Sunday, October 22, 2017

Doughboy Basics: How Many Battles Did the AEF Fight?


Below is a map I use for my battlefield tours to show the distribution of the main American operations in the war.  It has its genesis in the infamous WWI PBS documentary of the 1990s, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, in which two American historians, David Kennedy and Jay Winter, separately misinformed the viewers that "the United States had only fought one battle" in the war. For two decades I have waged a campaign to correct the damage they did.

What is shown on the map are what I think to be the ten most significant battles of the AEF.  I does not include ALL operations. These battles were waged by American formations of division size or greater and resulted in American victories. Not shown, for example, are the battles of the segregated regiments that fought separately with the French (mostly in the Champagne) and the aborted offensive out of the reduced St. Mihiel Salient that ended with the Armistice.  Sorry, but the only way to view the map is to enlarge it. Please feel free to print it out or save it to your hard drive if you wish.

Click on Image to Enlarge


11 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Can someone advise which battle they claimed was the only "one"?

    And, any details about which episode and a time reference for where they do this?

    Thanks.

    Paul

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    1. Hi Paul, I'm sure they were referring to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

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    2. Meuse-Argonne.

      I believe Mik is talking about the Great War series that PBS partnered with the BBC on about twenty years ago...not the one AE did six months ago.

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    3. Thanks for that info. I know I have seen parts of the 90's PBS series but a long time ago so I have ordered a copy from my library to do a refresher.

      I too am keeping a copy and printing the map. It should be helpful as a future reference.

      Thanks.

      Paul

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  3. Thank you Mike, A useful tool for those of us on this side of the pond who like to recount the AEF achievements o the Western Front.

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  4. That's a superb map. Very, very usefukl.

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  5. A minor nit to pick: probably rolled into your "3", but we should remember that before they moved west to participate in the drive to the Vesle, the 42nd fought a bloody defensive action east of Reims under the Lion of Champagne, General Henri Joseph Eugene Gourand.

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    1. Greetings John,

      As you know the the series of operations collectively called the Second Battle of the Marne is quite complicated. I would include the action of the Rainbow Division Division in the initial defensive phase of the battle. You probably know that one of the figures atop the Navarin Farm Monument is an American soldiers.

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    2. That being said, I probably should have included some notation on the map about that action.

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