Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I Review

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(More customer reviews)John Ellis, a military historian, wrote "Eye Deep in Hell" to explain the daily routines of the fighting men of World War I. The title of the book comes from the poet Ezra Pound, who wrote an epitaph for the soldiers who survived and died on the mud caked battlefields. Pound's poem adequately reflects the true nature of trench warfare during this meat grinder of a war. WWI was not a glorious call to arms or a romantic charge on a horse between dashing young men; it was attrition warfare on a massive scale, killing millions with little movement on both sides. Unfortunately, WWI is largely forgotten today because most of the veterans are gone and the bigger death tolls of WWII overshadowed the millions killed during 1914-1918.
You will not find much here about the causes of WWI or detailed explanations about the movements of troops during battle. Ellis concerns himself with how the men survived on a day-to-day basis, in those times between the grinding offensives. What quickly emerges in Ellis's book is a vivid picture of the utter despair of life in the trenches, lives mired in rampant disease, hunger, violent death, misery, and inclement weather. How anyone survived this war with their sanity intact is a mystery for the ages.
Ellis covers every conceivable aspect of daily routine and life in the trenches by dividing his book into four sections. The first part of the book describes the type of trenches built along the front. The first trench line was where the soldiers charged the enemy when an offensive took place. Connected to this trench by shorter trenches were reserve lines where soldiers could retreat if necessary, and where supplies of ammunition, food, mail, and clothing where moved to the front. Attached to the front line trenches were saps, little trenches running out into no man's land where observers attempted to keep an eye on the enemy lines. Also built into the trenches were dugouts, or deep bunkers where the officers lived. The men slept either against the trench wall or in little dugouts along the trench lines. Of course, sleep was a luxury few could afford. When the men were not watching the enemy lines, they were putting up barbed wire in no man's land, helping to reinforce or dig trenches, or moving supplies. All of these activities often took place in deep mud, standing water, and piles of poorly buried corpses.
As if dealing with these conditions were not bad enough, there was the constant threat of violent death. Men died when shot by snipers, from shell fragments and stray bullets, from grenades tossed in the trenches, from chlorine and mustard gas shells (a horrible, lingering death), and trench cave-ins. There were a thousand ways to die in the trenches, and precious few ways to live.
Ellis's second section deals with combat conditions. Offensives were never non-stop operations, but usually had a lengthy buildup. Soldiers knew they were in trouble when the shelling started in earnest. The constant shelling was an attempt to soften up the trenches before sending the men across no man's land. Soldiers described the shelling in numerous ways, all of them unpleasant. Several people said the shelling was so intense that it actually took on physical solidity, a presence in the environment that many soldiers said they thought they could literally touch. After the shelling came the assault, a soul shattering experience for all involved. Most knew they would die, but for many of the men it was more embarrassing to expose oneself as a coward to his fellow soldiers; it was fear that drove the men over the tops of the trenches into the withering machine gun fire. The psychological pressures were unbelievable, often leading to cases of "shell shock," where men lost their sanity and most likely never recovered from the pressures of war.
The third part of the book concerns "lighter" topics. A big part of this section deals with food supplies. Predictably, the food on the front was quite poor. Biscuits handed out to the soldiers were as hard as rocks, bread was stale, stews contained more fat than meat, and field kitchens rarely worked. The soldiers did receive alcoholic beverages, especially French and German troops who carried wine on a regular basis. It was not uncommon to give the boys a tot of gin before they went over the top to their deaths. Better food and supplies, as well as entertainment, were found during rest leave behind the lines.
The final segment of Ellis's book concerns the attitude of the troops. It is here that Ellis examines the mentality of the military elite towards the war. Incredibly, most generals and field marshals believed morale meant more on the battlefield than modern weaponry. The men who actually fought held a quite different view about combat, and accordingly despised the high commanders who rarely visited the battlefields but made decisions that cost millions of lives. At the same time, soldiers did respect line officers. They recognized that these officers often shared the same wretched conditions as the common soldier. A good line officer rarely had difficulty getting his men to follow orders.
Ellis's book covers just about every angle one could think of about World War I. There are plenty of pictures included in the book, some of which are quite gruesome but necessary in order to convey the absolute horror of trench warfare. Unfortunately, Ellis only covers the Western Front, so information about the war against Russia and Turkey is missing from the book. The book also suffers from a shabby editing job, with missing and misspelled words appearing throughout the book. Despite these problems, Ellis is a great place to start for those interested in the Great War.

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Millions of men lived in the trenches during World War I. More than six million died there. InEye-Deep in Hell, the author explores this unique and terrifying world-the rituals of battle, the habits of daily life, and the constant struggle of men to find meaning amid excruciating boredom and the specter of impending death.

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