A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front - Softcover

Novelist Winston Groom (Forrest Gump) brings his considerable skills as a storyteller and researcher to this gory tour of "the most notorious and dreaded place in all of the First World War, probably of any war in history." The Ypres salient, a small, hilly section of Belgium, witnessed the wholesale destruction of the old British professional army, "the Old Contemptibles"; it was the place where the great armies of England, France, and Germany were locked in a dance of death for four years, where "more than a million soldiers were shot, bayoneted, bludgeoned, bombed, grenaded, gassed, incinerated by flamethrowers, drowned in shell craters, smothered by caved-in trenches, obliterated by underground mines, or, more often than not, blown to pieces by artillery shells." Extraordinary moments occurred in that vast hell, including the renowned Christmas truce of 1914, when the armies set aside the killing for a few short hours, crossed the trenches, and celebrated together. But mostly the scenery was unbeautiful mud and blood, the makings of Groom's chilling canvas, one populated by the famed generals and ordinary soldiers who met in Flanders fields. The stuff of Groom's story will be familiar to readers of Liddell Hart, Keegan, and other scholars, and readers new to the history of the Great War will find it a memorable introduction. --Gregory McNamee

Winston Groom:

'If you see a line, go stand in it, probably can't hurt nothing' is a sample of the pithy wisdom of Forrest Gump by Gump's creator, Winston Groom.

Winston Groom took the publishing world by storm when his 1986 novel Forrest Gump flew to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for 21 weeks. It has sold over 2.5 million copies in the United States alone on the heels of its blockbuster movie adaptation starring Tom Hanks. The book has also been reprinted in at least thirteen countries.

Born in 1943, Groom grew up in Mobile, Alabama. In 1965 he graduated from the University of Alabama and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. He served in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division from July 1966 to September 1967 when he was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain. He then spent the next eight years working as a reporter and columnist for the Washington Star before becoming a full-time author. He holds several honorary Ph.D. degrees as a 'Doctor of Humane Letters.'

In addition to Forrest Gump and Gump & Co., Groom's novels include Better Times Than These, the award-winning As Summers Die, which was made into a movie starring Bette Davis, Gone the Sun and Only. He is also the co-author of Conversations with the Enemy, a non-fiction account of the experience of an American prisoner of war in Vietnam, brilliantly rendered and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His novel, Such a Pretty, Pretty Girl, was published by Random House in the spring of 1999. He has also written The Crimson Tide, a pictorial history of football at the University of Alabama which was published by the University of Alabama Press in the fall of 2000. He has recently finished a novel, El Paso, set in 1916.

As well as being a talented novelist, Groom is also a serious student of history. On of his books, the prize-winning Shrouds of Glory, published by Grove-Atlantic, is a meticulous, atmospheric history of the little known, but very dramatic, Western Campaign of the Civil War, inspired by tales of his great-grandfather who fought for the Confederate Army.

A Storm in Flanders, his riveting World War I history, will be published by Grove-Atlantic in the spring of 2002.

Groom has written for numerous magazines, including Vanity Fair, Southern Living, Conde Nast Traveler, Newsweek, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine and contributed editorial articles to the New York Times and the Washington Post