The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread which deals with the discussion of the Battle of the Argonne Forest.

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, also known as the Maas-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was a major part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front. It was fought from 26 September 1918 until the Armistice of 11 November 1918, a total of 47 days.

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the largest in United States military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers. It was one of a series of Allied attacks known as the Hundred Days Offensive, which brought the war to an end. The battle cost 28,000 German lives, 26,277 American lives and an unknown number of French lives.

It was the largest and bloodiest operation of World War I for the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), which was commanded by General John J. Pershing, and the second-deadliest battle in American history. American losses were exacerbated by the inexperience of many of the troops and the tactics used during the early phases of the operation.

The Meuse-Argonne was the principal engagement of the AEF during World War I.

Remainder of article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse-A...

Source: Wikipedia

Great War, Great Men: 313th Machine Gun Battalion of World War I

by Andrew Capets

Synopsis:

This is a compilation of the ranks of a World War I Machine Gun Battalion through first-hand accounts of more than a dozen soldiers who served together during the War. Their stories have been rediscovered by compiling unpublished letters and journals with historical insights to provide a compelling history of the men of the 313th Machine Gun Battalion.

A young Private colorfully describes the antics of his fellow draftees from Erie, Pennsylvania while they trained at Camp Lee preparing for war. An idealistic officer provides vivid details of the simple pleasures and the aggravating moments as the battalion travels through the French countryside on their way to the front.

The naïve desires of one officer, hoping he can get into a ‘real show’ are later extinguished when the unit takes on multiple casualties from a gas attack.

After escaping an incessant shelling, the honest prose of one officer reveals a mistake that was made, that cost the lives of men during a harrowing event in the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne.

The miserable days of long marches, muddy trenches and soaking wet uniforms were common. Being able to laugh through the misery, sharing a bottle of French wine, finding a swimming hole for the men, or sleeping in late under the warmth of the sun occasionally made it a good war.

This book was released to commemorate the Centennial Anniversary of World War I and to honor the men of the 313th Machine Gun Battalion, 80th Division.

About the Author:

Andrew J. Capets was raised in Trafford, Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserves. He attended Penn State University earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Insurance.

He has been employed by State Farm Insurance Companies since 1990, and is currently a State Farm Agent in Monroeville, PA. He met his wife Mariann when they were students at Penn State. The couple has been married for over 25 years and they reside in North Huntingdon, PA with their two teenage boys.

Andrew's passion for family and local history led him to founding the Trafford Historical Society and was co-author of the book "Images of America - Trafford" published in 2017 by Arcadia Publishing. In 2017, Andrew was successful in a grant challenge offered by the WWI Centennial Commission to save and restore WWI memorials.

His grant application was chosen and the Trafford WWI Memorial is one of only 100 memorials across the United State to be an officially designated a "WWI Centennial Memorial."

Review:

"Andrew J. Capets' 'Good War, Great Men' brings to light the lives, and deaths, in World War I of the many Erie County men in the Army's 313th Machine Gun Battalion. Capets' research on the movement of the unit is replete, but it's the letters, journal entries and memoirs he has obtained from family members and archives that propel the members of the 313th from Camp Lee, Virginia, in August 1917, through their battles, including the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the final days of the war, to their homecoming in June 1921." -- Matt Martin, Erie Times-News, November 15, 2017

To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918

by Edward G. Lengel

Synopsis:

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.

America's Deadliest Battle: Meuse-Argonne, 1918

by Robert H. Ferrell

Synopsis:

American fighting men had never seen the likes of it before. The great battle of the Meuse-Argonne was the costliest conflict in American history, with 26,000 men killed and tens of thousands wounded. Involving 1.2 million American troops over 47 days, it ended on November 11-what we now know as Armistice Day-and brought an end to World War I, but at a great price.

Distinguished historian Robert Ferrell now looks back at this monumental struggle to create the definitive study of the battle-and to determine just what made it so deadly. Ferrell reexamines factors in the war that many historians have chosen to disregard. He points first to the failure of the Wilson administration to mobilize the country for war. American industry had not been prepared to produce the weaponry or transport ships needed by our military, and the War Department-with outmoded concepts of battle shaped by the Spanish-American War-shared equal blame in failing to train American soldiers for a radically new type of warfare.

Once in France, undertrained American doughboys were forced to learn how to conduct mobile warfare through bloody experience. Ferrell assesses the soldiers' lack of skill in the use of artillery, the absence of tactics for taking on enemy machine gun nests, and the reluctance of American officers to use poison gas-even though by 1918 it had become a staple of warfare. In all of these areas, the German army held the upper hand. Ferrell relates how, during the last days of the Meuse-Argonne, the American divisions had finally learned up-to-date tactics, and their final attack on November 1 is now seen as a triumph of military art. Yet even as the armistice was being negotiated, some American officers-many of whom had never before commanded men in battle-continued to spur their troops on, wasting more lives in an attempt to take new ground mere hours before the settlement. Besides the U.S. shortcomings in mobilization and tactics, Ferrell points to the greatest failure of all: the failure to learn from the experience, as after the armistice the U.S. Army retreated to its prewar mindset.

Enhanced by more than four dozen maps and photographs, America's Deadliest Battle is a riveting revisit to the forests of France that reminds us of the costs of World War I-and of the shadow that it cast on the twentieth century.

The Test of Battle: The American Expeditionary Forces in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign

by Paul F. Braim (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this revised edition, Dr. Paul Braim analyzes the history of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, the most significant challenge to the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. Delving into newly acquired sources, he details the great difficulties encountered by the fledgling AEF, sent to fight in cooperation with Allies in France. Deployed to France from an army hastily expanded twenty times over its peacetime strength, the AEF was forced to organize a theater of operations, train the hundreds of thousands of arriving U.S. troops, and commit its partially trained forces into battle prematurely.

Braim recounts the commitment of the lesser trained soldiers of the AEF into positions for a major offensive into the Meuse-Argonne, the "test of battle" for the Americans in France. His description of the grim fighting evokes the sounds and smells of front-line battle, as the army drove north through the strong defenses in the Meuse-Argonne sector, and gained a bloody victory on the heights overlooking Sedan. Braim analyzes this costly victory by inadequately trained and inexpertly led forces as "learning to fight by fighting."

All great adds Jerome - thank you.

Unless we have this one in another AEF topic, it will help to understand why the Argonne was fought how it was fought.

by Mark Ethan Grotelueschen (no photo)

Synopsis:

This 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.