Charles Yale Harrison, born on June 16, 1898, was a Canadian American journalist and novelist. Although he was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he grew up in Montreal, Quebec. In 1917, he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Within a few months, he found himself on the Western Front in France as a foot soldier engaged in trench warfare. On August 8, 1918, he participated in the Battle of Amiens, where he sustained an injury. He did not return to active duty after being wounded.

Although Harrison returned to Montreal after the war, he soon moved to New York City and continued his career as a writer. Most notably, he began work on stories that would eventually become the novel Generals Die in Bed. Public reception of anti-war books reached its zenith at the end of the 1920s with the publication of novels and memoirs such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by German writer Erich Maria Remarque, Under Fire (1916) by French writer Henry Barbusse, and A Farewell to Arms (1929) by American writer Ernest Hemingway. Following this trend, the William Morrow Publishing Company brought out Generals Die in Bed in 1930.

The novel became an international bestseller and Harrison’s most successful novel, but Generals Die in Bed was not without controversy.