When Your Number's Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and co-author
of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Shadows of War, Faces
of Peace: Canada’s Peacekeepers.

Desmond Morton is one of Canada’s most prolific military historians,
and this book, a distillation of 30 years of research, is probably his
finest work. Brilliantly titled, When Your Number’s Up examines the
Great War from the vantage point of the individual soldier. This is no
study of commanders plotting their campaigns, in other words; instead,
here we look at why men enlisted and others did not, how trench warfare
was fought and how soldiers reacted to it, and what happened to the
wounded, to prisoners of war, and to courage and discipline under the
stress of war. Morton notes that “[w]ars are made by masses of
people” but “masses are made up of individuals, with their own
motives and experiences, joys, terrors and tragedies.” It is
extraordinary that it took more than three-quarters of a century for a
book like this to be written; happily, it is now available—and happier
still, it is presented in a manner that makes it accessible to all.