Echoing from the mountainous Vosges front of World War I come 
the rare accounts of an elite French foot soldier—a chasseur à pied. 
Robert Pellissier, born in France in 1882, had grown up in the 
United States and was teaching at Stanford when the Great War 
broke out in his homeland. Returning as a volunteer, he saw 
uninterrupted months of trench warfare in the Vosges mountains of 
Alsace, the only region where French troops actually captured 
German territory, a sector largely neglected in World War I 
literature.

    Pellissier’s diary and his letters to relatives in America show a 
panorama of this ghastly war: from the horror of being under fire 
with three thousand German shells falling on the French troops 
every day to the monotony of long quiet hours spent in cold, wet 
trenches. He writes of the grinding and indecisive character of the 
fighting in the Vosges and of the almost ritualistic shelling and 
limited tactical offensives, such as the attack at Steinbach in 
December 1914. His later letters were written from the hospital, 
from officer training school, and from the front at the Somme. He 
relays news of all the major battlefields—Flanders, Verdun, 
Russia, Austria, Gallipoli, Italy, Serbia, and the Suez. He also 
comments on the new technology that changed the nature of war: 
the machine gun, new airplanes, U-boats, improved artillery, 
barbed wire, and poison gases.

    Drama and a sympathetic human voice combine to make this 
account of a little-reported French front a valuable addition to the 
literature on World War I. Whether visiting the battlefields of 
Europe, researching the history of the war, or sitting in an armchair 
at home, readers will find Pellissier a reliable and personable 
guide.

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The great-nephew of Robert Pellisier and a minister by profession, 
JOSHUA BROWN is pastor of West Richmond Friends Meeting 
in Richmond, Indiana. He has also taught in the graduate school at 
Earlham College.


Number Eighty-three: Texas A&M University Military History 
Series