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Full Description
An extraordinary, newly discovered account from an ordinary Canadian on the ground in the crucial battles of the First World War.
What was it like to be a field gunner in the Great War?
Drawing on the unpublished letters and diary of field gunner Lt. Bert Sargent and his fellow soldiers, Thunder in the Skies takes the reader from enlistment in late 1914, through training camp, to the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, the Hundred Days Offensive, and home again with peace.
Posted just behind the front lines, Sargent and field gunners like him spent gruelling months supporting the infantry in the trenches. Theirs was a very different war, as dangerous or more at times as the one on the front lines. As an ordinary Canadian writing letters home to ordinary people, Sargent gives a wrenching, insightful account of a tight-knit band of soldiers swept up in some of the most important battles of the war that shaped the twentieth century.
Thunder in the Skies details the daily life of artillerymen fighting in the First World War in a way no other book has before.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
1 A City Goes to War
2 Into the 21st Battery
3 Training and the "Mysteries of Barrack Life"
4 "A Great Credit to Your Country"
5 New Homes
6 "Berlin or Bust"
7 At Sea
8 Shorncliffe
9 "We are a Depot Brigade"
10 "Dear ... Folks"
11 "Soldiering More Than We Have Done Since We Arrived in England"
Chapter 12 Zeppelin Attack
13 "I Have Seen No Better Brigade This Year"
14 To the Front
15 A "Present to the Kaiser"
16 The Second Division Ammunition Column
17 "Hell to the nth Power"
18 "Absolutely the Best Pal I Ever Had"
19 "We Made the Usual Success of It"
20 Prelude to Vimy
21 The Battle of Vimy Ridge
22 July and August 1917
23 "Not Glad to be Back"
24 "Like the Crack of Doom": The Battle of Passchendaele
25 Winter Quarters
26 "Looks Like One Hell of a Job!"
27 Operation Michael
28 Holding the Line: May and June 1918
29 A Much-Needed Rest
30 Amiens: "Black Day of the German Army"
31 Wedding Bells in "Blighty"
32 Back to the Front
33 Open Warfare and the Cambrai "Show"
34 Valenciennes and the Pursuit to Mons
35 Into the Rhineland
36 "Blighty" and the Official Record
37 HMT Northland and Canada
Epilogue
Bibliography
