History - HSTR 499: Senior Capstone Class (WWI): Books

Laskin tells the heartbreaking stories of how these men-both conscripts and volunteers-joined the army, were swept into the ordeal of boot camp, and endured the month of hell that ended the war at the Argonne, where they truly became Americans. Those who survived were profoundly altered-and their experiences would shape the lives of their families as well.

Macdonald presents a history of the second year of the Great War, focusing almost entirely on the impressions and experiences of common soldiers gathered from interviews over the last 20 years as well as from letters, journals, and memoirs.

This monumental, dramatic photographic narrative captures the war from the early arms race that developed around the massing of prewar battleship fleets to the final moments of the conflict with the sinking of the German fleet in Scapa. The photographs span the many battlefronts throughout the world: from the British Isles to the south Atlantic, across Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Sudan and East Africa, Jerusalem and Damascus.

Published by the Disabled American Veterans of the World War, Dept. of Rehabilitation

In 1917 young Edward Estlin Cummings went to France as a volunteer with a Red Cross ambulance unit on the western front. But his free-spirited, insubordinate ways soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy. Under the vilest conditions, Cummings found fulfillment of his ever elusive quest for freedom. The Enormous Room, his account of his four-month confinement, reads like a latter-day Pilgrim's Progress, a journey into dispossession, to a place among the most debased and deprived of human creatures. Cummings's hopeful tone reflects the essential paradox of his existence: to lose everything is to become free, and so to be saved.

The soldiers of 1914-1918 created a large body of newspapers and magazines by, for and about themselves. Often misleadingly called 'trench journals', these rich archival sources have received surprisingly little sustained scholarly attention. Through the first comprehensive investigation and analysis of the English language trench periodicals of the war – British, Canadian, Australia, New Zealand and American - The Soldiers' Press presents a cultural interpretation of the means and methods through which consent was negotiated between the trenches and the home front.

The youngest soldier who fought in the Great War is believed to have been just twelve years old. Many thousands of other boys are known to have faked eye tests, inflated their small chests and stood on tiptoes to bluff their way into a war of unforeseen horror. How and why so many under-aged boys were able to get to the battlefields is a complex mystery of World War I, and until Richard van Emden's classic account, largely unexplored. Richard van Emden, having amassed a unique collection of personal testimonies and hitherto unpublished diaries and letters, brings to life their stories of heroism and sacrifice.

In Bloch's Memoirs of War, 1914-15, here in its first English translation (originally published in hard covers in 1980 by Cornell University Press), Bloch left a keen and affecting account of his earliest experience of war.

Following the declaration of war in 1914, Chapman joined the Royal Fusiliers as an adjutant and was sent to the Western Front in August 1915. Chapman survived the Battle of Arras in 1917 but was badly affected by a mustard gas attack. Following treatment for this he returned to the Western Front, remaining until the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918.

Using journals that he kept at the time, the author worked on the book following his retirement; the manuscript was then sent to the Imperial War Museum, which was endeavouring to collect such memoirs for posterity. The Imperial War Museum subsequently published the book in 1969, and has ever since been recognized as a lucid testament to the experiences of the common British soldier during the war. It is truly an excellent read, filled with interesting and harrowing details of trench warfare.

ARTHUR GUY EMPEY (1883-1963) was an American soldier who fought in the British Army during World War I. He was medically discharged after being wounded in action. He wrote Over the Top upon his return to the United States, and after selling more than a quarter of a million copies it was made into a feature film in 1918. Empey went on to become a screenwriter, actor, and movie producer.

This book examines how the British state recruited some of its most controversial artists to produce official art as part of propaganda and how their work gave witnessed testimony to the trauma of a war that later generations would redeem in acts of remembrance.

Pellissier’s diary and his letters to relatives in America show a panorama of this ghastly war: from the horror of being under fire with three thousand German shells falling on the French troops every day to the monotony of long quiet hours spent in cold, wet trenches. He writes of the grinding and indecisive character of the fighting in the Vosges and of the almost ritualistic shelling and limited tactical offensives, such as the attack at Steinbach in December 1914.

Altered Memories of the Great War is the first book to compare the distinctive collective narratives that emerged within Britain and the Dominions in response to World War I. It powerfully illuminates the differences as well as the similarities between different memories of war and offers fascinating insights into what this reveals about developing concepts of national identity in the aftermath of World War I.

Written in the heart of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, Marie Lyster’s World War One diaries describe the political and social climate of Constantinople as Allied troops swept through Turkey, wreaking havoc on the country’s infrastructure and forcing residents, regardless of their national affiliations, to endure the hardships of war.

Harry Spring kept detailed diaries throughout most of his life. Harry died in 1974, but through his diaries he lives to tell us about his experiences. His diary for the time from November 28, 1917 to August 19, 1918 were lost during the fighting in the Argonne Forest, but in 1974, just before he died, he wrote some supplementary notes of what he could remember of this time. Harry Spring never intended or expected that his diaries would be published. They are therefore as private and personal as they are detailed and accurate. He never tried to make his diaries politically correct-he wrote exactly what he felt. This is why these diaries are so powerful.

Signaller Ellis Silas - of the 16th Battalion of the Australian Imperial force - was the only artist to paint and sketch actual battle scenes showing Australian soldiers in action at Gallipoli during World War I. This book contains the words and sketches by Silas, providing a brilliant and moving eyewitness picture of what it was really like at Gallipoli in 1915.

This poignant memoir recalls the great battle of the Meuse-Argonne, an epic conflict waged by well over a million men that saw casualties of 26,277 killed and 95,786 wounded. Many books have been written about General Pershing’s planning of the offensive; this one tells what happened to the soldiers who had to carry out his orders.

Pierpont Stackpole was a Boston lawyer who in January 1918 became aide to Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett, soon to be commander of the first American corps in France. Stackpole’s diary, published here for the first time, is a major eyewitness account of the American Expeditionary Forces’ experience on the Western Front, offering an insider’s view into the workings of Liggett’s commands, his day-to-day business, and how he orchestrated his commands in trying and confusing situations.

Between 1916 and 1918, Lance-Corporal George Timmins, a British-born soldier who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, wrote faithfully to his wife and children. Sixty-three letters and four fragments survived. These letters tell the compelling story of a man who, while helping his fellow Canadians make history, used letters home to remain a presence in the lives of his wife and children, and who drew strength from his family to appreciate life's simple pleasures. Timmins's letters offer a rare glimpse into the experiences relationships, and quiet heroism, of ordinary soldiers on the Western Front.

Steele and his comrades expected war to be a glorious adventure, their personal intersection with events of historic importance. His diary entries convey the excitement that accompanied the passage of the "First 500" recruits across the Atlantic to England and the boredom that followed as the regiment moved from training camps to garrison towns during the first year of the war. Steele's account of the regiment's role in the ill-fated Gallipoli expedition shows how the reality of war transforms individuals, shattering illusions about glory and heroic effort and replacing them with fears of death and wounding far from home.

During America's participation in World War I, 1917-1918, only a single commander of a division, William M. Wright, is known to have kept a diary. In it, General Wright relates his two-month experience at St. Mihiel and especially the Meuse-Argonne, the largest and most costly battle in American history.

Hogan’s book records his recollections of the 165th Infantry in World War I, a regiment in the famed Rainbow Division. Company K of the Third or Shamrock Battalion had a part in every fight, and those who survived had more wound stripes than did the soldiers of any other company in the American Expeditionary Forces. Few soldiers saw as much of the war in eighteen months as did young Martin Hogan, and in this stirring account he tells of his experiences with graphic power, humility, and humor.

This book tells the little-known stories of three all-Jewish battalions formed in the British army as part of the Allies' Middle East campaign, recruiting soldiers from the United States, Canada, England, and Argentina. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, and letters, the book follows their journey at sea through unrestricted submarine warfare; by trains and trucks through Europe, Egypt, and Palestine; and their battlefield experiences.

In Wounded, Emily Mayhew tells the history of the Western Front from a new perspective: the medical network that arose seemingly overnight to help sick and injured soldiers. These men and women pulled injured troops from the hellscape of trench, shell crater, and no man's land, transported them to the rear, and treated them for everything from foot rot to poison gas, venereal disease to traumatic amputation from exploding shells. Drawing on hundreds of letters and diary entries, Mayhew allows readers to peer over the shoulder of the stretcher bearer who jumped into a trench and tried unsuccessfully to get a tightly packed line of soldiers out of the way, only to find that they were all dead. She takes us into dugouts where rescue teams awoke to dirt thrown on their faces by scores of terrified moles, digging frantically to escape the earth-shaking shellfire. Mayhew moves her account along the route followed by wounded men, from stretcher to aid station, from jolting ambulance to crowded operating tent, from railway station to the ship home, exploring actual cases of casualties who recorded their experiences.

Year of the Locust captures in page-turning detail the end of the Ottoman world and a pivotal moment in Palestinian history. In the diaries of Ihsan Hasan al-Turjman, the first ordinary recruit to describe World War I from the Arab side, we follow the misadventures of an Ottoman soldier stationed in Jerusalem.

The first section consists of the entire text of the diaries which Bion wrote as a young man to record his experiences on the Western Front, including his photographs and diagrams. The second section comprises two essays in which he reflects on his war time experiences.