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"This is an edited collection of letters from a U.S. Army infantryman during World War I."--
Historians have been unkind to the 26th Division of the U.S. Army during World War I. Despite playing a significant role in all the major engagements of the American Expeditionary Force, the “Yankee Division,” as it was commonly known, and its beloved commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Clarence Edwards, were often at odds with Gen. John J. Pershing. Subsequently, the Yankee Division became the A.E.F.’s “whipping boy,” a reputation that has largely continued to the present day. In The Yankee Division in the First World War, author Michael E. Shay mines a voluminous body of first-person accounts to set forth an accurate record of the Yankee Division in France—a record that is, as he reports, “better than most.” Shay sheds new light on the ongoing conflict in leadership and notes that two of the division’s regiments received the coveted Croix de Guerre, the first ever awarded to an American unit. This first-rate study should find a welcome place on military history bookshelves, both for scholars and students of the Great War and for interested general readers.
This multilayered history of World War I's doughboys captures the experiences of American soldiers as they trained for war, voyaged to France, and faced the harsh reality of combat on the Western Front in 1917-18. Hallas uses the words of the troops themselves to describe the first days in the muddy trenches, the bloody battles for Belleau Wood, the violent clash on the Marne, the seemingly unending morass of the Argonne, and more, revealing what the doughboys saw, what they did, how they felt, and how the Great War affected them.
Through the vivid diary entries and artwork of Harold W. Pierce, this book offers a gripping firsthand account of a young soldier's journey through World War I. April 1917. Eighteen-year-old Harold W. Pierce leaves school to join the U.S. Army, specifically the National Guard infantry company from heavily forested Warren County in northwestern Pennsylvania. He’s big for his age and he’s determined to serve his country. Thirteen months later, having trained at the steaming hot tent city of Camp Hancock in Georgia, Pierce and the rest of the 28th Division’s 112th Infantry Regiment is on its way to England and then to France. He’s one of the First Battalion’s scouts so he’ll see the war from a different perspective than the rest of the infantrymen, which includes his older brother Hugh. What Pierce sees, hears and feels will fill the small diary he keeps in his pocket. His descriptions become a diary of 79,000 words. His descriptions, his insights, his fears and his hopes bring the war to life as a young man experiences it. This young man, though, has a keen ability to express and describe that goes beyond his years: The abject terror of being in the middle of a sustained artillery barrage, his fear as he desperately tries to dig in as machine gun bullets fly inches over his head, and the relief he feels when an artillery round splits the air where he would have been if he had not – inexplicably – stopped walking. Pierce has moments when he does not want to answer the runner’s call of his name, when all he wants to do is sleep in a safe shelter. But he does answer and he goes on the patrol that all are convinced will be a one-way mission. Pierce survives it all, becoming a state police trooper in Pennsylvania after the war and later the chief law enforcement instructor for that state’s Public Service Institute until his retirement in 1966. In 1979, the diary was printed in serialized form in a small Pennsylvania newspaper. Throughout his life Pierce took to canvas to depict a variety of scenes from the World War. Included in this book are six of those paintings. Pierce died in 1983.
The authoritative, dramatic, and previously untold story of the bloodiest battle in American history: the epic fight for the Meuse-Argonne in World War I On September 26, 1918, more than one million American soldiers prepared to assault the German-held Meuse-Argonne region of France. Their commander, General John J. Pershing, believed in the superiority of American "guts" over barbed wire, machine guns, massed artillery, and poison gas. In thirty-six hours, he said, the Doughboys would crack the German defenses and open the road to Berlin. Six weeks later, after savage fighting across swamps, forests, towns, and rugged hills, the battle finally ended with the signing of the armistice that concluded the First World War. The Meuse-Argonne had fallen, at the cost of more than 120,000 American casualties, including 26,000 dead. In the bloodiest battle the country had ever seen, an entire generation of young Americans had been transformed forever. To Conquer Hell is gripping in its accounts of combat, studded with portraits of remarkable soldiers like Pershing, Harry Truman, George Patton, and Alvin York, and authoritative in presenting the big picture. It is military history of the first rank and, incredibly, the first in-depth account of this fascinating and important battle.
“Before the Greatest Generation, there was the Forgotten Generation of World War I . . . wonderfully engaging” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “Richard Rubin has done something that will never be possible for anyone to do again. His interviews with the last American World War I veterans—who have all since died—bring to vivid life a cataclysm that changed our world forever but that remains curiously forgotten here.” —Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 In 2003, eighty-five years after the end of World War I, Richard Rubin set out to see if he could still find and talk to someone who had actually served in the American Expeditionary Forces during that colossal conflict. Ultimately he found dozens, aged 101 to 113, from Cape Cod to Carson City, who shared with him at the last possible moment their stories of America’s Great War. Nineteenth-century men and women living in the twenty-first century, they were self-reliant, humble, and stoic, never complaining, but still marveling at the immensity of the war they helped win, and the complexity of the world they helped create. Though America has largely forgotten their war, you will never forget them, or their stories. A decade in the making, The Last of the Doughboys is the most sweeping look at America’s First World War in a generation, a glorious reminder of the tremendously important role America played in the “war to end all wars,” as well as a moving meditation on character, grace, aging, and memory. “An outstanding and fascinating book. By tracking down the last surviving veterans of the First World War and interviewing them with sympathy and skill, Richard Rubin has produced a first-rate work of reporting.” —Ian Frazier, author of Travels in Siberia “I cannot remember a book about that huge and terrible war that I have enjoyed reading more in many years.” —Michael Korda, The Daily Beast
During the carnage of World War I, ambulance companies were essential, carrying casualties off the battlefield on litters, dressing wounds, and rushing the wounded to the rear, often amid intense fire and poison gas. As part of the 26th "Yankee" Division--the first full American division to arrive in France in 1917--the 102nd Ambulance Company spent 193 days at the front and carried more than 20,000 men in its ambulances. Based on the company diary of Sergeant Leslie R. Barlow and letters by other company members, this narrative follows the unit through its inception in Bridgeport, Connecticut, its National Guard training, passage overseas, and winter of adjustment in France. The book describes its contribution to British trench fever experiments and its role in disinfesting the division of "cooties"; and offers vivid descriptions of its combat experiences in five sectors between February and November 1918. The work is heavily illustrated with photographs of the company and includes a detailed roster.
This exploration of the noncombatants who earned the love and respect of the doughboys should appeal to armchair historians and scholars alike. Enhanced with photographs and an appendix summarizing the biographical information for each man, Sky Pilots is the first comprehensive look at the role of the Army chaplaincy at the divisional level. In August 1917, the U.S. 26th “Yankee” Division was formally activated for service in World War I. When the soldiers arrived in France, they were accompanied by more than three dozen volunteer chaplains. These clergymen experienced all the horrors of war, shared all the privations of the common soldier, and earned the love and affection of their “boys.” Two died, several were gassed or wounded, and many were decorated by France and the United States for their heroism, yet their stories have been lost to history. Through extensive research in published and archival sources, as well as firsthand materials obtained from the families of several chaplains, Michael E. Shay brings to life the story of these valiant men—a story of courage in the face of the horrors of war and of extreme devotion to the men they served. Just as important, Sky Pilots follows the chaplains home and on to their subsequent careers. For many, their war experiences shaped their ministries, particularly in the area of ecumenism and the Social Gospel. Others left the ministry altogether. To fill in the chaplains’ stories, Shay also examines the evolution of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps, the education of the newly appointed chaplains, and the birth of the Yankee Division.