With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the battle for Montfaucon

With Their Bare Hands traces the fate of the US 79th Division – men drafted off the streets of Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia – from boot camp in Maryland through the final years of World War I, focusing on their most famous engagement: the attack on Montfaucon, the most heavily fortified part of the German Line, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918. Using the 79th as a window into the American Army as a whole, Gene Fax examines its mistakes and triumphs, the tactics of its commander General John J. Pershing, and how the lessons it learned during the Great War helped it to fight World War II. Fax makes some startling judgments, on the role of future Army Chief-of-Staff, Colonel George C. Marshall; whether the Montfaucon battle – had it followed the plan – could have shortened the war; and if Pershing was justified in ordering his troops to attack right up to the moment of the Armistice. Drawing upon original documents, including orders, field messages, and the letters and memoirs of the soldiers themselves, Fax tells the engrossing story of the 79th Division’s bloody involvement in the final months of World War I.

Table of Contents:
Prologue Introduction Chapter 1: Setting the Stage Chapter 2: War Comes to Baltimore Chapter 3:Creating an Army Chapter 4: What Pershing Should Have Known Chapter 5: Training – The Army at War with Itself Chapter 6: Americans Reach the Battlefield Chapter 7: First Army Takes the Field Chapter 8: Concentration Chapter 9: The Germans Chapter 10: Over the Top and Up the Hill, September 26 Chapter 11: Left, Right, and Straight Ahead, September 26 Chapter 12: "Montfaucon Taken", September 27 Chapter 13: Bois de Beuge and Nantillois, September 28 Chapter 14: Bois 250 and Madeleine Farm, September 29–30 Chapter 15: Interlude – Troyon Sector, October 1–28 Chapter 16: Borne de Cornouiller and the Heights of the Meuse, October 29–November 10 Chapter 15: Armistice to Home, November 11, 1918–June 4, 1919 Epilogue Appendices Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
During his 45 years in the policy research industry, Gene Fax has written more than 200 research reports, policy papers, and competitive proposals and has edited hundreds more. An engineering graduate of MIT, he spent eight years conducting research and tactical studies in anti-submarine warfare for the US Navy. He is the co-founder of The Cadmus Group, Inc., which specializes in program development, evaluation, and policy research in environmental protection, energy efficiency, and sustainable development. He lives in New York, USA In preparation for With Their Bare Hands, Gene spent seventeen years researching archives in Washington, Baltimore, Paris, West Point, and Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He also researched this most bloody and fiercely contested battle on the battlefield itself.

Review :
Based on meticulous research Gene Fax’s fascinating account of the poorly trained 79th Division in the Meuse-Argonne offensive tells us much about how inexperience, poor communications and inadequate support compelled that division’s courageous soldiers to fight “with their bare hands.” Fax tells the amazing story of how the American Expeditionary Force and the 79th Division overcame many errors and false ideas and paid a high price learning how to fight effectively. The men of the AEF’s 79th Division were warriors for the working day: civilians in uniform. Their training was minimal, their cohesion limited, their tactics defying four years of Western Front experience. Yet the 79th’s first assignment was to take one of the best-defended position in the Argonne Forest. It became a compound disaster. But the division’s subsequent recovery is a case study in American soldiers’ often-demonstrated high learning curve and the AEF’s contribution to victory in 1918. Gene Fax’s new history of the 79th Division is a masterful study of the long and difficult road to victory. Ordered to capture the heavily fortified high-ground of Montfaucon on the first day of Meuse-Argonne, the doughboys of 79th Division-fresh from Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia-proved themselves as brave and tenacious soldiers. With Their Bare Hands is a fine testament to their courage under fire and a compelling work of history by Gene Fax In “With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the Battle for Montfaucon” Gene Fax masterfully recounts, studies and dissects [the 79th Division's] nightmarish struggle. ... Mr. Fax has plumbed a variety of source materials—original memoranda, reports by both sides, daily journals and correspondence—to transport the reader along with the soldiers of the 79th through the crucible of an almost impossible mission. ... “With Their Bare Hands” is an unvarnished examination of all corners of the battlefield, filled with failures and setbacks, courage and fear, noble sacrifice and, in many places, unnecessary casualties. Mr. Fax considers the battle on its own terms and in its own time, allowing the reader an unfiltered view of combat and confusion and command decisions—both wise and unwise.