| Title | : | Yesterday There Was Glory: With the 4th Division, A.E.F., in World War I |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1574416936 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781574416930 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 464 |
| Publication | : | Published September 14, 2017 |
Yesterday There Was Glory is an unpretentious account of men at war, from training camp to the occupation of Germany. It includes graphic descriptions of the battlefield, of shell fire, gas attacks, and lice. “Between the attacks the men would lay in their wet holes and pray for relief. But no relief came,” Howell remembers. He recalls much more than the horrors of combat, however, chronicling the diverse collection of heroes, professional warriors, shirkers, and braggarts that made up the American Expeditionary Forces.
Howell’s account preserves the flavor of army life with conversations and banter in soldier language, including the uncensored doughboy profanity often heard but seldom recorded.
Yesterday There Was Glory: With the 4th Division, A.E.F., in World War I Reviews
-
"YESTERDAY THERE WAS GLORY: With the 4th Division, A.E.F., in World War I" was Gerald Andrew Howell's memoir of his experiences as a soldier with the 4th Infantry Division during World War I. He had completed the manuscript for this memoir in October 1946 and sent it to several publishing companies, hoping that it would be published. At that time, with World War II having ended a little more than a year earlier, there was no interest in Howell's manuscript. Howell had spent a decade toiling away at his manuscript. He meant it to be an honest, unvarnished account of the ordinary Doughboy's combat experiences and that of his comrades. Sadly, a little more than 15 months after Howell's manuscript had been rejected for publication in 1946, he was dead. His manuscript was forgotten in the intervening decades until Jeffrey L. Patrick, a librarian in Missouri, found Howell's manuscript, read it, edited it, and helped to ensure its belated publication in 2017.
"YESTERDAY THERE WAS GLORY" is a wartime memoir that vividly conveys in many respects what was the common lot of the U.S. Army enlistee or draftee who was sent overseas to fight in France in 1918 and --- for those who survived the war --- would later be part of the U.S. Army of Occupation (i.e., the U.S. Third Army) in Luxembourg and the areas around Coblenz, Germany in the Rhineland.
Howell was inducted into the U.S. Army in March 1918 and for the next 2 months received stateside training. He became a part of the 39th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division. The 4th Division in toto would arrive in France on May 24, 1918 and for the next couple of months, would receive more intensive combat training. The baptism of fire for the Division would take place during the Aisne-Marne Campaign on temporary detachment with a French Army unit, playing its part in blunting the final German offensive of the war and serving as a spearhead in Marshal Foch's subsequent counter-offensive (better known as the Second Battle of the Marne).
Howell's memoir is further enlivened through the inclusion of a number of fellow soldiers in his regiment with whom he formed a tight bond. They are as follows:
"Private Jeffrey O'Hara ... from a small town in Ohio.
Private William Stevens ... garage mechanic from Belleview, Illinois.
Private Salvatore Vinelli ... [an Italian American - Powell had used a less flattering word in describing Vinelli] from New Haven, Connecticut.
Private Morris Belkin ... Jewish boy from New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Private Alonzo Brizee ... rubber salesman from Naugatuck, Connecticut.
Private Frank X. McGuire ... plumber from Danbury, Connecticut."
The voices of these men (as best as Howell could recollect them, for he admits he didn't keep a diary during his wartime service) give an extra human dimension to the memoir.
After the 4th Infantry Division was rested following the Allied victory in the Second Battle of the Marne, the division would go on to form part of the American First Army under the AEF's commander, General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, seeing action in the Battle of St. Mihiel and going on to fight for close to a month in the bloody Battle of the Meuse-Argonne.
With the coming of the Armistice (November 11, 1918), the 4th Infantry Division received orders to march into Luxembourg and Germany (in Coblenz and several smaller cities and hamlets along the Rhine River). The 4th would arrive in Germany early in December and would remain there well into 1919 when another unit arrived to take its place. Howell provides the reader with some interesting impressions he gathered from his travels in Germany and interactions with ordinary Germans (usually done discreetly because of Pershing's Non-Fraternization Order).
Howell summed up his Army experiences as follows ---
"I became as experienced, I'll admit, as any of my fellow soldats in the art of souvenir hunting and similar occupations. On special occasions, too, I saw the mademoiselles of Armentieres and elsewhere. Also I never missed a handout from the Red Cross or Y.M.C.A., Jewish Welfare Board or Salvation Army if I could help it. But no matter how I tried, I was never quite successful in my efforts to get back to Paris or the rear to join the Service of Supply (S.O.S.) where I'm told they had it very soft." (Howell also admits to equally liking and disliking many of the officers whom he had to deal with throughout his time in the Army.)
I very much enjoyed reading "YESTERDAY THERE WAS GLORY" and would recommend it to anyone wanting to better understand what the ordinary Doughboy experience in World War I was like. There are also many wonderful photographs and a few illustrations featuring the 4th Infantry Division during the time Howell was in its ranks.