A Long-Lost World War I Narrative "Once A Marine" is the true story
of the life of a private in the U.S. Marines on the battlefields of
Northern France during the First World War. The author, Levi E.
Hemrick, did not set down his narrative until nearly 50 years after
the somber, bloody, exhausting and at times hilarious event he
describes. Blessed with the vivid, selective memory of an artist
and a half century of gestation, Hemrick penned a memoir that was a
skillfully blended admixture of prosaic fact and deeply pondered
comment. The day-by-day incidents of almost forgotten battles are
recalled with a purity refined by the passage of time. In this book
- the first edition of which is now extremely hard to find -
Hemrick did not attempt a strategic assessment of the battles in
which he took a valorous part. His is the frankly confessed
worm's-eye-view of one private soldier who was unaware of even the
most minor tactics of his own platoon. One Man in the Trenches The
result was a memoir unfettered by any complicated responsibilities
or a temptation to rewrite events to justify his own part in them.
Hemrick's is the straightforward account of what he himself saw and
was called upon to do - first to carry food up to the men in the
front line and, later, to bear the wounded to the most forward
ambulance position. In the course of these stretcher-bearing duties
he received wounds to arm and ear that handicapped him for the rest
of his life. "Once A Marine" may not be history in the wide,
all-inclusive sense, but any historian of the Great War would be
unwise to ignore a story the veracity of which shines out of every
line and which can claim with complete confidence to represent the
experiences of the average Boche, Pollu, Tommy and Yank in the
trenches long ago. With a new foreword by historian Charles
Culbertson - who, as a boy, knew Hemrick and read the original
manuscript of "Once A Marine" - and biographical material, one of
the rarest of World War I memoirs is now available for the first
time in more than half a century. From "Once a Marine" "As we moved
deeper into this stream of human misery, our men for the first time
were brought face to face with the fact that war was a sad
business, a costly one whose product was mostly misery and despair,
pain and death, a kind of reward only the devil and his kind could
want or enjoy."
"The Germans were professionals. They didn't expect or believe
that the amateur, undisciplined, over-indulged, soft life our boys
lived at home, plus absence of training and experience, could or
would produce the physical toughness and the will to stand the pain
and hardships required of a good fighting soldier. So the Germans
waded into the Americans with the confidence of old time
professionals expecting to smash and push them aside and get going
on their march to Paris. To their surprise, these Americans did not
push so easy."
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