Through the Wheat

This novel, published in 1923, is a harrowing account of the combat experience of a brigade of United States Marines on the Western Front beginning in March 1918. The central character, William Hicks, had been “nine interminable months” in France prior to the events described in the novel but had yet to see “real action”. Many of the characters he describes in his novel are close representations of the actual personnel in the author’s platoon (for example, the platoon leader is referred to as Lieutenant Bedford; in Boyd’s platoon the leader was Lieutenant David Redford). This is largely a description of terrible bravery. One critic urged the reader to discard Stephen Crane’s iconic Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage:
“Take your copy... remove it respectfully from your library shelf and bestow it in the attic. For it is obsolete. It is superseded.”

The author, Thomas Boyd (born 3 July 1898), grew up in Ohio, the son of a Canadian father who died before Thomas was born. He was still at high school in Illinois when in May 1917 he enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served in France with the 3rd Platoon of the 75th Company. He received a citation and the Croix de Guerre honour for his part in the rescue of wounded soldiers near Vierzy on 19 July 1918. He was invalided by gassing on 4 October during the assault on Blanc Mont but returned to duty as part of the army of occupation in Germany. After being discharged in July 1919 he became a newspaper reporter in Minnesota. By 1921 he was responsible for a weekly literary page in the St Paul Daily News and had opened a bookshop. He became acquainted with important young writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis, who were both born in Minnesota. Fitzgerald encouraged him to write about his war experiences and this led to his first novel, Through the Wheat.  Fitzgerald successfully lobbied to have it published after it was originally rejected. It was followed by another war novel in 1924, a collection of war short stories in 1925 and a sequel to Through the Wheat in 1935. In addition he had written two historical novels and several biographies prior to his sudden death in January 1935.

Boyd’s description of the carnage of the battlefield is both devastating and poignant. In one scene, Hicks is part of a group sent to bury the bodies of those killed:
“The late afternoon sun shone upon a group of mounds of fresh-dug dirt. Each mound was marked by two rough sticks, made to form a cross, at the juncture of which a small aluminium disc bearing a number was fastened.
After another day of combat, the careful collection and burial of bodies had been overturned:
“The ground was a dump-heap of bodies, limbs of trees, legs and arms indpendent of bodies, and pieces of equipment. Here was a combat pack forlorn, its bulge indicating such articles as a a razor, an extra shirt, the last letter from home, a box of hard bread. Another place a heavy shoe, with a wad of spiral puttee near by. Where yesterday’s crosses had been erected, a shell had churned a body out of its shallow grave, separating from the torso the limbs. The crosses themselves had been blown flat, as if by a terrific wind.”