Onward, Dear Boys: A Family Memoir of the Great War
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.76 (696 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0773544682 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 340 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-09-13 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
High recommendation Edward J. Burger "Onward Dear Boys" is a book of many dimensions. At core, it is the narrative of four brothers who fought in the trenches of World War I. Their observations and declarations, conveyed in letters written to their parents, reveal the challenges each one found in the principal fronts of the conflict. The book, too, describes a Calvinist family as it moved from Europe to the Catholic setting in the Province of Quebec. Most of all, it is a picture at close range of a tightly knit family at the beginning of the last century. The b. SANDANONA C BIELER said I enjoyed the book very much. While ODB is a fascinating and unusual perspective of the little documented Canadian participation in WW1, at it's core it's a warm story about a tight-knit family and their devotion to each other, their new country and their faith. The sense of duty they had is such a contrast to today's society. I enjoyed the book very much.. Peter Bieler said I highly recommend it.. This book is a war diary written by four brothers serving on the front lines in WW1, in the form of the letters they wrote to their parents. They fought in most of the famous battles: Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge, Ypres, Sanctuary Wood, The Somme, among others. So the book is an eye witness dispatch from the muck, and terror and camaraderie and boredom of men serving in the trenches.The brothers looked out for each other, when maneuvers threw them together. But the front was vast, and only three came back. It was three weeks be
The other two were privates who fought in battles including Sanctuary Wood, the Somme, Vimy, and Passchendaele, and in 1917, the fourth son, Philippe, died at the front. The Bieler family's vast collection of wartime letters and photographs tell intimate, firsthand stories of five young brothers and their parents. In Onward, Dear Boys, Philippe Bieler skilfully weaves together his own voice with those of his grandparents, his father, and his uncles into a story of war, immigration, and family life. The youngest, Jacques, who was too young to go to war, was an instigator of the CCF party, a precursor to the NDP. Settling in the province of Quebec, then divided into French-speaking Catholics and English-speaking Anglicans, was a struggle for these devout, francophone Calvinists, but with the unexpected declaration of war in 1914 came an even gr
"The integration of the Bieler boys' war experiences into their family's story makes for a sophisticated and exceptional narrative." Terry Copp, Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University