The Doughboys: America and the First World War

Making a strong case that America's moral and material contributions were vital to the Allied war effort, Financial Times journalist Mead also argues convincingly that the performance of the American Expeditionary Force--comprised of young ""doughboys""--has been systematically underrated. Mead uses firsthand accounts to reconstruct the AEF's operational experiences, which largely reflected the problems of improvising a multimillion-man army in little over a year. He is particularly successful at portraying the frontline experience, with its mixture of trench and open warfare, presenting the doughboys as enthusiastic fighters who learned quickly when given a chance--and who were a good deal better at war than their officers, especially the generals. The problems the AEF faced in the Meuse-Argonne, according to Mead, in good part reflected the poor planning and hasty execution occasioned by General John J. Pershing's insistence on mounting the offensive in the immediate aftermath of Saint-Mihiel. Mead's proneness to take enlisted men's grievances and complaints at face value at times gives the book a strong flavor of studies from the 1930s, but his reiterated demonstrations of the AEF's virulent antiblack racism clearly distinguishes this book from such tainted sources. Less effective is the treatment of the war's wider issues: America's participation, for instance, becomes as much the consequence of French and British wire pulling as of German behaviors that posed objective short- and long-term threats to U.S. security. Nevertheless, readers looking for an up-to-date, single-volume account of American WWI troop experience should look no further. (Nov.)