Eric P. Kelly

Eric Philbrook Kelly was an American journalist, academic and author of books for young readers, whose book, The Trumpeter of Krakow, won the Newbery Medal for children's literature in 1929. He was a professor of English at Dartmouth College and a lecturer at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Kelly was born in 1884 in Amesbury, Massachusetts. While a student at Dartmouth College , Kelly was a member of the French club. After “ten colorless, uneventful, and discouraging years working on newspapers,” Kelly volunteered in 1918 to work with the French ‘Foyer de... Soldat’ in Quentin, France. He found himself in charge of athletics and entertainment for 2,000 Polish soldiers in Haller’s Army. In May 1919, Kelly was shipped across Germany to the newly-recognised state of Poland in closed boxcars along with the Polish troops. His new base was established in the old Napoleonic fortress of Modlin, near Warsaw. He wrote to his mother that “Warsaw is a beautiful city, reminds me in some ways of Denver.” During the 1919-1920 Polish-Soviet War, Kelly was posted at Chełm with Haller’s Army on the Bug River River.
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