Kirjahaku

Beginning with the novelist Edith Wharton, who toured the front in her Mercedes in 1915, this book describes the wartime experiences of American idealists (and a few rogues) on the Western Front and concludes with the doughboys' experiences under General Pershing. Americans were "over there" from the war's beginning in August 1914, and because America was neutral until April 1917, they saw the war from both the French and German lines. Since most of the Americans who served, regardless of which side they were on, were in Champagne and Lorraine, this sector is the focus. Excerpts from memoirs are supplemented by descriptions of personalities, places, battles and even equipment and weapons, thus placing these generally forgotten American adventurers into the context of their times. A special set of maps based upon German Army battle maps was drawn and rare photographs supplement the text.

Belgium in the First World War: the first country invaded, the longest occupied, and the last liberated. In 1914, Belgium was home to a large American colony: people working for U.S. corporations, diplomats with the American Legation and Americans in the arts - Brussels was cheaper than Paris. After the invasion, American journalists, writers and adventurers flocked to the invaded country to follow the action; in Belgium, military restrictions on travel were less stringent than in England or France.As the most industrialised country in Europe, Belgium depended upon trade and food imports to sustain its economy. The war isolated Belgium and wholesale starvation was imminent by the fall of 1914. Herbert Hoover and his Commission for Relief in Belgium raised funds to purchase and import foods to sustain Belgium and, eventually, Occupied France as well. Idealistic American volunteers (including some Rhodes scholars) supervised food distribution in the occupation zone. Along the Western Front in Belgium, hundreds of Americans served (illegally) in the British and Canadian armies. This book tells the story of the German invasion, occupation and retreat from the perspective of Americans who were there.

By 1915, the Western Front was a 450-mile line of trenches, barbed wire and concrete bunkers, stretching across Europe. Attempts to break the stalemate were murderous and futile. Censorship of the press was extreme--no one wanted the carnage reported. Remakably, the Allied command gave two intrepid American women, Edith Wharton and Mary Roberts Rinehart, permission to visit the front and report on what they saw. Their travels are reconstructed from their own published accounts, Rinehart's unpublished day-by-day notes, and the writings of other journalists who toured the front in 1915. The present authors' explorations of the places Wharton and Rinehart visited serves as a travel guide to the Western Front.