The World War I Memoirs of Robert P. Patterson: A Captain in the Great War

Edited by J. Garry Clifford ’64, University of Tennessee Press, 2012. Robert Patterson, under secretary and secretary of war from 1940-1947, recounts his formative experience as a young captain in the American Expeditionary Forces during the first World War. In portraying realities of life for soldiers fighting on the Western Front, he ties them to the larger U.S. experience of the war, making connections that would inform his efforts to manage U.S. mobilization during World War II. In his preface, Clifford, a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, places Patterson and his actions in a historical context and illuminates how how Patterson applied lessons he learned on the ground to the decisions he would make in Washington.