Commitment and Sacrifice: Personal Diaries from the Great War - Softcover

Shevin-Coetzee, Marilyn; Coetzee, Frans

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0190902353 ISBN 13: 9780190902353

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2018

Synopsis

For years, those who attempted to understand the devastation of World War I looked to the collections of diplomatic documents, the stirring speeches, and the partisan memoirs of the leading participants. However, those accounts offered little by way of the intimate history, or the individual experiences of those involved in the Great War. In Commitment and Sacrifice, Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee and Frans Coetzee provide just such an "intimate look" by bringing together previously unpublished diaries of five participants in the First World War and restoring to publication the diary of a sixth that has long been out of print.

The six diaries address the war on the Western front and the Mediterranean, as well as behind the lines on the home front. Together, these diarists form a diverse group: John French, a British sapper who dug precarious tunnels beneath the trenches of the Western Front; Henri Desagneaux, a French infantry officer embroiled in years of bloody combat; Philip T. Cate, an idealistic American volunteer ambulance driver who sought to save lives rather than take them; Willy Wolff, a German businessman caught in England upon the war's outbreak and interned there for the duration; James Douglas Hutchison, a New Zealand artilleryman fighting thousands of miles from home; and Felix Kaufmann, a German machine gunner, captured and held as a prisoner of war.

Through the personal reflections of these young men, we are transported into many of the iconic episodes of the war, from the upheaval of mobilization through the great battles of Gallipoli, Verdun, and the Somme, as well as the less familiar "other ordeal" of internment and captivity. As members of the so-called Generation of 1914 (each was between nineteen and twenty-four years old), they shared an unwavering commitment to their countries' cause, and possessed a steadfast determination to persevere despite often appalling circumstances.

Collectively, these diaries illuminate the sacrifices of war, whether willingly volunteered or stoically endured. That the diarists had the desire and the ingenuity to record their experiences, whether for their families, posterity, or simply their own personal satisfaction, gives readers the ability to eavesdrop on horrors long past. A century later, we are fortunate that they were both willing and able to set pencil to paper.

About this title

About the Author:

Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee and Frans Coetzee have taught at Yale and George Washington Universities and have been the recipients of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, American Philosophical Society, Alexander von Humboldt, Fulbright, and Mellon Foundations, Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and the National Endowment for the Humanities. They are the authors of seven books, including The World in Flames: A World War II Sourcebook (OUP, 2010).

Review:

"If you have ever wished that you could breach time and space to fully experience the trenches of World War I, this is your opportunity to do so. Commitment and Sacrifice is virtual reality at its best, and you need never leave the safety and comfort of your armchair....The Coetzees' rigorous research is clearly evidenced throughout this book as they effectively introduce and then contextualize each of these six voices with extensive but judiciously placed, illuminating footnotes."--Journal of Military History

"Shevin-Coetzee and Coetzee have assembled a well-balanced collection of six riveting personal journals from WWI, including those of an American ambulance driver, a German internee on the Isle of Man, a French lawyer turned infantry officer, an English sapper, a German machine gunner captured and held in France, and an ANZAC artillery soldier who described the landings at Gallipoli....Generous commentary about each diarist, plus informative footnotes, makes this collection especially valuable."--CHOICE

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0190902353
• ISBN 13: 9780190902353
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 348