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A Hilltop on the marne
A Hilltop on the marne
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1915
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 4, 2016
Such a beautiful little book! I stumbled on "hilltop" at an antique store for $2 and I think it's some of the best money I've ever spent on a book. I often find that civilian accounts of war are overlooked in favor of soldier's stories or the memoirs of Generals. You would be doing yourself a disservice by not reading Aldrich's version of the earliest battle of WWI.
Told through the author's letters to an unknown party, Mildred Aldrich makes you feel both at home and displaced at the same time. As such, you really get a feel of where she is coming from as an American expat in a war zone. Originally from America, Aldrich spent 16 years in Paris before retiring to a beautiful little house in Huiry France. From her letters you can tell she wasn't supported in this decision and many of her friends, who wanted her to come back to America. Three months after settling, the battle of the Marne begins nearly on her doorstep. Aldrich helps the English and French soldiers coming through her village as best she can and nearly every one of them asks her the same question; "Are you afraid?" Fear plays a big role in this book but not moreso than what we do to move beyond that fear and live in the moment. This is reflected in Aldrich's behavior as well as the soldiers who camp at her home.
The writing here is beautiful, stylistic, descriptive, and ultimately honest. I fel that Mildred Aldrich is a very relateable woman who loved her books and her adopted home too much to let fear make her abandon them. I don't think I'll be happy until I see this hilltop home in real life. Also, I feel this is a book I'll read over and over again. 5 stars across the board.
Told through the author's letters to an unknown party, Mildred Aldrich makes you feel both at home and displaced at the same time. As such, you really get a feel of where she is coming from as an American expat in a war zone. Originally from America, Aldrich spent 16 years in Paris before retiring to a beautiful little house in Huiry France. From her letters you can tell she wasn't supported in this decision and many of her friends, who wanted her to come back to America. Three months after settling, the battle of the Marne begins nearly on her doorstep. Aldrich helps the English and French soldiers coming through her village as best she can and nearly every one of them asks her the same question; "Are you afraid?" Fear plays a big role in this book but not moreso than what we do to move beyond that fear and live in the moment. This is reflected in Aldrich's behavior as well as the soldiers who camp at her home.
The writing here is beautiful, stylistic, descriptive, and ultimately honest. I fel that Mildred Aldrich is a very relateable woman who loved her books and her adopted home too much to let fear make her abandon them. I don't think I'll be happy until I see this hilltop home in real life. Also, I feel this is a book I'll read over and over again. 5 stars across the board.
March 10, 2026
Fourth time reading this collection of her letters written on a Hilltop on the Marne during The Great War. Such beautiful prose.
November 13, 2014
An amazing story set in 1914 in Huiry, France, about 40 kilometres to the east of Paris. Her move to Huiry was just a few months before the start of WW1. This is a non-fictional record written by Mildred Aldrich from a set of letters that she wrote regularly to a friend in the USA, where Mildred had been born and raised. She became a journalist and eventually ended up as a foreign correspondent in France and these letters tell of her decision to leave Paris and lease a house in the country where she would retire. The letters commence at the beginning of June 1914 and continue through to April 1917. This ending date coincides with the United States deciding to participate in WW1. She writes so well that I found nothing but pleasure in reading this wonderful account of her life at that time. The author died in France in 1928.
There is a second book that she wrote called "The Peak of the Load" and covers the April 1917 - November 1918 when WW1 ceased. It can be found as an eBook on the web.
There is a second book that she wrote called "The Peak of the Load" and covers the April 1917 - November 1918 when WW1 ceased. It can be found as an eBook on the web.
February 8, 2013
A splendid and moving account of the opening days of World War I from a strong-willed American woman living right near the battlefield of the Marne. Her observations and encounters are very much at the personal level with the refugees, the village inhabitants, and the soldiers billeted in her village. Mildred Aldrich is a generous and empathetic individual realizing both the predicament of France being invaded and the young soldiers who want to defend their motherland. She helps in any way she can and has ordinary conversations with the soldiers.
In this book one experiences the war on a day-to-day level, where one does not know the outcome and makes due with each passing moment, not discerning what the next hour or day will bring. It is wonderful that she recorded her experiences.
My volume was published by the DODO press which specializes in out of print books.
In this book one experiences the war on a day-to-day level, where one does not know the outcome and makes due with each passing moment, not discerning what the next hour or day will bring. It is wonderful that she recorded her experiences.
My volume was published by the DODO press which specializes in out of print books.
August 18, 2023
I have a hard time liking a book when I don't like the protagonist or the author's voice. I read a lot about France, and I am also an expat living in my older age in an adopted country (although not in the middle of a war) so there was a lot I could potentially identify with in this book. But for the most part, there was little that resonated. For all that she loves the soldiers, she seems a snob to me. She dwells far more on the nobility of dying for a great idea than she does on the horror that was going on nearby in the battle of the Marne and then the Somme. Although it's true that she could hear it but not see it, she could hear the cannons day after day and had different units billeted at her house so she had some idea. The battles, and everything she talks about, much of it interesting, is done with a detachment, that for me, made the book much less engaging than it could have been.
When, (I believe it was) the Battle of the Marne was over and people were allowed to leave their villages, Aldrich went to see the remains of what had happened. Near the tiny hamlet of Barcy she found "first the graves were scattered, for the boys lie buried just where they fell -- cradled in the bosom of the mother country that nourished them and for whose safety they laid down their lives. As we advanced they became more numerous, until we reached a point where, as far as we could see, in every direction, floated the little tricolore flags, like fine flowers in the landscape. They made tiny spots against the far-off horizon line, and groups like beds of flowers in the foreground, and we knew that, behind the skyline, there were more."
It would have been better if she had stopped there. It was a moving description. But she went on, "It was a disturbing and a thrilling sight. I give you my word, as I stood there, I envied them. It seemed to me a fine thing to lie out there in the open, in the soil of the fields their simple death has made holy" ... Well, I don't think it's thrilling or holy. I think it's immensely, unspeakably sad. Those boys, many of them weren't even 20 years old. She goes on, "You may know a finer way to go. I do not. Surely, since Death is, it is better than dying of old age between clean sheets." I'll bet most of those men and boys, even though they had volunteered to fight, and did fight heart and soul for their country, would have loved to have seen their old age rather than die at the age of 18 or 20 in the mud. Aldrich managed to die at the age of 75 between clean sheets.
She talks about the boys (soldiers) playing football on the field below her house and suggests they have no idea how to play the game. It does seem that, in spite of having lived in France for over 40 years, she had no idea that in France football is soccer, not American football, and that is why they all run after the ball when it is kicked. "If they only knew the game -- active, and agile, and light as they are -- they would enjoy it, and play it well."
If only Aldrich was less concerned with pretty words (lots of pretty words, perhaps too many pretty words for my taste) and less of a snob, I would have liked her book more than I did.
When, (I believe it was) the Battle of the Marne was over and people were allowed to leave their villages, Aldrich went to see the remains of what had happened. Near the tiny hamlet of Barcy she found "first the graves were scattered, for the boys lie buried just where they fell -- cradled in the bosom of the mother country that nourished them and for whose safety they laid down their lives. As we advanced they became more numerous, until we reached a point where, as far as we could see, in every direction, floated the little tricolore flags, like fine flowers in the landscape. They made tiny spots against the far-off horizon line, and groups like beds of flowers in the foreground, and we knew that, behind the skyline, there were more."
It would have been better if she had stopped there. It was a moving description. But she went on, "It was a disturbing and a thrilling sight. I give you my word, as I stood there, I envied them. It seemed to me a fine thing to lie out there in the open, in the soil of the fields their simple death has made holy" ... Well, I don't think it's thrilling or holy. I think it's immensely, unspeakably sad. Those boys, many of them weren't even 20 years old. She goes on, "You may know a finer way to go. I do not. Surely, since Death is, it is better than dying of old age between clean sheets." I'll bet most of those men and boys, even though they had volunteered to fight, and did fight heart and soul for their country, would have loved to have seen their old age rather than die at the age of 18 or 20 in the mud. Aldrich managed to die at the age of 75 between clean sheets.
She talks about the boys (soldiers) playing football on the field below her house and suggests they have no idea how to play the game. It does seem that, in spite of having lived in France for over 40 years, she had no idea that in France football is soccer, not American football, and that is why they all run after the ball when it is kicked. "If they only knew the game -- active, and agile, and light as they are -- they would enjoy it, and play it well."
If only Aldrich was less concerned with pretty words (lots of pretty words, perhaps too many pretty words for my taste) and less of a snob, I would have liked her book more than I did.
February 16, 2018
A Hilltop on the Marne, which was first published in 1916,presents a far-reaching account of Mildred Aldrich’s experiences during the First World War. Aldrich, a retired American journalist who worked for several papers in the Boston area before moving to France in 1898, had just moved to an idyllic hamlet in France’s Marne Valley before World War One was declared. In Huiry, a ‘little hamlet less than thirty miles from Paris’, she found herself adjusting to life in wartime, volunteering such services as hosting tea for and providing water to local forces. Her farmhouse soon became ‘a safe port in a storm for the various troops stationed in the village’.
Aldrich’s first letter in the volume is dated the 3rd of June 1914, and her correspondence goes through to the end of the war. We do not know who she writes to, and as none of her letters carry her signature or anything of the sort, A Hilltop on the Marne feels more like a diary in consequence. She urges her correspondent, who is evidently trying to coerce her into returning ‘home’ to the United States, to allow her to be content. In her first letter, she states, quite frankly: ‘I did not decide to come away into a little corner in the country, in this land in which I was not born, without looking at the move from all angles. Be sure that I know what I am doing, and I have found the place where I can do it’. She goes on to show how headstrong she is in her decision making, writing in August 1914: ‘I have your cable asking me to come “home” as you call it. Alas, my home is where my books are – they are here. Thanks all the same’.
Throughout A Hilltop on the Marne, Aldrich writes beautifully; each letter is long and has been penned with such care. Through her words, one gets the impression that she was an incredibly warm and witty woman, who valued honesty above all else. Sincerity weaves itself into each sentence which she crafts, and it feels throughout as though her utmost wish is for her reader to understand the things which she does, and the choices which she makes. We learn of such things as the layout of her home, the way in which she fills her days, the history of the Marne region, and the characters who live in the hamlet of Huiry. A Hilltop on the Marne is as rich as a novel in some respects, filled with such a wealth of detail as it is.
Aldrich evokes small-town life in France marvellously. When war begins and she is able to meet some of the soldiers stationed in her area, she begins to reflect upon what battle means for the men in the region, and in France as a whole: ‘It is not the marching into battle of an army that has chosen soldiering. It is the marching out of all the people – of every temperament – the rich, the poor, the timid and the bold, the sensitive and the hardened, the ignorant and the scholar – all men, because they happen to be males, called on not only to cry, “Vive la France”, but to see to it that she does live if dying for her can keep her alive. It’s a compelling idea, isn’t it?’ She goes on to write: ‘I have lived among these people, loved them and believed in them, even when their politics annoyed me’. Aldrich exemplifies the way in which her community carries on regardless, women taking over the ‘male’ tasks like baking bread and seeing to crops. She tells of preparations for battle, the lack of news which reaches the hamlet, the unreliability of the postal service, refugees being sent into France from Belgium, and how wounded soldiers are treated. She touches upon the requisition of weapons, evacuations of entire French towns, and the British cutting telegraph wires. In this way, Aldrich has presented a far-reaching account of life in wartime from a most interesting perspective.
One of the wonderful things about A Hilltop on the Marnee is its versatility; it can be dipped in and out of, or read all in one go. It is an important work of non-fiction, particularly in this, the centenary year of World War One’s beginning. It is a chronicle of war in a rural hamlet, which is sure to both charm its readers, and make them think.
Aldrich’s first letter in the volume is dated the 3rd of June 1914, and her correspondence goes through to the end of the war. We do not know who she writes to, and as none of her letters carry her signature or anything of the sort, A Hilltop on the Marne feels more like a diary in consequence. She urges her correspondent, who is evidently trying to coerce her into returning ‘home’ to the United States, to allow her to be content. In her first letter, she states, quite frankly: ‘I did not decide to come away into a little corner in the country, in this land in which I was not born, without looking at the move from all angles. Be sure that I know what I am doing, and I have found the place where I can do it’. She goes on to show how headstrong she is in her decision making, writing in August 1914: ‘I have your cable asking me to come “home” as you call it. Alas, my home is where my books are – they are here. Thanks all the same’.
Throughout A Hilltop on the Marne, Aldrich writes beautifully; each letter is long and has been penned with such care. Through her words, one gets the impression that she was an incredibly warm and witty woman, who valued honesty above all else. Sincerity weaves itself into each sentence which she crafts, and it feels throughout as though her utmost wish is for her reader to understand the things which she does, and the choices which she makes. We learn of such things as the layout of her home, the way in which she fills her days, the history of the Marne region, and the characters who live in the hamlet of Huiry. A Hilltop on the Marne is as rich as a novel in some respects, filled with such a wealth of detail as it is.
Aldrich evokes small-town life in France marvellously. When war begins and she is able to meet some of the soldiers stationed in her area, she begins to reflect upon what battle means for the men in the region, and in France as a whole: ‘It is not the marching into battle of an army that has chosen soldiering. It is the marching out of all the people – of every temperament – the rich, the poor, the timid and the bold, the sensitive and the hardened, the ignorant and the scholar – all men, because they happen to be males, called on not only to cry, “Vive la France”, but to see to it that she does live if dying for her can keep her alive. It’s a compelling idea, isn’t it?’ She goes on to write: ‘I have lived among these people, loved them and believed in them, even when their politics annoyed me’. Aldrich exemplifies the way in which her community carries on regardless, women taking over the ‘male’ tasks like baking bread and seeing to crops. She tells of preparations for battle, the lack of news which reaches the hamlet, the unreliability of the postal service, refugees being sent into France from Belgium, and how wounded soldiers are treated. She touches upon the requisition of weapons, evacuations of entire French towns, and the British cutting telegraph wires. In this way, Aldrich has presented a far-reaching account of life in wartime from a most interesting perspective.
One of the wonderful things about A Hilltop on the Marnee is its versatility; it can be dipped in and out of, or read all in one go. It is an important work of non-fiction, particularly in this, the centenary year of World War One’s beginning. It is a chronicle of war in a rural hamlet, which is sure to both charm its readers, and make them think.
February 22, 2017
This beautifully written memoir begins innocuously enough, with an American woman retiring to a quiet home on a French hilltop after a lifetime living and working in Paris. A bare three months later, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. A month after that, Germany's Kaiser started World War I, and our narrator found herself living in a war zone.
Ms. Aldrich, an ardent Francophile, elected to stay in her new home, and thus was witness to battle, the movement of French and English soldiers to and from the front, the tight control over news and communications, and the deprivations of a world in which all was directed to the defense of the nation. Many of her observations reflected the views of a woman who had long worked in a man's world; she greatly admired the stoicism of the French countrywomen who lived and worked around her. But she was also surprisingly passionate about the heroics of her adopted countrymen.
I've read a few other World War I memoirs, and wonder, if the author had seen the carnage of the battlefields, the disfigurement of gassed soldiers, and not just the pretty cemeteries and tidy convalescents in the local hospital, she would have continued to feel such pride in the generals and the officers who were sometimes billeted in her home.
Nevertheless, her letters to an American friend give a concise picture of one small corner of a vast war. Read it for the insights into the French character, and the portrait of a time when there was still some glory in going to war.
Ms. Aldrich, an ardent Francophile, elected to stay in her new home, and thus was witness to battle, the movement of French and English soldiers to and from the front, the tight control over news and communications, and the deprivations of a world in which all was directed to the defense of the nation. Many of her observations reflected the views of a woman who had long worked in a man's world; she greatly admired the stoicism of the French countrywomen who lived and worked around her. But she was also surprisingly passionate about the heroics of her adopted countrymen.
I've read a few other World War I memoirs, and wonder, if the author had seen the carnage of the battlefields, the disfigurement of gassed soldiers, and not just the pretty cemeteries and tidy convalescents in the local hospital, she would have continued to feel such pride in the generals and the officers who were sometimes billeted in her home.
Nevertheless, her letters to an American friend give a concise picture of one small corner of a vast war. Read it for the insights into the French character, and the portrait of a time when there was still some glory in going to war.
December 17, 2018
What happens when an American expatriate leaves Paris in 1914 for a quiet life in the French countryside only to discover a couple of months later that a war has begun and that her new home is in the path German invasion? A Hilltop on the Marne is a very interesting account of the last days of peace and the earliest days of the war from an American woman in France. The book is in the form of a series of letters she sent to the United States and tells of her interactions with violence, terror, British soldiers, French neighbors, etc.
July 1, 2017
What a gem I found in first edition, at an antique shop!!!
For those less lucky - find it, and treasure it.
For those less lucky - find it, and treasure it.
November 11, 2020
Read an original copyrighted 1915!
November 15, 2023
I like the personal experience
I have studied history for years. This book helped with learning about another side of war. I found out so much
I have studied history for years. This book helped with learning about another side of war. I found out so much
May 20, 2016
I enjoyed this. A pleasant read. I wish every person of this caliber would write a book - or become a statesperson! But no, never mind. A statesperson would ruin it all.
Aldrich is a peace-lover who still understands war. Not that she agrees with it, but she can see its place in the history of humankind. Yet she is a person who is so much above it all - life, love and conflicts - that she doesn't care about her own connection to it. She will always be her own island. Her way of seeing things from all sides is admirable, and would halt any ambitious person in making a rash decision, were she able to share her thoughts more profoundly.
(But what about the dog???)
Some quotes of my preference, very random:
"There is a law which decrees that two objects may not occupy the same place at the same time—result: two people cannot see things from the same point of view, and the slightest difference in angle changes the thing seen."
"..the end is the most interesting event ahead of me—the one truly interesting experience left to me in this incarnation."
"No one can decide for another the proper moment for striking one's colors."
"After all, it is a rather nice world."
"Faith half wins a battle. No one ever dies up on this hill, I am told, except of hard drink."
".. retreat is not cut off. I have sworn no eternal oath not to change my mind again."
"I shall not be lonely. No one who reads is ever that. I may miss talking. Perhaps that is a good thing. I may have talked too much. That does happen."
"The "Paths of Glory lead but to the grave," so what matters it, really, out by what door one goes?"
".. changes are in the spirit of the times, so I suppose one must not complain. I should not if people were any happier, but I cannot see that they are. However, I suppose that will come when the Republic is older. The responsibility which that has put on the people has made them more serious than they used to be."
".. woman proposes and politics upset her proposition. There seems to be no quick remedy for habit, more's the pity. It is a nasty outlook."
"It seems it is an easy thing to change one's environment, but not so easy to change one's character."
"I find that life is pretty logical. It is like chemical action—given certain elements to begin with, contact with the fluids of Life give a certain result. After all I fancy every one does about the best he can with the gifts he has to do with."
"So I imagine we do what is natural to us; if we have the gift of knowing what we want and wanting it hard enough we get it. If we don't, we compromise."
"After all, I am only his wife. France is his mother"
"I KNOW that if the thought be taken out of life that it is worth while to die for an idea a great factor in the making of national spirit will be gone. I KNOW that a long peace makes for weakness in a race. I KNOW that without war there is still death. To me this last fact is the consolation."
"I wonder. There is no actual buying and selling in open slave markets, it is true, but the men who built the Pyramids and dragged the stone for Hadrian's Villa, were they any worse off really than the workers in the mines today? Upon my soul, I don't know. Life is only a span between the Unknown and the Unknowable. Living is made up in all centuries of just so many emotions. We have never, so far as I know, invented any new one."
"Don't look so serious about it," he laughed, as we shook hands. "Some of us will get killed, but what of that? I wanted this war. I prayed for it. I should have been sad enough if I had died before it came. I have left a wife and children whom I adore, but I am ready to lay down my life cheerfully for the victory of which I am so sure. Cheer up."
Aldrich is a peace-lover who still understands war. Not that she agrees with it, but she can see its place in the history of humankind. Yet she is a person who is so much above it all - life, love and conflicts - that she doesn't care about her own connection to it. She will always be her own island. Her way of seeing things from all sides is admirable, and would halt any ambitious person in making a rash decision, were she able to share her thoughts more profoundly.
(But what about the dog???)
Some quotes of my preference, very random:
"There is a law which decrees that two objects may not occupy the same place at the same time—result: two people cannot see things from the same point of view, and the slightest difference in angle changes the thing seen."
"..the end is the most interesting event ahead of me—the one truly interesting experience left to me in this incarnation."
"No one can decide for another the proper moment for striking one's colors."
"After all, it is a rather nice world."
"Faith half wins a battle. No one ever dies up on this hill, I am told, except of hard drink."
".. retreat is not cut off. I have sworn no eternal oath not to change my mind again."
"I shall not be lonely. No one who reads is ever that. I may miss talking. Perhaps that is a good thing. I may have talked too much. That does happen."
"The "Paths of Glory lead but to the grave," so what matters it, really, out by what door one goes?"
".. changes are in the spirit of the times, so I suppose one must not complain. I should not if people were any happier, but I cannot see that they are. However, I suppose that will come when the Republic is older. The responsibility which that has put on the people has made them more serious than they used to be."
".. woman proposes and politics upset her proposition. There seems to be no quick remedy for habit, more's the pity. It is a nasty outlook."
"It seems it is an easy thing to change one's environment, but not so easy to change one's character."
"I find that life is pretty logical. It is like chemical action—given certain elements to begin with, contact with the fluids of Life give a certain result. After all I fancy every one does about the best he can with the gifts he has to do with."
"So I imagine we do what is natural to us; if we have the gift of knowing what we want and wanting it hard enough we get it. If we don't, we compromise."
"After all, I am only his wife. France is his mother"
"I KNOW that if the thought be taken out of life that it is worth while to die for an idea a great factor in the making of national spirit will be gone. I KNOW that a long peace makes for weakness in a race. I KNOW that without war there is still death. To me this last fact is the consolation."
"I wonder. There is no actual buying and selling in open slave markets, it is true, but the men who built the Pyramids and dragged the stone for Hadrian's Villa, were they any worse off really than the workers in the mines today? Upon my soul, I don't know. Life is only a span between the Unknown and the Unknowable. Living is made up in all centuries of just so many emotions. We have never, so far as I know, invented any new one."
"Don't look so serious about it," he laughed, as we shook hands. "Some of us will get killed, but what of that? I wanted this war. I prayed for it. I should have been sad enough if I had died before it came. I have left a wife and children whom I adore, but I am ready to lay down my life cheerfully for the victory of which I am so sure. Cheer up."
November 22, 2014
Aldrich's book is in the form of letters to an unnamed person, but it reads as a memoir of June-September 1914. Aldrich left Paris to move to a beautifully situated home overlooking the Marne. Little did she know events would bring WWI to her doorstep and a parade of soldiers to her garden. My 1915 Houghton Mifflin (by Riverside Press) edition has a map on the endpapers, a favorite feature of mine. Too bad the spine makes reading some place names difficult. Mildred refers to herself as elderly and remembers seeing soldiers parade off to the Civil War in Boston. That set me calculating her age. In 1914, she was 56, hardly what I would consider elderly. And she didn't really think so either. When a young soldier mistakes a woman just a decade younger for her daughter, Mildred is shocked. "I am accustomed to saying I am old. I am not yet accustomed to have people notice it when I do not call attention to it."
Mildred writes well and I found her a kindred spirit. Early in the letters, she tells her friend not to worry about her: "I've a head full of memories. I am going to classify them, as I do my books. Some of them I am going to forget, just as I reject books that have ceased to interest me. I know the latter is always a wrench. The former may be impossible. I shall not be lonely. No one who reads is ever that. I may miss talking. Perhaps that is a good thing. I may have talked too much."
Her guess, in July 1914, that this will be the bloodiest war shows her more prescient than the generals of the time. Waiting for the battle was harder to bear than enduring the battle. I found her passion afterwards endearing, as well her recognition that the "ordinary reticences of ordinary times are swept away." Is that the appeal of war? Its circumstances render emotions easier to reveal to intimates and acquaintances? Easier to connect with others?
I learned a few things too. I knew date for the Battle of the Marne but nothing of the details of those days. I had to look up the Caillaux affair and Uhlans. Mildred was certainly good company.
Mildred writes well and I found her a kindred spirit. Early in the letters, she tells her friend not to worry about her: "I've a head full of memories. I am going to classify them, as I do my books. Some of them I am going to forget, just as I reject books that have ceased to interest me. I know the latter is always a wrench. The former may be impossible. I shall not be lonely. No one who reads is ever that. I may miss talking. Perhaps that is a good thing. I may have talked too much."
Her guess, in July 1914, that this will be the bloodiest war shows her more prescient than the generals of the time. Waiting for the battle was harder to bear than enduring the battle. I found her passion afterwards endearing, as well her recognition that the "ordinary reticences of ordinary times are swept away." Is that the appeal of war? Its circumstances render emotions easier to reveal to intimates and acquaintances? Easier to connect with others?
I learned a few things too. I knew date for the Battle of the Marne but nothing of the details of those days. I had to look up the Caillaux affair and Uhlans. Mildred was certainly good company.
October 13, 2015
This was one of those books that I didn't want to end. Such a fabulous, rich, and wonderful book. I think it was so much more enchanting for me since I am here in Paris. So relatable.
She writes about her life in France during WW1. She arrived at her new home one month before the war began in 1914. I can't imagine - she is very brave and courageous in my mind.
I just adore her little stories of meeting the different regiments and her hosting them at her home. There were so many different officers that she formed a very true bond with by being gracious and opening her place to them as if it were their own.
The most fun chapter was that of her adopting her cat, Khaki. Oh my, it was so fun to read. And for her never owning a cat before in her life, well, it was just very special and brought a huge smile to my face.
Wish I could have met her in that time period. She was a trooper!
She writes about her life in France during WW1. She arrived at her new home one month before the war began in 1914. I can't imagine - she is very brave and courageous in my mind.
I just adore her little stories of meeting the different regiments and her hosting them at her home. There were so many different officers that she formed a very true bond with by being gracious and opening her place to them as if it were their own.
The most fun chapter was that of her adopting her cat, Khaki. Oh my, it was so fun to read. And for her never owning a cat before in her life, well, it was just very special and brought a huge smile to my face.
Wish I could have met her in that time period. She was a trooper!
December 4, 2017
I wanted to get an idea of how WW1 was for my grandfather, who fought in Flanders and near the Marne. I hope he met people as interesting and generous along the way.
June 2, 2019
This is a wonderfully written and heartfelt work that should be required reading in school.
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