1918: The Last Act

In the mud and snow and tacking Ice of the trenches of the Western Front in early 1918, the Allied armies faced a last enormous attack by the Great Army which they were hard put to resist. Millions of their best men had been killed and wounded in 3(apple) years of war, their home fronts were nearing exhaustion, their troops approaching the breaking point. Then came the American Expeditionary Force under General ""Black Jack"" Pershing to bolster the line and bring new hope to the trench soldiers. Beginning with that savage winter, this excellent little book recreates the last months of World War I. The battles themselves, with the grinding tanks, chattering machine guns, hand-to-hand beyond slaughter, form its center. But the little things are included too -- the songs the soldiers sang, the jokes they told, the way they reacted to the arrival of the Americans. St. Quentia, Lys, Rell Wood, the second Battle of the Marne -- the great counter-attacks against the Germans in which U.S. soldiers and Marines played such a gallant and vital part then the final collapse of the German Army, accompanied by a parallel collapse on the home front -- these are the stories which accurately and vividly recapture one of the most brutal military campaigns of all time. There is extra value in the moving photographs which leave no doubt as to how gruesome and destructive trench warfare could be. A first rate job.