RCC7430

With Their Bare Hands; General Pershing, The 79th Division, and the Battle for Montfaucon

ISBN 9781472819239 £25.00 10 Mar 2017
Osprey Publishing Limited , Oxford & New York (2017)
The US 79th Division was recruited from Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. They came to France in 1918 and became part of the US First Army in the Meuse-Argonne attack in late September 1918. The 79th Division was placed opposite Montfaucon, which was the key German position. The 79th had never served at the Front, it had not trained with its assigned artillery brigade, yet it was assigned to one of the most difficult tasks. This is the story of that division in this attack. The book is very well written and researched (it is particularly good in setting out how the build-up of the US forces in France actually happened) and is written in a very accessible way.