This book is an attempt to capture, in their own words, the experiences of British front line soldiers on the Western Front in World War I and what it was like to live and fight in the trenches. - Hot Blood and Cold Steel tells what it was like to live and fight in the trenches of the Western Front in the Great War. - Death is present, all pervadingly, for it was never far away and those who survived were the 'lucky' ones - even if they suffered the torments of vermin, muddy and stinking trenches and shell-holes, almost constant danger, sometimes mutilating wounds and strained nerves. - This is the story of the men who held the front line in France and Flanders, being a graphic account of a strange and seemingly unending style of life and death in all their facets. - It is a unique approach, an anthology interwoven with a continuous commentary so that the reader is always kept aware of the context of the writing. - The balanced and un-emotive approach cannot, however, fail to leave the reader unmoved.
- The aim of this all-encompassing portrayal of front line life is to grip the reader such that it cannot put it down, and that by the time it is finished he or she will have a genuine understanding of what it was like to fight in the trenches of the Western Front.