World War One Memoirs

 

Good-Bye To All That: An Autobiography by Robert Graves The quintessential memoir of the generation of Englishmen who suffered in World War I is among the bitterest autobiographies ever written. Robert Graves's stripped-to-the-bone prose seethes with contempt for his class, his country, his military superiors and the civilians who mindlessly cheered the carnage from the safety of home. His portrait of the stupidity and petty cruelties endemic in England's elite schools is almost as scathing as his depiction of trench warfare. Nothing could equal Graves's bone-chilling litany of meaningless death, horrific encounters with gruesomely decaying corpses and even more appalling confrontations with the callousness and arrogance of the military command. Yet this scarifying book is consistently enthralling. Graves is a superb storyteller and there's clearly something liberating about burning all your bridges at 34 (his age when "Good-Bye To All That" was first published in 1929). He conveys that feeling of exhilaration to his readers in a pell-mell rush of words that remains supremely lucid. Better known as a poet, historical novelist and critic, Graves in this one work seems more like an English Hemingway, paring his prose to the minimum and eschewing all editorializing because it would bring him down to the level of the phrase- and war-mongers he despises.  --Wendy Smith - Amazon.com

All For Heaven, Hell, Or Hoboken: The World War I Diary and Letters of Clair M. Pfennig, Flash Ranger, Company D, 29 Engineers, A.E.F.
by Anthony Finan
From the Back Cover On September 26, 1918, the American Expeditionary Force initiated an attack on German lines in France that would turn into the most prolonged battle in U.S. history. The Meuse-Argonne Operation lasted 47 days and involved over 1.2 million troops. So convinced the offensive would bring about a final German defeat, General John J. Pershing, Commander of the A.E.F., commented that his troops would meet their final destiny by Christmas--Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken. Indeed, he was right. The Meuse-Argonne Operation ended in the signing of the Armistice on November 11.

Eighty years ago, over 3 million American men were inducted into service to fight in the Great War. Private Clair M. Pfennig was one of those men. Based upon Private Pfennig's personal diary and published letters, All for Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken provides an intimate portrait of World War I from the perspective of a typical American soldier. Augmented with explanatory passages, photographs and maps, All for Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken also serves as an interesting source of information about a war that today seems to have passed from America's collective memory.
Paperback: 243 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.75 x 8.75 x 5.75
Publisher: Crimson Shamrock Press; 1st edition (March )
ISBN: 0966682106

Armageddon Revisited: A World War I Journal
by Amos Wilder
Book Description: As a young man, Amos Wilder, the distinguished New Testament scholar and poet, served as an ambulance driver and corporal in the Army`s 17th Field Artillery of the 2nd Division during World War I. His journals and letters home (including correspondence with his brother, Thornton Wilder) form the basis of this book of reminiscences about his experiences, one of the few wartime memoirs that eloquently articulates and interprets the common soldier`s point of view.
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr;
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Cellars of Marcelcave: A Yank Doctor In the BEF
by Bernard Gallagher
Hardcover
Publisher: Burd Street Press;

Comrades-In-Arms: The World War I Memoir of Captain Henri De Lecluse, Count De Trevoedal
by Roy Sandstrom
Book Description: This is a powerful and passionate account by a French cavalry officer of daily life on the Western Front from January 1915 to August 1916. Henri de Lcluse regarded the men who served under him as comrades and heroes and his memoir was written to memorialize those who had fallen in combat. Beautifully written and extremely moving, Lcluses memoir resembles short stories and is devoted to descriptions of artillery bombardments; raids on enemy trenches; grisly atrocities; night patrols gone awry;...
Hardcover
Publisher: Kent State Univ Pr; (November 17, )
 

The Devil Dogs at Belleau Wood: U.S. Marines in World War I by Dick Camp Paperback from Zenith Press

Hail and Farewell: Letters From Two Brothers Killed In France In 1916
by Alec Raws
Publisher: Kangaroo Press; (November )

Her Privates We
by Frederic Manning.

Frederic Manning was born in Sydney, Australia in 1882. He moved to England in 1903 where he pursued a literary career, reviewing and writing poetry. He enlisted in 1915 in the Shropshire Light Infantry and went to France in 1916 as 'Private 19022.' The Shropshires saw heavy fighting on the Somme and Manning's four months there provided the background to Her Privates We. He died in 1935.
Paperback - 288 pages (November 15, )
Consortium Book Sales & Dist; ISBN: 1852427175

His Time in Hell: A Texas Marine in France: The World War I Memoir of Warren R. Jackson
by Warren R. Jackson, George B. Clark (Editor)
Through the words of a man who lived it, the reader experience the discomfort, hunger, and danger of life in the maelstrom of mortal combat. 
Hardcover: 256 pages 
Publisher: Presidio Press; illustrated edition edition (October 11, ) 
Language: English 
ISBN-10: 0891417516 
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Letters From a Lost Generation: The First World War Letters Of Vera Brittain and Four Friends
by Vera Brittain
The events set in motion by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 changed many lives irrevocably. For Vera Brittain, an Oxford undergraduate who left her studies to volunteer as a nurse in military hospitals in England and France, the war was a shattering experience; she not only witnessed the horrors inflicted by combat through her work, but she lost the four men closest to her at that time--her fiancé, Roland Leighton, brother Edward, and two close friends, Geoffrey Thurlow and Victor Nicholson, who all died on the battlefield.

Letters from a Lost Generation, a collection of previously unpublished correspondence between Brittain and these young men--all public schoolboys at the start of the war--chronicles her relationship with them, and reveals "the old lie," the idealized glory of patriotic duty that was soon overtaken by the grim reality of the Flanders trenches. The letters are lively, dramatic, immediate and, despite the awfulness of war, curiously optimistic: "Somehow I feel the end is not destined to be here and now. We have not fulfilled ourselves--and someday we shall live our roseate poem through," wrote Vera in one of her last letters to Roland in December 1915, just days before he was killed by a sniper's bullet. Following his death, and later those of their mutual friends Victor and Geoffrey, Vera's letters take on a new, raw intensity as she concentrates all her emotions on her brother--a hero awarded the Military Cross--until his death on the Italian Front in June 1918. These letters formed the basis of Vera Brittain's remarkable autobiography, Testament of Youth, and vividly bring to life the voices of the lost generation whose words threaten to be lost forever as the First World War recedes even further from living memory. --Catherine Taylor, Amazon.co.uk
Hardcover
Publisher: Northeastern University Press; (March 15, )

Horses Don't Fly: A Memoir of World War I
by Frederick Libby, Winston Groom (Introduction)
(Paperback)

Memoirs Of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
Publisher: Simon Publications; Reprint edition

1914-1918: Voices & Images Of the Great War
by Lyn MacDonald
Book Description: From the boys who eagerly enlisted to the solemn burial of the Unknown Soldier, the Christmas truces that the generals could not prevent, the girls handing out white feathers on the streets of London, the filth, the rain, the flies and rats, the military blunders-scenes from the Great War have an almost overwhelming emotional power. Here, acclaimed historian Lyn Macdonald brings together letters, diary extracts, photographs, songs, amateur poetry, official reports, press cuttings, and eyewitness accounts of the Western Front and Gallipoli. The result is a terrifyingly vivid piece of unofficial history.
Publisher: Penguin Uk;

Seven Pillars of Wisdom
T. E. Lawrence
A superbly written account of desert warfare against the Ottoman Turk in WWI by one one of the most intriguing characters of the modern era, this ranks as one of the great classics of 20th century literature..
Listed under Lawrence of Arabia
 

Suddenly We Didn't Want To Die: Memoirs of a World War I Marine by Elton MacKin Mackin's memoirs are a haunting portrayal of war in the tradition of All Quiet on the Western Front.  Publisher: Presidio Pr;

The War As I Saw It: 1918 Letters of a Tank Corps Lieutenant
by Harvey Harris
Publisher: Pogo Pr; 1st edition

War Letters of Fallen Englishmen by Laurence Housman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press;

A Yankee Ace In the RAF: The World War I Letters Of Captain Bogart Rogers
by John Morrow
Hardcover
Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas;

Testament Of Youth: An Autobiographical Study Of the Years 1900-1925
by Vera Brittain
When war broke out in August 1914, 21-year-old Vera Brittain was planning on enrolling at Somerville College, Oxford. Her father told her she wouldn't be able to go: "In a few months' time we should probably all find ourselves in the Workhouse!" he opined. Brittain had hoped to escape to the Northern provinces, but the war seemingly dashed her plans. "It is not, perhaps, so very surprising that the War at first seemed to me an infuriating personal interruption rather than a world-wide catastrophe."

Her father eventually relented, however, and she was allowed to attend. By the end of her first year, she had fallen in love with a young soldier and resolved to become active in the war effort by volunteering as a nurse - turning her back on what she called her "provincial young-ladyhood". Brittain suffered through 12-hour days by reminding herself that nothing she endured was worse than what her fiancé, Roland, experienced in the trenches. Roland was expected home on leave for Christmas 1915; on December 26, Brittain received news that he had been killed at the front. Ten months later Brittain herself was sent to Malta and then to France to serve in the hospitals nearer the front, where she witnessed firsthand the horrors of battle. When peace finally came, Brittain had also lost her brother Edward and two close friends. As she walked the streets of London on November 11, 1918 - Armistice Day - she felt alone in the crowds:

For the first time I realised, with all that full realisation meant, how completely everything that had hitherto made up my life had vanished with Edward and Roland, with Victor and Geoffrey. The War was over; a new age was beginning; but the dead were dead and would never return.

First published in 1933, "Testament Of Youth" established Brittain as one of the best-loved authors of her time. Her crisp, clear prose and searing honesty make this unsentimental memoir of a generation scarred by war a classic. --Sunny Delaney - Amazon.com
Paperback: ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.27 x 7.75 x 5.12
Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper); Reprint edition (September )
ISBN: 0140188444 

War Birds : Diary of an Unknown Aviator
by John MacGavock Grider
A true classic of military literature, recently reprinted. Highly recommended. 
Elliot White Springs was John MacGavock Grider's best friend and fellow pilot during World War I. After the war he edited Grider's wartime diary, which was first published in 1926.
Paperback - 288 pages
Texas A&M University Press; ISBN: 1585440876

The Storm Of Steel: From the Diary of a German Stormtroop Officer On the Western Front
by Ernst Junger
A memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Jünger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict but—more importantly—as a unique personal struggle. Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, Jünger kept testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure.
Published shortly after the war’s end, Storm of Steel was a worldwide bestseller and can now be rediscovered through Michael Hofmann’s brilliant new translation. 
Publisher: Howard Fertig; Reprint edition
ISBN: 0865274231

An American Pursuit Pilot In France: Roland W. Richardson's Diaries and Letters, 1917-1919
by Roland Richardson
Publisher: White Mane Publishing Co.;
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My Experiences In the First World War
by John Pershing
Publisher: DaCapo Press; (April )
ASIN: 0306806169
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