With Their Bare Hands
General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the battle for Montfaucon
by Gene Fax
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Pub Date Feb 21 2017 | Archive Date May 21 2017
Description
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.
Advance Praise
"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 Tockelson, author of FORTY-SEVEN DAYS
"A careful study of a little-remembered division, in a little-remembered battle, in a little-remembered war. All of which is a pity, because as Gene Fax points out, the accomplishments of the 79th Division were remarkable and reflected better on the record of the American Expeditionary Force than historians often assume. A meticulous story, compellingly told." -Eliot Cohen, author of THE BIG STICK
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781472819239 |
| PRICE | $30.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 496 |
Featured Reviews
Pat L, Reviewer
This is a very griping book about the Meuse- Argonne campaign during the First World War. The author takes you from the beginning of the 79th and through their training and then to their arrival at the front. The author takes you through the difficulties that were experienced by this unit in losing so many men to other units and replaced by men that were not trained properly. This lack of fore thought by the higher were just one of many that would follow this unit. Another would be the artillery unit they trained with was changed to an entirely different unit once they got to the front. The author leads you through to the attack that they were to lead on a place named Montfaucon or little Gibraltar. This part of the story is sad to read because of the amount of lives that are lost, not just from this unit but by other AEF as well. You are shown the bravery by the men leaving the trenches and having to cover open ground to take the Germans who have been dunged in for four years with machines guns, and artillery. The Germans are also at an elevated position with aerial support and artillery, something the Americans did not have. This would add to the casualties for the Americans and the days it would take to capture Montfaucon. The men would do this without machine-gun fire, or artillery support, and also without food and water for days. This was the part of the story that makes me always upset when I have read WWI or any war books in how the leaders can order their men to attack and days later when they are still fighting not working on getting food and water to them. Especially when you have some generals from the civil war who always made sure they had supply lines in place. These men were running out of ammo, with no help in site yet they continued to fight. Yes by capturing this mountain would hasten the end of the war, these problems of how to attack a stronger opponent would be done differently when WWII would begin. Overall this was a very good in book in honoring the men who fought in WWI. A good book.
Terri W, Reviewer
Reading about the First World War can be so depressing. The American Expeditionary Force went into the Meuse-Argonne battle untrained and mismanaged, which led to thousands of unnecessary deaths.
General Pershing assumed he knew better than the British or French because they’d been at it for four years while he’d been successful in the Philippines and Mexico. His insistence on open warfare (rather than trench warfare) cost American lives. Infantry alone was no match for machine guns, but the Americans had never trained with artillery or tanks, so got little help there. Add to that virtually no battlefield communications.
If the German army hadn’t been so depleted after four years of war and the flu epidemic, many more American lives would have been lost in a longer war. The chief American contribution to the Allied victory was making clear to the exhausted Germans they couldn’t hope to win a war of attrition.
Gene Fax concludes that the American legacy of World War I was the experience enabled the government and military to mobilize for WWII and fight effectively.
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