A Yankee in the Trenches

Robert Derby Holmes did not wait for his own country to enter the Great War, enlisting instead in the British Army and going straight to the Western Front. This memoir, first published in 1918, records what he saw there as an infantryman: the mud and monotony of trench life, the sudden violence of a raid or a shell, and the grim humor that kept men going. Holmes writes plainly, without the polish of a professional author, which gives his account of the Somme and its aftermath a blunt, eyewitness force. For readers who want the war as an ordinary soldier lived it rather than as generals mapped it, this is a valuable firsthand record. Free to read as a PDF or EPUB edition.