In this meticulously researched and thoroughly readable volume Mitchell Yockelson has written a truly definitive account of the actions of the American II Corps in World War I. Doctor Yockelson's more than twenty years of experience as an archivist at the National Archives has uniquely equipped him for the task of bringing to light the too-long-neglected experiences of the National Guard's 27th and 30th Divisions of II Corps while deployed with and under the command of the British Fourth Army in Flanders and the Somme. Yockelson has plumbed deeply not only the primary source materials in such American repositories as the National Archives, the U.S. Army Military History Institute, and the Library of Congress, but also those materials archived in overseas repositories such as the Imperial War Museum, the National Army Museum, the Liddle Hart Centre for Military Archives, and the Australian War Museum. Enriching the text are five appendixes describing the organization of the American staff, the orders of battle of the Allied and German forces, and the comparative strengths of the American and British divisions; nine detailed maps; thirty photographs; fifty-five pages of notes and bibliography; and a comprehensive index with subheadings. I highly recommend this book both to World War I historians and to amateur and professional military historians with a more general interest in that war. Truly, a tour de force.
