Review of Letters From The Front, ed. Barry Waugh

Letters From The Front, J. Gresham Machen’s Correspondence From World War I, transcribed and edited by Barry Waugh, Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2012, 342 pp.

While I appreciate Barry Waugh’s work in putting this book together (as well as I appreciate his online writings on Presbyterian history), Letters From the Front is rather boring.

Basically, J. Gresham Machen was working for the Y.M.C.A. peddling hot chocolate (and sundry other commodities) to French and American soldiers during the final year or so of World War I. These letters are largely his day-to-day summaries of his life there in France written to his mother back in the States.

While there are occasional items of interest, this is a book that I’d recommend only to the most dedicated of Machen scholars.