Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917-1918
- ISBN-10
- 0670067350
- ISBN-13
- 9780670067350
- Category
- History / Military / Canada
- Pages
- 727
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2008
- Publisher
- Viking Canada
- Author
- Tim Cook
Description
"The first comprehensive history of Canadians in WWI in forty years, and already hailed as the definitive work on Canadians in the Great War, At the Sharp End covers the harrowing early battles of 1914-16. Tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, died before the generals and soldiers found a way to break the terrible stalemate of the front. Based on eyewitness accounts detailed in the letters of ordinary soldiers, Cook describes the horrible struggle, first to survive in battle, and then to drive the Germans back. At the Sharp End provides both an intimate look at the Canadian men in the trenches and an authoritative account of the slow evolution in tactics, weapons, and advancement. Featuring never-before-published photographs, letters, diaries, and maps, this recounting of the Great War through the soldiers' eyes is moving, engaging, and thoroughly engrossing. Shock Troops follows the Canadian fighting forces during the titanic battles of Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele, and the Hundred Days campaign. Through the eyes of the soldiers who fought and died in the trenches on the Western Front, and based on newly uncovered Canadian, British, and German archival sources, Cook builds on Volume I of his national bestseller, At the Sharp End. The Canadian fighting forces never lost a battle during the final 2 years of the war, and although they paid a terrible price in the killing fields of the Great War, they were indeed, as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George exclaimed, the shock troops of the Empire."--Provided by publisher.
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