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look" by bringing together previously unpublished diaries of five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.
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