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

With Their Bare Hands is an in-depth account of one of the most devastating American battles of World War I. With a compelling narrative arc and plentiful detail, this historical yet vivid account of the 79th Division’s engagement at Montfaucon—part of the American Meuse-Argonne offensive in France, which took place in the fall of 1918—investigates a key battle generally given little notice by authors and historians. Although this battle exemplifies many of the problems and achievements of the AEF in the war and is a fascinating story in its own right, it has never been given a book-length treatment. This exhilarating new title follows the division from its origins in the draft of 1917 to the end of the war, using its experiences as a window into the nature of the American effort as a whole—mobilization, doctrine, training, shipment overseas, life in the trenches, combat (including learning from failures), armistice, and repatriation.

Official Partner

Winner of the U.S. Military History Group's 2017 Master Corporal Jan Stanislaw Jakobczak Memorial Book Award for the outstanding book on any topic of U.S. Military History from 1898 to 1945

One of “The 5 best books on the Hundred Days Offensive . . . a masterpiece of narrative history.”

--History of War

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Also available as an audio book.

REVIEWS BY HISTORIANS

Doughty

"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, author of Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War and The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939.

Messenger

"An excellent and highly recommended work."

- Charles Messenger, Western Front Association; retired British Army officer and author of over 40 books on historical and defense matters.

Showalter

"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, author of German Military History, 1648-1982: A Critical Biography.

Davenport

"With Their Bare Hands is an unvarnished examination of all corners of the battlefield, filled with failures and setbacks, courage and fear, noble sacrifices and, in many places unnecessary casualties. Mr. Fax considers the battle on its own terms and n its own time, allowing the reader an unfiltered view of combat and confusion and command decisions--both wise and unwise."

- Matthew J. Davenport, The Wall Street Journal.

Cohen

"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 A. Cohen, author of The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force.

Yockelson

"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.

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FEATURED WORK

The Meuse-Argonne Was Not the Somme: The American Combat Experience in World War I

Published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History
Army History Magazine, Summer 2022
Go to p. 6

The Strange Early History of American Machine Guns: Hotchkiss and Browning

The Artilleryman Magazine,
Vol. 41, No. 3, Summer 2020

Pershing’s “Open Warfare” Doctrine in the Light of American Military History

Published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History
Army History Magazine, Fall 2019
Go to p. 32

Charles G. Dawes: The Man Who Supplied the American Expeditionary Forces

This article was published in World War One Illustrated, the journal of the non-profit World War One Historical Association – www.ww1ha.org.

Four Questions for Author Gene Fax

The United States World War One Centennial Commission and the Doughboy Foundation

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REVIEWS IN THE PRESS

History of War

"Here the Hundred Days Offensive is told through the eyes of the new kids on the block. Gene Fax’s book is a masterpiece of narrative history, focusing on one of the first American divisions to join the war effort and giving an invaluable look into the formation of the American Expeditionary Forces. The training and experiences of the 79th Division make for compelling reading, and the book continually surprises (when it left for France, for instance, half the division had received no training.) It’s a brilliant look inside the workings of a World War I division."

--History of War

World War One Illustrated

"Gene Fax earned well-deserved praise for this very detailed presentation of the U.S. 79th Division’s famous assault on the heavily fortified German position on Montfaucon . . . Nicely written, filled with anecdotes, this terrific book was a finalist for a Distinguished Writing Award by the Army Historical Foundation."

--World War One Illustrated

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Gene Fax

My grandfather fought in the 313th Infantry Regiment of the 79th Division. When my brother and I were young, he would regale us with old-soldier stories. Sometime in the 1980s I tried to get his war service record, only to find that most of the personnel files from World War I were destroyed in a fire in 1973. As a substitute I read a history of his regiment, which first made me aware of the assault on Montfaucon; I learned that Company G, my grandfather’s company, had been the first to gain the top of the hill. Digging further, I discovered that little had been written about that bloody and important engagement, save for one or two pages in general histories of the AEF and a few articles in old, obscure military journals.

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