One of the chapters of our AEF ebook deals with literature produced by vets of the Great War. A great tale of the marines comes in Thomas Boyd’s Through the Wheat. Boyd served with the 1st Battalion, Sixth Marines and saw action at Belleau Wood, St. Mihiel and Mont Blonc. Boyd retells his experience through the character of William Hicks an Ohio boy who joined the Marines in Cincinnati.
Though Hicks is the protagonist we meet an eclectic array of characters. An unscrupulous supply sergeant who sell tinned beef ‘monkey meat’ or ‘Argentina beef’ for bottles of vin blanc. Captain Powers, an English professor in Texas who pines for the days of Sam Houston and the Texas War of Independence. ‘How much finer it is, he thought, to attack as General Sam Houston attacked; to march steadfastly upon the enemy and make them surrender at the point of a sword or a bowie-knife.’ There is Sgt. Harrison, the reluctant enlistee who nevertheless performs his duty until receiving a dear John letter from his girl back home. Wanting nothing more than to win his girl back Harriman shoots himself in the foot and only afterwards does he realize that he has committed an offense punishable by court marshal. Boyd writes, ‘And he had only meant to get back home. He began to whimper.’
Boyd also gives us harrowing tales of action at Belleau Wood. After the war Boyd become a socialist journalist and actually ran for Vermont governor on the Socialist Ticket.
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