I will talk about: How I got interested in the topic; my decisions about structure and content; my approach to sources; adventures in the archives; how I learned to write; and how I got the book published. This event is not open to the public.
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.