Toward the Flame:
A Memoir of World War I – Hervey Allen
During WWI, Hervey Allen’s unit of the National Guard (from Pennsylvania)
fought in France. Many military and cultural historians consider
Allen’s Toward the Flame to be the best combat memoir of WWI by an
American.
This is not a mud and blood memoir of the trenches since
by the time Hervey and the men he served with got to fight, it was a war of
movement. Allen was keen observer and gives descriptions of men dealing with
shelling, anxiety, boredom, and ordinary but wonderful activities such as
eating. Hervey gets across that in battle the individual infantryman’s survival
depended on a combination of training, comrades, lay of the land, and luck.
Allen gives a memorable account of the battle for Fismes
and Fismette during the Aisne-Marne offensive of 1918. Some historians of the
war call that battle the worst five days of fighting faced by the American
forces in WWI. Allen is best-known as the author of the historical
novel Anthony Adverse in the 1930s. It sold like hotcakes for its
epic story and spicy parts.
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