A Soldier Of France To His Mother; Letters From The Trenches On The Western Front
A Soldier Of France To His Mother; Letters From The Trenches On The Western Front

Author: Eugène-Emmanuel Lemercier

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 1782892923

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The story of a renowned French painter who volunteered for the Army during the First World War paints a vivid picture of the horror at the front in his letters home written before his death in 1915. “A Bestseller, remarkable for the horrors of the western front conveyed in a spirit of self-sacrifice and filial love.”- A Companion to World War One ed. John Horne, Blackwell Publishing, 2012 “THE following letters were written by a young French painter who was at the front until the beginning of April, 1915, when he “disappeared” in one of the combats in the Argonne region of France. “Should he be spoken of in the present or in the past?” asks M. André Chevrillon , a friend of the soldier’s family, in the preface to the French edition of this book. “Since the day when his mother and grandmother received from him his last communication, a post card bespattered with mud which announced the attack in which he fell, what a tragic silence for these two women who, during eight months, had lived only with these letters, which came almost daily. In his studio, among the pictures in which this young man had fixed his dreams and his visions of an artist, I have seen, piously arranged on a table, all the little square white sheets of this correspondence. What a speechless presence! I did not know then what a soul was there transcribed in these messages to the family hearth - a fully formed soul, which, if it had lived, I feel sure would have spread its fame and its influence far beyond this little home circle and radiated a-wide among the hearts of men.””

General Alexandre Dumas
General Alexandre Dumas

Author: John G. Gallaher

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9780809320981

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In 1799, however, Dumas left Egypt when Napoleon wanted him to remain with the army. This plunged Dumas deeply into the dungeon of Napoleon's disfavor. Later he was literally imprisoned in southern Italy until 1801. "Napoleon never forgave Dumas," Gallaher notes, "and even continued to punish his wife and children after his death.".

What Soldiers Do
What Soldiers Do

Author: Mary Louise Roberts

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-05-17

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0226923096

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How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.

A Soldier Unafraid - Letters From The Trenches On The Alsatian Front
A Soldier Unafraid - Letters From The Trenches On The Alsatian Front

Author: Captain André Cornet-Auquier

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2014-06-13

Total Pages: 83

ISBN-13: 178289179X

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Nearly 1.7 million French soldiers died in the First World War fighting for their homeland against the invading German Armies; it is difficult to comprehend that hecatomb. It is indeed difficult to comprehend that many lost lives, perhaps the only way to do so is in representative figures such as the Unknown Soldier or by the many memoirs and diaries that have been left behind. One such diary is that of Captain André Cornet-Auquier, a passionate but moral man, well-known for his leadership skills in and bravery on the battlefield. The conditions in which he served on the Alsace front were always tough, being often within forty-five yards of the enemy’s front lines, his faith in his cause and God sustained him even in the most trying situations. Despite being in the front line fighting for so long his luck ran out in February 1916, mortally wounded by a shell splinter. A symbol of French stoicism and courage he died beloved by his men, one of his sergeants said “It is not a spectacle often witnessed, — that of soldiers, accustomed to face death, weeping like children as they stood round his bier.”

To Raise and Discipline an Army
To Raise and Discipline an Army

Author: Joshua Kastenberg

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2017-04-15

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1609092139

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Major General Enoch Crowder served as the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army from 1911 to 1923. In 1915, Crowder convinced Congress to increase the size of the Judge Advocate General's Office—the legal arm of the United States Army—from thirteen uniformed attorneys to more than four hundred. Crowder's recruitment of some of the nation's leading legal scholars, as well as former congressmen and state supreme court judges, helped legitimize President Woodrow Wilson's wartime military and legal policies. As the United States entered World War I in 1917, the army numbered about 120,000 soldiers. The Judge Advocate General's Office was instrumental in extending the military's reach into the everyday lives of citizens to enable the construction of an army of more than four million soldiers by the end of the war. Under Crowder's leadership, the office was responsible for the creation and administration of the Selective Service Act, under which thousands of men were drafted into military service, as well as enforcement of the Espionage Act and wartime prohibition. In this first published history of the Judge Advocate General's Office between the years of 1914 and 1922, Joshua Kastenberg examines not only courts-martial, but also the development of the laws of war and the changing nature of civil-military relations. The Judge Advocate General's Office influenced the legislative and judicial branches of the government to permit unparalleled assertions of power, such as control over local policing functions and the economy. Judge advocates also altered the nature of laws to recognize a person's diminished mental health as a defense in criminal trials, influenced the assertion of US law overseas, and affected the evolving nature of the law of war. This groundbreaking study will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers of US history, as well as military, legal, and political historians.