Edith Wharton and Mary Roberts Rinehart at the Western Front, 1915

By 1915, the Western Front was a 450–mile line of trenches, barbed wire and concrete bunkers, stretching across Europe. Attempts to break the stalemate were murderous and futile. Censorship of the press was extreme—no one wanted the carnage reported.

Remakably, the Allied command gave two intrepid American women, Edith Wharton and Mary Roberts Rinehart, permission to visit the front and report on what they saw. Their travels are reconstructed from their own published accounts, Rinehart’s unpublished day-by-day notes, and the writings of other journalists who toured the front in 1915. The present authors’ explorations of the places Wharton and Rinehart visited serves as a travel guide to the Western Front.

For years, Ed and Libby Klekowski have spent time in a farmhouse in Lorraine, exploring the nearby villages and forests for the artifacts of war. Their discoveries were the basis of two hour-long American Public Television documentaries on World War I. They live in Leverett, Massachusetts.

Ed Klekowski and Libby Klekowski
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 232
Bibliographic Info: 55 photos, maps, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2018
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6746-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3212-4
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1
Introduction 3
1. Mrs. Rinehart Goes to War 7
2. In Flanders Fields Without Poppies 34
3. Visiting the Deadly Lake 57
4. Back and Forth Across the Channel 80
5. Mrs. Wharton’s War 106
6. Back to Paris, Then Perhaps On to Nancy 134
7. The Vosges, Then Flanders 160
8. Alsatian Tour 180
9. Summing Up 196
Epilogue 206
Chapter Notes 209
Bibliography 220
Index 223