To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918

Army, Aug 2008 by Baker, Samuel M

To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918. Edward G. Lengel. Henry Holt and Company. 493 pages; blackand-white photographs; maps; index; $32.50.

With only one American veteran of World War I remaining, and only a handful of any nationality throughout the world, the passing of the 90th anniversary of the armistice ending World War I this autumn may go largely unnoticed. Considered at the time to be "the war to end all wars," World War I was soon eclipsed by an even bloodier, total and far-reaching conflict barely a generation later.

Nevertheless, the final push by the United States and its allies, which ultimately ended the war, remains, in human terms, the largest and most costly single battle our nation has ever fought. With more than 1.2 million men and women in the combat zone and more than 26,000 dead and 95,700 wounded by the time of the armistice, figures from the Meuse-Argonne offensive easily surpass those of other more well-known battles.

Symptomatic of this lack of recognition of America's main contribution to the Allied war effort against imperial Germany is the astounding dearth of comprehensive accounts and scholarly examinations of the subject. Although a flurry of memoirs and other firsthand accounts of World War I and the Meuse-Argonne were published immediately following the war, very little has been written on the subject since the 1920s. The result is that today most people's only exposure to the war comes from Erich Maria Remarque's classic All Quiet on the Western Front-a semiautobiographical account by a German soldier.

Thus, Edward G. Lengel's To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 is a much anticipated and extremely welcome work on the subject. Using primary source material-including military records, diaries, letters and little-known memoirs written immediately following the war-To Conquer Hell is exhaustively researched. The level of detail is remarkable as Lengel moves beyond following American action on a broad scale and frequently describes the fighting on the company and battalion levels. Although this does occasionally result in confusion over the different units, it serves to put the battle on a more human scale. In the end, much of the fighting on the Western Front was done on just such a scale, by small groups of men fighting crater to crater, capturing one machine-gun nest or artillery emplacement at a time.

Frequently, Lengel goes into even closer detail and focuses on individual soldiers. It's here that To Conquer Hell is at its best. In recounting not just the exploits of famous veterans of the Meuse-Argonne, of which there are many, but also the actions of Medal of Honor recipients and other soldiers, Lengel gives the battle a human face and drives home the courage and heroism that were commonplace.

Throughout To Conquer Hell, Lengel never wavers in his admiration and praise of the typical Doughboy and how he progressed from an undertrained raw recruit to a hard-bitten fighter in just a few short weeks of fighting. The American military leadership, however, doesn't enjoy such immunity from criticism. Lengel is critical of almost every American general officer, but is especially scathing regarding Generals Pershing, Summerall and Bullard. He asserts that the American strategy of relentless frontal attack and an emphasis on the individual rifleman instead of machine guns, artillery and hand grenades led to unnecessary casualties. He describes Pershing as a "mediocre" battlefield general who was eventually replaced by the more deliberate and capable Lt. Gen. Hunter Liggett.

Although not entirely without merit, Lengel's criticism of Pershing and other American generals is excessive. The battle did last much longer than Pershing and his staff initially projected, but there were multiple factors outside of his control affecting the outcome. Most notably, severe rain and inclement weather slowed the American advance. Furthermore, although the battle was won at a heavy cost, a comparison of American and German casualty levels reveals that the Doughboys gave almost as good as they got from an entrenched and battle-hardened enemy. The very fact that the United States could better absorb such losses and continue a relentless attack helped force Germany's surrender. In the end, To Conquer Hell is a superb account with appeal to both amateur and professional historians. Decades overdue, Lengel's work fills a significant gap in American military history.

-Samuel M. Baker