The book I chose is called Nels Anderson’s World War I Diary and is a first-hand account of the war. I found it by searching “world war I” but that was too broad so I added “primary source” and this book caught my eye. I flipped through the first couple pages and the forward drew me in by saying that Nels Anderson, whose journals are in this book, wrote over four-hundred hand written pages recording his life during the war.

Nels Anderson was an American soldier who was twenty-eight years old when he arrived in France in 1918 to partake in the “war to end all wars.” He writes about how being a soldier was different than what he had imagined. In his words, “I used to think it took courage to be a soldier but I have decided that I have more call for patience.” He then writes about how “trenching” (ditch digging) took up a large amount of the time he spent abroad and the long process trenching was. He doesn’t make it sound pleasant at all. Most of the diary isn’t recording fighting because that was so infrequent, its recording the daily life of soldiers  for most of the time they spent “at war.”

It is so interesting to read this and think about how the nature of war today has changed. Now a war that severely impacts hundreds of thousands occurs on the digital battlefield for example.

Anderson, Nels, and Allan Kent. Powell. Nels Anderson’s World War I Diary. Salt Lake City: U of Utah, 2013. Print.