Bringing "Ration Hounds At War" To Readers

I am Neal Murphy. I finished polishing and self-publishing my grandfather's account of his time in France with the AEF in The Great War; it is ready to print. It is an engaging story written by a lad who turned 17 during the summer of 1918. Dad remembered his mother typing it in the early 1930s; I started with that 132-page manuscript. Dad always called it his father's diary; but after reading it, I realized it is a novelized account of his time over there. To adapt a line from an old TV show, the names were changed to protect the guilty.

My grandfather volunteered and ended up with the 3rd Division, 76th Field Artillery, Battery D. His adventures, shenanigans, trials and tribulations start from landing at Saint-Nazaire, to training at Camp Coëtquidan, and thence to war at Château Thierry in July, onward to the Saint-Mihiel salient in September, through the Meuse-Argonne Offensive from September to November 11, and on toward Luxemboug. He was soon diagnosed with rheumatic fever due to being gassed in the earlier fighting.

I titled the story "Ration Hounds At War" because during the six months they were there, they never had enough to eat and were always scrounging for extra rations. Early on, during long marches in the rain, he and a couple buddies often 'fell out' and slogged to a nearby barn to sleep because they were tired of marching and were cold and hungry; they figured they'd catch up with the unit the next day. Another time, they were sent to the rear to fetch fresh horses. But there were none to be had. So they, being teenagers on their own with a couple days freedom, explored the area and, upon finding a box of grenades left behind in the woods, went fishing. The artillery was usually well behind the front lines, but at one point he was sent to the front lines as a runner to carry messages should German artillery cut the phone lines. There was definitely combat in addition to various respites. In short, there were hours of total boredom interspersed with minutes of sheer terror, and the tedium carrying hundreds of shells—both gas and HE—to feed the French 75s.

Dad used to say it's a pretty good story for an uneducated man. I believe my grandfather used what he knew and experienced as a foundation. He experienced a lot of boring, exciting, wondrous, and terrible things and wrote an engaging story about The Great War from his perspective.

In addition to polishing the story, I added front matter, photos of the memorabilia my grandfather left, some photos from the US National Archives, one-page appendices of locations, internet references and a glossary, and two excerpts from "Roll of Honor of the Seventy Sixth U. S. Field Artillery (Dec. 1918, Koblenz, Germany); this additional matter adds further substance to the story. In total, there are 130 pages of story and pictures and another 23 pages of front and end matter in a standard 4.1" by 6.75" paperback book.

I want to print 1,000 copies of the book to distribute to a wider audience. If the principle of 'six degrees of separation' hold, this will generate enough interest to make it feasible to sell the book through online retailers.

I prepared a preview EPUB that contains the beginning of the book including the first chapter. You can download it at: https://murent.us/rationhounds/rationhounds-teaser.epub. This preview may be freely shared with family, friends, elders, seniors, juniors, strangers, and even enemies.