Edith Wharton and Mary Roberts Rinehart at the Western Front, 1915

By 1915, the Western Front was a 450 mile line of trenches, barbed wire and concrete bunkers. Remarkably, the Allied command gave two American women, Edith Wharton and Mary Roberts Rinehart, permission to visit the front and report on what they saw. Their travels are reconstructed from their own published accounts, Rinehart's day-by-day notes, and the writings of other journalists.