The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War [Hardcover]

James Carl Nelson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0312551002 | ISBN-13: 978-0312551001 | Edition: First Edition

“Not since Flags of Our Fathers—no, make that, Not since Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory—no, make that, Not ever—has an American nonfiction writer reached into history and produced a testament of young men in terrible battle with the stateliness, the mastery of cadence, the truthfulness and the muted heartbreak of James Carl Nelson in The Remains of Company D. I wish I’d had the honor of working on this book with him. But then, he didn’t need me.”---Ron Powers, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Flags of Our Fathers and author of Mark Twain: A Life

“A beautifully crafted anthem to doomed American youth, James Carl Nelson’s The Remains of Company D is a must-read for World War I enthusiasts and those looking for a damn good war book.”---Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Longest Winter and The Bedford Boys

“War is always hell, but the unprecedented carnage on World War I’s Western Front was the stuff of nightmares. The American boys of Company D were on the front lines, and James Carl Nelson has combined previously unpublished first-person accounts, prodigious research, and vivid, you-are-there prose into one of the great books on the subject. This is a Band of Brothers for World War I.”---James Donovan, author of A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn—the Last Great Battle of the American West

“James Carl Nelson’s book is a great contribution to AEF history. He has done an incredible amount of research in order to convey the experience of one group of doughboys...and to tell their story through their own words.….He reminds us that these long-forgotten battles of ninety years ago were as hard fought as any before or since, and that our country was well served by the young men who fought them. Get this book. It puts a very human face on the experience of Americans on the Western Front.”---Dr. Paul Herbert, executive director of the Cantigny First Division Foundation

Haunted by an ancestor’s tale of near death on a distant battlefield, James Carl Nelson set out in pursuit of the scraps of memory of his grandfather’s small infantry unit. Years of travel across the world led to the retrieval of unpublished personal papers, obscure memoirs, and communications from numerous Doughboys as well as original interviews of the descendents of his grandfather’s comrades in arms. The result is a compelling tale of battle rooted in new primary sources, and one man’s search for his grandfather’s legacy in a horrifying maelstrom that is today poorly understood and nearly forgotten.

The Remains of Company D follows the members of Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment, United States First Division, from enlistment to combat to the effort to recover their remains, focusing on the three major battles at Cantigny, Soissons, and in the Meuse-Argonne and the effect these horrific battles had on the men. 

This is an important and powerful tale of the different destinies, personalities, and motivations of the men in Company D and a timeless portrayal of men at war.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nelson's grandfather fought in WWI. Wounded in 1917, he survived until 1993 but said little about his experience. Inheriting only his grandfather's dog tag, a Purple Heart and a few postcards, Nelson, a former staff writer for the Miami Herald, resolved to tell his story and that of his 250-man company. Using these scraps, old newspaper accounts, government archives, secondary sources and a good deal of imagination, Nelson delivers biographies of dozens of young men, poor and middle-class, swept into the American Expeditionary Force and shipped to France, where General Pershing, anxious to prove the superiority of American fighting men (and convinced that trench warfare was for sissies), flung them at German lines, where they performed magnificently but suffered terrible casualties. Despite a dearth of primary material (no diaries turned up), Nelson delivers a creditable performance, bringing to life an America of 90 years ago in which many eagerly answered their president's call, but others (Nelson's grandfather among them) went about their business until drafted and then dutifully joined the carnage. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Oct.)
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Review

“Not since Flags of Our Fathers—no, make that, Not since Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory—no, make that, Not ever—has an American nonfiction writer reached into history and produced a testament of young men in terrible battle with the stateliness, the mastery of cadence, the truthfulness and the muted heartbreak of James Carl Nelson in The Remains of Company D. I wish I’d had the honor of working on this book with him. But then, he didn’t need me.”---Ron Powers, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Flags of Our Fathers and author of Mark Twain: A Life

“A beautifully crafted anthem to doomed American youth, James Carl Nelson’s The Remains of Company D is a must-read for World War I enthusiasts and those looking for a damn good war book.”---Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Longest Winter and The Bedford Boys

“War is always hell, but the unprecedented carnage on World War I’s Western Front was the stuff of nightmares. The American boys of Company D were on the front lines, and James Carl Nelson has combined previously unpublished first-person accounts, prodigious research, and vivid, you-are-there prose into one of the great books on the subject. This is a Band of Brothers for World War I.”---James Donovan, author of A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn—the Last Great Battle of the American West

“James Carl Nelson’s book is a great contribution to AEF history. He has done an incredible amount of research in order to convey the experience of one group of doughboys...and to tell their story through their own words.….He reminds us that these long-forgotten battles of ninety years ago were as hard fought as any before or since, and that our country was well served by the young men who fought them. Get this book. It puts a very human face on the experience of Americans on the Western Front.”---Dr. Paul Herbert, executive director of the Cantigny First Division Foundation

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (October 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312551002
• ISBN-13: 978-0312551001
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #644,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

He loved cars, hated dogs, and was middling about kids. He was something of a pool shark, even well into his eighties spry enough to lay himself out across the green velvet of his table in the basement and pocket the eight ball with a nifty carom. He was a painter by trade, a curmudgeon by choice, a Swedish immigrant by happenstance, and a poor violin player by lack of talent.
And, oh, yes - he was shot in France as he raced across a field way back in 1918, and very nearly died.
All of the above tell you something about my grandfather, the simply named John Nelson, but it was that last bit that seized my attention from an early age, when I became smitten with all things military, and was astounded to learn that the old man I called Grandpa Nelson had a war story of his own.
And the story was simple as well: At some point, and for some reason, my grandfather had been shot in the left side by a machine gun bullet, laid out on the field overnight, and then was "saved" by two exotic stretcher-bearers from some exotic French Colonial unit.
I dreamed about this; I appropriated the story for retelling during furious backyard battles that went on summer after summer in the Chicago suburb in which I was raised (yes, I'm that old).
And when I was old enough, when I had children of my own and a better sense of the context surrounding John Nelson's near-death experience, I went looking for what else I could find of his story, seized myself by a need to understand what he had been doing in the Army, and in that field.
He was limited in words, Old School all the way, and not one whose memory could be prodded into a kindly retelling of The Good Old Days. So it wasn't until after he died in 1993, at the age of 101, that I sought out his story, my initial poking into the ashes of his life producing some medical records that indicated he had suffered much more from that wound than he ever let on, and as well a muster roll for the unit in which he served - Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division.
I initially hoped simply that by researching the names on that roll - Captain Soren C. Sorensen, Private Rollin Livick, Sergeant Willard S. Storms - I might be able to tell the story of the circumstances that had left him face-down and bleeding into the soil of France.
But with some early good luck in obtaining family records and other material, I realized for the first time that John Nelson's story had not occurred in a vacuum, that every name on that roll had his own story, and that - it may sound sappy, but I mean this - perhaps I had been chosen to tell the cumulative tale of Company D in the Great War.
Slowly, over years of teeth-pulling and searching for needles in haystacks, the story did emerge, or as much of it as I could find. And it was an important story, I thought and still think, a story of unheralded sacrifice and tragedy and glory and heroism by otherwise ordinary young men. And it's a story we should all know.
It's a story of the war's fallen, who were rolled into shell holes or dragged their mortally wounded bodies off to die alone in a clump of bushes, and it's a story of the war's survivors, who -- most battered physically, if not emotionally - came home singly to pick up their lives as best they could, while the nation swept the war under the rug and moved on, with an almost audible sigh and a whispered, "What was that all about?"
The sacrifices of the dead and living would be overshadowed before too long by the sacrifices and heroism of The Greatest Generation, while these old doughboys would simply fade away in the last half of the 20th Century, most of their individual stories and experiences ignored in the books that did try to explain America's short-lived role in the murderous First World War, but which resorted to a collective and unnamed "they" in the retelling.
And so, beginning with the small tale of the woebegone John Nelson, I saw it as my privilege and honor to smoke out the stories within the story of Company D of the 28th Infantry Regiment, and by extension the individual stories of every doughboy who inhaled gas or died anonymously in the trenches at Cantigny, or the scarred landscape of the Argonne, or while chasing after his life on the wide and open fields of Soissons.
Old soldiers may fade away, but their stories need not. The Remains of Company D was written for those who died and are now forgotten, and for all of the old soldiers who somehow lived through that hell on the Western Front - first and foremost, my grandfather.

****************

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story for all wars!, August 28, 2009

By 

James W. Durney (Tampa Bay area) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War (Hardcover)

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We suffer from a lack of good World War I books. The majority of books, like the war, have thousands of men going "over the top" into massed machine guns. This is not a criticism of the authors but a statement of fact. Years ago, when they were inexpensive, I bought several "how to" books written by British officers for American officers. Reading them, I came to understand that No Man's Land was a varied place with multiple tactical problems. Most of the war was much more than a massed attack destined to end badly.
The author's grandfather fought in the First Division in 1918 on the Western Front. What follows is not a history of the AEF or the First Division. This is a history of Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment and what combat in 1918 was like. Working with a combination of first person accounts, standard histories and newspapers the author constructs his story. We move from the front, to the rear, to home and back again quickly. Sometimes this can be jarring but it presents a more complete story, giving us a fuller understanding of why and how of things happening to D Company at the front.
The maps are good, most at one mile to the inch, and allow the reader to gain an indertanding of where the men are. In addition to the war, we get a look at the American midwest during the war and life almost 100 years ago.
The chapters "In the Interest of Humanity" and "To the End of Your Days" are worth the price of the book. This is powerful stuff dealing with loss and the impact of war on the following years. The men who fought are gone now. This book is an excellent tribute to them and the price they paid making "the world safe for democracy."

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A deep look at the lives of soldiers in a mostly forgotten war, September 1, 2009

By 

S. Lawrenz "Lendorien" (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War (Hardcover)

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Synopsis:
The Remains of Company D, by James Nelson, is an account of Company D of the 28th United States Infantry Regiment and its ordeal on the Western Front in war torn France towards the end of World War 1. As the grandson of one of the soldiers of Company D, Nelson sought to find details of his grandfather's hidden life after his grandfather's death in 1993. What he found was the lives of dozens of men who lived and died in the trenches and life stories as profound as that of his grandfather.

Nelson writes chronologically, first detailing his relationship with his Grandfather, a World War 1 veteran, then moving on to the world of the early 20th century and the actions of Company D in the war. He details some of the contacts he made and the research he did as he discovered the lives of his grandfather's comrades at arms. The book uses written accounts from memoirs, letters and newspaper reports to tell the very personal stories from before and after the war of many of the men of Company D who fought and died in France.

Review
World War 1 books are relatively rare these days. Overshadowed by the war that the children of World War 1 veterans fought, it's a mostly forgotten war that many seem only to know of because of the mere fact that to have 2nd World War, there must have been a first one.

Nelson makes a profound statement in this book that really caught my attention, that it is through those that did NOT survive the war that the most information about it can be found. Those who died left behind grieving families who saved what mementos and treasures of their loved ones that they could. It's those things that make up a lot of the sources of this book and are referenced in its title. Those who survived often did not keep their history or talk about it.

I can completely understand this statement. As a grandson of a World War 2 vet who died when I was young, I know the mystery that comes with having a loved one who had a profound experience in war and yet never shared it. Thankfully, unlike Nelson, I have letters and diaries from that time which let me get to know him.

I've done some similar research of my own as well so I know full well the immense amount of work Nelson has put into this book. His research is outstanding. He has tied together countless newspaper articles, personal memoirs, recollections of relatives, letters, and divisional reports to give a sometimes day by day account of men who fought and died in France. He details their backgrounds in the United States and their fates, both before and after the war, and includes how those fates affected their families. An amazing level of research that undoubtedly took many years.

He tends to jump around a bit as he writes, introducing a soldier and giving their background before launching into their story. It can be disconcerting at times, but it works well overall. Nelson is a solid writer, and he achieves his goal, making the men of Company people into men again, not just statistics. His vivid and descriptive writing style results in a very poignant and often sad account. War is always tragic.

Nelson's search for his Grandfather's history has great benefits to those interested in history. He's taken a forgotten time and place and combined pieces from all over to it back to life, pulling the lives of the men who lived there all into one place where the rest of us can share them.

To an extent, The Remains of Company D does for the First World War what "Band of Brothers" did for the second. The focus and style is different, but the intent is the same, to show the lives of men who fought and died in war halfway across the world. In this, Remains does an admirable job. But where Band celebrated the fighting and indomitable spirit of the men it followed, Remains mourns the pointlessness and brutality of their deaths.

The one observation I do have about this book is that the depth of what is going on will be beyond most readers. World War 1 is truly a forgotten war. The average reader does not know much about it, much less why it was fought or individual fronts and battles. Nelson does speak about the war and its causes only in passing, certainly not enough to give the average reader a good picture of the background and what was going on. Nelson's detailed and well made maps help, but for anyone not familiar with the Great War, I strongly suggest, at the very least, reading the Wikipedia article about World War 1 before delving into this book. Doing so will greatly enhance the reader's understanding of the situation these men were in.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and a strongly suggest it to any reader who's interested in the social history of war, or war history in general. This is an impactful work that a lot of readers will enjoy and get a lot out of.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesing and revealing, but not quite engaging, September 1, 2009

By 

Joshua Senecal (Livermore, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War (Hardcover)

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This book tells, as best as the author is able to determine, the story of Company D, 28th Infantry regiment, in World War I. The author, James Nelson, began to work on collecting material when he learned a little more about his grandfather's service in Company D and desired to know more about the history of it, as it is part of his grandfather's history.

Books of this sort are valuable. Those of us who have never experienced war or been affected by it (I fall in that category) need to know what others did, the sacrifices they made, and the experiences they had. War is truly a horrific thing, and those of us who have no knowledge of it (or think we do, based solely on movies we've seen) need to appreciate these people who go and fight when called upon to do so.

Generally, I enjoyed the book. It's fascinating to see how people from all backgrounds and walks of life answered their country's call and served. The book is formed from as much historical record the author could find (letters, military records, interviews, etc.), with the author's comments and speculation in some places. As to be expected, there is extensive quoting from these sources.

Personally, while I found the book to be interesting and worth the read, I didn't find it engaging. There are some books that you pick up, start reading, and just can't put down. This unfortunately isn't one of those. It comes close, but does fall short.

One of the reasons may be that although Company D fought in more than one engagement, the author is in my opinion excessively fixated on one event: the crossing of the Paris-Soissons road. It looms over everything. This fixation is understandable--the fighting was fierce, and this is where the author's grandfather was wounded--but it distracts from the telling of Company D's experiences. As evidenced by the book itself, there are many who fought and were wounded in many places and circumstances.

The other reason may be that at times the author's quoting of the soldier's writings felt overdone. Having multiple quotes about, say, the horrible ways in which doughboys were dying and being wounded during shelling gets repetitive, even if the quotes are from different sources and experiences.

All in all, I recommend giving this book a read. You'll have a greater appreciation for the sacrifices that were made during the Great War, and for all other soldiers in other wars who have had similar experiences.