Argonne Days In World War I

Author : Horace L. Baker
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
ISBN 13 : 0826265758
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Argonne Days in World War I written by Horace L. Baker and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2007-03-07 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he took ship for France in the spring of 1918, Horace Baker was ill prepared for war. A private in the American Expeditionary Forces, the unassuming Mississippi schoolteacher joined the renowned Thirty-second Division and learned his soldiering skills from men who’d already fought in the Aisne-Marne offensive. Before long, he was to put those skills to use in the largest and most costly battle ever fought by the U.S. Army. This poignant memoir recalls the great battle of the Meuse-Argonne, an epic conflict waged by well over a million men that saw casualties of 26,277 killed and 95,786 wounded. Many books have been written about General Pershing’s planning of the offensive; this one tells what happened to the soldiers who had to carry out his orders. The Thirty-second was a shock division made up largely of National Guard units—farm boys from the Upper Midwest. But as casualties mounted, replacements were rushed into battle with little training—and devastating results. Baker knew friends and tent mates who were alive one day, dead the next, and he kept track of the battle in diary entries tucked into his Bible—and made evasively short in case of capture. He shares his and his comrades’ thoughts about fighting in a harsh climate and terrain, relates their ongoing problems with short supplies, and tells how they managed to overcome their fears. It is a straightforward narrative that doesn’t glorify battle or appeal to patriotism yet conveys the horrors of warfare with striking accuracy. Historian Robert Ferrell’s new introduction puts Baker’s recollections in the context of the larger theater of war. Baker fleshed out his diary in a book that saw limited publication in 1927 but has remained essentially unknown. Argonne Days in World War I is a masterpiece brimming with insight about the ordinary doughboys who fought in the European trenches. It conveys the spirit of a man who did his duty in a time of trouble—and is a testament to the spirit shared by thousands like him.

Author : Alan D. Gaff
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 9780806136967
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blood in the Argonne written by Alan D. Gaff and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique history of the “Lost Battalion” of World War I, Alan D. Gaff tells for the first time the story of the 77th Division from the perspective of the soldiers in the ranks. On October 2, 1918, Maj. Charles W. Whittlesey led the 77th Division in a successful attack on German defenses in the Argonne Forest of northeastern France. His unit, comprised of men of a wide mix of ethnic backgrounds from New York City and the western states, was not a battalion nor was it ever “lost,” but once a newspaper editor applied the term “lost battalion” to the episode, it stuck. Gaff draws from new, unimpeachable sources—such as sworn testimony by soldiers who survived the ordeal—to correct the myths and legends and to reveal what really happened in the Argonne Forest during early October 1918.

Author : Richard Merry
Publisher : Pen and Sword Military
ISBN 13 : 1526773295
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Great War in the Argonne Forest written by Richard Merry and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The annals of the First World War record the Argonne Forest as the epicenter of the famous Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918. The largest American operation launched against the Germans during the conflict. During 1914 and 1915 though, amidst the dense forest, French and Italian soldiers withstood the German assaults. All sides suffered horrendous casualties, as each sought to break through the lines. The epic four-year campaign is the subject of Richard Merry’s vividly written account. His great-uncle arrived there in September 1914 and started corresponding with his family. Richard traces the stories of some of the men – and women – who became embroiled in the epic forest struggle which culminated in the cold, gas-filled autumnal mist of 1918 when the New Yorkers of the 77th ‘Liberty’ Division fought there. One of their number, Charles Whittlesey, and his 'Lost Battalion’ held out against insurmountable odds. Sergeant Alvin York, the Tennessee backwoodsman and pacifist, overcame his religious convictions and wrote himself into American military history. The story does not end there; the author describes the aftermath of war in the area – the lethal outbreak of Spanish flu, the reburial of the dead, the rebuilding of the villages and the replanting of the forest before the Germans invaded again in 1940.

Author : Horace Leonard Baker
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Argonne Days written by Horace Leonard Baker and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War I memoir by Horace Baker, a Greenwood Springs native and Aberdeen, Mississippi schoolteacher Horace Leonard Baker who entered the U.S. Army as a private in 1918 and fought with the American Expeditionary Forces 32nd Division 128th Infantry Regiment under General John Pershing including the Meuse-Argonne offensive better known as the Battle of the Argonne Forest.

Author : Horace Leonard Baker
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Argonne Days in World War I written by Horace Leonard Baker and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A straightforward World War I memoir by Horace Baker, a Mississippi schoolteacher who took ship for France in the spring of 1918 as a private in the American Expeditionary Forces and soon fought with the Thirty-second Division in General Pershing's offensive at the battle of Meuse-Argonne"--Provided by publisher.

Author : Robert H. Ferrell
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
ISBN 13 : 0826264794
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Five Days in October written by Robert H. Ferrell and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During American participation in World War I, many events caught the public's attention, but none so much as the plight of the Lost Battalion. Comprising some five hundred men of the Seventy-seventh Division, the so-called battalion was entrapped on the side of a ravine in the Argonne Forest by German forces from October 2 to 7, 1918. The men's courage under siege in the midst of rifle, machine-gun, mortar, and artillery fire (coming both day and night), with nothing to eat after the morning of the first day save grass and roots, and with water dangerous to obtain, has gone down in American history as comparable in heroism to the defense of the Alamo and the stand at the Little Big Horn of the troops of General George A. Custer. Now, in Five Days in October, historian Robert H. Ferrell presents new material-previously unavailable-about what really happened during those days in the forest. Despite the description of them as a lost battalion, the men were neither lost nor a battalion. The name was coined by a New York newspaper editor who, upon learning that a sizable body of troops had been surrounded, thought up the notion of a Lost Battalion-it possessed a ring sure to catch the attention of readers. The trapped men actually belonged to companies from two battalions of the Seventy-seventh, and their exact placement was well known, reported by runners at the outset of the action and by six carrier pigeons released by their commander, Major Charles W. Whittlesey, during the five days his men were there. The causes of the entrapment were several, including command failures and tactical errors. The men had been sent ahead of the main division line without attention to flanks, and because of that failure, they were surrounded. Thus began a siege that took the lives of many men, leading to the collapse of the colonel of the 308th Infantry Regiment and, many believe, to the suicide of Major Whittlesey three years later. This book grew out of Ferrell's discovery of new material in the U.S. Army Military History Institute at the Army War College from the papers of General Hugh A. Drum and in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The Drum papers contain the court-martial record of the lieutenant of a machine-gun unit attached to the battalions, who advised Major Whittlesey to surrender, while the Seventy-seventh Division files contain full accounts of the taut relations between the Lost Battalion's brigade commander and the Seventy-seventh's division commander. By including this material, Ferrell gives a new accounting of this intriguing affair. Five Days in October will be welcomed by all those interested in a fuller understanding of the story of the Lost Battalion.

Author : William M. Wright
Publisher : University of Missouri
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Meuse-Argonne Diary written by William M. Wright and published by University of Missouri. This book was released on 2004-06-09 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "During America's participation in World War I, 1917-1918, only a single commander of a division, William M. Wright, is known to have kept a diary. In it, General Wright relates his two-month experience at St. Mihiel and especially the Meuse-Argonne, the largest and most costly battle in American history. In the Meuse-Argonne, the Eighty-ninth Division, made up of 28,000 draftees from Missouri and Kansas and under Wright's command, was one of the two American point divisions beginning November 1, 1918, when the U.S. First Army forced the German defenders back to the Meuse River and helped end World War I as the main German railway line for the entire Western Front came under American artillery fire. It was a great moment, and Wright was at the center of it. Robert Ferrell skillfully supplements the diary with his own narrative, making use of pertinent manuscripts, notably a memoir by one of Wright's infantry regiment commanders. The diary shows the exacting attention that was necessary to keep such a large, unwieldy mass of men in motion. It also shows how the work of the two infantry brigadiers and of the two supporting artillery brigades required the closest attention. Meuse-Argonne Diary, a unique account of, among other things, a singular moment in the Great War in which American troops ensured victory, will fascinate anyone interested in military history in general and World War I in particular. From the Diary September 13, 1918 Got no sleep at all last night. About two o'clock in the morning Col. Heintzelman, chief of staff of the corps, came out and he was much pleased with what the division had accomplished and with the way they had gone through. It was the division's first battle and it played a very important and creditable part. Certain things fell down. . . . The truth of the matter is the troops got away from the wire and it was impossible to keep the wire up through the tangle of barbed wire and woods. We captured 3,000 prisoners on our front alone and have lost 521. November 1, 1918 Considerable heavy artillery fire all night. The preparation fire went down promptly at 3:30, it was very heavy. . . . The barrage went down promptly at 5:30. Troops jumped off. At 7:30 thirty prisoners reported from Le Dhuy Fme., taken by the 353rd and 354th infantries. I don't understand what the 353rd Infantry is doing in there, as it is out of the sector. At 7:00 a.m. there was a distinct lull in the artillery fire. . . . I told Hanson at 8:05 to move his troops forward to parallel 86 immediately. He stated that he would get them going about 8:30, but actually did not get them started until about eleven o'clock. I sent for him on arrival and told him to hurry his men up. Before Lee left I had ordered the divisional reserve to move forward with its advance element on the first objective to maintain their echelonment in depth. Smyser came in at one o'clock and I ordered the divisional machine guns to the front to take position about one-half kilometer east of Dhuy Fme. At the time the reserves were ordered forward. I ordered Hanson to take his P.C. to Dhuy Fme. . . . Hanson has just arrived. I do not understand why he is always so slow. He seems to be inordinately stupid."--Publishers website.

Author : Robert H. Ferrell
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book America's Deadliest Battle written by Robert H. Ferrell and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preparation -- The plan -- First days -- The 35th Division -- Ending the enfilade -- The Kriemhilde Stellung -- Reorganization -- Breakout -- Victory.

Author : Robert H. Ferrell
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
ISBN 13 : 0826272460
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Unjustly Dishonored written by Robert H. Ferrell and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-05-20 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly one hundred years, the 92nd Division of the U.S. Army in World War I has been remembered as a military failure. The division should have been historically significant. It was the only African American division of the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Comprised of nearly twenty-eight thousand black soldiers, it fought in two sectors of the great battle of the Meuse-Argonne, the largest and most costly battle in all of U.S. history. Unfortunately, when part of the 368th Infantry Regiment collapsed in the battle’s first days, the entire division received a blow to its reputation from which it never recovered. In Unjustly Dishonored: An African American Division in World War I, Robert H. Ferrell challenges long-held assumptions and asserts that the 92nd, in fact, performed quite well militarily. His investigation was made possible by the recent recovery of a wealth of records by the National Archives. The retrieval of lost documents allowed access to hundreds of pages of interviews, mostly from the 92nd Division’s officers, that had never before been considered. In addition, the book uses the Army’s personal records from the Army War College, including the newly discovered report on the 92nd’s field artillery brigade by the enthusiastic commanding general. In the first of its sectors, the Argonne, the 92nd took its objective. Its engineer regiment was a large success, and when its artillery brigade got into action, it so pleased its general that he could not praise it enough. In the attack of General John J. Pershing’s Second Army during the last days of the war, the 92nd captured the Bois Frehaut, the best performance of any division of the Second Army. This book is the first full-length account of the actual accomplishments of the 92nd Division. By framing the military outfit’s reputation against cultural context, historical accounts, and social stigmas, the authorproves that the 92nd Division did not fail and made a valuable contribution to history that should, and now finally can, be acknowledged. Unjustly Dishonored fills a void in the scholarship on African American military history and World War I studies.

Author : William S. Triplet
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
ISBN 13 : 9780826212900
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne written by William S. Triplet and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appeal of military benefits - room and board, travel, adventure, and fifteen dollars a month, plus knowing he would receive his high school diploma - was too much for the young Triplet to pass up.".