Back Over There

February 15, 2017
A journey back to the French rural landscape where so many American soldiers fell during World War I.Maine-based journalist and author Rubin (The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War, 2013, etc.) offers a fine on-the-ground account of some of the iconic battles of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, during which the Americans helped turn the tide finally against the Germans in late 1918. Readers following in Rubin's scramble across the largely unmarked rural terrain will need a solid background to the actual fighting since, in many places, the author (who does not speak French) felt like he was the only "Anglophone tourist" who had been there since 1918. Artifact hunting is a serious avocation in these parts, and Rubin admits that one should be mentored in the pursuit, as he was for his previous research by Jean-Paul de Vries, the proprietor of a relics museum in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon. The author examines the sites of the most terrible battles missed by the Americans during the first months of the war: Verdun, the Somme, Ypres. The young doughboys of the American Expeditionary Forces were eager to join the fighting, which occurred in Bathelemont, where the first Americans fell in November 1917. Rubin explored the eerie chalk mines on the so-called Chemins des Dames, where the Yankee Division took shelter in early 1918 and where the walls are scrawled with American graffiti, in effect "their last will and testament." From there, Rubin visited Chateau-Thierry on the Marne, where Gen. John Pershing's Americans engaged the German Spring Offensive of 1918, including the legendary Battle of Belleau. Indeed, it was the Americans--and only the Americans--who could drive the Germans back, retaking the occupied territory held for four years. Throughout the book, Rubin sounds his theme of the Americans being crucial to France's ultimate freedom (as amply recognized by the grateful French). An eloquent dive into World War I cemeteries, monuments, mines, and trenches.

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March 15, 2017

Many of the social, political, and financial events of the 20th century can be attributed to the aftermath of World War I, according to Rubin (The Last of the Doughboys). The author has written this folksy accounting of remnants of battles, relatives of the dead, and those who lived during this time. There are descriptions of artifacts in the Alsace-Lorraine theatre (in present-day France near the German border), including the remainders of shrapnel and spent cartridges that still litter the ground in local fields. Using his high school-learned French to communicate, Rubin visited combat sites that still contain German concrete trenches, machine gun nests, blockhouses, and opposing French trenches just deep enough to protect the men inside. He visits people in the villages, where the first man was killed in the war, and the site where the last American was killed in 1918. These bloody, gas-choked battles, which took place in the French countryside, brought about a 20-year cease-fire that spawned World War II. VERDICT Rubin succeeds in reminding readers how the Great War is the genesis of today's political and social complexities. Recommended for amateur historians and high school history classes.--Harry Willems, Great Bend P.L., KS

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2017
Even though a century has passed, WWI remains vividly present today in France. As journalist Rubin ventures through the still-battle-scarred countryside in this travelogue based on his New York Times series Over There, he is universally met with broad smiles and hospitality simply because he is an American. He visits villagers who are steeped in knowledge about the war (which is referred to simply as 1418), scavenges for the treasures left behind by soldiers in the fields, attends solemn memorial ceremonies, and clambers into the concrete-lined trenches still in place for battles that ended long ago. He masterfully weaves the stories of the conflict into his accounts of what now remains, bringing into sharp focus the voices of long-dead soldiers and the personalities of the famous men who made fateful decisions. From the first American to shed his blood in the war to the young man from Baltimore felled just one minute before its end, Rubin presents an exceptional narrative of America's involvement in a war that, for many, lives on.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)