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Drawing on journals, diaries, personal narratives, and unit histories, Hallas relates the story of WWI's "doughboys" -- the men behind the American rifles. He weaves from first experiences to the bloody battle at Belleau Wood to Marne and Argonne battlefields, crafting a uniquely personal and startingly real conception of how boys from America became soldiers in Europe.
This 2007 book provides the most comprehensive examination of American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) combat doctrine and methods ever published. It shows how AEF combat units actually fought on the Western Front in World War I. It describes how four AEF divisions (the 1st, 2nd, 26th, and 77th) planned and conducted their battles and how they adapted their doctrine, tactics, and other operational methods during the war. General John Pershing and other AEF leaders promulgated an inadequate prewar doctrine, with only minor modification, as the official doctrine of the AEF. Many early American attacks suffered from these unrealistic ideas that retained too much faith in the infantry rifleman on the modern battlefield. However, many AEF divisions adjusted their doctrine and operational methods as they fought, preparing more comprehensive attack plans, employing flexible infantry formations, and maximizing firepower to seize limited objectives.
In 1946, World War I veteran and self-described “buck private in the rear rank” Gerald Andrew Howell finished a memoir of the experiences of his squad from the 39th Infantry Regiment, 4th Division, and their “moments of horror, tragedy, humor, amour, [and] promiscuity” in Europe. This was “the old Army as it used to be,” Howell explains—the saga of the “down-trodden doughboy.” A few months later Howell was dead, his manuscript unpublished. Jeffrey Patrick discovered the memoir and the author’s correspondence with publishers and took on the task of bringing it to publication at last. Yesterday There Was Glory is an unpretentious account of men at war, from training camp to the occupation of Germany. It includes graphic descriptions of the battlefield, of shell fire, gas attacks, and lice. “Between the attacks the men would lay in their wet holes and pray for relief. But no relief came,” Howell remembers. He recalls much more than the horrors of combat, however, chronicling the diverse collection of heroes, professional warriors, shirkers, and braggarts that made up the American Expeditionary Forces. Howell and his comrades longed for wounds that would allow them to escape the war, but resolutely engaged the Germans in hand-to-hand combat. They poked fun at their comrades, but were willing to share their last can of food. They endured difficult marches, pursued “mademoiselles” and “frauleins,” and even staged a “strike” to protest mistreatment by their officers. They were as “ribald as any soldiery in any army,” Howell admits, but “underneath this veneer, they were really patriotic, steadfast and sincere.” Patrick provides an editor’s introduction and annotations to explain terms and sources in the memoir. Howell’s account preserves the flavor of army life with conversations and banter in soldier language, including the uncensored doughboy profanity often heard but seldom recorded.
Immediately after the armistice was signed in November, 1918, an American journalist asked Paul von Hindenburg who won the war against Germany. He was the chief of the German General Staff, co-architect with Erich Ludendorff of Germany’s Eastern Front victories and its nearly war-winning Western Front offensives, and he did not hesitate in his answer. “The American infantry,” he said. He made it even more specific, telling the reporter that the final death blow for Germany was delivered by “the American infantry in the Argonne.” The British and the French often denigrated the American contribution to the war, but they had begged for US entry into the conflict, and their stake in America’s victory was, if anything, even greater than that of the United States itself. But How America Won WWI will not litigate the points of view of Britain and France. The book will accepts as gospel the assessment of the top German leader whose job it had been to oppose the Americans directly - that the American infantry won the war - and this book will tell how the American infantry did it.
World War I had a profound impact on the United States of America, which was forced to 'grow' an army almost overnight. The day the United States declared war on Germany, the US Army was only the 17th largest in the world, ranking behind Portugal – the Regular Army had only 128,00 troops, backed up by the National Guard with some 182,000 troops. By the end of the war it had grown to 3,700,000, with slightly more than half that number in Europe. Until the United States did so, no country in all history had tried to deploy a 2-million-man force 3,000 miles from its own borders, a force led by American Expeditionary Forces Commander-in-Chief General John J. Pershing. This was America's first truly modern war and rising from its ranks was a new generation of leaders who would control the fate of the United States armed forces during the interwar period and into World War II. This book reveals the history of the key leaders working for and with John J. Pershing during this tumultuous period, including George S. Patton (tank commander and future commander of the US Third Army during World War II); Douglas MacArthur (42nd Division commander and future General of the Army) and Harry S. Truman (artillery battery commander and future President of the United States). Edited by Major General David T. Zabecki (US Army, Retired) and Colonel Douglas V. Mastriano (US Army, Retired), this fascinating title comprises chapters on individual leaders from subject experts across the US, including faculty members of the US Army War College.
Artillery proved to be the greatest killer on the Western front in World War I, and the use and misuse of artillery was certainly a determining factor in the war^D's outcome. While many books explore the artillery forces and employment of the European powers, this is the first study to examine artillery employment in the American Expeditionary Force. Grotelueschen follows one AEF division through its entire World War I experience, from preliminary training to each of its battles in France. This approach allows for great investigative depth and an opportunity to explore the implementation of doctrinal changes throughout the war. While accounts of the AEF written in the immediate aftermath of the war praised it as a great fighting machine, most scholars have concluded that the AEF was a flawed combat force. This study demonstrates that despite significant flaws and weaknesses, especially in artillery doctrine and employment, at least some AEF divisions did attain effective fighting ability. American divisions were most successful when carrying out limited, set-piece attacks, efforts that ran counter to approved US Army and AEF doctrine at the time. Historians will find this unique approach to the study of division level strengths and weaknesses to be useful in making more accurate and complete comparisons among the great armies of the Western Front.
The Great War caught a generation of American soldiers at a turning point in the nation's history. At the moment of the Republic's emergence as a key player on the world stage, these were the first Americans to endure mass machine warfare, and the first to come into close contact with foreign peoples and cultures in large numbers. What was it like, Richard S. Faulkner asks, to be one of these foot soldiers at the dawn of the American century? How did the doughboy experience the rigors of training and military life, interact with different cultures, and endure the shock and chaos of combat? The answer can be found in Pershing's Crusaders, the most comprehensive, and intimate, account ever given of the day-to-day lives and attitudes of the nearly 4.2 million American soldiers mobilized for service in World War I. Pershing’s Crusaders offers a clear, close-up picture of the doughboys in all of their vibrant diversity, shared purpose, and unmistakably American character. It encompasses an array of subjects from the food they ate, the clothes they wore, their view of the Allied and German soldiers and civilians they encountered, their sexual and spiritual lives, their reasons for serving, and how they lived and fought, to what they thought about their service along every step of the way. Faulkner's vast yet finely detailed portrait draws upon a wealth of sources—thousands of soldiers' letters and diaries, surveys and memoirs, and a host of period documents and reports generated by various staff agencies of the American Expeditionary Forces. Animated by the voices of soldiers and civilians in the midst of unprecedented events, these primary sources afford an immediacy rarely found in historical records. Pershing's Crusaders is, finally, a work that uniquely and vividly captures the reality of the American soldier in WWI for all time.
Upon the entry of the United States into World War I, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) were created by the War Department on short notice from existing units, filled up with men from the training camps and deployed with only their personal weapons and equipment. The US Army was not prepared for combat in France, and the remarkable achievement of the AEF's commanding officer, John J Pershing, was the creation of an American field army, built and nurtured from the bottom up. This book details the organizational structure, training and doctrine of the AEF and illustrates how it came to make a significant contribution to Allied victory in World War I.