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FEDERAL PUBLICATIONS INC. |
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Baptism of Fire: The Second Battle of Ypres and the Forging of Canada, April 1915 |
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| Format | Hardcover | |
| Catalogue No. | 978-0-00-200727-6 | |
| Pages | 474 | |
| Language | English only | |
| Price | $34.95 | |
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Written by Nathan M. Greenfield. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2007. Description: |
| The Second Battle of Ypres pitted the highly trained German
soldiers—armed with the first weapon of mass destruction, chlorine
gas—against the 1st Canadian Division, which had been in the trenches for
just over a week. Yet it was the Canadians who ultimately triumphed, stopping
the German advance that followed history’s first poison-gas
attacks. In Baptism of Fire, Nathan M. Greenfield revisits the battlefields and war rooms of history, deconstructing military motives and unearthing scores of unpublished interviews, giving voice to the men who faced what one officer called a “filthy, loathsome pestilence” that turned copper buttons green and seared the Canadians’ lungs. He describes how surprise turned to terror as the infantry saw the first clouds of chlorine gas rolling towards them; how, at first, the German soldiers had joked that their mysterious silver cylinders, spied across the enemy line, were a new kind of German beer keg. Greenfield takes readers into the unimaginable horror of shell fire that turned men into “pink mist” and obliterated trenches, leaving the survivors to defend a position of death. And he explains how the untried Canadians, with their defective Ross rifles, breathing through urine-soaked handkerchiefs, successfully made one of the most important stands of the war—perhaps even staving off an ultimate German victory. With alacrity and a great respect for the men in the trenches, Greenfield adds a new dimension to, and explodes a few myths behind, the Battle of Ypres. Within his pages are the words of Canadian and German soldiers. Their accounts make Baptism of Fire a gripping read for anyone seeking to understand our historical or military past. |
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Shipping and applicable taxes extra. Questions about this product? Please e-mail us. This page last modified: October 23, 2007 |
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