Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them

A restless tide of men, women, and strangers crowds a weather‑worn steamer bound for a continent already trembling under the threat of invasion. Among them are a Broadway‑spirit nurse‑in‑training, a French poet‑soldier polishing champagne glasses, and a scholarly Bulgarian determined to return to the front. Their brief, chaotic conversations on deck set the tone for a journey that follows the war’s first thunderclaps from the Low Countries to the French plains.

From the siege of Antwerp to the mud‑splattered trenches at La Bassée, the narrator weaves frontline dispatches with vivid portraits of prisoners, makeshift hospitals, and the daily grind of ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances. Encounters with war correspondents, tense interrogations of hostages, and the restless anticipation of a new theater in the Dardanelles reveal how the conflict spreads like a restless river, pulling countless lives into its current.

Illustrated with period photographs, the account reads like a living diary, granting listeners an intimate sense of the war’s early months—its urgency, its humor, and its stark contradictions—without ever moving beyond the first act of this sprawling, multi‑front saga.