With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the battle for Montfaucon - Hardcover

Fax, Gene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1472819233 ISBN 13: 9781472819239

Verlag: Osprey Publishing, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

With Their Bare Hands traces the fate of the US 79th Division-men drafted off the streets of Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia-from their training camp in Maryland through the final years of World War I, focusing on their most famous engagement: the attack on Montfaucon, the most heavily fortified part of the German Line, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918.

Using the 79th as a window onto the American Army as a whole, Gene Fax examines its mistakes and triumphs, the tactics of the AEF commander-in-chief General John J. Pershing, and how the lessons it learned during the Great War helped it to fight World War II. Fax makes some startling judgments, on the role of future Army Chief-of-Staff, Colonel George C. Marshall; whether the Montfaucon battle-had it followed the plan-could have shortened the war; and if Pershing was justified in ordering his troops to attack right up to the moment of the Armistice.

Drawing upon original documents, including orders, field messages, and the letters and memoirs of the soldiers themselves, some of which have never been used before, Fax tells the engrossing story of the 79th Division's bloody involvement in the final months of World War I.

Über diesen Titel

Críticas:

Based on meticulous research Gene Fax's fascinating account of the poorly trained 79th Division in the Meuse-Argonne offensive tells us much about how inexperience, poor communications and inadequate support compelled that division's courageous soldiers to fight "with their bare hands." Fax tells the amazing story of how the American Expeditionary Force and the 79th Division overcame many errors and false ideas and paid a high price learning how to fight effectively. (Brigadier General (ret.) Robert A. Doughty)

The men of the AEF's 79th Division were warriors for the working day: civilians in uniform. Their training was minimal, their cohesion limited, their tactics defying four years of Western Front experience. Yet the 79th's first assignment was to take one of the best-defended position in the Argonne Forest. It became a compound disaster. But the division's subsequent recovery is a case study in American soldiers' often-demonstrated high learning curve and the AEF's contribution to victory in 1918. Gene Fax's new history of the 79th Division is a masterful study of the long and difficult road to victory. (Professor Dennis Showalter)

Ordered to capture the heavily fortified high-ground of Montfaucon on the first day of Meuse-Argonne, the doughboys of 79th Division-fresh from Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia-proved themselves as brave and tenacious soldiers. With Their Bare Hands is a fine testament to their courage under fire and a compelling work of history by Gene Fax (Mitchell Yockelson, author of Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing’s Warrior’s Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I)

In "With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the Battle for Montfaucon" Gene Fax masterfully recounts, studies and dissects [the 79th Division's] nightmarish struggle.
...
Mr. Fax has plumbed a variety of source materials-original memoranda, reports by both sides, daily journals and correspondence-to transport the reader along with the soldiers of the 79th through the crucible of an almost impossible mission.
...
"With Their Bare Hands" is an unvarnished examination of all corners of the battlefield, filled with failures and setbacks, courage and fear, noble sacrifice and, in many places, unnecessary casualties. Mr. Fax considers the battle on its own terms and in its own time, allowing the reader an unfiltered view of combat and confusion and command decisions-both wise and unwise.

(Matthew Davenport, author of "First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America’s First Battle of World War I," a finalist for the 2015 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History. Wall Street Journal 2017-02-17)

Biografía del autor:

During his 45 years in the policy research industry, Gene Fax has written more than 200 research reports, policy papers, and competitive proposals and has edited hundreds more. An engineering graduate of MIT, he spent eight years conducting research and tactical studies in anti-submarine warfare for the US Navy. He is the co-founder of The Cadmus Group, Inc., which specializes in program development, evaluation, and policy research in environmental protection, energy efficiency, and sustainable development. Fax is a member of the Society for Military History, the Western Front Association, and the Army Historical Foundation.
In preparation for With Their Bare Hands, Gene spent seventeen years researching archives in Washington, Baltimore, Paris, West Point, and Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He also researched this most bloody and fiercely contested battle on the battlefield itself.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Osprey Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1472819233
• ISBN 13: 9781472819239
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 496