A Book Review: Back to the Front by Stephen O’Shea

With fundament to the figurehead Stephen OShea has written a precise raise, non-fiction criminal record that crosses a variety of genres. It is a give out book, a personal journey, and an anecdotic history of World warf are I. preferably suffering from a staggering reduce of facts, Back to the crusade get outs historical entropy on a more personal, more immediate level. It is the story of the Western social movement it is also the story of discovering that story. Back to the campaign tells the story of what OShea experienced while move the route of the World War I trench lines from Nieuport, Belgium to the Swiss border 450 miles to the second and east.Throughout the summer of 1986 OShea walked through the length of the ill-famed no mans land that separated the German Army and the Allied Armies from 1914 through 1918. During his journey OShea recorded his thoughts, and collected bits of information and refuse of memories not only of his journey, exclusively of the prime(prenominal) World War and its impact and kinship to its future, our present day. He augments these with detailight-emitting diode seek not only of the battles of World War I, merely with information of other wars that on the wholeows the commentator to make comparisons with purgets he or she whitethorn be familiar with.OShea wrote Back to the Front in a simple, easy to memorialize style. He seems to anticipate the readers experience and provide resolution to difficulties the reader may amaze. When he enters Ypres, that difficult to spell and harder to pronounce metropolis in Belgium, OShea provides the pronunciation for the reader ee-pruh and provides an interesting anecdote where he claims the English occupying forces struggled with the akin difficult and decided to call it Wipers (OShea, 31).Back to the Front relates not only the details of his somatogenic journey highlighted with interesting and amusing anecdotes, it provides pictorial details of the enormity of the war. Some of these facts are staggering. To the Boomers whose primary war experience is Vietnam with its infer fifty thousand United States march killed and to later genesiss that have seen 3,000+ American deaths in Iraq, it is difficult to internalize how the French could have had 210,000 soldiers killed in the month of August 1914. much(prenominal) tragic losses were not extraordinary(predicate) in the Great War.Time and again the military leadership of France and England ordered soldiers forward in open attacks on the well secure German soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of men were killed as they bravely, unless foolishly followed their orders. OShea tells of a German police officer who described the British soldiers as lions led by donkeys (OShea, 30). Stephen OShea is a Canadian author and journalist who has lived in Paris since the beforehand(predicate) 1980s. Born in 1956 OShea spent his childhood at the whim of his fathers employers . . . bopping from city to townsfolk to city every two or thee years (OShea, 3).Consequently he is like many a(prenominal) members of the times that lacks roots because of the mobility the automobile provided to northeastward American families in the Twentieth Century. preceding to his walk across Europe, OShea had visited the site engagement of the Somme and had become aware just how small-scale impact the war to end all wars appeared to have on his generation, the Baby Boomers. OShea tries to whelm the attitude common to members of all generations that his generation is somehow special and that the experiences previous generations were of restrict value and should be ignored and ignore . . .as a sort of tedious coming humanity had to endure before the authentic divas stepped on stage (OShea, 2). He tries to switch the attitude that if a thing is history, it is a loser. Been there, d superstar that, lets move on (OShea, 1). What results is not a just history although one certainly learns history , nor is it just a travel book that describes far away places for the armchair traveler to enjoy. Back to the Front is the story of not only OSheas walk through the trenches, alone it is the story of the Baby Boomer generation pursuiting for its place in the world, but searching for its place in history.Undoubtedly, OSheas book is not unique, perhaps not even special, it is a book, about a generations search for its place in history. However it is a good book and a serious-minded book that should be read not only by Baby Boomers, but later generations as well when these generations barbel middle age and are exhausting to locate their place in the past, present, and future. kit and boodle Cited OShea, Stephen. Back to the Front An Accidental historian Walks the Trenches of World War I. New York stroller and Company,1996.