GAFF : Blood in the Argonne (fülszöveg)
In this unique history of the "Lost Battalion" of World War I, Alan D. Gaff tells for the first time the story of the 77th Division from the perspective of the soldiers in the ranks.
On October 2, 1918, Maj. Charles W. Whittlesey led the 77th Division in a successful attack on German defenses in the Argonne Forest of northeastern France. His unit penetrated German lines to reach its assigned objective, but other units of the 77th could not keep pace and on October 3 Whittlesey's unit was surrounded by German forces. Without food for more than four days, the seven hundred soldiers held out, despite losing more than half their number, until being rescued on the night of October 7.
Whittlesey's unit was not a battalion nor was it ever "lost," but once a newspaper editor applied the term "lost battalion" to the episode, it stuck, coloring contemporary and successive accounts and elevating the soldiers to heroic status. In Blood in the Argonne, Gaff describes these soldiers in human terms, identifying them as New York City draftees and replacements from the western states who all came from a wide mix of ethnic backgrounds. Portraying the soldiers through their surviving memoirs, photographs, and papers, Gaff gives voice to the thoughts and feelings of the men who endured one of the most famous and compelling episodes of warfare in the twentieth century.
It has been said that it is harder to find the truth about what happened to the Lost Battalion than it was to find the battalion itself. Gaff overcomes this impediment by drawing from new, unimpeachable sources—such as sworn testimony by soldiers who survived the ordeal—to correct the myths and legends and to reveal what really happened in the Argonne Forest during early October 1918.
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
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