“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.
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.