Trench Knives and Mustard Gas: With the 42nd Rainbow Division in France

Further Reading

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 199 Further Reading The 42nd Division’s constituency, the source of its personnel, was widespread, and perhaps that is most of the reason why the division inspired so many books. It may also have been the division’s popular name—the Rainbow. A lesser reason for the books was the “Fighting 69th,” the New York City regiment of the National Guard, which became the 165th Infantry, filled with well-known city figures who, if not celebrating the division , were celebrating the regiment that in its traditions reached back before the Civil War. It was understandable that every regiment in the 42nd Division , including the artillery regiments, enjoyed recitals of war service in book form. The 165th, the New Yorkers’ own, had a notable account by its chaplain, Father Francis P. Duffy, Father Duffy’s Story: A Tale of Humor and Heroism, of Life and Death with the Fighting Sixty-Ninth (Garden City, N.Y., 1919). For the 166th Infantry Regiment there is R. M. Cheseldine, Ohio in the Rainbow: Official Story of the 166th Infantry, 42nd Division, in the World War (Columbus: Heer, 1924). The 167th is in William H. Amerine, Alabama’s Own in France (New York: Eaton and Gettinger, 1919); the 168th in John H. Taber, The Story of the 168th Infantry, 2 vols. (Iowa City: Iowa State Historical Society, 1925). The 149th Field Artillery Regiment is in Charles G. MacArthur, A Bug’s Eye View of the War (n.p., 1919), republished as War Bugs (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1929). For the 150th Regiment see Elmer W. Sherwood’s memoir , Rainbow Hoosier (Indianapolis, 1919), and its forthcoming revision with the title of A Soldier in World War I, Robert H. Ferrell, ed. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2004). The 151st Regiment is best seen in the diary of its colonel, George E. Leach, published privately in 1923, reprinted as War Diary (Roanoke, Va.: Rainbow Division Veterans, 1962). A remarkable volume on the Rainbow Division is by the 149th Field Artillery Regiment colonel who replaced General 200 FURTHER READING Michael J. Lenihan as brigade commander in mid-October 1918, Henry J. Reilly, Americans All, The Rainbow at War: Official History of the 42nd Rainbow Division in the War (Columbus : Heer, 1936). General Reilly gathered everything he could find about the Rainbow, including individual testimonies (sometimes edited a bit). Beyond the above titles are perhaps thirty or forty more, by participants and admirers, the majority worth reading. The most recent is James J. Cooke, The Rainbow Division in the Great War (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994). For manuscript collections, the best resource is the U.S. Army Military History Institute, a part of the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Beginning in the 1970s, the Army sent thousands of questionnaires to World War I veterans to survey their service; the questionnaires brought in letters, diaries, and memoirs, all now gathered by divisions. In addition, the Carlisle Barracks records hold a long-maintained name file. The National Archives, with its collections in a new building in College Park, Maryland, possesses an enormous mass of official records bearing on the war, including papers of divisions , of which the 42nd’s holdings number several dozen boxes—perhaps fifteen feet of field orders, reports, and summaries of action. ...