| Title | : | Paths of Glory |
|---|---|---|
| Author | : | Irvin S. Cobb |
| Release | : | 2017-12-27 |
| Kind | : | ebook |
| Genre | : | Biographies & Memoirs, Books |
| Size | : | 324207 |
| Irvin S. Cobb's eye-opening recollections of his time on the Western Front in the First World War features vignettes of rural France and Belgium, army life, and the unfolding carnage of trench warfare. A journalist by trade, Cobb journeyed to Europe in late 1914 to tour portions of the Western Front. By the time he had arrived, the armies were already dug in - the notorious attrition which characterized trench warfare was underway. He notes the use of artillery by the French, realizing that - with aviation still in its ineffectual infancy - these big guns would end up characterizing both offence and defense in the ensuing war. We hear incidental encounters and conversations with French and British officers, details of the remnants of battle and of a landscape shattered by the intensity of the conflict. At one point, Cobb drily remarks: "By now half of Europe was one great funeral. Part of it was on crutches and part of it was in the graveyard and the rest of it was in the field." The final chapter carries several grim notes; a widow of a dead Belgian approaches Cobb's group, attempting to sell postcards of the locality. Visibly shocked by the destructive warfare in the ruined city of Louvain, amid the trauma of losing her husband she is unable to recall the night on which the invading Germans killed him. As most of Belgium finally surrendered, Cobb sees refugees troop down the roads - the author concludes his account by praising the courage and patience of the Belgian people. At the time these observations were published in 1915, the United States was neutral in the conflict. Cobb's accounts were not subject to censorship at anywhere near the scale that British journalists had to submit to: as such we encounter raw images of a war which had already claimed a staggering amount of life, with cities ruined and countryside turned from verdant fields to apocalyptic carnage. |
