Thunder and Flames: Americans in the Crucible of Combat, 1917-1918

by Edward G. Lengel

Overview

November 1917. The American troops were poorly trained, deficient in military equipment and doctrine, not remotely ready for armed conflict on a large scale—and they'd arrived on the Western front to help the French push back the Germans. The story of what happened next—the American Expeditionary Force's trial by fire on the brutal battlefields of France—is told in full for the first time in Thunder and Flames.

Where history has given us some perspective on the individual battles of the period—at Cantigny, Chateau Thierry, Belleau Wood, the Marne River, Soissons, and little-known Fismette—they appear here as part of a larger series of interconnected operations, all conducted by Americans new to the lethal killing fields of World War I and guided by the battle-tested French. Following the AEF from their initial landing to their emergence as an independent army in late September 1918, this book presents a complex picture of how, learning warfare on the fly, sometimes with devastating consequences, the American force played a critical role in blunting and then rolling back the German army's drive toward Paris. The picture that emerges is at once sweeping in scope and rich in detail, with firsthand testimony conjuring the real mud and blood of the combat that Edward Lengel so vividly describes. Official reports and documents provide the strategic and historical context for these ground-level accounts, from the perspective of the Germans as well as the Americans and French.

Battle by battle, Thunder and Flames reveals the cost of the inadequacies in U.S. training, equipment, logistics, intelligence, and command, along with the rifts in the Franco-American military marriage. But it also shows how, by trial and error, through luck and ingenuity, the AEF swiftly became the independent fighting force of General John "Blackjack" Pershing's long-held dream—its divisions ultimately among the most combat-effective military forces to see the war through.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700620845
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	04/03/2015
Series:	Modern War Studies
Pages:	470
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Edward G. Lengel is Professor and Director of the Papers of George Washington Project at the University of Virginia. He is the author of To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 and General George Washington: A Military Life, among other works.

Table of Contents

Preface

A Note on Maps

Introduction: Approaches to Study of the AEF at War, 1917-1918

1. Setting the Stage

2. Into the Line: November 1917-April 1918

3. Cantigny: May 1918

4. Chateau-thierry: May 1918

5. The 2d Division Enters the Lines: May 31-June 5, 1918

6. Into the Woods: June 6, 1918

7. "Sporting Soldiers": Belleau Wood, June 7-8, 1918

8. "We Want the Damn Woods": Belleau Wood, June 9-10, 1918

9. "No Idea of Tactical Principles": Belleau Wood, June 11-12, 1918

10. Gas and Exhaustion: Belleau Wood, June 13-15, 1918

11. Enter the US Army: Belleau Wood, June 16-21, 1918

12. Finishing the Job: June 22-July 2, 1918

13. Rock of the Marne: The Marne River Defense, July 15-17, 1918

14. "Deal the Enemy a Crushing Blow": Soissons, July 18-22, 1918

15. Reducing the Marne Salient: US Troops in the Aisne-Marne Campaign, July 18-August 6, 1918

16. Tragedy at Fismette: Travails of the 28th Division, August 1918

Conclusion: The Road to Saint-Mihiel, September 1918

Notes

Bibliography

Index

An Illustration gallery follows page 155

Editorial Reviews

"Meticulously researched and well written, Lengel’s Thunder and Flames succeeds in clarifying how the AEF performed while under French command. Valuable and highly commendable."—H-Net Reviews

"Lengel writes well, and mixes analysis of policy, tactics, and doctrine with battle narrative, often seasoned by first hand accounts, and reminds us that the failures in France led to intense study of tactics, logistics, and mobilization of men and industry which stood the nation in good stead in a later war. This is a very good read for anyone interested in the AEF or the Great War."—NYMAS Review

"Lengel’s book is valuable because he draws heavily upon German and French military records as well as those of the U.S. Army. And he concludes that much of what earlier historians have written about key events does not hold up."Washington Times

"Lengel highlights the Americans’ sense of saving the day at the last minute, their frequent dismissal of the poilus as burned-out, prone to panic and reluctant to fight. But using French records, Lengel establishes the French as first-rate combatants, skilled alike in minor tactics and larger combined-arms operations."—Military History Quarterly

"Lengel has done an admirable job cutting through the decades of legend and half-truths surrounding the American Expeditionary Forces in the First World War. Students of the war will owe him a great debt for this comprehensive and effective book."—Michael S. Neiberg, author of Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I

"Lengel employs meticulous research and vivid, fast-paced prose to dissect American soldiers’ ‘baptism by fire’ on the Western Front. It is a great read and a major scholarly contribution—no one will ever again be able to claim that America was ‘barely bloodied’ by World War I."—Jennifer D. Keene, author, Doughboys, the Great War and the Remaking of America

From the Publisher