Over There, by Byron Farwell

Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917-1918, by Byron Farwell
WW Norton & Company, 1999
299 pages plus 16 pages of B&W photos, Appendices, bibliography, and index
Library: 940.4 FAR

Description
When the United States finally declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, the British and French armies were at a point of total exhaustion, and within two weeks the French troops had mutinied, leaving the Western Front practically undefended. In the same month, Lenin arrived in Moscow on the heels of the Russian Revolution, and vowed to make peace with Germany.

Our last minute intervention in this European war woudl save the Allies in their hour of need and ch ange forever the way Americans saw their country and the world. In the course of a few months, the American army grew from 200,000 ill-equipped and untrained men to over a million, but it was longer still before the French and British commanders took General Pershing and his recruits seriously. This was a war fought under conditions unlike anything seen before, with dramatically improved weaponry--such as machine guns, artillery, flame throwers, poison gas, tanks and military aircraft-producing a nightmare of violence and death that young American soldiers entered innocently, almost lightheartedly.

Byron Farwell's vivid and informed narrative covers all phases of the American effort, from the home front, where the war introduced rapid technological and social changes that were difficult to absorb, to the desperate encounters in the front lines of Belleau Wood and the St. Mihiel salient, where American troops proved their valor and altered the course of the war.

With its fresh look at the GReat War, this book paints a memorable picture of the intense national experience whereby America came of age in the twentieth century.

Table of Contents
Prologue
Introduction
1. Edging toward war
2. The United States enters the war
3. The tools and engines of destruction
4. Finding the men and tools
5. Training in the United States
6. The War at Sea: the Anti-Submarine Campaign
7. The War at Sea: getting the Army over there
8. The AEF arrives over there
9. France: First Casualties
10. Trench WArfare
11. First Battles: Seicheprey and Cantigny
12. Home Front
13. Army Welfare
14. Venereal disease
15. Blacks and Indians in the American Army
16. Second battle of the Marne: on the Aisne river
17. Second battle of the Marne: final phase
18. The war in the air
19. The St. Mihiel Offensive: 12-16 September 1918
20. The Meuse-Argonne offensive: First phase Sept-Oct 1918
21. Meuse-Argonne: the Final Phase
22. Americans under European commanders
23. Armistice
24. The Army of Occupation and the wait for shipping space
25. Intervention in Northern Russia and Siberia
26. Return of the Legions
27. Epilogue: Medals and other Honors
Appendix A: Words and expressions from the GReat War
Appendix B: The Hello Girls, Alvin York, The "Lost Battalion"
Bibliography
Index


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