Search results for ""author alexander f. barnes""

This two-volume series serves as a unique window to view the U.S. Army’s entry onto the world stage. Faced with entry into the “Great War,” the country called upon its military leaders to prepare the Army for combat. What follows is the in-depth story of how the American military and civilian leadership created and trained the Doughboys. In less than eighteen months, America’s Army would grow from its humble beginning to fielding over a million soldiers in the Meuse-Argonne campaign. Training and leading this force into battle against the Imperial German Army were some of the great names in American military history, including such stalwarts as John J. Pershing, George Marshall, and Leonard Wood. Here is the story of their perseverance and courage that ultimately defeated the enemy and helped to win the war.

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America's entry into World War I in 1917 was marked by the need to quickly build an Army and deploy it to France. Among the units deploying was the 29th "Blue and Gray" Division. Comprised of National Guardsmen from the Mid-Atlantic region, it quickly achieved a reputation as a top-notch outfit during the Meuse-Argonne campaign. This reputation was enhanced in World War II when the 29th was selected for the assault on German-occupied France in the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944. The courage and sacrifice shown by Guardsmen that day was later matched in bloody fighting at St Lô, Brest, and Julich. In the years that followed, the 29th would add to its lustrous reputation by becoming the Guard's first "Light" division and serving effectively as peacekeepers in the Balkans--at times only fifty miles from where World War I started. Using previously unpublished material and images from 1917 to 2001, here is their story.

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This two volume series serves as a unique window to view the U.S. Army’s entry onto the world stage. Faced with entry into the “Great War,” the country called upon its military leaders to prepare the Army for combat. What follows is the in-depth story of how the American military and civilian leadership created and trained the Doughboys. In less than eighteen months, America’s Army would grow from its humble beginning to fielding over a million soldiers in the Meuse-Argonne campaign. Training and leading this force into battle against the Imperial German Army were some of the great names in American military history, including such stalwarts as John J. Pershing, George Marshall, and Leonard Wood. Here is the story of their perseverance and courage that ultimately defeated the enemy and helped to win the war.

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This book covers the entire spectrum of military service during World War I. It gives examples, including many photographs, from almost every ethnic and national group in the United States during this time. Including draft registration, induction and training, stateside service, overseas service, combat, return home, and discharge, learn the history of America’s foreign-born soldiers during World War I and how they adapted to military service to become part of the successful American Expeditionary Forces.

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This book brings a unique perspective to this previously unexplored topic of desert combat uniforms and patches with the authors' extensive knowledge of military history combined with a total of over 50 years of military experience. In this extraordinary comprehensive reference book, they provide a detailed picture of desert uniforms, patches, and insignia worn by the US Armed Forces in combat from Desert Storm, through Somalia and in the more recent hard fought campaigns of Iraq and Afghanistan. The sum of the extensive information gathered here on Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard units that wore the desert uniform is not available anywhere else. Calling upon original source documents and extensive public and private collections, the authors have painstakingly assembled detailed research that will serve veterans, historians, collectors, and reenactors for years to come as the definitive reference on this topic.

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Baseball is the most American game. No other sporting contest so closely reflects the American psyche and culture. Its uniqueness comes from the fact that part of the game is clearly defined and unchanged since play first began, while another part of the game fluctuates and changes constantly. And if baseball is the truest American game, the Doughboys of the Great War were its most loyal proponents. By 1918, there were over four million of them: two million in France fighting in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and another two million in stateside training camps awaiting their turn to cross the Atlantic to the Western Front. Playing wherever they could find enough room to throw a ball, they brought the game with them into the front lines and then into the occupation of Germany. Sharing their military service, in combat and on the baseball diamond, were a number of famous professional ballplayers, managers, lawyers, politicians, and even an umpire.

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