Members of the Rainbow Division, 42nd Infantry discuss what it was like to participate in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April of 1945.

Formed in 1851 by Irish immigrants, the Fighting Sixty-Ninth has served with distinction since the Civil War. This is a complete, illustrated history of the regiment's service in the Irish Brigade and the Rainbow Division. Functioning as the 1st Regiment, Irish Brigade, 2nd Corps, Army of the Potomac throughout the Civil War, the regiment made history at Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and Appomatox. According to legend, an exasperated General Jackson cursed them as part of "that damn brigade." Functioning as the 165th Infantry, 42nd Division (Rainbow Division) throughout World War I, the regiment helped turn back the last German offensive, counterattacked at the Ourq river, spearheaded one of Pershing's pincers at St. Mihiel, and helped break the Hindenburg Line in the Argonne Forest. Today, the regiment is known as 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry (Mechanized), New York Army National Guard.

Send the Alabamians recounts the story of the 167th Infantry Regiment of the WWI Rainbow Division from their recruitment to their valiant service on the bloody fields of eastern France in the climactic final months of World War I. To mark the centenary of World War I, Send the Alabamians tells the remarkable story of a division of Alabama recruits whose service Douglas MacArthur observed had not “been surpassed in military history.” The book borrows its title from a quip by American General Edward H. Plummer who commanded the young men during the inauspicious early days of their service. Impressed with their ferocity and esprit de corps but exasperated by their rambunctiousness, Plummer reportedly exclaimed: In time of war, send me all the Alabamians you can get, but in time of peace, for Lord’s sake, send them to somebody else! The ferocity of the Alabamians, so apt to get them in trouble at home, proved invaluable in the field. At the climactic Battle of Croix Rouge, the hot-blooded 167th exhibited unflinching valor and, in the face of machine guns, artillery shells, and poison gas, sustained casualty rates over 50 percent to dislodge and repel the deeply entrenched and heavily armed enemy. Relying on extensive primary sources such as journals, letters, and military reports, Frazer draws a vivid picture of the individual soldiers who served in this division, so often overlooked but critical to the war’s success. After Gettysburg, the Battle of Croix Rouge is the most significant military engagement to involve Alabama soldiers in the state’s history. Families and genealogists will value the full roster of the 167th that accompanies the text. Richly researched yet grippingly readable, Nimrod T. Frazer’s Send the Alabamians will delight those interested in WWI, the World Wars, Alabama history, or southern military history in general. Historians of the war, regimental historians, military history aficionados, and those interested in previously unexplored facets of Alabama history will prize this unique volume as well.

Trench Knives and Mustard Gas: With the 42nd Rainbow Division in France is the memoir of a soldier on the front lines of World War I. Hugh Thompson’s memoirs of his time in France demonstrate a keen eye for detail and a penchant for philosophy. Thompson combines the fast-paced prose of the jazz age and the passionate observations of an engaged intellectual. Originally serialized in the Chattanooga Times in 1934, this newly edited version allows the author to tell his story to a whole new generation. Thomspon takes the reader on an intense journey with the 168th regiment of the 42nd Rainbow Division through the villages, towns, battlefields, and hospitals of France. He points out the sights along the way and has a knack for compressing a complex reflection on life into a single sentence. Severely wounded in his arm and back, Thompson reassesses his situation after visiting comrades who lost arms or legs. “I went back to my tent,” he recalls, “almost ashamed of my own lucky wounds.” Homesick for the States during his first months overseas, Thompson discovers that his platoon has become his second family. He becomes increasingly estranged from his old one and accustomed to the war’s distortion of time and values. Friendships form and disappear in the hour it takes a stranger to die. When he is wounded, Germans serve as his stretcher bearers. And things never happen when they take place, but later when one learns of them from a letter or from a soldier passing through. War does not destroy the physical man. It leads to strange experiences. Trench Knives and Mustard Gas brings the front lines of World War I, the Great War, to the hearts and minds of its readers. The book is an indispensable guide into the past, told by a man who was there.

These accounts by 42nd Rainbow Division P.O.W.'s from both World Wars provide stark descriptions of battles preceding capture as well as experiences in the Lagers in which they were imprisoned.