The Kaiser's Reluctant Conscript

[Nickc]

By Dominik Richert,
Translated by David Carrick Sutherland
Imprint: Pen & Sword Military
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9781781590331
Published: 5th November 2012

I guess we have all read many many books over the years to do with our passion/interest, I know I have.

This in my unimportant opinion, is the best war memoir I have ever read, it is also a mine of information about the Germany Army at the time.

I have an unopened hardback copy of the book for use in my displays when we move house, until then the Kindle reader on my phone will do.

 

[b.loree]

Thanks for the post.....just bought it! I really enjoy these first hand veteran accounts. Have you read Ghosts Have Warm Hands by Will Bird?

 

[Nickc]

Thanks for the post.....just bought it! I really enjoy these first hand veteran accounts. Have you read Ghosts Have Warm Hands by Will Bird?

No I haven't but I will!
As you like first hand accounts have you seen the Pen and Sword translations of German soldier memoirs published during the war:

Dying for the Kaiser part 1
Dying for the Kaiser part 2
Here the fields bleed
We attack at twilight (100 letters from all fronts)
We are the Western Front
We are the Eastern front

There are several more books I will list the lot in a separate post.

They are a mine of useful information from why there are so many German photographs and postcards, to delousing stations, what was going on at home.
There is a tremendous amount of realism from the soldiers they are cynical and hardened to their fate and their lot. In one of the letters in We attack at twilight one soldier returning from leave saw a family with the husband going back and his wife and children hanging on to him crying, the observation "you tell how that was going to end".

 

[b.loree]

I will check those out. Bird was in the 42nd Highlanders, The Black Watch out of Montreal. Another...The Journal of Private Fraser 31st Batt. CEF