Author: B. Cory Kilvert, Jr.

ISBN: 1-4196-5780-1

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In his latest book, “Comrades in Courage,” B. Cory Kilvert again proves himself to be the Shelby Foote of World War One, or, as it was known at the time, The Great War.  Kilvert has an enormous personal library of books devoted to this conflict and a great passion to convey its details, experience and meaning to his readers.

In his previous book, “Echoes of Armageddon,” Kilvert presented a detailed narrative of troop movements and activities, combined with the personal histories of eight British soldiers, which was quite effective in bringing the unfathomable carnage of the war into clearly understandable terms.

In “Comrades” Kilvert’s tactic is a bit different and in the end, even more elucidative of the era than was “Armageddon.” Divided into five chapters, corresponding to the five years of the war, Kilvert’s narrative contains general information, specific troop activities and reams of personal letters and poems and it is this last element which makes “Comrades” absolutely riveting. 

Kilvert includes the writings of many well-known individuals such as British poet Siegfried Sasson, whose war-related poems reveal the evolution of a patriot awarded the Military Cross for heroism who later hurled that same medal into the River Mersey because of his disgust for those who were grossly mishandling the disastrous war.

Kilvert also includes reams of writing from lesser-known individuals like Frederic Hillersdon Keeling who attests to the psychological horror of trench warfare in a letter to his family: “when people think it is mud and wet we mind, that is nothing, absolutely nothing, compared with the nerve-wracking hell of bombardment . . . The strange thing in a way is that there doesn’t seem to be a limit to what you can make human nature stand.”

Although a certain awkwardness occasionally creeps into Kilvert’s writing, his tremendous fascination for his subject plus the plethora of personal narratives he includes cause the entire conflict to practically jump off the pages of his book.  The Great War is an era of particular fascination for those interested in how the 19^th century was violently wrenched into the 20^th and “Comrades in Courage” is an extremely valuable addition to that study.

The above review was contributed by: Kathryn Atwood:  Kathryn Atwood's poetry, reviews and essays have appeared in numerous online and print journals, including "The Aurora Review,", "Afterimage," "Void Magazine," "Wild Violet," and "PopMatters." 

 When she's not writing or driving her three kids around somewhere, Kathryn is usually teaching at a local music studio or givng vocal performances with her husband on the  subject of American song.

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