Customer Reviews

Through the Wheat: A Novel of the World War I Marines

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If asked to name a World War I novel most Americans would almost certainly say "All Quiet on the Western Front". Thanks to our rather uniform public education system, Remarque's novel has earned a place in American culture as the quintessential novel of The Great War. It deserves its reputation as a landmark of 20th century literature, but unfortunately its success contributed to the disapearance from memory of Thomas Boyd's "Through the Wheat". Without moralizing about the cost of war, Boyd brilliantly depicts its horrors and their effects on the psyche of a young American Marine. If you want to understand the Combat experience -- the noise, dirt, distraction, sweat, blood, stench of war -- this is a novel you must read. It is a tragedy that it is no longer in print.

This is an outstanding historical and literary view of the horrors of life and death for US Marines in the "Great War". The author closely models his novel on his actual experiences with the Sixth Marines in some of the heaviest fighting by American forces in Belleau Wood, Soissons and many smaller battles. You feel the oppressive numbing fear of constant shellfire and random death, poison gas, spoiled food and the constant dirt and mud that was trench life and warfare in WWI. Lack of sleep, bad food when you could get food, and the bleak landscape of no-mans land with unburied corpses are the back drop to an excellent exploration of how men continue fighting long past their initial thoughts of patriotism and "glory" of cause. This book favorably compares and to some surpasses, Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage". This is a classic of men at war.

Started out slow, Boyd seemed caught up in using as many adjectives as a sentence could hold. Once I got past that and was able to focus on his story it flowed easily. His accurate depiction of what it was like for the average Marine was outstanding. A very good read of USMC WWI history.

This is a novel about what it was lke fighting in the trenches of WW I. Edmund Wilson among others thought it one of the best war novels in our literature. Boyd is a fierce realist (he was a soldier in the war, too) and pulls no punches. Death and misery are everywhere, and no one really knows what they're doing there. But Boyd is only a mediocre writer, and the realism, though praiseworthy, is not enough. The writing is flat.

I consider the writing substandard. The overly ripe adjectives do not paint convincing pictures. Boyd is compelling when limning the tedium of the trenches or the terror of attacking over No Man's Land. He bogs down when trying for artistic embellishment. As a description by someone who was there, the book is rewarding to WWI buffs, but as literature it is as leaden as a pair of muddy boots.

THROUGH THE WHEAT: THE U.S. MARINES IN WORLD WAR I

BRIGADIER GENERAL EDWIN H. SIMMONS, USMC (RETIRED) AND COLONEL JOSEPH H. ALEXANDER, USMC (RETIRED)

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS, 2008

HARDCOVER, MAPS, PHOTOGRAPHS, 304 PAGES, $34.95

On March 6, 2008, then President George W. Bush met with Corporal Frank Woodruff Buckles, who at the age of 107, is America's last living veteran of the First World War. That war, and the men who fought it, are now nearly forgotten. When Taps is finally sounded for Corporal Buckles, there will no longer be any living memory of America's military experience of World War I. Among the millions of American fighting men who marched off to save Europe, end all war, and make the world safe for democracy (and who accomplished only one of those three goals, through no fault of their own) was Thomas Boyd. Born in Ohio in 1898, Boyd enlisted in the U.S. Marines when war came, and saw action in France. When he returned home, he took up writing. His literary career was fairly brief, for Boyd died in 1935. But among his books was a remarkable novel, THROUGH THE WHEAT, which deserves to be ranked among the best American war fiction. Boyd combined an eye for detail, a talent for clear, highly readable prose, and actual combat experience to produce a book that was, in many ways, ahead of its time. Boyd has been compared to Hemingway. It could be going too far to say that Boyd was doing Hemingway before anyone knew who Hemingway was. But like Hemingway, he wrote a kind of direct, straightforward, action-oriented prose before such a style became common. THROUGH THE WHEAT vividly captures frontline combat in World War I. THROUGH THE WHEAT follows the experiences of William Hicks, an automatic rifleman in the U.S. Marine Corps, through his first taste of combat at Belleau Wood. We meet him first in France, where he has served as a military policeman, stevedore, and construction laborer, but has yet to see combat. Neither Hicks nor most of his fellow U.S. Marines (including many officers and NCOs) had had much training. The only officer in his battalion, a highly respected major, had seen combat in the Philippines. But that would soon change as his unit was rushed to the front to help halt the great German offensive of 1918, which was slowly grinding its way toward Paris. Throughout this book, the reader sees combat from a rifleman's perspective. Boyd remains tightly focused on Hicks and a few other characters and thus the reader never gets to see the larger tactical picture. Like Hicks, the reader is in the fog of war. When Hicks is sent out to locate a French unit that was to be posted on the U.S. Marines' flank, there are no Frenchmen to be found and neither Hicks nor the reader ever learns why. The first time Hicks is taken under fire is during a night patrol and its friendly fire. One effect of this rifleman's eye view is to bring home to the reader how isolated the Marines were. THROUGH THE WHEAT depicts infantry combat after both rifles and machine guns forced the infantry to disperse before the advent of effective battlefield radio communications. Neither Hicks nor the reader know how the U.S. Marine attack is going until they see some German troops begin to surrender. The first indication of the cost of a successful attack doesn't come until after the attack is over and the reader is shocked to learn that the ground gained had cost the battalion a staggering 80% casualties with one company being nearly annihilated. THROUGH THE WHEAT was, in many ways, ahead of its time. Boyd wrote about the chaos of war and what it does to men. He especially understood how the prolonged stress and fear of combat effects those exposed to it. He also has a talent for sheer terror, especially in a scene where Hicks and a fellow U.S. Marine while escorting a wounded man to the rear, get caught in a barrage and are gassed (Boyd himself was gassed). But in other ways, the book is clearly a product of its time. This is an exceptional book that belongs in the library of on any serious student of military history.

Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard

Orlando, Florida

Thomas Boyd's "Through the Wheat" was written by a former newpaperman and the book is fairly easy to read. The writing style was such that you though that it was a true story being told to a friend. He was better known when he was alive for his historical novels. But I think this novel was his best.

Thomas Boyd was an interesting man who died from a brain tumor thought to have been caused by his being gassed during the WWI. He came back the war disillusioned and ran for public office in New Hampshire or Vermont as a communist. Mr. Boyd died suddenly in his early thirties and left behind a wife and a daughter. One of his collections of short stories Points of Honor(light) was made in a successful silent movie.