An Acceptable Warrior

The story begins in France soon after the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 – Armistice on the Western Front. Signed by the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, the Armistice thus terminated hostilities within six hours of signature and ended the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Shared by the U.S. forces with the French Fourth Army, Meuse-Argonne was the principal engagement of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, engaging 1.2 million American soldiers. Its successful objective was to capture the railway hub at Sedan and thus break the railway network essential to supporting the German Army in France and Flanders. It was the largest frontline commitment of troops by the U.S. Army during the war, also its deadliest, resulting in 26,277 American deaths and 95,786 wounded over 47 days of intense, bloody fighting.

The story progresses over four months, following Armistice on the Western Front, through a succession of adventures encountered by a thoughtful young American soldier and journalist from Virginia, David Atwood, and chronicles his mental state from disillusionment, lost love, hopelessness and depression toward the possibility of ultimately coming to terms with himself and acquiring a renewed sense of purpose. Any sensitive war veteran of any age will likely find some aspects of him or herself in these pages – and a hopeful promise of personal transformation.

This is the story of a personal journey – a young soldier’s path up and out of an uncaring universe toward spiritual awakening and individual self-actualization – discovering his promise and tendency to become actually what he is potentially, to become everything he is capable of becoming, to seek the frontiers of his creativity and strive to reach higher levels of consciousness, happiness, awareness and wisdom, to potentially becoming a fully conscious human – a grateful “spiritual warrior” – or will he?

Arthur Hayne Mitchell is a writer, senior biodiversity, environmental and natural resources specialist, protected areas planner and manager, environmental policy specialist, conservation biologist and biological anthropologist with more than thirty years' experience, including twenty-five working outside the United States in fifteen countries, primarily in Southeast and South Asia as well as East Africa and the Caribbean. Art Mitchell, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Yale University, lives in Fairfax, Virginia. Reginald Earle Looker volunteered to serve in France, prior to the official entry of America into WWI, as an ambulance driver with the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps (Norton-Harjes). During that time, he also worked as a freelance war correspondent for The Evening Post. After the war, Looker worked as an advertising executive, magazine editor, public relations consultant, ghost-writer and speech writer for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Looker was associate editor of Asia magazine and a contributing editor of Fortune magazine. In addition to The White House Gang, a 1929 'New York Times' bestseller, he wrote This Man Roosevelt; Colonel Roosevelt, Private Citizen; The American Way: Franklin Roosevelt in Action; Looking Forward and Government - Not Politics (both ghost-written with Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Revolt (with his second wife Antonina Hansell Looker). During WW II, Looker headed the Psychological Warfare division of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), which was transferred under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of 1942. MIS was tasked with collecting, analyzing and disseminating intelligence. The OSS later became the CIA. He also served as a Lt. Colonel in World War II, Pacific Theater. Earle Looker died in 1976 at Toccoa, Stephens County, Georgia.