“This is a ground-breaking study of the US’s most devastating battle during the Great War. Using original documents, including orders, field messages, and letters and diaries of the soldier themselves, it focuses on the 79th division, from its time at Boot Camp in Maryland and through the War up to that last climactic conflict.”
—Military History Matters (published in the UK)
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.