The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)

| Book Reviews | 0 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post

Reviewed by Nicholas E. Efstathiou
By Jean-Yves Le Naour
Metropolitan Books, New York, 2004

World War I, initially marked by troops employing 19th-century tactics encountering 20th-century weaponry, saw heavy casualties on all sides. France, the Allied power that bore the brunt of German offensives in the West, suffered a particularly high casualty rate, including some 400,000 soldiers listed as missing. Even after a near century of recovering the dead, some 130,000 French soldiers re-main missing in action from WWI.

Those missing men left behind families and friends who were unable to achieve closure. In The Living Unknown Soldier, Le Naour details the quest to discover the identity of an amnesiac veteran whose anonymity gripped the French nation in 1918. The search stirred the national conscience and rekindled painful memories among the relatives of other missing men, who saw in the amnesiac soldier their own loved ones.

Le Naour, a professor of history and political science at the University of Aix-en-Provence, brings considerable writing and research skills to his story. Penny Allen’s English translation reads easily and concisely brings to light one of war’s horrors: to die alone and unknown, leaving behind a family that never knows the fate of its loved one.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Del.icio.us

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to digg

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Stumble Upon

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Technorati

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Yahoo My Web

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Google Bookmarks

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Netscape

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Ask

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Live-MSN

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to FaceBook

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to MySpace

Add 'The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War (Book Review)' to Twitter

Tags: Book Reviews, Military History Book Reviews

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Magazine Help
+Give as a gift
+Renew
+Address Change
+Questions

Most Titles
$21.95/6 issues!

What is HistoryNet?

The HistoryNet.com is brought to you by the Weider History Group, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 1,200 articles originally published in our various magazines.

If you are interested in a specific history subject, try searching our archives, you are bound to find something to pique your interest.

Get our RSS!
Newsletter Signup