Duty, Honor, Privilege: New York's Silk Stocking Reiment and the Breaking of the Hindenburg Line

Duty, Honor, Privilege: New York's Silk Stocking Reiment and the Breaking of the Hindenburg Line by Harris, Stephen L.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781574882018.

On September 29, 1918, a regiment of volunteers from New York State, many of them rich boys from Manhattan, attacked the famed Hindenburg Line, one of the strongest defenseive systems ever devised. In the tradition of the Union Armys heroic assaults on Confederate entrenchments during the closing battles of the Civil War, the doughboys hurled themselves at the center of a desperate but still powerful army. At a frightful cost, they broke the enemy and, just as their Union forebears had done, helped bring a terrible war to a close. Interweaving extracts from letters, diaries, and previously published accounts, DUTY, HONOR, PRIVILEGE follows the patrician 7th New York Regiment from the spring of 1917 when war is declared, through its merger with the plebian 1st regiment from Upstate New York (forming the 107th), to training with the British in France aand the heroic attack on the Hindenburg Line. Finally, we witness their triumphant welcome-home parade, still believed to be the biggest parade in New York City history.