October 17, 2018: Final Salute to Don Martin, Soldier of the Pen

We have reached the end of the Don Martin World War I centennial memorial blog. Starting on December 7, 2017, this daily blog has chronicled, in 315 postings, the remarkable story of my grandfather’s contribution to the Great War.

This blog was possible because of the availability of my grandfather Don Martin’s diaries and his letters to my mother, and his published writings in the New York and Paris Herald.

We have followed him from leading political reporter of the New York Herald at the end of 1917, to head of its London office in January-March 1918, and then to France as accredited war correspondent covering the American Expeditionary Forces, based first in Neufchateau, then in Meaux, Nancy and finally for a few days in Bar le Duc. And then, his final return to his hometown in Silver Creek, New York. Don Martin has given us a full and insightful, if grim, picture of the Great War, as witnessed by the American war correspondents. We have seen him always looking for the ‘good story’—one reporting the facts as he has seen them on the ground but with human interest. He was good at it.

What better way to end this than by recalling Minna Irving’s poem, published shortly after his death: --

Yes, let us salute Don Martin, Soldier of the Pen!

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Don Martin, Soldier of the Pen – Introduction

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