James McWilliams and R. James Steel are avid military historians. He has collaborated with James McWilliams on two previous books, World War I: The Suicide Battalion (1978, 1990) and Gas! The Battle for Ypres, 1915 (1989), as well as a unit history, The Battery (1996). R. James Steel is also the author of The Men Who Marched Away: Canada's Infantry in World War I, 1914-1918 (1989).