author
Harold Barclay
1872–1922
A wartime physician’s diary gives this early-20th-century writer a vivid, immediate voice. Best known for recording his service with the American Expeditionary Forces in France, he left behind a firsthand account of medicine, military life, and the human side of World War I.
1 Audiobook
A Doctor in France, 1917-1919: The Diary of Harold Barclay
by Harold Barclay
About the author
Born in 1872, Harold Barclay was an American physician and writer remembered for A Doctor in France, 1917-1919, a diary drawn from his wartime service. Library and archival records connect his name most strongly with that book, which was published after his death and preserves his observations from the First World War.
Contemporary descriptions of the book present Barclay as a doctor who served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in late 1918. His writing stands out for its direct, personal view of daily work, military responsibility, and the pressures of caring for others during war.
Barclay died in 1922 while traveling in France with his wife, and his diary was privately printed in 1923. Today, his reputation rests on that single surviving work: a clear, human record of one doctor’s experience in a world at war.