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    First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America's First Battle of World War I
    First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America's First Battle of World War I
    First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America's First Battle of World War I
    Audiobook14 hours

    First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America's First Battle of World War I

    Written by Matthew J. Davenport

    Narrated by Mel Foster

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    At first light on Tuesday, May 28th, 1918, waves of American riflemen from the U.S. Army's 1st Division climbed from their trenches, charged across the shell-scarred French dirt of no-man's-land, and captured the hilltop village of Cantigny from the grip of the German Army. Those who survived the enemy machine-gun fire and hand-to-hand fighting held on for the next two days and nights in shallow foxholes under the sting of mustard gas and crushing steel of artillery fire.

    Thirteen months after the United States entered World War I, these 3,500 soldiers became the first “doughboys” to enter the fight. The operation, the first American attack ever supported by tanks, airplanes, and modern artillery, was ordered by the leader of America's forces in Europe, General John “Black Jack” Pershing, and planned by a young staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel George C. Marshall, who would fill the lead role in World War II twenty-six years later.

    Drawing on the letters, diaries, and reports by the men themselves, Matthew J. Davenport's First Over There tells the inspiring, untold story of these soldiers and their journey to victory on the Western Front in the Battle of Cantigny.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 29, 2016
    ISBN9781515985228
    First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America's First Battle of World War I
    Author

    Matthew J. Davenport

    Matthew J. Davenport's first book, First Over There, a finalist for the 2015 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, was acclaimed as “a brilliant work for every library” by Library Journal and was heralded by Pulitzer-Prize winning historian James McPherson as "military history at its best." Davenport has been a contributing writer for the Wall Street Journal Book Review and salon.com and is a member of the Authors Guild. A native of Missouri and a former prosecutor, he practices law in North Carolina where he lives with his wife and two sons.

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    Reviews for First Over There

    4.5/5

    12 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Excellent historical narrative. Well performed and well written. I am thankful that there were men willing to die to keep America free.
    • 5/5
      This is an intensely detailed book that describes the USA expeditionary force's first major WWI engagement, Cantigny. The author provides some basic map and unit positions which are helpful in following the battle as it progresses. The injuries and deaths (both German and US) he describes are horrific. It is humbling to realize that these were real people. This comes across vividly in Davenport's account of the action. A very good read if you are a military history buff.
    • 5/5
      An in depth look at America's first major engagement in World War 1 at Catigny, France. America stands on the sidelines during the first years of the war finally drawn in by German U-boat attacks and the Zimmerman cable. Davenport does a great job putting you in the trenches, feeling the mortar shells and the ever present immediacy of death. I teach History in college and students and Americans in general know very little about our countries' efforts like who "Black" Jack Pershing was and what it was really like to fight in the trenches. This book helps fill our collective Amnesia about the war.