Into the Jaws of Death

What compels a man to walk into the killing fields of the Western Front? Jack O'Brien asked himself that question in 1915, and his answer was duty, mateship, and something he couldn't quite name. A private in the 28th Northwest Battalion of the Canadian Army, O'Brien traces his journey from enlistment through the grinding monotony of training to the first shattering moments in the trenches. This is not a glorification of war. It is a worker's account of war: the cold, the mud, the pitch-black nights broken by artillery, and the strange humor men use to survive it. O'Brien writes with raw honesty about the friendships that anchored him and the fears he never quite named. For anyone who wants to understand what the Great War actually felt like to the ordinary soldiers who fought it, this memoir is an essential, unflinching window into the belly of the beast.