World War One Soldiers: 1914-1918 (Militaria Guides)

A good reference for some basic, overall views of World War One uniforms of all nations but doesn't get too detailed with uniform items or the uniform pieces. Those looking for deep detail will be disappointed, but those who want a basic understanding will like it.

I use this as color is a drawing reference, accuracy counts and color is important. Description is about right, giving a frame of reference about time and functions of each piece.

great reference for WWI

Great book

This is basically a reprint of a 1990 book. This one is slightly better done with a few extra "images" in the margins, but overall it was NOT what I expected. If the description of the book had been accurate I would not have purchased it. First, it was listed as a hardback...its not, its softcover! Second, the description on Amazon.Com as of this day says it is 84 pages, so I thought I was getting an additional 12 pages from the original. It is not, it is the same 66 pages as the original version. To be honest, I would give this book 5-stars, but I feel I have to give it two. This is not a criticism of the book and its content as much as the false information about its format. I highly recommend the book for anyone remotely interested in WW1, but I wanted to make sure you read the facts and people don't tend to be "warned" by a 5 star rating.

Excellent book!

There are 30 different soldiers with photos of the front and rear and a page of description of their clothing and kit. It's mainly the Western front combatants. You get several pictures of German, British and French soldiers, showing how their kit evolved during the war (for example, they show examples of German troops in 1914, 1915, 1916 and two in 1918, one French soldier in 1914, one in 1915, three from 1916 and one in 1917 and 1918). You get a good understanding of how kit was worn, as it's all posed with modern people and the photos are clear. The colours seem to be correct too, handy if you are trying to reproduce a look and the uniforms and kit have additions showing that the wearers have researched their subject well, a nice example was the French greatcoat with pockets in a different colour. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of detail, so you can't identify unknown units or rank decorations, the captions just describe the articles in the photos. Some of the other nations are shown, the Italians have several entries, as do the Belgians , Austrians, Americans and Russians. The Turks, Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians and Hungarians don't appear at all This is a translation of a French book, it's worth having if you want pictures of what people wore, but poor if you want to know greater detail.

I, like others I know are very annoyed by certain books being re published with alternative covers.this particular book was even advertised next to a copy of the original book, which I have, giving the impression that here for sale was another similar but new or updated publication.It even stated that..... 'Never before have actual battle uniforms, individual equipment and weapons of the infantrymen of the great war been illustrated in such authentic detail...'.I was very disappointed to discover that not only was it just a reprint but even the photographs were of poorer quality than the previous edition, being slightly smaller and darker....the colours deceptive and unbalanced.In all I am most unimpressed and must in future question more thoroughly a books authenticity.

Good use of live models posed wearing the proper equipment, a little light on text, but for me, this was a more satisfying purchase. As far as I can see it was correct in its details, even down to the changes made to British webbing to stop rounds being lost!!

very, very good, informative and good photographic resource

The book follows the same great layout and variety of some of the WW2 publications I have, but this version was in the smaller format. Colour information on WW1 uniforms is scarce and this book fills an important gap there.