Jeffrey B. Miller

Behind the Lines: Wwi's Little-known Story of German Occupation, Belgian Resistance, and the Band of Yanks Who Helped Save Millions from Starvation. Jeffrey B. Miller

During World War I, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) initiated, organized, and supervised the largest food and relief drive the world has ever seen. Working in concert with its counterpart in Belgium, the Comite National, the CRB fed and clothed for four years more than 9 million Belgians and northern French trapped behind German lines. Young, idealistic Americans volunteered to go into German-occupied Belgium to guarantee the food would not be taken by the Germans. They had to maintain strict neutrality in what they said and did as they watched the Belgians suffer under the harsh German regime. Covering August 1914 through December 1914, this nonfiction book follows a handful of CRB delegates, a twenty-two-year-old Belgian woman, two U. S. diplomats, the head of the CRB, and a Belgian businessman and a Belgian priest who team up to fight the German occupation. It is a story that few have heard.