<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A highly recommended eyewitness testimony
Review: Ably edited for contemporary readers by Joshua Brown, A Good Idea Of Hell: Letters From A Chasseur A Pied presents the diary and letters of Robert Pellissier, a man who served his country of France in the infamous trench warfare of World War I. Vivid descriptions of shelling, the long inactive waits in the cold and the wet, the limited tactics, the news of the battlefields, insights on how changing technology affected the nature of war itself, and a great deal more comprise this literate and highly recommended eyewitness testimony of the unfolding military battlefield history of World War I. Of special interest is the inclusion of three letters from a Protestant army chaplain at the end, explaining just how Pellissier "heroically and selflessly" died during battle -- which resulted in his being posthumously awarded the Medaillie Militaire and the Croix de Guerre avec Palme.
Rating:
Summary: MEMORABLE LETTERS
Review: These letters written to his family by a foot soldier serving in France during World War I graphically remind us that war can not only be hell, it is hell. American raised and professionally a scholar at Stanford University Robert Pellissier nonetheless felt the pull of his native country, France. This may well have been his reason for enlisting in the French army in 1914. He was sent to the front where he fought in the Alsace mountains. Masterfully written these documents relate in gripping detail life and death in the dank, frigid trenches where French soldiers are bombarded every day by thousands of German shells. Pellissier tells his family of the horrific sights he encounters almost hourly, and of the ill treatment of civilians by the Germans. His professorial eye misses nothing of the bravery or the cowardice. He was wounded on August 29, 1916, and died soon after. His letters were penned from officer training school, from the front lines, and from the hospital. All are testimony to a man who loved and died for his native land. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: MEMORABLE LETTERS
Review: These letters written to his family by a foot soldier serving in France during World War I graphically remind us that war can not only be hell, it is hell. American raised and professionally a scholar at Stanford University Robert Pellissier nonetheless felt the pull of his native country, France. This may well have been his reason for enlisting in the French army in 1914. He was sent to the front where he fought in the Alsace mountains. Masterfully written these documents relate in gripping detail life and death in the dank, frigid trenches where French soldiers are bombarded every day by thousands of German shells. Pellissier tells his family of the horrific sights he encounters almost hourly, and of the ill treatment of civilians by the Germans. His professorial eye misses nothing of the bravery or the cowardice. He was wounded on August 29, 1916, and died soon after. His letters were penned from officer training school, from the front lines, and from the hospital. All are testimony to a man who loved and died for his native land. - Gail Cooke
<< 1 >>
| 
