3 books to know World War I. John Dos Passos
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Table of Contents
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Introduction
WELCOME TO THE 3 Books To Know series, our idea is to help readers learn about fascinating topics through three essential and relevant books.
These carefully selected works can be fiction, non-fiction, historical documents or even biographies.
We will always select for you three great works to instigate your mind, this time the topic is: World War I.
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
The War That Will End War by H.G . Wells
The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Three Soldiers is a 1921 novel by American writer and critic John Dos Passos. It is one of the American war novels of the First World War, and remains a classic of the realist war novel genre.
During August 1914, immediately after the outbreak of the war, British author and social commentator H. G. Wells published a number of articles in London newspapers that subsequently appeared as a book entitled The War That Will End War. Wells blamed the Central Powers for the coming of the war and argued that only the defeat of German militarism could bring about an end to war. Wells used the shorter form of the phrase, "the war to end war", in In the Fourth Year (1918), in which he noted that the phrase "got into circulation" in the second half of 1914. In fact, it had become one of the most common catchphrases of the First World War.
The Amazing Interlude (1918) is a story about Sara Lee Kennedy, an innocent and idealistic nineteen year old American girl from Pennsylvania, who is touched by the plight and suffering of the soldiers battling on the front lines during WWI. Funded by the local women's charity, Sara Lee joins the Red Cross, travels to Europe over her fiancee's objections and meets Henri, an intriguing Belgian spy who helps her setup a soup kitchen near the Belgian front line.
This is one of many books in the series 3 Books To Know. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the topics.
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Three Soldiers
BY JOHN DOS PASSOS
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“Les contemporains qui souffrent de certaines choses ne peuvent
s'en souvenir qu'avec une horreur qui paralyse tout autre plaisir,
meme celui de lire un conte.”
STENDHAL
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PART ONE: MAKING THE MOULD
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I
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THE COMPANY STOOD AT attention, each man looking straight before him at the empty parade ground, where the cinder piles showed purple with evening. On the wind that smelt of barracks and disinfectant there was a faint greasiness of food cooking. At the other side of the wide field long lines of men shuffled slowly into the narrow wooden shanty that was the mess hall. Chins down, chests out, legs twitching and tired from the afternoon's drilling, the company stood at attention. Each man stared straight in front of him, some vacantly with resignation, some trying to amuse themselves by noting minutely every object in their field of vision,—the cinder piles, the long shadows of the barracks and mess halls where they could see men standing about, spitting, smoking, leaning against clapboard walls. Some of the men in line could hear their watches ticking in their pockets.
Someone moved, his feet making a crunching noise in the cinders.
The sergeant's voice snarled out: “You men are at attention. Quit yer wrigglin' there, you!”
The men nearest the offender looked at him out of the corners of their eyes.
Two officers, far out on the parade ground, were coming towards them. By their gestures and the way they walked, the men at attention could see that they were chatting about something that amused them. One of the officers laughed boyishly, turned away and walked slowly back across the parade ground. The other, who was the lieutenant, came towards them smiling. As he approached his company, the smile left his lips and he advanced his chin, walking with heavy precise steps.
“Sergeant, you may dismiss the company.” The lieutenant's voice was pitched in a hard staccato.
The sergeant's hand snapped up to salute like a block signal. “Companee dis...missed,” he rang out.
The row of men in khaki became a crowd of various individuals with dusty boots and dusty faces. Ten minutes later they lined up and marched in a column of fours to mess. A few red filaments of electric lights gave a dusty glow in the brownish obscurity where the long tables and benches and the board floors had a faint smell of garbage mingled with the smell of the disinfectant the tables had been washed off with after the last meal. The men, holding their oval mess kits in front of them, filed by the great tin buckets at the door,