Saturday, January 20, 2024

Lit. 1918: The Doughboy's Contribution to American Literature — A Roads Classic




The American experience on the battlefields of Europe had a tremendous influence on the nation's literature for the rest of the 20th century. Name these literary notables from the AEF.  Answers below.  (This is not a comprehensive listing.) 


1. He served as an artillery officer with the 4th Artillery Brigade, 4th Division. He would  later create the detective Mr. Moto and write satirical novels about the upper crust, including the award-winning The Late George Apley

2. Another Doughboy artillery officer, he would win three Pulitzer Prizes for poetry and a play, and would serve as Librarian of Congress. 

3. A sergeant staffer on Stars and Stripes, he was already an established drama critic before the war. Later, when he was nationally known, his unique personality inspired  one of America's greatest comedies, The Man Who Came to Dinner

4. Wounded while serving with the 28th Pennsylvania Division in the Second Battle of  the Marne, he wrote one of the greatest Doughboy memoirs, Toward the Flame. Then he dedicated himself to writing historical novels, most famously, the best-selling Anthony Adverse

5. This sergeant with the 79th Division, who participated in the capture of Montfaucon, later became one of the founders of "hard-boiled" American fiction with such works as  The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity

6. What about those Marines?! For some reason the Marine Brigade of the 2nd Division  produced at least four notable authors of memoirs, novels, and plays about the AEF at war. 

a. After losing a leg at Belleau Wood, he turned to writing. He collaborated on a famous play about the Yanks at war, What Price Glory?, and later wrote an anecdotal but comprehensive history of the American experience in World War I, The Doughboys.   

b. His innovative novel, Company K, includes the Unknown Soldier as a character. 

c. His novel, Through the Wheat, chronicles the psychological destruction of a young Marine. 

d. A career Marine who was awarded the Navy Cross in the Great War, he chronicled  the intensity of combat on the Western Front in Fix Bayonets!

7. A pioneering neurosurgeon who served with the British and American Medical Services, he wrote a great memoir of the war, From a Surgeon's Journal, and was later  an award-winning biographer. 

8. This authorial team were both veterans of the Lafayette Flying Corps and the U.S. Air Service. Their most famous collaboration was The Bounty Trilogy.

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Answers

1. John P. Marquand

2. Archibald MacLeish

3. Alexander Wolcott

4. Hervey Allen

5. James M. Cain

6a. Laurence Stallings

6b. William March Campbell

6c. Thomas Boyd

6d. John W. Thomason

7. Harvey Cushing

8. Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

Source: Originally presented in the Spring 2012 issue of THE JOURNAL OF THE WORLD WAR ONE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

3 comments:

  1. This is an excellent survey of WWI American literature! David Beer

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  2. Archibald MacLeish (2), brother of Kenneth MacLeish (Navy Cross) buried at Flanders Field Cemetery, Belgium

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  3. Thank you for this list of American authors who introduced realism and authenticity to the literary world. These veterans contributed to satire and commentaries, such as John P. Marquand, whose writing criticized to critique and satirized societal norms and the upper class. Archibald Macleish contributed to modern poetry and experimentation because of his war experiences. Putting them back down once you pick up a book and start reading these literary masterpieces is difficult.

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