A Rifleman Went To War (by Herbert W. McBride)

From Wikipedia ....

Herbert W. McBride was a Captain in the Twenty-first Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, during the First World War. He was a sniper and commander of a machine gun unit known as the "Emma Gees." He was also the author of two books on the war: "A Rifleman Went To War" (1933) and "The Emma Gees" (1918). He was born in Waterloo, Indiana on October 15, 1873. He was born into a military family. His grandfather served in the Mexican War, and his father served in the Union cavalry during the Civil War. After the war, his father rose to the rank of Colonel in the Indiana National Guard and was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court. Both Herbert's father and grandfather were lawyers, and he became one. From an early age Herbert hunted game and participated in riflery competition. He honed his skills at Camp Perry, where he participated in the National Matches. As a young man, after contracting tuberculosis and receiving medical advice to change climate, Herbert traveled to the western United States (Colorado and New Mexico), where he met some of the legendary gunfighters, including Bat Masterson. He traveled to the Klondike during the gold rush in 1898-1900. He later enlisted in the Indiana National Guard and rose to the rank of Captain by 1907. He was in an artillery battery at one point, where he was introduced to the Gatling gun. Right before the war, he traveled to British Columbia and hunted large game for a railroad company. When the war started, he volunteered in a Canadian rifle company in Ottawa because he wanted to see action as quickly as possible. He was commissioned as an officer, but was reduced to a private due to several drunken incidents. He shipped to England for training and then to the Western Front, where he participated in battles around Ypres and the Somme throughout 1916. In his book, "A Rifleman Went To War," he recounts killing more than 100 German soldiers as a sniper. This book is highly regarded by students of riflery. It is mandatory reading in the U.S. Marine Corps Sniping School. It is also considered one of the best first-person accounts of World War I, often being compared favorably to "Storm of Steel" by Ernst Junger. Like Junger, McBride is unusual in that he writes enthusiastically of his war experiences, deriding Hollywood "sob stuff" pictured in the movies after the war. But McBride notes in his book that by the end of 1916 he felt in his heart "the game was over," and a series of alcoholic binges resulted in his court martial and dismissal from the Canadian Expeditionary Force in February 1917. He then joined the United States Army's 38th Division, serving out the war as a marksmanship and sniping instructor at Camp Perry. He resigned in October 1918. After the war, he worked in the lumber industry in Oregon for most of his later years. He died in Indianapolis of a sudden heart failure on March 17, 1933, shortly after finishing "A Rifleman Went To War." He was 60.

A review from an Amazon customer (M. Dog) dated January 2, 2004

This is a great WWI memoir, and it gives some incredible insights the makings of a great soldier. As one might expect, Mr. McBride was an extremely tough, brave man. However, this book makes it clear that there are some other, less obvious qualities to the professional soldier. Contrary to popular believe, imagination and individual initiative are among them. Most importantly, though, is a particular mindset. I leave it to McBride to put it best:

"Hatred is a slow, calculating, cold-blooded business. There is no time for it in battle . . . I assure you that when I was behind the rifle, the principal feeling was one of keen satisfaction and excitement of the same kind that the hunter knows. That's the spirit. That's what makes good rifleman and good soldiers."

If you are looking for poetic prose, look elsewhere. McBride was not an introspective man, full of soulful wanderings about the horrors of war. This soldier was thrilled and eager to participate in war, and joined the Canadian force because his home country, America, was too slow to enter the fray for his tastes. He described the mud of the trenches and the sound a bullet makes striking a human head in hatchet-like, blunt sentences.

There is the satisfaction, though, that this lover of war told you the hard truth in every word he wrote. Another reviewer called this book "refreshing" and I will second that.

In one segment of the book, McBride describes his distaste for a current war movie of the time of the book's writing, the classic "All Quite On The Western Front." While McBride complemented the scenes of actual battle, the whole show was ruined for him by the depiction of men in battle. The constant emotions, and, as he wrote of them, "facial contortions" exhibited by the actors where in his view ridiculous. Men died quickly, fought hard, and killed one another without a lot of fuss, or "sob stuff," as he called it.

I believe H.W. McBride is telling me the truth.