FRENCH
|
André BRETON,
poet, essayist, critic, editor, communist, surrealist, described by
Ionesco as "one of the four or five great reformers of modern thought".
During the war he served in the neurological ward of a hospital in Nantes
and made some attempts to use Freudian methods to psychoanalyze his
patients, whose disturbed images he considered remarkable. Among the
wounded soldiers he treated in 1916 was one Jacques Vaché, whose
life and death by suicide in 1919 had tremendous influence on
Breton, and whose Lettres de Guerre, with Breton's introductory
essay, proved a seminal work in the pre-history of Dada and
Surrealism. Equally influential for Breton and Surrealism, was
his wartime meetings with Apollonaire in Paris. Breton's pre-war and
wartime poems were collected in his first book,
Mont de Piété (Pawnshop), published in 1919.
|
Jean COCTEAU, (1889-1963),
poet, novelist, playwright, actor,
artist, film-maker, critic.
Born at Maisons-Lafitte. Served
at the front in 1914 in the volunteer ambulance corps. Close
friend with first French ace Roland Garros, with whom he
often flew over Paris, & to whom he dedicated a long poem. Collaborated with Picasso &
Eric Satie. Influenced, & influenced by, Cubism, Dadaism,
Surrealism.
|
Auguste COMPAGNON
, killed in Champagne, aged 36.
~~~ POEMS ET LETTRES DES TRANCHEES
(1916).
|
Pierre DRIUE La Rochelle
, (1893-1945), poet, novelist, essayist. Born
and died in Paris. Decorated for leading a bayonet charge at
Charleroi in August 1914. Forged his war experiences into a slim
volume of poems, INTERROGATION
, which appeared in a limited edition in 1917.
Influenced by Paul Claudel and the Futurists, it celebrated war's
virtues without concealing its horrors.
Drieu's postwar novels of the '20s chronicled the aimlessness
and debauchery of soldiers returning to the banality of civilian life.
In 1934 he published a memoir of the war,
LA COMEDIE DE CHARLEROI .
Later works include REVEUSE BOURGEOISE
(1937); and
GILLES (1939). Dreiu eventually became a
fascist and collaborated with the Vichy government during World War II.
Shortly after the liberation of France, he committed suicide. His
RECIT SECRET (1961)
and MEMOIRES DE DIRK RASPE
(1966) were among a number of his works that
were published posthumously
|
Antoine DUJARDIN. Born 1887. Died of
wounds 30 April 1915.
Paul ÉLUARD (1895-1952). Born in Saint
Denis. A founder
of Surrealism with Louis Aragon, André Breton among others, &
one of the important lyrical poets of the 20th century. Though
tubercular, he served in WWI in the French Army (hospital
corps & infantry), and was a casualty of gas. In WWII he
served again in the French Army, as well as in the Resistance.
He joined the Communist Party in 1942.
| |
Pierre-Jean JOUVE,
poet, novelist, critic. Born 1887 in Arras. Volunteered at beginning
of war for service as a medical orderly, but soon forced to give it
up due to ill health. His pre-war influences were the Neo-Symbolists
and the Unanimism of Romains. During the war he was influenced by the
altruistic humanitarianism of Romain Rolland. His war verse appeared
in 1914-1916; POEMS. A personal crisis, brought on partly by the war and by his discovery of the mystics and psychoanalysis led him to renounce his earlier work. His most important novels and poetry were all post-WWI.
|
Wilhelm de Kostrowitsky
(pseud.
Guillaume APOLLONAIRE) (1880-1918).
Enlisted
French Army 1915, serving first in the artillery and subsequently, as
a lieutenant, in the infantry. Sustained a head wound in the trenches.
Invalided out of service. Died from combination of influenza and war
wounds in 1918, just prior to the Armistice. His war verse was
published in a volume entitled CALLIGRAMMES
(1918).
|
Charles PEGUY, born January 7,
1873, in Orléans, France. Died September 5, 1914, near Villeroy.
Poet, philosopher, Catholic, socialist, patriot. Péguy was born in
poverty. His father died when Charles was an infant; his mother mended
chairs for a living. He attended the lycée at Orléans on a
scholarship and in 1894 entered the École Normale Supérieure
in Paris. In 1895 he turned to socialism, abandoning the conventional
practice of Roman Catholicism, though he retained to the end of his
life a fervent religious faith. Wrote first version of Jeanne d'Arc
in 1897, a dramatic trilogy embodying his religious and socialist
principles. When the Dreyfus affair broke, Péguy threw himself
unreservedly into the battle to establish Dreyfus' innocence and
persuaded many of his fellow socialists to join the cause. In 1900
Péguy began publishing the influential journal Cahiers de la Quinzaine,
which exercised a profound influence on French intellectual life for the next 15 years.
Many leading French writers, including Anatole France, Henri Bergson, Jean Jaurès, and Romain Rolland, contributed work to it. Though Péguy published several collections of essays prior to World War I, his most important works are his poems. Lieutenant Péguy was killed in action while leading a charge at Villeroy on the opening day of the First Battle of the Marne.
~~~ JEANNE D'ARC (1897)
~~~
LE MYSTÈRE DE LA CHARTIÈ DE JEANNE D'ARC(1910)
~~~
MYSTÈRE DES SAINTS INNOCENTS (1912)
~~~
ÈVE (1913) .
~~~ Yvonne Servais,
CHARLES LES PÈGUY: THE PURSUIT OF SALVATION (1953)
~~~ Marjorie Villiers,
CHARLES PÈGUY: A STUDY IN INTEGRITY (1965, reprinted 1975).
|
SCOTTISH
|
 Captain
Cyril Morton HORNE.
Born 1887. The outbreak of war found Cyril Horne in the United States
working in the theatre and already the author of an opera. He returned
home and in March 1915 was commissioned in the 7th Battalion King's
Own Scottish Borderers. In the summer of 1915 he went to France as
their Transport Officer. In September 1915 the battalion participated
in the Battle of Loos, taking heavy casualties on the 25th. On the
27th Horne took over command of "A" Company and was one of the few
officers to survive the battle unscathed. Captain Horne was killed by
an artillery shell on 27 January 1916 in Loos village while attempting
to rescue a wounded soldier. He was buried in Mazingarbe Communal
Cemetery.
~~~ SONGS OF THE SHRAPNEL SHELL AND OTHER
VERSE. (Harper & Brothers, New York & London, 1918).
|
 Lt.
Ewart Alan MACKINTOSH, M.C. Born
March 4, 1893, Brighton, Sussex, to Scottish parents. Educated at
Brighton College, St Paul’s School & Christ Church College, Oxford.
Commissioned in the 5th Battalion Seaforth Highlanders in December
1914, and joined the Battalion at Laventie in July 1915. On 16 May
1916 awarded the Military Cross for action in a trench raid. Wounded
& gassed at High Wood in early August 1916, and sent home to
recuperate, spending the next eight months as a bombing instructor
with the Cadet Corps at Cambridge. Lt. Mackintosh returned to France in
October 1917 and joined the 4th Battalion Seaforth Highlanders in huts
at Courcelles-le-Comte, near Bapaume. He was killed in the
village of Fantaine Notre-Dame during the Battle of Cambrai on 21
November 1917 by a bullet to the head.
~~ A HIGHLAND REGIMENT AND OTHER POEMS. (John Lane, 1917).
~~ WAR, THE LIBERATOR AND OTHER PIECES. With memoir by John Murray (John Lane, 1918).
Captain Charles Kenneth Michael SCOTT-MONTCRIEFF (1889-1930). Served on Western Front with the 3rd Battalion, the King's Own Scottish Borderers. Won the Military Cross.
| |
 Charles Hamilton SORLEY, 1895-1915. Born in Aberdeen,
Scotland. At outbreak of war, immediately enlisted in
Suffolk Regiment. Commissioned & sent to France in May 1915.
Killed in action 13 October 1915, at Battle of Loos, age 20.
Name engraved on The Loos Memorial to the Missing, Dud Corner Cemetery, Loos, France.
~~~ MARLBOROUGH AND OTHER POEMS, LETTERS FROM
GERMANY, & THE LETTERS, WITH A CHAPTER OF BIOGRAPHY. (Cambridge
University Press, January,1916).
~~~ THE LETTERS OF CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY. With an introduction by Mrs. Sorley. (Cambridge
University Press, 1916).
~~~ THE POEMS AND SELECTED LETTERS OF CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY. Edited by Hilda D. Spear (Blackness Press, 1978).
~~ Swann, Thomas Burnett, THE UNGIRT RUNNER(Archon Books, 1965). A brief biography of C.H.S.
~~ Wilson, Jean Moorcroft, CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY, A BIOGRAPHY. The first full-length biography of C.H.S.
~~ CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY EXHIBITION CATALOGUE: ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL, OCTOBER 1985. Catalogue of an Exhibition held by Cecil Woolf Publishers to mark the 90th anniversary of this first world war poet's birth; the 70th anniversary of his death; the publication of the first full-length biography and the first complete edition of his poems.
|
Lt.
Robert STERLING, Born in Glasgow, 19 November 1893. Educated Glasgow Academy, and Sedbergh School. Gained a Classical Scholarship to Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1912, and two years later won the Newdigate Prize with his poem, "The Burial of Sophocles". Shortly thereafter war broke out. Sterling was commissioned in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and sent to Scotland for training. Arrived in Ypres area in February 1915; in & out of trenches at St. Eloi. Hospitalized in early April 1915 for influenza.
By late April had rejoined his battalion in time for the Second Battle of Ypres. He was killed 23 April 1915 at Ypres, after holding a length of trench all day with fifteen men. He was 22. He is buried at Dickebusch New Military Cemetery, Belgium.
~~~
POEMS, Oxford University Press, 1916 .
|
Lt.
Walter Scott Stuart LYON, 9th Battalion Royal Scots. Born 1 October 1886 in North Berwick. Educated Haileybury College and Balliol College, Oxford.
Graduated in Law at Edinburgh University in 1912 and became an advocate. Killed in a heavy artillery barrage in Potijze Wood, south of the Menin Road, 8 May 1915.
His name is on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, Ypres, Belgium.
|
IRISH |
Captain
George C. DUGGAN, born in County Wicklow Ireland. Earned BA at
Trinity College, Dublin. International cross-country runner. Resided
in Dublin. Died of wounds at Gallipoli on August 16 1915, aged 29. No
known grave, commemorated on Helles Memorial.
|
Francis LEDWIDGE, born in Slane, County Meath, Ireland,
19 August 1887. Educated Slane Board School. Was befriended by
Lord Dunsany, who introduced him to other Irish literati. Worked on
the roads and in a copper mine. One of the founding members of the
Slane branch of the Meath Labour Union. Served with 5th Battalion
Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in the Dardanelles in August 1915, during
which time his battalion lost half its men in nine days fighting.
Served in Salonika in late 1915. In December, while in a six-day
forced retreat under severe attacks from the Bulgarians, Ledwidge lost
all his manuscripts save a few rain-soaked remnants. He suffered a
severe inflamation in his back which caused his collapse and four
months hospitalization in Cairo. Was sent to hospital in Manchester
in April 1916, where news of the Easter Rising, and the death of his
friend and fellow poet Thoimas MacDonagh upset him deeply. Was
court-martialled and stripped of his rank in May for overstaying
his leave and insubordination. Spent next seven months in
Ebrington Barracks, Derry. Rejoined his Battalion in the village of
Picquigny, north of Amiens, in December 1916. In early 1917 was
drafted to "B" Company, 1st Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers,
part of the 29th Division, and sent first to Carnoy, then to a camp
in Le Neuville, near Corbie. While there he began a correspondence
with the Irish poetess, Katherine Tynan. The Battalion was in billets
at Le Neuville in early March, 1917. In early April the 1st Battalion
arrived in Arras; it moved to Proven in the Ypres area on 27 June, and
served intermittantly in trenches for the next seven months.
Ledwidge was killed on 31 July on the opening day of the third Battle of Ypres by
an exploding shell.
~~~
THE COMPLETE POEMS OF FRANCIS LEDWIDGE. WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY LORD
DUNSANY. Herbert Jenkins, 1919 .
~~~ Alice Curtayne,
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE: A LIFE OF THE POET (1887-1917). Martin Brian & O'Keeffe, 1972.
|
WELSH |
Ellis EVANS, born, near Trawsfynydd, North Wales. Educated Trawsfynydd Elementary School. After leaving school, Evans helped his father on the family farm. He won the first of his six bardic chairs at Bala in 1907 &
was given his bardic name “Hedd Wyn” at a concert held on the banks of Llyn y Morymion in Merionethshire in August 1910. He just failed to win the Chair at the National Eisteddfod at Aberystwyth in 1916. In October 1916, Evans began work on “Yr Arwr” (“The Hero”), his awdl (a long eisteddfodic poem using several of the traditional 24 strict metres) for the Eisteddfod to be held at Birkenhead in 1917. Before he was able to complete his awdl, he was called up in January, 1917. He enlisted in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was sent to Litherland camp near Liverpool for training. In the Spring of 1917, Evans was granted seven weeks leave to return home and work as a ploughman on his father’s farm. During these weeks he composed more lines of “The Hero”, which he completed in the middle of July after arriving in the village of Flechin on the frontier between France and Belgium, with the 15th Welch Fusiliers, part of the 28 (Welsh) Division. The 15th Battalion left Flechin on July 15th and marched to Dublin Camp and Canal Camp on the Comines-Ypres canal five days later. The 15th Battalion crossed the canal into German territory on July 31st, moved into the village of Pilckem, and on to a spot later named “Battery Copse”, where it was fiercely attacked by the Germans. Every officer of the Battalion was killed or wounded and command of the battalion fell to Regimental Sergeant-Major Jones, who received orders to hold on to a ridge of land, later named Iron Cross Ridge, about a mile from the village of Langemarck. During this fighting Pvt Evans was wounded in the chest by a piece of trench mortar shell. He died a few hours later. A few weeks following his death, the National Eisteddfod was be held in Birkenhead. The Chair was placed in the centre of the stage with the eisteddfodic sword resting across its arms. When the Archdruid, Dyfed called out three times for the winning poet to stand up, there was no response. Dyfed announced that the chief bard had fallen on the field of battle in France on the last day of July. He explained who he was, “Hedd Wyn”, a shepherd from Trawsfynydd. And then, as there was no one to be chaired, the sword was removed, and the Chair draped in a black cloth.
And there, the weeping willow trees
Bear the old harps that sang amain,
The lads’ wild anguish fills the breeze,
Their blood is mingled with the rain.
|
AUSTRALIAN
|
Leon GELLERT. Born and educated in Adelaide, Australia. Enlisted as a
private in 10th AIF. Took part in the Gallipoli landings, where he was
wounded and invalided to England until return to Australia 1916. After
the war became journalist on Sydney Morning Herald. Acclaimed
as Australia's greatest war poet. Died 1977.
|
Captain James Griffyth FAIRFAX, 1886-1976. Served with the Army Service Corps in Mesopotamia. Mentioned in Despatches four times.
|
Frederic MANNING, 1882-1935. Though born in Australia, was living in England when war broke out. Enlsited in 1914 in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, refused a commission, and served with 7th Battalion from July 1916 to the Armistice. Fought on the Somme.
|
Tom SKEYHILL. Regimental signaller 8th battalion, 2nd (Victorian)
Infantry Brigade, AIF. Trained in Egypt January-April 1915. Landed on
Anzac beach, Gallipoli April 25 1915. Wounded May 8 at Cape Helles in
charge by 2nd Brigade when a shell exploded beside him & blinded him
permanently. Invalided home.
|
Walter Jalmes Redfern TURNER, 1889-1946. Born in Australia. Served in
the Royal Garrison Artillery, 1916-18.
|
F E WESTBOOK. Born in Melbourne. A rover ~ sheep shearer, farm
labourer, ship's cook. Wrote no poetry until he enlisted in
1914. Became a Gunner with 4th. Battery, 2nd. Brigade, Australian
Field Artillery. His battery took ashore on Gallipoli the first gun at
Anzac beach on April 25 1915. Sent to England to convalesce from
neurasthenia following shell-shock.
|
CANADIAN
|
John McCRAE. Born Guelph, Ontario, 1872. Commanded an artillery battery during the Boer War. Served as Brigade Surgeon, First Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery from Fall 1914 to Summer 1915. Served in 2nd Battle of Ypres as surgeon and occasional gunner.
In Summer 1915 became second in command of medical services at Number 3 Canadian General Hospital in France. Died 28 January 1918 of pneumonia and meningitis. Buried at Wimereux Cemetery in France. Wrote most famous poem of the war, "In Flanders Fields".
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
 That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
|
Robert William SERVICE, 1874-1958.
Born in Preston, Lancashire. Service emigrated to Canada in 1894 and, while working for the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Victoria, B.C., was stationed for eight years in the Yukon. Service's first verse collections, “Songs of a Sourdough” (1907) and “Ballads of a Cheechako” (1909), describing life in the Canadian north, was enormously popular. He worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 At the outbreak of WWI, Service tried to enlist, lying about his age (41), but was rejected because of a varicose vein. He later joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps and served as a driver on the Western Front for two years. His “Rhymes of a Red Cross Man” appeared in 1916.
|
2nd Lieutenant
Bernard Freeman TROTTER. 
Born 16 June 1890, Toronto, Canada. Educated Woodstock College, Ontario, and
McMaster University. While at University of Toronto reading English
Literature in late 1915, applied for commission in British Army. Sailed
for England March 1916.
Trained at Oxford; commissioned in the Leicestershire Regiment,
the county, as it happened, where his father was born and where members
of his family still lived. Joined 11th Batallion Leicestershire
Regiment at Bethune in December 1916.
In April the Battalion was in the
front line in the Mazzingarbe area, west of Loos. On 7 May 1917, while
on his horse supervising the transporting of slag for repairing roads
at Loos. 2nd Lieutenant Trotter was killed by an explosive shell.
~~~
A CANADIAN TWILIGHT AND OTHER POEMS OF WAR AND OF PEACE.
Toronto, 1917.
Inscription reads: To my absent boy, Lt. Carl H. Hubner with hopes that he may enjoy his late lamented friend's writings as much as has been my pleasure. ~~ Dad. ~~ Dec. 25th, 1917
|
ITALIAN
|
Giuseppe UNGARETTI, 1888-1970
Served as an infantryman on the lower Isonzo front with the 3rd Army from 1915 until early 1918. In the spring, he was transferred to the Western Front.
|
Eugenio MONTALE, 1896-1981
Served in the Trentino as an infantry officer 1917-18.
|
RUSSIAN
|
Ilya EHRENBURG. Born 1891 in Kiev. Served in French Army on the Western Front.
|
Nikolai Stepanovich GUMILYOV, 1886-1921. Born in Kronstadt. With outbreak of war, immediately volunteered for active duty. Saw action & was twice decorated. In 1917 was sent to France to join Russian Expeditionary Corps, but mostly spent time in Paris & London awaiting assignment. The Quiver, 1916, contains his war poetry. Executed by firing squad in 1921 for counter-revolutionary activities.
|
Nikolay TIKHONOV, 1896-1979. Served as hussar in WWI, then in the Red Army. The Horde, 1921, reflects his war experiences.
|
AMERICAN
|
John Peale BISHOP
|
E.E. CUMMINGS
|
Robert A. DONALDSON. Served in France with the American Field Service.
|
David M. FUNK. Served with the A.E.F. in France.
|
Joyce KILMER. Served with the 69th Division, A.E.F. Killed in action July
30, 1918, at Seringes, France.
|
Archibald MacLEISH
|
Alan SEEGER .
Born 22 June1888, New York City . Grew up on Staten Island. At 12,
moved with his family to Mexico City. At 14 sent to boarding school
at Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY, but continued spending his summers
in Mexico. At 18, in September 1906, Seeger entered Harvard University,
where he became friends with another poet, John Reed, later famous as
author of Ten Days that Shook the World. Seeger graduated in
June, 1910, with an honors degree in Celtic Literature. Continued
friendship with Reed & circle of radicals, writers & artists in
Greenwich Village from late 1910 to early 1912, where, between bouts
of poetry, he worked as a sometime writer for the magazine
American, where Reed was an editor. In the Spring of 1912,
Seeger moved to Paris where he continued his bohemian existence on the
Left Bank among a set of artistic American expatriots until the
outbreak of war. 
On 24 August 1914, Seeger volunteered as a private
in the Foreign Legion, French Army. Assigned to Regiment de Marche, he
served in Champagne, on the Aisne, in Alsace, and on the Somme. He
was wounded in February 1915, and invalided to Biarritz in April.
He rejoined his regiment in May. Alan Seeger was killed in action 4
July 1916 on the Somme, near Belloy-eni-Santerre during a charge, and
is reported to have sung a patriotic song to urge on his comrades
as he bled to death. His poem, "I Have a Rendevous with Death" was
the most popular and widely-quoted American poem of the war.
~~ "Champagne, 1914-15"
, a poem which
appeared in THE HARVARD VOLUNTEERS IN EUROPE:
PERSONAL RECORDS OF EXPERIENCE IN MILITARY, AMBULANCE, AND HOSPITAL
SERVICE,
edited by M.A. DeWolfe Howe, Harvard University Press, November 1916.
~~~ POEMS
With an introduction by William Archer. (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1916).
~~~ LETTERS AND DIARY OF ALAN SEEGER
(NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917).
~~~ A LA MEMOIRE DE ALAN SEEGER ET DE SES
CAMARADES, LES VOLONTAIRES AMERICAINS MORTS POUR LA FRANCE. TROIS
POEMES D'ALAN SEEGER, INSPIRES PAR LA GUERRE.
"Ces trois poemes ont ete lus a la
Comedie-Francaise, au cours de la Matinee du 21 Janvier 1917, par
Mme SECOND WEBER et M. SILVAIN, apres que M. RENE BESNARD,
Sous-Secretaire d'Etat a la Guerre, eut rendu hommage a' la memoire
des volontaires americains. Three poems, translated into French:
"Champagne 1914-15", J'ai un rendez-vous avec la Mort...."and
"Amerique et France", with a brief biographical notice.
Stapled, printed paper wraps, 16 pages.
(Imp. Henri Dieval, Place des Victoires, Paris, no date).
~~~
ALAN SEEGER, LE POETE DE LA LEGION ETRANGE.
Ses Lettres et Poemes. Ecrits Durant la Guerre Reunis par son Pere
et Traduits par Odette Raimondi-Matheron. Paris: Payot & Cie,1918.
12mo, 311pp. Printed paper wraps.
~~
"Alan Seeger, Poet of the Legion"
, a chapter in
THE VANGUARD OF
AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS
, by Edwin W. Morse, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918.
~~~ ODE IN MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS
FALLEN FOR FRANCE.
"By Alan Seeger, a soldier of the French Foreign Legion born June 22,
1888; killed in Action July 4, 1916, Belloy-en-Santerre."
[The American Legion Department of France printed above title].
Paris: Printed by Herbert Clarke, 338, Rue Saint-Honore, [1920].
8vo, printed stapled self-wraps. "Composed for Decoration Day in 1916,
this Ode was to have been read before the statue of Lafayette and
Washington in Paris. By appropriate Resolution of the American Legion
this Ode is to be read at all ceremonies conducted by members in
France on Memorial Day 1920."
~~~ Irving Werstein, SOUND NO TRUMPET: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ALAN SEEGER.
(NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1967).
After her son's death, Mrs Seeger gave volumes of Alan's poetry to friends, enclosing a photograph of Alan as a baby. This inscription reads: To dear Cousin Marnie from Alan's mother, Elsie Addams Seeger, Paris, April 30th, 1917.
|
Gertrude STEIN, writer & mentor to the
'Lost Generation' of writers in Paris after World War I. She was born
in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, February 3, 1874. During the war she & Alice B. Toklas, at
first, frightened by zeppelin raids, left Paris for the safety &
tranquility of Palma de Mallorca. However, in the summer of 1916,
they returned to Paris and soon volunteered their services as drivers
for the organization "American Fund for French Wounded". Obliged to
furnish their own transportation, Stein wrote to her cousins in New
York who raised sufficient funds to purchase a Ford & have it shipped
to France. AFter it arrived, the ladies had it fitted out like a truck
& christened it "Auntie" in honor of Stein's Aunt Pauline "who always
behaved admirably in emergencies and behaved fairly well most times if
she was properly flattered". They spent the remainder of the war
distributing relief supplies to hospitals around Paris, Perpignan, &
Nimes. Toklas handled accounts, and Stein, dressed in helmet-shaped
hat, belted, big-pocketed coat, sandals, knitted vest & shirtwaist
with gathered sleeves, spent countless hours among the wounded
soldiers, cheering them with her easy conviviality, maternal warmth &
clown-like appearance. She published two war poems in "Life", and
another, entitled "The Work" in the A.F.F.W. Bulletin. After the
Armistice, Stein & Toklas were assigned to Mulhouse, in liberated
Alsace, where they distributed supplies to the shelled cities &
burned-out villages throughout the 1918-19 winter.
|
Amos N. WILDER. 1895-1993. Served in American Field Service in the Argonne and west of Verdun in 1917, and on the Serbian Front and Salonika later that year. Served with A Battery, 17th Field Artillery, Second Division, AEF from January until the Armistice, participating in the following engagements: Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Mihiel, Blanc Mont, and the Argonne.
|
THE ROAD TO BAYONVILLERS
The sidecar skimmed low down like a flying sled
over the straight road with its double screen
of wire--the blue profile of Amiens sank
below the plain--near by, a hidden blast
of gunfire by the roadside--just ahead,
a white cloud bursting out of a slope of green.
Then low swift open land and the wasted flank
of a leprous hillside--over the ridge and past
the blackened stumps of Bois Vert, bleak and dead.
Our sidecar jolted and rocked, twisting between
craters, lunging at every rack and wrench.
Through Bayonvillers--her dusty wreckage stank
of rotten flesh, a dead street overcast
with a half-sweet, fetid, cloying fog of stench.
|
John Allan WYETH . Served on the Western Front as Company Translator with the 33rd Division, A.E.F.
~~~ THIS MAN'S ARMY: A WAR
IN FIFTY-ODD SONNETS (New York:
Longmans Green & Co., 1929).
|
|
|
