The war at sixteen - Julian Green

Julian Green was as young as the century when in 1916 his world was turned upside down by war. Encouraged by his father to 'do something' for the war effort he joined up in the American Field Service to fight for France, the land of his birth. After a period of training as an ambulance driver, he and his comrades were sent to the Argonne forest on the North-Eastern front. It was not long before the horrors of war began to make their impression on his young mind: his first sight of a dead soldier made him a pacifist for life. A shy, serious and devout boy who had lost his mother when he was only fourteen, his sudden and violent exposure to loneliness, suffering and death, and his first experiences of self discovery and sexual awakening were to mark his rise to maturity and permanently influence his development as a writer.