Fix Bayonets

Fictional account of WW I Battles of Belleau Wood, Soissons, Blanc Mont accurately described by the author who was a combatant.

This collection of WWI sketches of the Fifth Marine Regiment is “forthright, unsparing, deeply felt but unsentimental, and reads like a house afire” (The Wall Street Journal). From a soldier who was there, here are first-hand accounts of combat and camaraderie during the Great War. In a series of stories and illustrations, Capt. John W. Thomason captures the bravery and gallantry of the leathernecks fighting the Germans in France—putting readers in the trenches, facing the staccato of rifle fire, feeling the pangs of starvation, and the demoralizing fatigue. This collection is a tribute to the men who lived and breathed the motto “Semper Fidelis”, or “Always Faithful”, those who made the ultimate sacrifice and those who made it out alive. “Fix Bayonets! is in the company of Tolstoy and Crane and Bierce in the literature of war. Indeed, I should leave Crane out of it . . . The Red Badge of Courage cannot stand the fierce sun of Fix Bayonets!” —Laurence Stallings, American playwright and veteran “Remains the single finest account of Americans in battle in World War I.” —The United States World War One Centennial Commission “Thomason brings life and energy to his account—and the spirited drawings—of what he saw.” —The Wall Street Journal

The bayonet is an essential item of a soldier's kit even on today's modern hi-tech battlefield. This work examines the origins of this humble weapon and the 'cult of the bayonet' as espoused by the Russian General Alexander Suvorov who asserted that The bullet misses, the bayonet does not. The first bayonets appeared in France in the early 17th century and soon they were being used by every army in Europe. The author examines the spread of this simple weapon and how it led to fundamental changes being made in battlefield tactics. Over 300 years later, in the age of hi-tech warfare and weapons of mass destruction, the bayonet is still in service with armies around the world. British and US forces in Afghanistan regularly have their bayonets fixed. Fix Bayonets illustrates how tactics changed and the design of the weapon, although fundamentally the same, has evolved over the centuries.Much myth and legend surrounds the subject of bayonet charges and the weapon has become an icon of defiance and the determination to do whatever it takes to win. The author examines evidence for the reality of such actions. How did the ordinary soldier feel to be told 'fix bayonets'? John Norris draws on personal accounts of soldiers using bayonets in combat from the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars, various Colonial campaigns, through the World Wars, Falklands War and into the 21st century in Afghanistan. In so doing he explains the seemingly anachronistic survival of this simple weapon on the modern battlefield.

Facsimile reprint. Originally published 1925.

Excerpt from Fix Bayonets! They tell the tale of an American lady of notable good works, much esteemed by the French, who, at the end of June, 1918, visited one of the field-hospitals behind Degoutte's Sixth French Army. Degoutte was fighting on the face of the Marne salient, and the 2d American Division, then in action around the Bois de Belleau, northwest of Chateau Thierry, was under his orders. It happened that occasional casualties of the Marine Brigade of the 2d American Division, wounded toward the flank where De goutte's own horizon-blue infantry joined on, were picked up by French stretcher-bearers and evacuated to French hospitals. And this lady, 'looking downa long, crowded ward, saw on a pillow a face unlike the fiercely whiskered Gallic heads there displayed in rows. She went to it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.