Those War Women, by One of Them

New York: Coward-McCann. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1929. First Edition. Hardcover. [light wear to extremities, some age-toning to edges of text block; the jacket is lightly edgeworn, with tiny bits of paper loss at several corners, a small chip at the top of the rear panel, small red dampstain at left edge of front flap]. "This anonymous diary of a woman participant in the A.E.F. [American Expeditionary Force] is a peculiar human document that must stand with others of the great war. The writer who has woven her staccato series of ten years ago into a formal and continuous record will stir a thousand memories of Bordeaux, Tours, Paris, Le Mans, Malo, for the men and women who were there -- and for their friends." In a Postscript (placed at the front of the book), the author explains how the book was assembled from her letters and diaries, rediscovered by her family years after the fact. She relates how she showed the book, in manuscript, to "a man whose literary judgment I value highly. He said it was trivial and squalid. It is. We were trivial. The things through which we passed were squalid. War performed no miracle in them or us." .