The Doughboys were the more than three million men, many of them volunteers, recruited from the cities and farms of the United States, who traveled across the Atlantic to aid the Allies in the trenches and on the battlefields of World War I. Without their courage and determination, the outcome of the war would have been very different. Drawing upon the often harrowing personal accounts of the soldiers of the AEF, The Doughboysestablishes the pivotal...
The author sets out his purpose, to set the record straight on Americans involvement in the Great War, right at the start of the book. The way he put the story together, with jumps in time & space, at first, it seemed like he was telling another story entirely since America had such a hard time right at the start of the war. Finally Mr. Mead, and America, gets his feet under him and the story takes off as success follows...
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The author is certainly right when he asserts that the American role in World War I has been downplayed by both the British and the French. The British and French would not have won their war with the Germans without the Americans. In 1918, the French were spent as an offensive force and the British didn't have the resources. Thus, I applaud the author's -- a Brit -- conclusion. Most European writers about the war are not...
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You know what's coming when you discover this history of American armed forces in World War One was written by an Englishman. But you couldn't be more wrong. Firstly, this is not one of those minute-by-minute descriptive accounts of every military engagement which involved American troops. True, as he must, Mead devotes objective analyses to the major encounters involving Doughboys. However, he devotes the major portion...
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Nicely illustrated with 48 black-and-white historical photographs, Gary Mead's The Doughboys is the story of the more than three million men who comprised the American Expeditionary Force during the First World War. More than 50,000 of these men were killed in battle. Enhanced with maps and list tallies, the American involvement in 1917 and 1918 is carefully and accurately presented resulting in one of the best and most "reader...
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With the sparse titles available for WWI, this book tells a very good story. Two other books that cover the US entry and involvement in the great war (while great books as well) do not tell such a rich and full story as Mead's book. What I liked most is the way Mead describes the way the other allied nations tried to use the US troops to help their respective nations. It also reads like a mini bio of Gen Pershing, who...
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