Steel: Life and Death in the Trenches of the First World War

by Andy Simpson (Editor)

Using a unique approach of weaving anthology with a continuous commentary, Hot Blood & Cold Steel describes what it was really like to live and fight in the trenches during the Great War. Domestic life on the line—accommodations, food and drink, wiring and carrying, the whole day and night routine—is investigated along with the operational aspects of trench life, such as raiding and patrolling in no-man's-land and the German lines. But as well as the blood and gore of battle, the book examines the attitudes of front line soldiers, officers, and their men. This all-encompassing portrayal of the front line grips the reader and refuses to let go, communicating a genuine understanding of what it was really like to have fought in the trenches of the Western Front.

Genres: History, Military Fiction, World War I, Nonfiction, War

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite its title, this book is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in World War I.

I got it as a gift, and rolled my eyes as I looked at the cover. When the memoirs of Sassoon, Blunden, Remarque and others were published to great acclaim there was a strong reaction by those who thought depictions of the war as mud, filth, slaughter, and incompetence were overdone, and who wanted to set the record straight. Many mediocre and now justly forgotten works came out that claimed things hadn’t been so bad after all, and the soldiers the author knew were cheerful, plucky, and oh so brave. I once heard a history lecturer speak of these kinds of whitewashed reminiscences as the pornography of war, and with its ludicrous title I thought this book was going to be one of them.

Fortunately, it is nothing like that. It uses soldiers’ own words from letters and diaries to describe what it was like to be there in the thick of things. Many of the entries were written immediately after the events they describe or, in some cases while they were still going on. The result is a sense of immediacy that is hard to find in general histories, and the book is full of details about what their lives were like, such as:

A Company had two platoons in the front line trench 41, some 100 yards from the enemy, and two platoons in a support line called ‘41 support.’ The trenches themselves were well built and revetted with sand bags, and dry enough even during the wettest weather. We had in these days only small shelters – the deep dugout was unknown. The three subalterns in A Company took turns at duty in the trenches, four hours on and eight hours off, night and day. The duty consisted chiefly of visiting the sentries every hour, and keeping a general look-out, and seeing that the trench rules were obeyed. A good deal of rifle fire went on at night. Sentries on either side would exchange shots, and an occasional machine-gun would open out. At close range the bullets make a curious crack as they pass overhead.

Francis Buckley, 7th Northumberland Fusiliers, January 1916

Life was difficult and dangerous even when they were nominally in a support role:

The bane of our life was working parties, usually at night. For these unwelcome chores men had to be constantly provided. The worst assignment that summer was to carry gas cylinders up communication trenches and to instal [sic] them in our front line. This took many weary and exhausting hours. The most disagreeable part of the business was that we had to wear gas masks rolled up on the top of our heads under our tin hats all the time. These masks, effective only against chlorine, were damp and impregnated with some unpleasant-smelling stuff which, as we were soon to learn, could bring out an ugly and itching rash on the forehead. The masks had to be at the ready in this way for fear that a chance shell or even machine-gun fire might puncture a cylinder, which did not add to the attractions of the whole exercise. Then it rained and the slippery duckboards, slithering cylinders, traversed trenches, stinking masks and stumbling, swearing men, added up to a long black night in C Company’s memory.

Anthony Eden, 21st King’s Royal Rifle Corps (Yeoman Rifles), spring 1916

The great majority of the book consists of these first person accounts, with only enough connecting text to link them together. I have read most of the well known memoirs of the Great War, and the selections here are largely new to me. Many of them are well written, evocative and moving. The book is arranged thematically rather than chronologically, allowing the author to concentrate on a single aspect of the soldiers’ experience at a time, such as life in the trenches, fear and shellshock, relations between officers and men, opinions about the staff officers safely in the rear, the French, the Germans, and more.

This is an excellent book, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in World War I.

[James Kemp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book inspired a game I designed about night raids between the trench lines of the WW1 western front. It provided a good insight into life in the front lines and the experiences of soldiers in the first world war. A must read if you want to understand infantry life.