Background
Harrison was born in Philadelphia and was raised in Montreal Canada, where at age fifteen he wrote his first short story and at age sixteen took an entry-level job with the Montreal Star newspaper.
( Generals die in bed, while soldiers die in the trenche...)
Generals die in bed, while soldiers die in the trenches, horrifically, unimaginably, infested with lice and surrounded by rats fattened on corpses. There are no rules, no expectations in war. And there is certainly no glamour. Instead, the men inhabit a senseless world, trusting only the instinct to stay alive. Based on his own experiences in the First World War, Charles Yale Harrison writes a stark and poignant story from the point of view of a young man sent to fight on the Western Front. Beginning in Montreal, the scene soon shifts from the cheering crowds, streamers, and music of the farewell parade to the stench of the trenches, where the soldiers meticulously divide up the stale, gray "war" bread and rationed sugar for their weak tea. In stark, graphic detail, Harrison writes of the soldiers' fear as the crumbling dirt walls of the palisade tumble down upon them during a shell attack. He recounts the horror of face-to-face combat, where the enemy is revealed to be a smooth-skinned lad, no different from the boy down the street. He shows compassion for both the killer and the killed, each innocent, in a situation without choice. In raw, powerful prose, the insanity of war is shown clearly as Harrison questions the meaning of heroism, of truth, and of good and evil. The First World War may seem distant and irrelevant to many young people today, but it is a timeless and important lesson. Seen through the eyes of the adolescent narrator, the experience of trench warfare takes on renewed vibrancy as readers identify with the plight of the youthful soldiers. Harrison's vivid account is a valuable resource for all teachers and students of history and of the human condition. An introduction places Generals Die In Bed in its proper literary context, beside All Quiet on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arms. Harrison's concise, blunt writing style is an effective means of conveying the reality of war and an example to students of literature. Originally published in 1930, this book was lauded as "the best of the war books" by the New York Evening Standard.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1550377310/?tag=2022091-20
( As the world marks the 100th anniversary of the start o...)
As the world marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, the bestselling novel Generals Die in Bed becomes more relevant than ever. Originally published in 1930, the landmark novel was one of the first to shatter the world’s illusion that war is a glorious endeavor. Instead, this chilling first-hand account brought readers face to face with the brutal, ugly realities of life in the trenches. Often compared to All Quiet on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arms, Generals Die in Bed was described by The New York Times as a burning, breathing, historic document.” With veterans of WWI no longer here to tell their tales, this book stands as a lasting monument to the horror of war.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1554516927/?tag=2022091-20
Harrison was born in Philadelphia and was raised in Montreal Canada, where at age fifteen he wrote his first short story and at age sixteen took an entry-level job with the Montreal Star newspaper.
Educational public schools, New York and Montreal.
Harrison"s journalistic career was pre-empted, however, when he enlisted with the 244th Overseas Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1917 to fight in World War I. After several months in a reserve battalion in England, Harrison transferred to the Royal Montreal Regiment and was sent to the Western Front. The climax of Harrison"s war experience came on 8 August 1918 when he participated in the first day of the Battle of Amiens. Harrison was wounded in the foot and spent the rest of the war recuperating, before returning to Montreal.
During the 1920s, Harrison managed a movie theatre before moving to New York City to pursue a career as a novelist, journalist, and public relations consultant.
By 1928, serialized portions of Generals Die in Bed began to appear in several American and German periodicals. The same year, Harrison made headlines in the New York Times when he was arrested en route to Nicaragua, where he planned to interview the Nicaraguan dissident General Augusto César Sandino.
In 1930, after such anti-war books as Robert Graves"s Goodbye to All That, Ernest Hemingway"s A Farewell to Arms, and Erich Maria Remarque"s All Quiet on the Western Front (all published in 1929) became bestsellers, publishers took an interest in Generals Die in Bed, many elements of which resembled the other books Harrison, who was working as a copy editor on the Bronx Home News was propelled into the spotlight when Generals Die in Bed became an international bestseller, in part due to the controversy surrounding its depiction of Canadian soldiers looting the French town of Arras and shooting unarmed German soldiers.
Although he went on to publish several more novels, none of them matched the commercial success of Generals Die in Bed.
Harrison"s last novel, Nobody"s Fool, was published in 1948. Suffering from the heart condition that inspired his self-help memoir, he died in 1954.
( Generals die in bed, while soldiers die in the trenche...)
( As the world marks the 100th anniversary of the start o...)
More successful were his non-fiction writings, including a 1931 biography of socialist lawyer Clarence Darrow and a 1949 memoir entitled Thank God Foreign My Heart Attack, an early installment in the genre of self-help books
Married Emily Courtier, April. Married second, Edna Margolin, February 14, 1932 (divorced).