{"id":312,"date":"2024-09-09T14:18:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T14:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=312"},"modified":"2024-09-09T14:18:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T14:18:00","slug":"book-review-searching-for-john-dewitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Searching for John Dewitt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Searching for John Dewitt<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by John Chase<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Memoir \/ WWII<\/p>\n

Print Length:<\/strong> 257 pages<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/span>Buy from Amazon<\/span>\n <\/div>\n

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Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski<\/em><\/p>\n

A heartwarming work of narrative nonfiction about a grandson exploring his grandfather\u2019s letters from WWI<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In 2020, author John Chase learned about a cache of eighty perfectly preserved letters from his grandfather John DeWitt to his parents, written during his time training as a soldier stateside and his deployment to Europe over the summer of 1917 to the fall of 1918. Those letters would send Chase on an unexpected journey to learn more about his grandfather\u2019s experiences\u2014especially his highly dangerous assignment as a trench \u201crunner\u201d\u2014and reveal aspects of the man he never knew.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Searching for John DeWitt <\/em>chronicles Chase\u2019s attempt to read between the lines of DeWitt\u2019s letters home to family in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to get a fuller picture of DeWitt\u2019s actual wartime experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Intrigued by DeWitt\u2019s role as a runner, Chase used the letters\u2014almost all \u201cupbeat and optimistic, unfailingly cheerful\u201d<\/em><\/strong>\u2014as a springboard to research more about DeWitt\u2019s regiment, the 168th Regiment of the famed Rainbow Division, and the dangers trench runners encountered. What Chase discovered would lead to a newfound respect for his grandfather and understanding of why \u201che chose not to disinter the darker memories of his time \u2026 He buried those memories like he had buried so many of his comrades.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

DeWitt volunteered for the U.S. Army in June 1917 when he was twenty years old. Recruits heading into the American Expeditionary Force under the command of General John \u201cBlack Jack\u201d Pershing received six months of military training stateside before shipping out overseas. DeWitt would train at both Camp Dodge in Iowa and Camp Mills in New York, and Chase points out that his grandfather\u2019s enlistment window showed impeccable timing\u2014any sooner and he may have been sent off from \u00a0 Camp Dodge to chase Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and any later he may have returned to Camp Dodge in 1918 after being wounded, right in the midst of the Spanish Flu epidemic that decimated the installation. His time in France also coincided with the availability and improved quality of gas masks in 1918, another instance of DeWitt\u2019s lucky timing.<\/p>\n

Mixing family memories with compelling historical storytelling, Chase illuminates DeWitt\u2019s training period through liberal quoting of his letters. One thing stood out immediately to Chase, and that was his grandfather\u2019s chipper attitude in letters to his mother\u2026and the frustrating lack of details.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Parsing DeWitt\u2019s letters closely led to a \u201cDamascus Road\u201d moment for Chase, as he realized that DeWitt and hisfather agreed when he enlisted to not worry his mothers or sisters in his letters home. But this also fired up Chase\u2019s desires to dig into the historical records of the 168th and elsewhere to form a fuller picture of the horrors DeWitt endured.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized my grandfather\u2019s notes home were like the North Atlantic icebergs he and his fellow soldiers dodged on their way to France in November 1917 \u2026 beneath the surface was a more important story, not just about my grandfather, but about an entire generation of young men now for the most part forgotten.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When DeWitt was assigned as a Battalion Runner in April 1918, he hid the fact that runners were \u201cexpendable and often killed\u201d<\/em><\/strong> ferrying messages across bombed-out craters and trenches, German bullets whizzing all around them. It was work DeWitt relished, according to Chase, and he chalks up his grandfather\u2019s calm and courage to his sense of mission and his deep Catholic faith.<\/p>\n

Chase relies on two histories, History of the Rainbow Division<\/em> by Raymond Tomkins and The History of the 168<\/em>th<\/em> by John Taber, to tell a mini history of the unit\u2019s experiences and imagining where DeWitt fit into those movements. Through this amateur sleuthing, Chase paints a fuller portrait of his grandfather\u2019s movements and engagements, aligning them as he can with the letters\u2019 selective information. What shines through is a devout, courageous, and honor-bound young man eager to make his parents and nation proud. Dewitt is a pleasure to read. Those looking for more about the inspiring people and the families they left behind in WWI will cherish the chance to meet him in this book.<\/p>\n

During a German bombardment and gas attack around the village of Suippes on July 15, 1918, DeWitt would take shrapnel in his left leg (which he dutifully reported to his mother from the hospital) and was gassed, as well (which he did not <\/em>tell his mother). His heroic actions as a runner in that battle earned DeWitt a Purple Heart medal, a surprising fact that \u201cGrampa\u201d never mentioned, Chase says. In looking over his grandfather\u2019s year in the war, Chase concludes it definitively changed him:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had emerged as a man who had seen much death and violence and unholy chaos, and he had not flinched.\u201d \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Searching for John DeWitt <\/em>is a touching testament to the lived experiences of American veterans of WWI, an invaluable reference for historians, and a poignant tribute by a grandson to a beloved grandfather. Highly recommend.<\/p>\n

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Thank you for reading Peggy Kurkowski\u2019s book review of Searching for John Dewitt <\/em>by John Chase! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.<\/p>\n

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The post Book Review: Searching for John Dewitt<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Searching for John Dewitt by John Chase Genre: Memoir \/ WWII Print Length: 257 pages Buy from Amazon Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski A heartwarming work of narrative nonfiction about a grandson exploring his grandfather\u2019s letters from WWI In 2020, author John Chase learned about a cache of eighty perfectly preserved letters from his grandfather John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}