A Yankee in the Trenches

In the nascent days of World War I, long before American intervention, Robert Derby Holmes, a young Bostonian, impulsively crossed the Atlantic to enlist with the British army. Driven by a thirst for adventure and a nascent sympathy for the Allied cause, Holmes plunges headfirst into the brutal reality of the Western Front. His memoir charts a vivid course from the mundane, ceaseless discomforts of trench life—the omnipresent mud, the incessant 'cooties,' the grueling work details—to the visceral terror of direct combat against the German forces. He recounts harrowing 'over the top' charges, tense nocturnal patrols, and even witnessing the nascent, clunky power of early tanks.