Extraordinary Valor

9781424146727

1424146720

This story is an inspirational work based on my great-grandfather’s true story of his combat experience during World War I in Europe. It is based on a diary he wrote during the war. He and his comrades became soldiers of youthful enthusiasm. But the world of work, duty, culture and progress they had been accustomed to in civilian life broke into pieces under the first battle in the trenches. It is a tale of a soldier’s life that was filled with difficulties, strange complexities, horrifying incidents, and sentiments which were equivalent but not translatable. Through weeks of vivid horror, Adolphe Masson and his comrades held fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men wearing different uniforms against each other. It has even greater interest as a painful personal history, with references as significant as its disclosures. His account of the war was to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure. Death is not an adventure to those who face it. He merely attempted to describe a soldier’s prowess in war. It is a story of extraordinary valor.