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Preface William Johnson Frazer,my father,a native of Greenville,Alabama,served as an enlisted man in the 167th infantry and its predecessor,the 4thAlabama infantry, from 1916 to 1919.i knew aboutWill’s service before i could read.i carried his Purple heart medal to my first grade class and considered his wartime helmet and kit my playthings.At an early age i knew about the regiment’s advanced training on the mexican border and its campaigning in europe duringWorldWar i. i knew howWill—as i referred to him when i outgrew childhood—fought with that regiment in the rainbow division in France at baccarat, in Champagne, and atAisne-marne in the battle of Croix rouge Farm. hospitalized in Paris for wounds he incurred at Croix rouge,Will missed the fighting on the ourcq river but returned to the regiment in time for its battles at Saint-mihiel and the Côte de Châtillon. he also served in theArmy of occupation in Germany. Although my parents separated when i was seven,Will and i continued to share a common interest in the 167th infantry.it remained our strong bond,representing my father’s greatest life achievement and an inspiration for my own life.Will taught me an appreciation for military service,and some of my earliest memories are of thumbing through his copy of CaptainWilliam h. Amerine’s Alabama’s Own in France.1 Although considered the official regimental history, Amerine’s text is as fragmented asWill’s stories. Some scholarly articles consider the 167th, but the complete story of the regiment’s moves and battles in 1918 remains untold. As i grew older and read more, this started to bother me.Were omissions of the role of theAlabamians just a coincidence, or did they arise from more insidious causes? i considered a number of possible causes: prejudice against those mostly southern boys,some of whom may have been racist and wild;bias against uneducated people with a different manner of speaking; an attempt to cover up xii / Preface the number of killed and wounded due to mistakes and failure of officers and military higher-ups. i remained convinced that the 167th deserved more recognition than it received .one of the firstAmerican units committed to combat in France,the regiment served in a number of operations between February 1918 and war’s end. it moved constantly, as evidenced by the seventy-seven command posts on its station list. it served in bothAmerican and French corps and armies. in the July 26, 1918, battle at Croix rouge Farm—the 167th’s bloodiest battle and one of the hardestAmerican battles inWorldWar i—theAlabamians secured a victory that caused the Germans to retreat twelve miles and set into motion a series of crucial Allied successes.2 in that two-battalion bayonet assault, which included hand-to-hand fighting,the 167th captured,without artillery support,a fortified farmhouse and the huge area surrounding it. Croix rouge was just one of the 167th’s many successes.thev Corps commander later observed that without theAlabamians’ efforts at Côte de Châtillon, the advance by theAmerican army would have been impossible.3 the 167th represented a wide range of Alabamians, and it accrued most of the state’sWorldWar i deaths.Amerine lists 592 of the regiment’s officers and men as dead or missing,17 percent of the regiment’s original 3,677 individuals.4 of the 95,000Alabamians who served in the war, 814, or approximately 1 percent , were killed or died from wounds.5 the 167th accounted for 73 percent of theAlabamians who gave their lives. the 167th infantry was deployed for a tour of duty inWorldWar ii and another during the KoreanWar. elements of the regiment exist today in the Alabama national Guard, and some of its officers and men have served in iraq and Afghanistan. most recently, the 167th infantry battalion, consisting of over five hundred men, was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012. Although the 167th continues to perform valuable service, for now the significance of its 1918 tour remains unparalleled. the167th’sassociationwiththeflamboyantdouglasmacArthurfromthetime it joined the rainbow division in the summer of 1917 until the war’s end makes its scarcity in the war record even more puzzling.As a major in theWar department ,macArthur helped organize the rainbow division,and the 167th’s ColonelWilliam P. Screws served directly under him until the end of the war.As division chief of staff, macArthur occupied the traditional army role of “bad...

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