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A review by cassieyorke
Sons of Freedom: The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I by Geoffrey Wawro
5.0
It's hard to find good information about the United States in the First World War. You might be looking at that sentence like "what's she talking about?!" unless you've actually gone to research the topic yourself. It's only then you realize, "Wait a second...this was just a hundred years ago. Why is specific information so hard to find?"
That's when I stumbled on Wawro's book "Sons of Freedom". He tells his story well - how America jumped into a war it couldn't have been less prepared for, how the Army and National Guard had to find a way to combine into an effective force, how our doctrines and psychology of war had changed very little since the end of the Civil War. From there he describes the situation in Europe, something barely remembered or acknowledged today - the Allies shattered and exhausted, falling apart on the battlefield. Wawro quotes letters and communiques from British and French commanders, politicians, and journalists, everyone wondering if the Americans would arrive before everything collapsed. It's so hard to find documentaries - or popular history of any kind - that remembers the American role in this war as anything other than a footnote, but Wawro constantly shows how excited the Allies were to get Americans on the field - and how much American involvement changed everything, not just militarily but also psychologically.
Where the book really changed everything for me was in the sheer amount of helpful details about the AEF. Online research on this stuff got me *nowhere*. Half of the battles and big events seem like they're forgotten entirely, and the resources you find are hopelessly vague. So I was constantly impressed with how helpful this book is. Forgotten battles like Soissons and Montfaucon are in there in riveting detail, the author providing abundant information about units and order of battle - but also colorful (and often horrific) anecdotes about what it was really like on the ground. For an author like me, hoping to write a novel set within the AEF in 1918, books like "Sons of Freedom" are absolutely essential.
The US might have gotten into the war at the eleventh hour, but they turned the tide. Not just their manpower but their insane bravery helped to deliver Europe out of the most horrific disaster in human history up to that point. The American battles were just as horrific as any that had come before, their casualties just as high. I honestly had no clue, and neither do most people. There's no reason what the US went through in 1918 should be forgotten in favor of anything else that happened in that horrific war - and thankfully narratives like this exist to help us remember.
That's when I stumbled on Wawro's book "Sons of Freedom". He tells his story well - how America jumped into a war it couldn't have been less prepared for, how the Army and National Guard had to find a way to combine into an effective force, how our doctrines and psychology of war had changed very little since the end of the Civil War. From there he describes the situation in Europe, something barely remembered or acknowledged today - the Allies shattered and exhausted, falling apart on the battlefield. Wawro quotes letters and communiques from British and French commanders, politicians, and journalists, everyone wondering if the Americans would arrive before everything collapsed. It's so hard to find documentaries - or popular history of any kind - that remembers the American role in this war as anything other than a footnote, but Wawro constantly shows how excited the Allies were to get Americans on the field - and how much American involvement changed everything, not just militarily but also psychologically.
Where the book really changed everything for me was in the sheer amount of helpful details about the AEF. Online research on this stuff got me *nowhere*. Half of the battles and big events seem like they're forgotten entirely, and the resources you find are hopelessly vague. So I was constantly impressed with how helpful this book is. Forgotten battles like Soissons and Montfaucon are in there in riveting detail, the author providing abundant information about units and order of battle - but also colorful (and often horrific) anecdotes about what it was really like on the ground. For an author like me, hoping to write a novel set within the AEF in 1918, books like "Sons of Freedom" are absolutely essential.
The US might have gotten into the war at the eleventh hour, but they turned the tide. Not just their manpower but their insane bravery helped to deliver Europe out of the most horrific disaster in human history up to that point. The American battles were just as horrific as any that had come before, their casualties just as high. I honestly had no clue, and neither do most people. There's no reason what the US went through in 1918 should be forgotten in favor of anything else that happened in that horrific war - and thankfully narratives like this exist to help us remember.