In Trench Knives and Mustard Gas, the memoir of a soldier on the 
front lines of World War I, Hugh S. Thompson combines the fast-
paced prose of the Jazz Age with the passionate observations of 
an engaged intellectual. Originally serialized in the Chattanooga
Times in 1934, this newly edited version allows the author to tell
his story to a new generation.

    Thompson takes the reader on a grueling journey with the 
168th regiment of the 42nd Rainbow Division through the 
villages, towns, battlefields, and hospitals of France. Severely 
wounded in his arm and back, Thompson reassesses his situation 
after visiting comrades who lost arms or legs. "I went back to 
my tent," he recalls, "almost ashamed of my own lucky wounds."

    Homesick for the States during his first months overseas, 
Thompson discovers that his platoon has become his second 
family. He becomes accustomed to the war's distortion of time 
and values. Friendships form and disappear in the hour it takes 
a stranger to die. When he is wounded, Germans serve as his 
stretcher bearers.

   If war does not destroy the physical man, it nonetheless 
leads to strange experiences. Trench Knives and Mustard Gas 
brings the front lines of the Great War to the hearts and minds 
of its readers.

_________________________________________________________

ROBERT H. FERRELL taught history for many years at Indiana 
University in Bloomington and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.


Number Six: C. A. Brannen Series


What people are saying about this book

"As he accounts his service, Thompson captures, in lucid and 
compelling prose, the grimness of trench warfare, the agony of 
becoming a gas casualty, and the myriad challenges faced by a 
small unit leader."—On Point