Edward A. Gutièrrez

On one hand, the author deserves a lot of credit for hunting down a forgotten source of insight; questionnaires completed by American soldiers from Connecticut, Minnesota, Utah and Virginia who served in the Great War. These questionnaires being a product of a still-born volunteer effort (the self-proclaimed "National Board for Historical Service") to capture the meaning of American participation in the struggle. The problem is that Gutierrez seemed to start this work with a preconceived dislike of the literary legacy of World War I and the metaphor of the "Lost Generation" as capturing the general American experience. While I appreciate a debunking of historic "just so" stories as much as the next person I have to admit that I don't trust Gutierrez's voice either and wonder whether he has his own secret agenda. Still, if Gutierrez had done nothing more than hunt down the quote "Sherman had an inadequate vocabulary" (from a Virginian no less) then he has done good work; this is a book you probably should read if you're a student of the war but it shouldn't be the first one you read.… (más)

5264. Doughboys on the Great War How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Service, by Edward A. Gutierrez (read 11 Apr 2015) This is a 2014 book by a man who found and studied questionnaires that were sent to World War One soldiers in Utah, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Virginia right after they completed their service. Thousands of them filled out the forms and sent them back. Apparently no one has ever studied these documents before. The author asserts their attitudes were a lot more affirmative than that expressed by the "Lost Generation" writers such as Hemingway, Dos Passos, Cummings, et al. But since so many soldiers failed to respond to the questionnaires we can think that the non-responders may well have had a different attitude as the author did before he did the research and and wrote this book. He quotes from many of the responses and draws rather obvious conclusions therefrom. The author did a lot of work but it would have been much more interesting if he had followed up on what these men did the rest of their life, and how, if at all, their view of their time in the Army changed in the 1920's. Much in the book is pretty repetitious. There is an extensive bibliography (33 pages) and if the author looked at all those books we know he did a lot of work, in addition to looking at the hundreds of questionnaires. The book gives insight into attitudes of the men and the author.… (más)