The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me was published by Macmillan in 1918. White and his friend Henry Allen (a fellow Kansas editor) toured the Western Front in 1917 as part of an American Red Cross inspection delegation. The book is White’s account of what two middle-aged, overweight, provincial American newspapermen saw and experienced in wartime France.
The comedy is genuine: White and Allen are comically out of place among soldiers and diplomats, bewildered by French culture, perpetually lost, and physically unsuited to the discomforts of the war zone. But the comedy is also deliberate camouflage for more serious material — White describes the destruction, the wounded, the landscape of the trenches, and the human cost of industrial warfare with growing seriousness as the book progresses. By the end, the humor has given way to something approaching awe at what ordinary men were enduring.
The book is minor White — a wartime occasional piece rather than a considered literary work — but it demonstrates his characteristic method: approaching serious subjects with humor, refusing pomposity, and trusting that the material will speak for itself if presented honestly.
Collecting The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
First edition (Macmillan, New York, 1918): Cloth with illustrations by Tony Sarg.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $30–$75
- Very good: $10–$30