author
E. G. Odell
1886–1929
A Canadian First World War officer, he is remembered for helping turn battlefield experience into a vivid, direct memoir. His surviving public footprint is small, which gives his writing an added sense of immediacy and rarity.
1 Audiobook
Hunting the Hun
by James Belton, E. G. Odell
About the author
Ernest Gregory Odell was a Canadian officer best known as the co-author, with Captain James Belton, of Hunting the Hun, a 1918 memoir about wartime service. Project Gutenberg and the Library of Congress both identify him in connection with that book, and the text presents him as Lieutenant E. G. Odell, formerly of the 54th Canadian Battalion.
The book is a firsthand account of training, attack, and life at the front during the First World War, with particular attention to the fighting around Vimy Ridge. Its plainspoken, personal tone is part of what makes it endure: rather than offering a distant history, it brings readers close to the daily reality of soldiers in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
Confirmed biographical details about Odell are limited in the sources available here. A Find a Grave memorial identifies him as Ernest Gregory Odell and records his death on March 26, 1929, with burial at Mount Royal Cemetery in Outremont, Montreal, Quebec. I wasn't able to verify a suitable portrait photograph of him from reliable accessible sources, so none is included.