Just in time for Veterans' Day:


I found this book to be informative, anti-sentimental, definitely NOT propagandistic as so many of the personal narratives about the First World War were. Holmes wrote this book in reaction to America joining the fight against Germany, he had survived two years in the trenches as a soldier in the British Army, fighting in the Somme. Receiving a "million-dollar wound", as referred to in the war to follow the First World War (The War to End All Wars), he is discharged from the King's Service in 1917.


What I find fascinating is the practical advice given to the parents of the young people who were about to go "over there" from America to fight in the war: what to send the soldiers, how to send it, how often, what did soldiers like to eat, what cigarrettes to send, etc. The reader comes to learn the existential detail, the minutiae that agglomerated into the daily life of a man in the trenches.


This book has the elegance of a survivor's, first-person narrative even if written in colorful, cockney language. I loved it. You can read it for free on Google Books.


On the 11th minute, of the 11th hour, of the 11th month of 1918, The First World War formally ended. This is a good read to commemorate this seminal event in world history.


Remember our Veterans today! (Chaz)