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Through the Wheat: A Novel of the World War I Marines
Fresh out of a Defiance, Ohio, high school, Thomas Boyd (1898–1935) joined the Marines to serve his country in the patriotic heat of the spring of 1917. In 1919 he came home from the war with a Croix de Guerre and a desire to write. He joined the St. Paul News as a journalist and opened a bookstore, whose patrons included F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis. Through the Wheat appeared to immediate acclaim, with F. Scott Fitzgerald calling it "a work of art" and "arresting." Boyd wrote five other works before he died in Vermont of a cerebral hemorrhage at age thirty-seven.
266 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1923
27 people are currently reading
268 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Boyd
33 books3 followersThomas Boyd was raised by his mother's family due to his father's death before he was born. While still in school, he and a friend enlisted in the US Marine Corps and saw service in France, where he was gassed in 1918.
Upon discharge from the occupation forces in 1919, Boyd tried several occupations before becoming a writer for newspapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. He opened a bookstore, Kilmarnock Books, in St. Paul, which became the locus of literary figures, including Sinclair Lewis. He was urged to write and produced the 1923 novel, Through the Wheat, based in part on his own war experiences.
Boyd later remarried and became interested in Socialist causes during the Depression, eventually running as the Communist candidate for governor of Vermont.
Upon discharge from the occupation forces in 1919, Boyd tried several occupations before becoming a writer for newspapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. He opened a bookstore, Kilmarnock Books, in St. Paul, which became the locus of literary figures, including Sinclair Lewis. He was urged to write and produced the 1923 novel, Through the Wheat, based in part on his own war experiences.
Boyd later remarried and became interested in Socialist causes during the Depression, eventually running as the Communist candidate for governor of Vermont.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 14, 2023
6/14/23: another reread for belleau wood month... i love watching a book become dense and layered with notes, tabs, marginalia, etc. over the course of time, fresh meaning discovered with every new visit to the text. writing & thinking & reading about this book and about boyd during the past year has increased my appreciation & understanding of it one million fold, there are so many treasures hidden inside of it that can only be uncovered with rereading and with doing the hard work of research. i really and truly cannot get over this book. the way boyd so perfectly twins the reality with the fiction is just so.... so absurdly haunting. as the men continually complain in the book, in their weird, wonderful, hydra-headed collective voice, "how does he get like that?!?"
2/4/23: unironically the greatest book of all time
6/22/22: finished this in a day..... feeling distraught <3 f. scott fitzgerald called this book a work of art and you know what. some points were made!
hicks is my favorite kind of character: inherently good-hearted, confused, somewhat buffeted by the winds of fate, seemingly doomed but invulnerable to the vagaries of war, an astute observer, friend to bugs. he won me over i think ten pages into the book when he finally gets a letter from home during mail call and is standing at the back of the group, trying to reach his letter through all the clamoring men, "all aflutter," yelling me! me! here i am! i'm back here!
he's everything. you really can't help but rejoice with his rejoicing, weep when he is weeping, etc etc and it's one of those books where it HURTS and you're reassuring yourself like "this is fictional it's not real" but the writing is so excruciatingly vivid you know that everything + everyone in the book is just a lightly fictionalized thing that actually happened.... i'm in pain <3
hicks, lying in the wheat, divided his attention between the maneuvering of the tanks and the frantic scampering of the insects on the ground and in the wheat, whose manner of existence he had disturbed by his sitting down... it was the first time since he had enlisted that he had thought much about bugs. now he wondered whether their lives were not as important as the lives of men; whether they were not conscious of a feeling that, were they no longer to exist, the end of the world would come. he compared them with the hustling, inane little tanks, and almost concluded that one was as important as the other. he stood carefully so as not to step on any of the insects.
2/4/23: unironically the greatest book of all time
6/22/22: finished this in a day..... feeling distraught <3 f. scott fitzgerald called this book a work of art and you know what. some points were made!
hicks is my favorite kind of character: inherently good-hearted, confused, somewhat buffeted by the winds of fate, seemingly doomed but invulnerable to the vagaries of war, an astute observer, friend to bugs. he won me over i think ten pages into the book when he finally gets a letter from home during mail call and is standing at the back of the group, trying to reach his letter through all the clamoring men, "all aflutter," yelling me! me! here i am! i'm back here!
he's everything. you really can't help but rejoice with his rejoicing, weep when he is weeping, etc etc and it's one of those books where it HURTS and you're reassuring yourself like "this is fictional it's not real" but the writing is so excruciatingly vivid you know that everything + everyone in the book is just a lightly fictionalized thing that actually happened.... i'm in pain <3
hicks, lying in the wheat, divided his attention between the maneuvering of the tanks and the frantic scampering of the insects on the ground and in the wheat, whose manner of existence he had disturbed by his sitting down... it was the first time since he had enlisted that he had thought much about bugs. now he wondered whether their lives were not as important as the lives of men; whether they were not conscious of a feeling that, were they no longer to exist, the end of the world would come. he compared them with the hustling, inane little tanks, and almost concluded that one was as important as the other. he stood carefully so as not to step on any of the insects.
November 11, 2014
Having read thousands of pages on Revolutionary and Civil War history, in this Centennial year of World War I, I decided it was time to read some more history. After reading several books on the Great War, I came to Through the Wheat. This book has a history in my family and there on page 25, I found it. Old Hepburn was my grandfather. Old? He was only 20 years old! Or maybe,"Old Hepburn" refers to the fact that Thomas Boyd and my grandfather, Robert W. Hepburn, knew each other in Elgin, IL, enlisted together in May 1917 in Chicago, continued to Parris Island and Quantico before embarking from New York to France.
My grandfather fought in and was wounded in the battle of Chateau Thierry/St. Mihiel sector in June 1918. The shrapnel remained in his knee for the rest of his life. There was also talk that he experienced a gas attack. While I did not find the book to be exceptional, it was enlightening to find out what life was like in the trenches. I now look at my grandfather with different eyes. He viewed the war as the great adventure of his life. Indeed, the photos of him in uniform show a smiling young man ready to make his way in the world.
He was a member of the VFW and the American Legion until the end of his long life. The most moving moment at his funeral,some 35 years ago, was the line of WWI vets who recited Flanders Field.
Robert W. Hepburn, USMC, Corporal, 2nd Division, 4th Brigade, marksman,sharpshooter. Enlisted May 1917, discharged June 1919. My grandfather.
My grandfather fought in and was wounded in the battle of Chateau Thierry/St. Mihiel sector in June 1918. The shrapnel remained in his knee for the rest of his life. There was also talk that he experienced a gas attack. While I did not find the book to be exceptional, it was enlightening to find out what life was like in the trenches. I now look at my grandfather with different eyes. He viewed the war as the great adventure of his life. Indeed, the photos of him in uniform show a smiling young man ready to make his way in the world.
He was a member of the VFW and the American Legion until the end of his long life. The most moving moment at his funeral,some 35 years ago, was the line of WWI vets who recited Flanders Field.
Robert W. Hepburn, USMC, Corporal, 2nd Division, 4th Brigade, marksman,sharpshooter. Enlisted May 1917, discharged June 1919. My grandfather.
Read
August 14, 2021Mr. Boyd presents the story of William Hicks, an ordinary American soldier on the front line in the Great War. Hicks experiences the customary spectrum of senseless battlefield brutalities, which gradually erase his soul. The question that comes to mind is why anyone continues to believe war is a good idea or that dying in modern battle is a noble act. The countervailing perspectives are archived in works such as this for anyone who cares to understand.
April 25, 2018
Through the Wheat joins several other highly regarded war-novels on my bookshelf. A common denominator among many of these, including Through the Wheat, is an author who survived the war about which they write (WW1 here). Such experience gives their writing an authenticity that lay authors struggle to achieve.
Quite unlike techno-thrillers, veteran-written novels like Through the Wheat (and “Barbara” for WW2) make it abundantly clear that War is indeed hell, that men crack, that cowardice and desertion are not uncommon, and that rank does not bestow intelligence.
I haven’t read the Red Badge of Courage in decades, but another reviewer compared these two titles, so I’ll add it to the list and see if it’s an appropriate comparison.
Quite unlike techno-thrillers, veteran-written novels like Through the Wheat (and “Barbara” for WW2) make it abundantly clear that War is indeed hell, that men crack, that cowardice and desertion are not uncommon, and that rank does not bestow intelligence.
I haven’t read the Red Badge of Courage in decades, but another reviewer compared these two titles, so I’ll add it to the list and see if it’s an appropriate comparison.
July 8, 2016
Pretty good read, I found it a bit hard to follow at times and a bit slow in the beginning however, it does a great job describing the horrors of WWI and the the things combat can do to a man mentally and physically. I would encourage anyone who is interested in the Marine Corps or WWI to give it a read.
September 1, 2023
Thomas Alexander Boyd was a 1920's Lost Generation writer and contemporary of Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. While he shared their literary interests, amoral materialist worldview and leftist politics, Boyd was a bit of a literary one-hit wonder best known for this novel, "Through the Wheat," published in 1923 and based on his own experience as a Marine in WWI. He would write other books but nothing that quite measured up to the brutal depictions of life on the front in this one.
Through the Wheat is a slow starting novel. It takes a bit of patience to work through the cumbersome, nineteenth century style of prose that characterizes the first third of the book. But as the story draws the reader into the increasingly bleak and brutal world of WWI trench warfare, it picks up pace, Boyd becoming more judicious in his prose and creating a sinister portrait of war's bleakness as the story progresses.
The main character, Hicks, is drawn woodenly. There is little character development. We only know Hicks represents "the average American" serving on the frontlines. His personality can even be called bland. But the strength of the novel lies in the slow acceleration in the brutality of combat paralleling with the personal development of Hicks from normal, under-motivated, authority hating American Marine into cold, demented, forward-moving automaton whose soul has been crushed by the madness all around him. In one interesting scene, his dazed, war-weary behavior is mistaken for courage as he suddenly stands up and advances under enemy fire leading to a tactical victory for his platoon. But it's madness, not courage, that gives Hicks his fearlessness. The wheat in the title refers to a wheat field through which Hicks' platoon advances in their first battle.
There are some odd things about this novel. It takes a while to distinguish that this is a novel about Marines and not generic soldiers. Later Marines would have derided the lack of esprit de corps portrayed here. These Marines, in fact, are not particularly good ones. It is possible given the large contingent of Army Officers that led Marines in battle during the Great War that distinctions between soldier and Marine were not so glaring as they became during WWII. Especially among short-timers like Boyd who, as a budding socialist, possessed a rebellious streak aimed at all military authority. It's a weird flaw in what would otherwise be an interesting perspective of the First World War.
So, if you like classic, semi-autobiographical novels about war in all its sheer naked brutality, Through the Wheat is worth reading.
Through the Wheat is a slow starting novel. It takes a bit of patience to work through the cumbersome, nineteenth century style of prose that characterizes the first third of the book. But as the story draws the reader into the increasingly bleak and brutal world of WWI trench warfare, it picks up pace, Boyd becoming more judicious in his prose and creating a sinister portrait of war's bleakness as the story progresses.
The main character, Hicks, is drawn woodenly. There is little character development. We only know Hicks represents "the average American" serving on the frontlines. His personality can even be called bland. But the strength of the novel lies in the slow acceleration in the brutality of combat paralleling with the personal development of Hicks from normal, under-motivated, authority hating American Marine into cold, demented, forward-moving automaton whose soul has been crushed by the madness all around him. In one interesting scene, his dazed, war-weary behavior is mistaken for courage as he suddenly stands up and advances under enemy fire leading to a tactical victory for his platoon. But it's madness, not courage, that gives Hicks his fearlessness. The wheat in the title refers to a wheat field through which Hicks' platoon advances in their first battle.
There are some odd things about this novel. It takes a while to distinguish that this is a novel about Marines and not generic soldiers. Later Marines would have derided the lack of esprit de corps portrayed here. These Marines, in fact, are not particularly good ones. It is possible given the large contingent of Army Officers that led Marines in battle during the Great War that distinctions between soldier and Marine were not so glaring as they became during WWII. Especially among short-timers like Boyd who, as a budding socialist, possessed a rebellious streak aimed at all military authority. It's a weird flaw in what would otherwise be an interesting perspective of the First World War.
So, if you like classic, semi-autobiographical novels about war in all its sheer naked brutality, Through the Wheat is worth reading.
October 2, 2019
Not up to present day standards of a good war novel
The author didn't develop his characters and I determined very late that his main character was a Marine. He didn't employ Marine jargon, talk about their company gunny, bitch at the Army, etc. The author was a former Marine, but his characters never discussed the Corps which is very strange. Just not well written.
The author didn't develop his characters and I determined very late that his main character was a Marine. He didn't employ Marine jargon, talk about their company gunny, bitch at the Army, etc. The author was a former Marine, but his characters never discussed the Corps which is very strange. Just not well written.
May 9, 2019
Excellent first-hand account of life at the front lines of WW I ca. 1917. Based on author Thomas Boyd’s own experiences, the story follows the life of Private Hicks as he takes part in several major battles and many bloody minor skirmishes in France without ever revealing the big picture of the war but instead focusing on the personal travails of the soldier: the hunger, thirst, filth, exhaustion, pain and disease testing the endurance & survival instincts of the fighting men to their own individual breaking points. What is particularly shocking in this account is the chaos on all levels. Contradictory, senseless orders are given—sometimes ignored—platoons wander aimlessly, supplies are lost, food is poor or nonexistent and gear is inadequate or inappropriate. And although this is primarily a personal story of one man it is also a resounding awakening call to the world that warfare has forever evolved from orderly lines of man-to-man encounters on foot or horseback into sprawling, logistical nightmares and long-range mechanized, and in this conflict, chemical mass slaughter. Private Hicks witnesses all of the horror of what is now known as modern warfare.
June 11, 2023
"For an everlasting hour-hour they ploughed and squirmed through the field, struggling to get into position in order that the attack might commence. Meanwhile shells, timed like the ticking of a clock, fell with horrible and spirit-shaking accuracy. At last the tanks had maneuvered themselves into the proper distance ahead of the front line. Whistles were blown piercingly. The advance, the men aligned in four waves, had commenced."
This harrowing and seemingly dystopian of work is not for the faint of heart, that is if you can understand the writing from the early period of the 20th century. This does not age well, but I only say that about the writing, there are multiple sentences that went over my head, Thomas Boyd was born in the correct time period.
Little to zero character depth and exposition, I'll be lucky if I can recall the main character, Hicks, next week. Given that, Boyd's only goal here is to raise awareness of war and the psychological effects, there is no happy ending here, only brutal truth of the nature of war.
This harrowing and seemingly dystopian of work is not for the faint of heart, that is if you can understand the writing from the early period of the 20th century. This does not age well, but I only say that about the writing, there are multiple sentences that went over my head, Thomas Boyd was born in the correct time period.
Little to zero character depth and exposition, I'll be lucky if I can recall the main character, Hicks, next week. Given that, Boyd's only goal here is to raise awareness of war and the psychological effects, there is no happy ending here, only brutal truth of the nature of war.
October 29, 2022
Read this for class. It feels heavy and honest. I've read it's completely based on the author's experience - even the names are real. Much pain and tragedy written matter-of-factly - as that was the reality. I know it's important to have these records and stories and accounts, but they are not fun to read.
June 9, 2021
Written in 1923 by one who was there, Through the Wheat is a gritty account of a World War I Marine and those around him. The reader seem William Hicks, our protagonist, dehumanized and ground down through the experiences of war.
Read
July 12, 2019A good historical account of what life was like for the infantryman in WWI.
December 14, 2024
Well written.
July 13, 2025
Great ending
You can tell this book was written 100 years ago. It feels raw and fresh to the first world war. The ending is fantastic
You can tell this book was written 100 years ago. It feels raw and fresh to the first world war. The ending is fantastic
August 19, 2021
Like the Lost Generation he is associated with, Thomas Boyd has been lost to literary history--both his name and this powerful work. Tagged once as "The finest American novel of World War I," it is largely forgotten today while Hemingway's Farewell to Arms is touted as a classic.
I think Through the Wheat is a better war novel than Farewell to Arms. Boyd gives the reader an intimate look at the war: both the seemingly endless waiting and boredom that all soldiers endure and the mind numbing terror of combat.
I think Through the Wheat is a better war novel than Farewell to Arms. Boyd gives the reader an intimate look at the war: both the seemingly endless waiting and boredom that all soldiers endure and the mind numbing terror of combat.
July 22, 2018
A Somber Tale of the Marines in World War I
Focusing on a platoon of U.S. Marines during the summer months of 1918, the novel follows one Marine and a few of his comrades as their division moves in and out of action. The novel highlights the emotions and perceptions of the protagonist.
Focusing on a platoon of U.S. Marines during the summer months of 1918, the novel follows one Marine and a few of his comrades as their division moves in and out of action. The novel highlights the emotions and perceptions of the protagonist.
July 28, 2010
Boyd's character goes through several stages as he reacts to the brutality and (seeming) futility of war until the ending where "his soul is numb."
July 9, 2012
A good historical fiction book about the Marines in WWI.
December 11, 2014
Not bad novel of American Marines fighting in France during the "Great War" (WW 1).
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews