En Repos and Elsewhere Over There. Verses Written in France, 1917-1918

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918. First Edition. 1/4 cloth. Near fine/none as issued. A very near fine first edition. Brown paper over burgundy quarter cloth boards with black title on cover and title on paper label on spine. Previoous owner's name on front pastedow is only flaw. xvi, [1], 111, [1] pages, 1 leaf The verses here collected "need no bush" They evidence what they are the reflections, now playful, now serious, of typical American youth upon the surroundings of life on the French Front. They were written by two members of one of the many volunteer ambulance sections of the American Field Service, who came to this organization from Leland Stanford University and who served in and with the French Army long before American troops were operating in France. Subsequently the sections of the American Field Service were adopted by the American Army, though left to serve with the French divisions, and the authors of these verses, along with many hundred other former volunteers, were enlisted as American soldiers.Most of these verses were printed originally in the "Amer ican Field Service Bulletin, " a small weekly published in France by volunteers of the Field Service for their own and their comrades' amusement. Not having been written for readers at home, but for the severely critical and somewhat blase eyes of comrades, they contain few allusions to shot and shell, and the thrills and horrors of war. Journalists and novelists, writing for the home market, have naturally selected for description only the dramatic and heroic aspects of the war and have frequently conveyed an impression of life at the Front which, even though literally true of special times and places, is by no means representative of the normal experiences. The circumstances under which these verses were written are such as to give them a kind of documental value as true exhibits of a soldier's life and thoughts." --preface