THE AMERICAN LEGIONS
When the German spring offensive of 1918 came and hewed a great dent in
the western front, the cry went up from the Allied capitals for American
aid. "Hurry!" entreated Lloyd-George. "Hurry!" came the echo from Paris.
Then, almost like an answering echo, was heard the tramp of American
legions on the soil of France. Week after week, through the spring and
summer, United States troops spread their columns fanwise from their
ports of debarkation, until their multiplying presence was felt, where
not seen, along the entire fighting line from the Belgian coast to the
Swiss frontier.
Another army had preceded them, armed with picks and shovels, trowels
and axes. It was an army of tool chests, building gear and rails. More
than one western port of France, slumbering in its ancient ways, had to
be transformed, to give proper entrance to the shiploads of soldiers
from the New World, with their mountainous equipment, and new roads had
to be cut through France to convey them to the front. One regiment was
of foresters, with knocked-down sawmills, who went into the woods of
France to cut down trees and shape them into timbers for building large
docks. Another corps of advance guards were the American engineers,
later organized into five regiments and nineteen battalions, all engaged
in railroad construction and operation to facilitate the movement of
American troops. So with new and spacious gateways, which transformed
the restricted port facilities of the French coast towns, and with huge
warehouses, ordnance depots and barracks neighboring the new docks, the
American troops found an ingress on French soil and accommodation for
themselves and their leviathan equipment in keeping with the vast scheme
of warfare that represented American belligerency.
From the French ports ran a double line of railroad which was extended
by American army engineers to the battle front. The use of these
preexisting lines for American troops called for the additional
construction of hundreds of miles of trackage for yards, sidings, and
switches. Thus was called into being the United States Military Railroad
in France. It started from the seaport terminals, with their new docks
verdant with the rawness of fresh-cut timber, with their tipples and
cranes and wharf houses and warehouses, and spread over a mass of tracks
that meandered and forked into division yards, curved on to divergent
lines or connected with light railways at the fighting front some 600
miles distant.
With new ports and new railroad systems virtually constructed for their
passage, the American troops moved to their allotted places at the front
under conditions that gave their journey an uncommon éclat. They were
sorely needed, for one thing, and, for another, preexisting port and
transit facilities did not suffice to bear them to their destination. A
new path had to be blazed for the armed entrée of the New World into the
Old World.
[Illustration: Military establishments in the United States.]
The gateways widened as each shipload grew in numbers and frequency. The
beginning of the overseas movement was slow; the United States stumbled
through weary-dragging months before its awakened militancy got into its
stride in spanning the ocean. In May, 1917, the month following the
American declaration of war, only 1,718 officers and men landed; in
June, 12,261; July, 12,988; August, 18,323; September, 32,523; October,
38,259; November, 23,016; December, 48,840. The beginning of 1918
brought no perceptible expansion, the number of troops sent in January
and February, 1918, being only 46,776 and 48,027, respectively. But with
the spring came indications of the accumulating force of American
preparations. In March the number sent across was 83,811; in April,
117,212; in May, 244,345; in June, 276,372, and in July, 300,000.
Marines numbering 14,644 were also dispatched. So by July 31, 1918,
American forces in France had reached the impressive figure of
1,319,115.
Meantime the troops were vaguely heard of as fighting in five different
sectors along the western front, one detachment as far east as the Swiss
border. Later they had spread to eight sectors, namely, near Montdidier,
northwest of Château-Thierry, immediately east of Château-Thierry, at
Toul, in Lorraine, and three in Alsace, one near the border line,
another south of that, and one in front of Belfort.
The German spring offensive had sensibly stimulated the shipment of
troops, as the figures showed. That offense had its critical stages
toward the close of March, which made the help of American troops more
and more urgent. General Pershing interposed with an offer to the
British and French Governments to place all the American troops and
facilities then in France at their disposal to help stay the German
advance. The proposal deeply stirred the Anglo-French ranks--and the
inactive American troops no less--and evoked grateful acknowledgments
from London and Paris.
Presently American troops were heard of further afield--in Italy, for
service under General Diaz against the Austrians. Tidings of their
presence at a still more remote corner of the battle area came in the
announcement that American marines, cooperating with British forces, had
occupied a part of the Murman coast of the White Sea in European Russia.
The Stars and Stripes fluttered over Europe at far-flung points. On the
western front an American army had grown up, and was rated as competent
to perform the hardest work of war--to stand an intensive bombardment,
to repel the assaults of massed infantry, or to launch counterattacks.
Its achievements will be subsequently related; but even if they did not
rank in numbers with those of the British and French, the mere presence
of American soldiers at the forefront of one of the world's greatest
battles stood out as a transcendent historical event. The forces of the
New World had appeared to save liberty in Europe. They were there to
establish a reorganization of the world on the American plan--not for
the glory of the Stars and Stripes, but for a vindication of the ideas
which the flag represented.