Doughboy War: The American Expeditionary Force in World War I
Hallas, the publisher of a Connecticut newspaper and author of several previous books on military campaigns, including another World War I study, Squandered Victory: The American First Army at St. Mihiel, here compiles hundreds of personal accounts, diaries, and unit histories from the war. He limited the accounts to the infantry or artillery--those soldiers who slogged it out in the trenches and the mud. What emerges from reading the book is anything but the "glory" or "romance" of war. Instead, we find the horror of gas attacks and the endless slaughter by machine guns. The chapters are organized around the major battles in time-line fashion. Hallas has done a good job of showing what the war was really like for those men fighting it. Recommended for academic and especially public libraries.-Mark E. Ellis, Albany State Univ. Lib., GACopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.