Book Review: Hell's Observer, by Pvt. William J. Graham

I have recently come to an even deeper appreciation for keeping a personal journal. While a journal doesn't provide all the facts about a climactic event encompassing a large amount of people, it does provide some very solid information about the event from the standpoint of the writer. Private Graham, while not having all the information, does give an account of the war from the perspective of his personal experience. And his experience is not told from the standpoint of someone looking back into the recent past, but as someone writing his way through the event. His faithfulness to pen and paper provides us with a testimony of the American Doughboy in what was called The Great War before it became known by its modern name of World War I.

World War I (WWI henceforth) for the average bear such as myself, seems like the neglected and shadowy older brother of World War II. Whenever I try to image the lesser known battles of WWI, my mind goes back to the brief snippets of information I've heard here and there, in sum that WWI was "the boring war" as you could call it. The reason for such a title is because people have usually said this in summary: "Aw WWI was ridiculous. A bunch of guys in gas masks digging trenches divided by a no-mans-land throwing bombs at each other." That's it. Just a bunch of guys waiting for the next barrage of bombs to be thrown at them as they sit quietly in a big hole in the ground. Boring, right? Especially when such a set up is juxtaposed with recent popular films about World War II with snipers, tactical maneuvers, sneak attacks and such. Because of this, it's easy to overlook the first world war for the sake of something a little more- well, engaging.

But according to this very detailed, very graphic penmanship put in print for us, there were many interesting things happening in the European battlefields of 1914-1918. Gas masks were issued to all due to gas bombs, snipers plagued the hillsides, hot air balloons were used for surveying and spying on enemy movements, messenger pigeons were deployed to fly over barbed wire ridden open areas, flanking movements were always being formulated, and air raids sent all running for their lives. From this account, it seems that more was happening in WWI than artillery and the lameness of trench-foot.

It's through this man's diligence of writing, at a point when the military regarded a private journal as contraband, that we have an eye-witness answer to the age old question seasoned veterans and soldiers on furlough get from the general public: "What was it like?" We can now read and find out for ourselves in striking detail.

The historical photographs by Mr. Jarvis were most helpful and very well spaced throughout the book. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in undertaking the subject of WWI.