Mildred Aldrich (1853–1928)

Mildred Aldrich was born in Providence, Rhode Island and grew up in Boston. After graduating from high school, she taught elementary school before going on to a career in journalism. She wrote for the Boston Home Journal, the Boston Journal, and the Boston Herald. In 1898, she moved to Paris and became a friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. She worked as a foreign correspondent, critic, and translator. Aldrich moved to Huiry, a small village near Paris overlooking the Marne River valley only months before the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Her experiences during the First Battle of the Marne, as detailed in her diary and letters to friends, made up her first book, A Hilltop on the Marne (1915). Following the success of that work, she produced three more collections of wartime writings, On the Edge of the War Zone (1917), The Peak of the Load (1918), and When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1919). She also wrote a novel, Told in a French Garden, August 1914 (1916). Her autobiography, Confessions of a Breadwinner, was completed in 1926 but never published. Mildred Aldrich received the French Legion of Honor 1922 for her war work.