From the Trenches: Louvain to the Aisne, the First Record of an Eye-Witness

In August 1914, Geoffrey Winthrop Young was among the first correspondents to witness the German invasion of Belgium, and one of the few to survive telling the tale. This is his electrifying record of those first weeks: the panic in Paris, the exodus of refugees clogging every road, the smell of Louvain burning, and the terrible, absurd chaos of modern war as it unfolded. Young moved through a landscape becoming unrecognizable, cities in flames, ancient streets shattered by shells, soldiers digging the first primitive trenches that would eventually stretch across Europe. His account captures the raw bewilderment of those initial days, before the world understood what kind of war was about to consume a generation. This book endures because it was written in real time, before the narrative calcified, before anyone knew whether any of them would live to see the end. It is primary source as visceral experience: the war of 1914, witnessed fresh.