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Chronology of Amos N. Wilder's World War I Service Biographical and Editorial Note Prologue Part One -- With the American Field Service in Macedonia Part Two -- With the American Expeditionary Forces in the Field Artillery Epilogue Notes Illustrations |
| 26 September | Enlists in New York as volunteer ambulance driver |
| 21 October | Sails for France |
| 6 November | Begins three-month assignment, American Ambulance Hospital in Paris ("the Paris Service") |
| 31 January | Transfers to American Field Service (AFS) |
| 7 February | Begins three-month assignment, AFS Section 2, at the front in the Argonne, west of Verdun |
| 6 April | United States enters war against Germany |
| 16 May | Begins seven-day leave in London and the Lake District |
| 7 July | Following reenlistment in AFS, departs Paris for Macedonia and service with the Army of the Orient |
| 3 August | Begins assignment with AFS Section 3, attached to Second Serbian Division, encamped at Bistrika, Serbian Front |
| 19 October | Departs Salonika for Paris |
| 15 November | Released from AFS in Paris |
| 26 November | Enlists in Paris as private in U.S. Army, assigned to Field Artillery Training School, Valdahon |
| 2 January | Reassigned at Valdahon to A Battery, Seventeenth Field Artillery, Second Division; promoted to corporal |
| 8 March | Departs Valdahon for the front, Rupt Sector, southeast of Verdun |
| 1 June | Division rushed to Château-Thierry/Belleau Wood defense to repel massive German thrust toward the Marne and Paris |
| 7-8 July | Regiment placed in reserve during Second Battle of the Marne |
| 15 July | Begins forced march for Soissons/ Viller-Cotterets mobilization and decisive attack of 18 July |
| 29 July | Division rusticated near Nancy |
| Sept.-October | Hospitalization, convalescent camps, influenza quarantine in southwest France |
| 12-13 Sept | American-led victory at St.-Mihiel |
| 20 October | Returns to A Battery behind the front at Blanc Mont Ridge |
| 31 October | Moves to the front in Argonne Forest for attack of 1-2 November |
| 8 November | Foch gives terms with 72-hour armistice for German answer |
| 11 November | Armistice officially declared |
| 28 June | Discharged from the U.S. Army at Gievres Discharge Depot after duties at Bendorf and Coblenz with the Army of Occupation and release for studies at University of Toulouse |
| September | Begins senior year at Yale |
Biographical and Editorial Note Amos N. Wilder was born on September 18, 1895 in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1916 his family had recently moved to New Haven following his father's postings as American consul general in Hong Kong and Shanghai from 1906 to 1915.
The author with his brother and three sisters constituted a family of writers: Thornton (playwright and novelist), Charlotte (winner of the Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry), Isabel (graduate of the Yale School of Drama and novelist), and Janet Dakin (scientist who wrote on conservation and equestrian topics).
After attending public schools in Madison and Berkeley, California (with brief schooling in China), Amos Wilder prepared for college at the Thacher school in Ojai, California. After two years at Oberlin he transferred to Yale in the fall of 1915. Following the war he received his B.A., B.D., and Ph.D. from Yale. He was ordained in 1926 and for several years served as minister of the First Congregational Church in North Conway, New Hampshire.
In 1930, Amos Wilder began his teaching and scholarly career at Hamilton College. He subsequently taught at Andover Newton Theological School, Chicago Theological Seminary and Federated Theological Faculty, University of Frankfort, and Harvard Divinity School, where he retired as Hollis Professor of Divinity Emeritus in 1963.
Despite poor health in his later years Amos Wilder retained to his death a zest for the several elements that comprised his professional career and related interests---New Testament studies, the relation between religion and the arts, literary criticism, and the practice of poetry. The summer before he died he was still able to spend part of many days in his "summer workshop," a rudimentary cabin in the woods in Blue Hill Falls, Maine. It was here that much of the work was done on, the great project of his last years, the writing of this book, which he completed in April 1992. He used a typewriter ardently in the manner taught by his journalist father as well as by this time a reading machine that allowed him to read despite near total blindness.
Amos Wilder died on May 1, 1993. Anticipating the end, he asked me to serve as his surrogate in dealing with the inevitable queries in the final editing, adding with characteristic modesty that he hoped that it would not be a burden. It has not been a burden; rather, it has been a delight and a privilege.
Changes made to the text since the author's death include the deletion of a few repetitions and a slight reorganization of parts of the text in order to maintain the continuity of the narrative. Robin Gibbs Wilder and William R. Crout have been helpful in making judgments about these changes.
Extreme care has been given to preserve the integrity of the extracts taken from Amos Wilder's journal. Sometimes writing under extraordinary constraints---in his dugout during bombardments, for example---he often compressed language to save both paper and time. Only changes necessary for clarity, such as spelling out certain abbreviations, have been made. In some cases the author himself added words of explanation in brackets. In the final editing a few additional lines from the journal have been added to several entries as well as footnotes containing information that may be helpful to the reader. All names, places, dates, and citations have been checked for accuracy to the extent possible, and the few errors or imprecisions have been corrected.
I extend special thanks to Patricia Barry for helping me with a line-by-line review of the extracts against the original sources and to William L. Foley for responding graciously to queries about the American Field Service experience in World War I. It has also been a great pleasure to work with Harriett Blood on the maps, which are based on Field Service maps published in 1920. The Western front map was modified to reflect the author's experience in the U.S. Army. All the pictures reproduced in this book were taken by the author or through the lens of his Brownie camera. (A stylus feature, which permitted the photographer to write on each negative, has allowed most pictures to be identified quite precisely.)
I deeply regret that my father did not have the opportunity to meet and work with Jonathan Brent, the acquisitions editor at Yale University Press, and Noreen O'Connor-Abel, the book's thoughtful and skillful manuscript editor. Had he done so their names would hold a prominent place in his acknowledgments---where they rightly deserve to be.
A. Tappan Wilder
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