REVIEWS 



Tiirnficfli Engineers (France, igi/-ipiS-ipiQj. Dimni & Sons 

 Printing Co., Portland, Oreg. 



Perez Simmons, Alliambra, Calif., and Alfred H. Davies, Portland, 

 Oreg., the editors, and Shelby L. Davies, Portland, Oreg., the business 

 manager of the preliminary history of the men of the Twentieth En- 

 gineers, are to be congratulated upon their intimate log of these 

 battalions who have "drab and aching memories of monotonous drudg- 

 ery."' aimed at helping win the war. These men were not permitted to 

 take their stand in the front line trenches and face death because they 

 were needed to produce w^ood products for the A. E. F. and in .co- 

 operation with the French and British Forestry Corps. On November 

 11, 1918, the Twentieth Engineer organization in France comprised 

 290 officers and 11,586 men, with Forestry Service companies of 61 

 officers and 6,-122 men. There were also Engineer Service Battalions 

 attached to the Twentieth Engineers comprising 9 officers and 751 

 men. Quartermaster units engaged upon fuel wood projects in the 

 advanced section under the technical supervision of the C. & F. includ- 

 ed 146 officers and 10,700 men. These imits delivered the goods and 

 were perhaps the most efficiently organized of any technical branch 

 in the S. O. S. 



Perhaps it would have been more fitting if the names of H. H. 

 MacPherson and Wilfred A. Fair, the two men "killed in action" had 

 been placed on a special page in the front of the book. But it must be 

 recalled that at least 91 men were lost X)n the Tuscania which in 

 effect was a naval action in the face of the enemy and there is no 

 one who can say today what deeds of heroism were performed by one 

 or more of these men who went down before a German submarine. 

 Moreover, Corporal Charles J. Cumiskey, who "was recommended for 

 a Distinguished Service Medal as a posthumous reward for service in 

 serving the sick men in the (flu) epidemic which claimed him as a 

 victim after he had exhausted his strength in saving the lives of others," 

 certainly could take his place as one of the heroes of the Battalion. 

 The reviewer would be proud to subscribe to a monument to the men 

 of the Forestry Battalions who lost their lives in the Great War and 



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