AT THE FRONT
When Americans endeavor to estimate the value of their work on the
lines of battle they are bound to see and should be glad in justice
to admit that our actual fighting effort was small indeed compared
with the vast and bloody and appalling struggles in which our war
associates had almost exhausted themselves. They are bound to see that
its importance in the final decision was incommensurate with the amount
of what they actually did on the fighting lines, although not, perhaps,
with the extent of the nation’s preparation. It fell to America to add
the deciding strength after years of battle in which the combatants had
been so nearly equal that their armies on the Western front had swayed
back and forth over a zone only a few miles in width.
Nevertheless, no just summing up of the last year of the war can fail
to award to America the credit of having been the final deciding
factor, a credit that belongs alike to the valor and size of her
armies, the ability of their officers and the overwhelming might
and zeal with which the whole nation had gathered itself up for the
delivery of the heaviest blows in its power to give. The rapidly
growing evidence of how powerful those blows would be, as shown by our
enormous preparations in France and the war spirit and war activities
in the United States, had convinced the enemy that unless he won
decisive results by the autumn of 1918 there was no possibility of his
final victory. And therefore he put forth his supreme efforts during
the spring and summer of that year. The enormous scale upon which this
country entered upon and carried through its preparations for war both
at home and in France sent to high figures the money cost of the war
to the United States, but it made immeasurable savings in human life,
for anything less would have meant more months of war, even more bloody
than the preceding years.
The enemy’s determination to win a decisive victory in the spring
or summer of 1918 before, he believed, it would be possible for the
American Army to make itself felt at the front forced England and
France and Italy to make what would have been, without our help, their
last stand. They had reached the limit of what they could do and were
fighting “with their backs to the wall.” Exhausted by nearly four years
of bitter struggle they were almost but not quite strong enough to
withstand the final, determined, desperate rush of the foe for which he
was gathering together all his powers. And American forces gave the aid
that was needed to drive him back.
Of high importance among the things that America did to help bring
about decision between the battle lines was her share in the final
agreement upon unified control of the associated armies in France.
It was the voice of the United States Government through its
representation in the Supreme War Council that carried the day for this
measure and led to the appointment in March, 1918, of Marshal Foch as
Generalissimo of the Allied and Associated Armies, an action which
military authorities are agreed should have been taken long before and
which, when finally brought about, was fruitful of the best results.
The aim of the War Department, as carried out by General Pershing,
Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, was to
make the American Army in France an integral force, able to take
the offensive and to carry on its own operations, and with that end
in view he shaped its training and planned for its use at the front
after its arrival in France. While he offered and furnished whatever
troops Marshal Foch desired for use at any part of the battle line,
General Pershing refused to distribute all his forces, insisted upon
building them up as they became ready for the front into a distinctive
American Army--at the signing of the armistice the First, Second and
Third American Armies had been thus created--and by the time the
American forces had begun to make themselves felt at the front he had
substituted American methods of training, finding them better adapted
to his men than the European, and in his last battle, the decisive
action in the Meuse-Argonne region, his staff work was all American.
The plan of training carried out, except in the later months when the
demand for troops at the front was immediate and urgent, allowed each
division after its arrival in France one month for instruction in small
units, a second month of experience by battalions in the more quiet
trench sectors and a third month of training as complete divisions.
When the great German offensive began in Picardy in March, 1918,
General Pershing had four divisions ready for the front and offered
to Marshal Foch whatever America had in men or materials that he could
use. None of the Allied commanders believed that men so recently from
civilian life could be used effectively in battle and it was only
General Pershing’s knowledge of the character of his men, his insistent
faith that they would make good under any trial of their mettle and
his willingness to pledge his honor for their behavior under fire that
induced Marshal Foch to accept his offer.
Brilliantly did these men justify their commander’s faith in them in
this and in all the later battles in which they took part. In all,
1,390,000 were in action against the enemy. Less than two years before
they had been clerks, farmers, brokers, tailors, authors, lawyers,
teachers, small shop keepers, dishwashers, newspaper men, artists,
waiters, barbers, laborers, with no thought of ever being soldiers.
Their education, thoughts, environment, whole life, had been aloof
from military affairs. They had been trained at high speed, in the
shortest possible time, four or five months, and sometimes less, having
taken the place of the year or more formerly thought necessary. But it
was American troops that stopped the enemy at Chateau-Thierry and at
Belleau Wood in June, when the Germans were making a determined drive
for Paris and had reached their nearest approach to the French capital.
They fought the enemy’s best guard troops, drove them back, took many
prisoners and held the captured positions. Because of their valor and
success the Wood of Belleau will be known hereafter and to history as
“the Wood of the American Marines,” although other American troops
fought with the Marines in that brilliant action. In the pushing
back of the Marne salient in July, into which General Pershing, with
absolute faith in the dependability of his men, threw all of his troops
who had had any sort of training, American soldiers shared the place of
honor at the front of the advance with seasoned French troops. Through
two weeks of stubborn fighting the French and the Americans advanced
shoulder to shoulder and steadily drove the enemy, who until that time
had been just as steadily advancing, back to the Vesle and completed
the object of reducing the salient.
Early in August the First American Army was organized under General
Pershing’s personal command and took charge of a distinct American
sector which stretched at first from Port sur Seille to a point
opposite Verdun and was afterwards extended across the Meuse to the
Argonne Forest. For the operation planned against the formidable
enemy forces in front of him General Pershing assembled and molded
together troops and material, all the elements of a great modern army,
transporting the 600,000 troops mostly by night. The battle of St.
Mihiel, for which he had thus prepared, began on September 12th, and
this first offensive of the American First Army was a signal success.
The Germans were driven steadily backward, with more than twice the
losses of our own troops and the loss of much war material, and the
American lines were established in a position to threaten Metz.
Two American divisions operating with the British forces at the end
of September and early in October held the place of honor in the
offensive that smashed the Hindenburg line, which had been considered
impregnable, at the village of St. Vendhuile. In the face of the
fiercest artillery and machine gun fire these troops, supported by
the British, broke through, held on and carried forward the advance,
capturing many prisoners. Two other divisions, assisting the French at
Rheims in October, one of them under fire for the first time, conquered
complicated defense works, repulsed heavy counter attacks, swept back
the enemy’s persistent defense, took positions the Germans had held
since 1914 and drove them behind the Aisne river.
The battle of St. Mihiel was a prelude to the Meuse-Argonne offensive
and was undertaken in order to free the American right flank from
danger. Its success enabled General Pershing to begin preparations at
once for the famous movement that, more than any other single factor,
brought the war to its sudden end. No military forces had ever before
tackled the Argonne Forest. French officers did not believe it could
be taken. With the exception of St. Mihiel, the German front line,
from Switzerland to a point a little east of Rheims, was still intact.
The purpose of the American offensive was to cut the enemy’s lines
of communication by the railroads passing through Mézières and Sedan
and thus strangle his armies. The attack began on September 26 and
continued through three phases until the signing of the armistice.
Twenty-one American divisions were engaged in it, of which two had
never before been under fire and three others had barely been in touch
with the front, but of these their commander said that they quickly
became as good as the best. Eight of the divisions were returned to
the front for second participation, after only a few days rest at the
rear. In all, forty German divisions were used against the American
advance, among them being many picked regiments, the best the German
army contained, seasoned fighters who had been in the war from the
start. They brought to the defense of their important stronghold an
enormous accumulation of artillery and machine guns and the knowledge
that they must repulse the offensive and save their communications or
give up their entire purpose and confess themselves beaten. German
troops did no more desperate and determined fighting in the war than in
this engagement.
[Illustration: MOBILE KITCHEN BACK OF THE FRONT LINES]
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN BIG GUN IN FRANCE]
Day after day the American troops moved slowly forward, over rugged,
difficult ground, broken by ravines and steep hills, through dense
underbrush, in the face of deadly fire from artillery and nests of
machine guns hidden in every vantage point, through incessant rain and
mud and fog and penetrating cold, pushing the enemy steadily back,
until they reached Sedan, cut the German Army’s most important line of
communication, and so brought the end of the war in sight. For a few
days later came the German request for an armistice and terms of peace.
Aiding the fighting men at the front were non-combatant troops who by
their courage and zeal helped greatly and won high honor. Regiments
of engineers worked with the lines at the front, keeping the roads
open, building railways, repairing bridges in front of the advancing
lines to enable them to pour across in pursuit of the fleeing enemy,
and, in the earlier months, mining and tunneling under the enemy’s
lines and constructing trenches. Much of the time they worked under
fire and it sometimes happened that, suddenly attacked, they seized
rifles from the dead and wounded around them and fought back the
assaulting party. The camoufleurs worked close behind and sometimes at
the front, disguising roadways, ammunition dumps, artillery and machine
gun positions, concealing the advance of troops, most of the time in
the shelled areas and often under fire. Immediately behind the front
lines during the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives and under the
protection of camouflage the map makers and printers of the American
Army had big rotary presses on trucks and turned out the necessary maps
at once as they were needed. British and French lithographers had told
them it could not be done, but their mobile map-making trains kept in
touch with the army, turning out a million maps during the Argonne
drive.
The Signal Corps gave services of such inestimable value that without
them the successes of the combatant troops would have been impossible.
The war enlarged the personnel of the Corps from 1,500 to 205,000, of
whom 33,500 were in France, where they strung 126,000 miles of wire
lines alone, of which 39,000 miles were on the fighting fronts. Their
duties were varied and highly specialized and demanded the greatest
skill and efficiency. Regardless of danger the personnel of the Corps
carried on their work with the front lines, went over the top with the
infantry, and even established their outposts or radio stations in
advance of the troops. A non-combatant body, it lost in killed, wounded
and missing, 1,300, a higher percentage than any other arm of the
service except the infantry. Its photographers made over seventy miles
of war moving picture films and more than 24,000 still negatives, much
of both within the fighting areas.
The enemy captured 4,500 prisoners from the American forces and lost to
them almost 50,000, so that the Americans took ten for each one they
lost. The American Army captured also in the neighborhood of 1,500
guns. There were 32,800 Americans killed in action and 207,000 were
wounded, of whom over 13,500 died of their wounds, while the missing
numbered almost 3,000. The total casualties of all kinds, exclusive of
prisoners returned, for the Army amounted to 288,500, while those for
the Marine Corps totaled over 6,000 additional. The battle death rate
for the expeditionary forces was 57 per thousand.
In recognition of their exceptionally courageous and self-forgetful
deeds on the battle field nearly 10,000 members of the American
Expeditionary Forces received decorations from the French, British,
Belgian and Italian Governments. Our own rarely bestowed and much
coveted Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest recognition for valor
the Government can give, was won by 47 heroes, while Distinguished
Service Medals were awarded to several hundred individuals and to a
goodly number of fighting units.
Those of their own officers who had had a lifetime of military training
and experience marveled at the spirit of these civilian soldiers and
their feeling was voiced by one of them who said, “They have taken our
West Point tradition of implicit obedience and run away with it, as
they have with every other soldierly quality.”
Field Marshal Haig complimented the American divisions who had fought
under him upon “their gallant and efficient service,” and “the dash and
energy of their attacks,” said that their deeds “will rank with the
highest achievements of the war” and told them, “I am proud to have had
you in my command.”
Marshal Foch said that “the American soldiers are superb” and told
how, when General Pershing wished to concentrate his army in the
Meuse-Argonne sector, notwithstanding its many obstacles and forbidding
terrain, he consented, saying to the American general, “Your men have
the devil’s own punch. They will get away with all that.”
Other British and French officers on many occasions praised the
“gallantry” and “the high soldierly qualities” of these civilian
troops, their “energy, courage and determination,” their “discipline,
smartness and physique,” said they were “splendid fighters with marked
initiative,” and one French general commanding an American division
that was in battle for the first time declared that their “combative
spirit and tenacity” rivaled that of “the old and valiant French
regiments” with which they were brigaded. German documents captured
not long after our men had begun to take an important part showed that
the foe already had a good opinion of the American soldier, for they
spoke of his expertness with weapons, his courage, his determination,
his fighting qualities and--curious soldierly quality for a German to
recognize--his honor in battle.
Many observers of our own and other nations bore witness to the fine
character of the American soldiers back of the fighting lines, among
their fellow soldiers of the other armies and the civilian population.
Their cheerfulness, high spirits, good nature and simple, human
helpfulness gave new heart to the soldiers of the Allies with whom
they fraternized and made warm friends of the people in the cities,
towns, villages and countrysides with whom they came in contact. The
Secretary of War, after several weeks of intimate study of our army
in France, said that it was “living in France like the house guests
of trusting friends.” And the Chairman of the Commissions on Training
Camp Activities, after two months of investigation in all the American
camps in France declared, as the result of this long and intimate
association, that the question Americans should consider was not
“whether our troops overseas were worthy of us and our traditions but
whether we were worthy of our army.”
PART ONE: SECTION II. BY SEA