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Stephen L. Harris

Rock of the Marne: The American Soldiers Who Turned the Tide Against the Kaiser in World War I

The American soldiers who turned he tide against the Kaiser in World War I.

Rock of the Marne: The American Soldiers Who Turned the Tide Against the Kaiser in World War I

The soldiers of the Third U.S. Infantry Division in World War I were outnumbered and inexperienced young men facing hardened veterans, but their actions proved to be a turning point during the last German offensive of the war.
In stopping three German divisions from crossing the Marne River, these heroic American soldiers blocked the road to Paris east of Château Thierry, helped save the French capital and, in doing so, played a key role in turning the tide of the war. The Allies then began a counteroffensive that drove the enemy back to the Hindenburg Line, and four months later the war was over.
Rock of the Marne follows the Third Division’s Sixth Brigade, which took the brunt of the German attack. The officers, many of them West Pointers and elite Ivy Leaguers, fighting side by side with enlisted men—city dwellers and country boys, cowboys and coal miners who came from every corner of America along with newly planted immigrants from Europe—answered their country’s call to duty.
The heroic stand of these soldiers earned for the Third Division its famous nom de guerre “Rock of the Marne.”

Duffy’s War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I

The legendary Fighting 69th took part in five major engagements during World War I. It served for almost 170 days, suffering almost one thousand killed and thousands of others wounded. This highly decorated unit was inspired by its chaplain, the famous Father Francis Duffy (whose statue stands in Times Square) and commanded by the future leader of the OSS (predecessor of the CIA), “Wild Bill” Donovan. One of its casualties was the poet Joyce Kilmer.

Harlem's Hell Fighters: The African-American 369th Infantry in World War I

When the United States entered World War I, thousands of African-American men volunteered to fight for a country that granted them only limited civil rights. Many from New York City joined the 15th N.Y. Infantry, a National Guard regiment later designated the 369th U.S. Infantry Regiment. Before the war was over, the unit would make military—and musical—history.

Duty, Honor, Privilege: New York’s Silk Stocking Regiment and the Breaking of the Hindenburg Line

In World War I, New York’s old Seventh Regiment, later the 107th Infantry, attacked the very center of the vaunted Hindenburg Line and lost more killed on a single day of fighting than any regiment in U.S. history.  On that day, four of its men earned Congressional Medals of Honor.
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