Selection

Michael A. O'Neill

About

Hello and welcome to my bookshop. I’m a writer and translator, activities I developed as a producer/director and scriptwriter of historical TV documentaries. On this special interest site of, predominantly, translated German WWI  diaries, letters and eyewitness reports, you will also discover a few other unusual biographies lurking here and there that I find are stories worth being told.

Enjoy looking around and hopefully finding a book or two that grab your attention!

Selected book

Monthly Featured Book

Dying for the Kaiser

These personal stories and photos from the frontlines are painful and sad, wistful or grim, full of hope or fear; they are all the voices of a destroyed future that is now our past, returned after 100 years to warn the present that having forgotten their pleas and sacrifices it is condemned to harm the future.

“What’s the use of calling the stretcher bearers to bring him to the dressing station? He can no longer be saved; a funny, courageous, powerful man, one of many – oh, amongst how many! – has gone over to the other side with love for his mother on his pale lips.”

The dramatic and thoughtful excerpts and photos are a reminder of what war was all about for the young German soldiers who marched to the frontlines and gave their lives for the Kaiser and their fatherland convinced of the rightness of their cause.

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£15.29

Description

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Additional information

Dimensions 16.7 × 3.8 × 24.2 cm
Translator

Michael A. O'Neill

Format

Kindle Books, Paperback

Language

English

Publisher

BfP Books

Year Published

2023

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LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Read an extract from a book not yet available on the website.

This month: The Pfälzer Division in Flanders

NEW ON THE SHELF. THE FIELD-GREYS.

“It fell right beside us. Strong wind. Hole six metres to our right. Sand blasted from the neighbouring bunker, beams tipped upwards, communication trench collapsed. We’re half-buried. So, now it’s our turn. The shell has to hit us. One minute passes. I stand upright in the open to be killed outright. “Thy will be done”.

Catarina de Bragança excerpt.

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The book translations  on this site have been undertaken to preserve historical documents in the interest of public and academic research and knowledge. Thus the views expressed in the texts are not those of the translator or publisher, nor can the author or publisher guarantee the accuracy of the information contained in the texts.

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The books on this site highlight the true nature of warfare in any century in any country. They contain the words of eye witnesses to the absolute degradation of human activity and thought and the need for wiser voices to prevail in the future than those they obeyed. May their words add to the warnings to us to avoid the monumental folly to which they were subjected without mercy.

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I felt a sharp pain in my thigh; a bayonet stab wound. My helmet and rifle had disappeared. The quiet whimpering of my comrades blended in with the heavy steps of enemy soldiers, who were, apparently, inspecting the battlefield. I, too, like the dead men around me, was turned onto my side, assumed to be dead, given a kick and left where I was.

Fate came down on the enemy side, and 11 o’clock in the morning, the little German island had been swallowed by the English surge, swallowed unsung having bravely fulfilled their duty; their deaths in this great event were just an episode, as small as a miniature, and yet an image that was woven into the vast tapestry of entangled threads that was called a battle.