Doughboys in Flanders

Posted on January 14, 2023 by

18 Comments

In this episode we look at the men of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) who fought in Flanders, from Ypres to the Scheldt River, in 1918. What were American troops doing in Belgium away from the main US sector and what remains of their battlefields more than a century later?

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BATTLEFIELD MAP:

PODCAST EXTRAS:

Category: American WW1 Battlefields, Flanders, Podcast Episode, WW1 History

18 Comments on “Doughboys in Flanders”

  1. Very well done, Ive been hoping for your take on the AEF for 2 years and I have not been disappointed. I sent a note on the Buy me a Coffee site and wanted to pass on a 2 page excerpt from my grandfathers informal regimental history A Buck Private with the 80th. There is more on their time with the British if you are interested but generally very complimentary on there training from the British NCOs and lots of humor on learning each others language

    Best Regards

    Joseph K Wallace New London NH USA Telephone/Text message ; 760-267-8337

    [IMG_4355.jpeg][IMG_4356.jpeg]

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      • Thank you so much. My grandfather fought in the 30th division. It is so rare to hear and read about the doughboys attached to the British and French armies. As another person said, Borrowed Soldiers is a fabulous book for understanding how much the Americans benefited from fighting with and learning from the British and Australians.

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  2. Excellent. Very well done. I had 3 grt uncles in the AEF. I guess one problem was understanding some of the Brit accents. Our very rural, low population county had one man KIA on Nov. 11 1918. Our first man killed in the war , Martin Erickson, died at Cantigny. Out of the 52 men lost during the war, 2/3 died from the Flu.

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  3. Thanks so much for this episode. Extremely well done and enlightening. As a student of the US 30th Division’s and US II Corps’ battles, this was a great addition to what’s out there. (I also enjoyed the accompanying posed photo of the 119th Infantry’s Lewis gunner; one can easily tell it is posed because no drum magazine is fitted!) Both Americans and British can–and should–recognize and value the shared efforts of the “Borrowed Soldiers” of the US II Corps alongside their British, Australian and Canadian peers, and what each group of allies learned from one another.

    Please keep up the great work, Paul; I am a big fan of “The Old Front Line.” Cheers.

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  4. Great episode. Love all your work but thanks for bringing some AEF stories. We know very little about WW1 in America.

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  7. I’m curious about that statistic that some 20% of the AEF was Jewish. I know there had been high levels of Jewish immigration to the US in the decades before WW1, but 20% for the AEF seems high. Can you point me to your source?

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    • Hi Neil – I’m not sure I said that. I went back to the transcript of the episode and this is what I said:

      “There’s a grave here of an unknown soldier, but he’s Jewish. Now, if he’s unknown, how do they know he’s Jewish? And what was done in the 20s was that a decision was made to look at the percentage of the American army that was Jewish and commemorate in the cemeteries where there were unknown soldiers buried there, the same percentage with Stars of David rather than crosses, which is kind of a strange thing to do, because no one would ever know what the religion of these unknown soldiers could possibly be.”

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