Steele's Battalion

The Great War Diaries: The Great War Diaries

By: John D Beatty

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Paperback | 6 April 2025

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Paperback
398 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 2.26

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A scholar finds diaries in an old steamer trunk. The diaries tell the story of a young man, Ned Steele, who embarks on a journey from Detroit to Germany.

Ned joins the Army in 1914, earns a commission in 1917, leads a machine gun company on a Flanders hill, and then a machine gun battalion in the AEF in France. In between, Ned finds romance, terror, exhaustion, friendship, death, and the misery of World War One....

23^rd November, Colline Mortelle..

I have seen the Inferno from the edge of Purgatory...mud, wire, holes, water, and the remains of man, beast, and civilization. There is no sadder sight than a ruined town...No training can get anyone ready for this [expletive].

I could never have imagined what a howitzer shell landing so close could have felt like.... machine-gun bullets hum like giant bees or kazoos in the air and sound like meat hooks hitting a side of [expletive] beef when they hit...Sgt. Thorsten and I went down to the "front line"...like [expletive] animals in unbelievable filth and indescribable stink...in the forward posts, we endured a small bombing raid...Don't think I've ever been so [expletive] humiliated in my life....

"Get ready..." the voice on the telephone said softly....the night stillness was ever-so-gently broken by the rumbling of heavy guns, followed by the crack of light howitzers...then, the shush-shush-shush of shells passing overhead...then, the ground seemed to explode...

The Maxims opened fire, the bzzz-bzzz-bzzz of the bullets ending abruptly in a muddy torrential blizzard of thut-thut-thut as they hit the hill...Half of Steele's guns were on the west side of the hill...where most of the bullets were falling...

The telephone crackled again.... "Steele!"

"On our left and right," the voice said. "Missions 6 and 9."

"Out," Steele answered, grabbing his company phone and Missions List. "1^st Platoon fire Mission 6, standing; 2^nd Platoon Mission 9, standing...Forward post now!"

His machine guns opening fire...and kept firing...

"Fire Mission 5, sweep left to right..."

"B Boy Company: my flank is open. Give me your Mission 12, and a lot of it."

"Fire Mission 12, standing. Split fire."

"B Boy again. Shift east two hundred; you're too bloody close..."

"Out. Give me 1^st Platoon...sweep left two hundred..."

"Give me 3^rd Platoon...Mission 9, standing..." Steele's guns kept firing...he kept adjusting..."Give me 2^nd Platoon...Mission 7, standing bump left..."

Industry Reviews

Right from the opening pages, the way the diary unfolds-a scholar uncovering Steele's own voice in an old steamer trunk-feels like a literary excavation that invites the reader deep into history itself. There's such a vivid juxtaposition between Steele's early sense of duty and the visceral horror he describes as he earns his commission, leads machine-gun units on a Flanders hill, and endures the grim mechanics of life in the trenches. These moments-where exhaustion, terror, friendship, and fleeting beauty coexist on every page-made me feel as if I were experiencing the war through his eyes rather than reading about it on a distant landscape.

What I found especially resonant was the specificity with which each entry captures not just the physical chaos of warfare the mud, the wire, the unending din of guns but also the emotional cadence of Steele's internal world: his fleeting impressions of ruined towns, his acute awareness of fear and responsibility, and how those seemingly ordinary human thoughts persist amidst extraordinary circumstances.

Donna Tartt, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Goldfinch

For almost 400 pages, we follow the life of Ned Steele as he leads his men through the last year of the war. He distinguishes himself more than once and advances from lieutenant to brigadier general (although this rank is rescinded after the war). The author spares no detail in making Steele's war career come alive to us, whether in his relationships with women, his men and his superiors, or in his grueling experiences which never even allow him a badly needed break without a heightened reality crashing in upon him.

David Beer for Roads to the Great War

A gripping and satisfyingly detailed war novel in the vein of Sergeant York.

Kirkus Reviews.

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