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Modern War Studies
Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Experience
It is impossible to reproduce the state of mind of the men who waged war in 1917 and 1918," Edward Coffman wrote in "The War to End All Wars." In "Doughboys on the Great War" the voices of thousands of servicemen say otherwise. The majority of soldiers from the American Expeditionary Forces returned from Europe in 1919. Where many were simply asked for basic data, veterans from four states Utah, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Virginia were given questionnaires soliciting additional information and "remarks." Drawing on these questionnaires, completed while memories were still fresh, this book presents a chorus of soldiers' voices speaking directly of the expectations, motivations, and experiences as infantrymen on the Western Front in World War I.
What was it like to kill or maim German soldiers? To see friends killed or maimed by the enemy? To return home after experiencing such violence? Again and again, soldiers wrestle with questions like these, putting into words what only they can tell. They also reflect on why they volunteered, why they fought, what their training was, and how ill-prepared they were for what they found overseas. They describe how they interacted with the civilian populations in England and France, how they saw the rewards and frustrations of occupation duty when they desperately wanted to go home, and perhaps most significantly what it all added up to in the end. Together their responses create a vivid and nuanced group portrait of the soldiers who fought with the American Expeditionary Forces on the battlefields of Aisne-Marne, Argonne Forest, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, the Marne, Metz, Meuse-Argonne, St. Mihiel, Sedan, and Verdun during the First World War.
The picture that emerges is often at odds with the popular notion of the disillusioned doughboy. Though hardened and harrowed by combat, the veteran heard here is for the most part proud of his service, service undertaken for duty, honor, and country. In short, a hundred years later, the doughboy once more speaks in his own true voice.
What was it like to kill or maim German soldiers? To see friends killed or maimed by the enemy? To return home after experiencing such violence? Again and again, soldiers wrestle with questions like these, putting into words what only they can tell. They also reflect on why they volunteered, why they fought, what their training was, and how ill-prepared they were for what they found overseas. They describe how they interacted with the civilian populations in England and France, how they saw the rewards and frustrations of occupation duty when they desperately wanted to go home, and perhaps most significantly what it all added up to in the end. Together their responses create a vivid and nuanced group portrait of the soldiers who fought with the American Expeditionary Forces on the battlefields of Aisne-Marne, Argonne Forest, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, the Marne, Metz, Meuse-Argonne, St. Mihiel, Sedan, and Verdun during the First World War.
The picture that emerges is often at odds with the popular notion of the disillusioned doughboy. Though hardened and harrowed by combat, the veteran heard here is for the most part proud of his service, service undertaken for duty, honor, and country. In short, a hundred years later, the doughboy once more speaks in his own true voice.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published September 19, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 4, 2017
This was an interesting and somewhat informative book, though academically poor.
The premise is interesting and I liked Gutièrrez hooking the reader by informing us that the last surviving American WW1 veteran died in 2011 thus leaving us without any direct first account source of the war. It's a great introduction to the (almost) never before dealt with sources of a questionnaire answered by returned soldiers in four American states in the years 1919-1923. It opens up to a great point of memory and how statements may change the further they move from an event, which is important when dealing with sources in the subject of history.
My first beef is his lack concept explanation. "Doughboys" is an American term. It's in the title, and it would barely take a sentence to explain, yet we get none. (Could've also used the info that the "huns" referred to int the many quotes, where the Germans. I don't believe this is common knowledge that you can expect of the reader.)
There is a whole chapter on why people joined the war or willingly went with conscription, but never deals with why the US in 1917 sounds like Europe before the war, with the old ideas of war as an honorable act when Europe has long since been disillusioned on that front. Why the soldiers are being trained in old-fashioned army battles rather that the trench warfare they will encounter. This is probably to do with Isolationism, but Gutierrèz never deals with that angle, and it leaves the reader questioning and wanting.
He claims the book is a sociokulturel examination of the effect of war upon an individual (paraphrased). It is barely so. It's mostly just quote dump upon quote dump.
This may be due to the amount of source material he uses. He uses both diaries, letters, and memoirs, upon the several thousand answered questionnaires (he's unclear about the exact number) and he attempts to boil all this down to less than 180 pages. He's not very succesful.
He very often doesn't comment on the statements he dumps on us an he fails to engage critically with his source material. He informs us that the ideas of nationalism and patriotism penetrated every inch of society yet never considers how that might have affected the soldiers' answers, were they influenced by what society expected them to say? He also informs us that censoring of letters home was common, delting much negative thought so they wouldn't impact morale at home. How did experience with censoring any bitterness affect their answers to a non-anonymous questionnaire sent out by the government? He mentions that many did not answer at all for fear of what the answering might lead to, but despite they extremely low percentage of completed answers (3% in Virginia?), he frequently uses these questionnaires to make sweeping generalizations of all the soldiers based on the few who answered.
He also suffers from a lot of repetition despite the minimal space given to his own writing, and at times contradicts himself.
A point of his own that he very much tries to get about is that the idea of a 'Lost Generation' connected to WW1 is a myth created through literature and poetry. He very much fails to form any proper arguments despite the fact that he seems very enthusiastic to get this across. He ends up replacing what he sees as a extremely oversimplified view created through literature with his own oversimplified view. He also isn't clear on the difference between European and American experience of the war in regards to this point.
His conclusion has no connection to the body of the book. It is about 17 pages long and filled with new information and new quote dumps. It seems like a chapter on its own rather than a conclusion. He spend ca. four pages on the subject of race during the war. It's quite interesting. Much more interesting that the less than four pages he spends on race in the actual body of the book. (In this regard I'd like to jump back to his failure of being critical of his sources - in those less than four pages some white soldiers claim that only black soldiers take "souvenirs" like ears from German soldiers, and at one solder claim that he tries to stop them. Gutièrrez takes this point and runs with it with no critical thoughts whatsoever.)
His biggest crime, though, I feel is found in his short dealing with psychological trauma. He refers to this trauma as "self-induced" and find that the connection between PTSD and war is a mistake, that it's practically to exploit the diagnosis, and that it's a great shame that the concept has been so closely connected to war. He finds the connection between shell-shock and PTSD to be no more than a fad, simply done in circles because it is ”in vogue”. He seems to think that drawing this connection is the same as saying that the whole generation was traumatized though he doesn't explain where he got that impression. He also states that US soldiers continued with their life after the war because they ”did not allow” the trauma to define them, leaving you with the gross implication that anyone needing help was themselves to blame.
Like all his other point it lack any theory or proper arguments, merely left standing as a weak statement, with seemingly great passion behind it. (Though in this case he does take a gross rute of using some out of context quotes from random psychiatrists.)
in his dealing with the sources you almost get the feeling that he falls into the same trap that he repeatedly states the soldiers did when they signed up for the war - he romanticizes, seemingly characterizing the concepts of patriotism and duty as positive with little to no nuance.
The book seems like a first draft. It barely gets above the level of describing (very poorly, he simply gives us pictures of the questionnaires and is very vague about the number answered, willfully skipping the percentage answered out of the number of veterans) and quoting uncritically. He makes little to no use use of literature and theories relevant to the concepts he's dealing with.
It might be used as a stepping stone for anyone who wants to deal with the source material, but the book itself is not with much.
The premise is interesting and I liked Gutièrrez hooking the reader by informing us that the last surviving American WW1 veteran died in 2011 thus leaving us without any direct first account source of the war. It's a great introduction to the (almost) never before dealt with sources of a questionnaire answered by returned soldiers in four American states in the years 1919-1923. It opens up to a great point of memory and how statements may change the further they move from an event, which is important when dealing with sources in the subject of history.
My first beef is his lack concept explanation. "Doughboys" is an American term. It's in the title, and it would barely take a sentence to explain, yet we get none. (Could've also used the info that the "huns" referred to int the many quotes, where the Germans. I don't believe this is common knowledge that you can expect of the reader.)
There is a whole chapter on why people joined the war or willingly went with conscription, but never deals with why the US in 1917 sounds like Europe before the war, with the old ideas of war as an honorable act when Europe has long since been disillusioned on that front. Why the soldiers are being trained in old-fashioned army battles rather that the trench warfare they will encounter. This is probably to do with Isolationism, but Gutierrèz never deals with that angle, and it leaves the reader questioning and wanting.
He claims the book is a sociokulturel examination of the effect of war upon an individual (paraphrased). It is barely so. It's mostly just quote dump upon quote dump.
This may be due to the amount of source material he uses. He uses both diaries, letters, and memoirs, upon the several thousand answered questionnaires (he's unclear about the exact number) and he attempts to boil all this down to less than 180 pages. He's not very succesful.
He very often doesn't comment on the statements he dumps on us an he fails to engage critically with his source material. He informs us that the ideas of nationalism and patriotism penetrated every inch of society yet never considers how that might have affected the soldiers' answers, were they influenced by what society expected them to say? He also informs us that censoring of letters home was common, delting much negative thought so they wouldn't impact morale at home. How did experience with censoring any bitterness affect their answers to a non-anonymous questionnaire sent out by the government? He mentions that many did not answer at all for fear of what the answering might lead to, but despite they extremely low percentage of completed answers (3% in Virginia?), he frequently uses these questionnaires to make sweeping generalizations of all the soldiers based on the few who answered.
He also suffers from a lot of repetition despite the minimal space given to his own writing, and at times contradicts himself.
A point of his own that he very much tries to get about is that the idea of a 'Lost Generation' connected to WW1 is a myth created through literature and poetry. He very much fails to form any proper arguments despite the fact that he seems very enthusiastic to get this across. He ends up replacing what he sees as a extremely oversimplified view created through literature with his own oversimplified view. He also isn't clear on the difference between European and American experience of the war in regards to this point.
His conclusion has no connection to the body of the book. It is about 17 pages long and filled with new information and new quote dumps. It seems like a chapter on its own rather than a conclusion. He spend ca. four pages on the subject of race during the war. It's quite interesting. Much more interesting that the less than four pages he spends on race in the actual body of the book. (In this regard I'd like to jump back to his failure of being critical of his sources - in those less than four pages some white soldiers claim that only black soldiers take "souvenirs" like ears from German soldiers, and at one solder claim that he tries to stop them. Gutièrrez takes this point and runs with it with no critical thoughts whatsoever.)
His biggest crime, though, I feel is found in his short dealing with psychological trauma. He refers to this trauma as "self-induced" and find that the connection between PTSD and war is a mistake, that it's practically to exploit the diagnosis, and that it's a great shame that the concept has been so closely connected to war. He finds the connection between shell-shock and PTSD to be no more than a fad, simply done in circles because it is ”in vogue”. He seems to think that drawing this connection is the same as saying that the whole generation was traumatized though he doesn't explain where he got that impression. He also states that US soldiers continued with their life after the war because they ”did not allow” the trauma to define them, leaving you with the gross implication that anyone needing help was themselves to blame.
Like all his other point it lack any theory or proper arguments, merely left standing as a weak statement, with seemingly great passion behind it. (Though in this case he does take a gross rute of using some out of context quotes from random psychiatrists.)
in his dealing with the sources you almost get the feeling that he falls into the same trap that he repeatedly states the soldiers did when they signed up for the war - he romanticizes, seemingly characterizing the concepts of patriotism and duty as positive with little to no nuance.
The book seems like a first draft. It barely gets above the level of describing (very poorly, he simply gives us pictures of the questionnaires and is very vague about the number answered, willfully skipping the percentage answered out of the number of veterans) and quoting uncritically. He makes little to no use use of literature and theories relevant to the concepts he's dealing with.
It might be used as a stepping stone for anyone who wants to deal with the source material, but the book itself is not with much.
June 18, 2017
The work is substantially based on questionnaires filled out by returning veterans of the Great War in 1919. This is valuable source material. Gutièrrez works through it methodically, but without inspiration. The work is a bit too much of a data dump, surveying all the obvious topics of doughboy life and death. The material begs for a reading that is both more critical and more empathetic. I do agree with the author's general thesis that the doughboys lived in "an age when honor mattered a great deal to a man" (2).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews