Trench Knives and Mustard Gas: With the 42nd Rainbow Division in France (C.A. Brannen Series, No. 6) by Hugh S. Thompson, Robert H. Ferrell (Editor)

From the Publisher

In Trench Knives and Mustard Gas, the memoir of a soldier on the front lines of World War I, Hugh S. Thompson combines the fast-paced prose of the Jazz Age with the passionate observations of an engaged intellectual. Originally serialized in the Chattanooga Times in 1934, this newly edited version allows the author to tell his story to a new generation.

Thompson takes the reader on a grueling journey with the 168th regiment of the 42nd Rainbow Division through the villages, towns, battlefields, and hospitals of France. Severely wounded in his arm and back, Thompson reassesses his situation after visiting comrades who lost arms or legs. "I went back to my tent," he recalls, "almost ashamed of my own lucky wounds."

Homesick for the States during his first months overseas, Thompson discovers that his platoon has become his second family. He becomes accustomed to the war's distortion of time and values. Friendships form and disappear in the hour it takes a stranger to die. When he is wounded, Germans serve as his stretcher bearers.

If war does not destroy the physical man, it nonetheless leads to strange experiences. Trench Knives and Mustard Gas brings the front lines of the Great War to the hearts and minds of its readers.

On Point

"As he accounts his service, Thompson captures, in lucid and compelling prose, the grimness of trench warfare, the agony of becoming a gas casualty, and the myriad challenges faced by a small unit leader."

January 2005 - Military Trader

"Thompson's graphic and heart-wrenching narrative of combat and life in the trenches ranks among the best American eyewitness accounts of the 'War to End All Wars.' "

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