The Generals

by Winston Groom

  Thus some of the political class (which rarely missed an opportunity for exploitation) began to grouse that the American army was failing and in some cases had already failed. Though there was no foundation for the scurrilous rumormongering, it soon found its way into newspapers, giving rise on Pershing’s staff to speculation that these were actually political attacks centered on who would wield the power should a surrender or an armistice conference be declared. To some, it even appeared the gossip was mired in jealousy or envy that an upstart army could arrive after nearly four years of catastrophic war and claim credit for being in on the end. Marshall appraised it later as an even more sinister plot “that grew by leaps and bounds and like a snowball continued to gather weight and size … apparently for the purpose of depreciating the American [war] effort in order to weaken Mr. Wilson’s powerful position.”

  Marshall also vented his anger at America’s unpreparedness in not raising and training a large army much earlier on. “Everywhere on the battlefield individuals were paying the price,” he said. “They paid with their lives and their limbs for the bullheaded obstinacy with which our people had opposed any system of training in time of peace.”15

  Meanwhile, the Central Powers had already begun crumbling as the attack in the Meuse-Argonne pressed on. The Germans gave ground grudgingly as casualties mounted heavily on both sides. Bulgaria had already signed an armistice with the Allies, and Austria was now threatening to seek one. The Turks had been driven by the British “in wild flight” from the Middle East, and Ludendorff was recommending to the kaiser that Germany seek some kind of peace agreement through the Americans, whom he thought would give them a better deal than the British or French.

  By the first of October the French Fourth Army was lagging behind the fast-moving Americans, leaving the Americans’ left flank “in the air,”* a situation the battlewise Germans quickly exploited by cutting off what came to be famously known as the “Lost Battalion.” For five days this forlorn unit of the U.S. 77th Division lay benighted and besieged by the Germans, who had them surrounded and trapped in the wilds of the Argonne Forest. Gallantly, the approximately 555 men under Major Charles Whittlesey, a New York Wall Street lawyer, held their own against superior German forces until they were at last rescued on October 7 by the 82nd Infantry Division; the battalion, however, had lost some 350 men in the fray.

  During this time George Marshall roamed over the battle area, cajoling, urging, ordering commanders, in the name of the commanding general, to reorganize and move forward.

  Marshall put himself on hand to see that they followed those instructions. He was particularly concerned that he and his staff workers should share the privations of the front so that they would understand what it was like when “Life became a succession of dangers, discomforts and hungers, with a continuous pressure being exerted on the individual to do more than he felt himself or his organization capable of accomplishing.”16

  MEANWHILE, THERE WERE STILL 230 German machine-gun nests on the Côte de Châtillon and it “seemed almost impossible to move without getting shot.” Ever since the offensive began, men had fallen around MacArthur but he appeared so magically untouched that his soldiers began to say he was “bulletproof.”17

  The battle had a profound effect on MacArthur. One night he was reconnoitering the German flank for a thin spot in the wire after the brigade had been held up all day on the Côte de Châtillon and his patrol suddenly came under a terrific enemy shelling and machine-gun fire. The men fell into craters to wait out the barrage and, when at last the flares had burned out, MacArthur crept from shell hole to shell hole whispering for the men to follow him. Getting no response, he shook the soldiers, thinking they had fallen asleep from exhaustion. But they were “all stone dead.”

  The journalist Frazier Hunt of the Chicago Tribune was hanging around outside MacArthur’s headquarters when the general briefly returned during a slight lull in the action. Noticing a bullet hole in the sleeve of MacArthur’s sweater Hunt asked, “When did brigadier generals get to be expendable?”

  MacArthur laughed, embarrassed. “There are times when even generals have to be expendable,” he said. “Come inside and we’ll rustle up some coffee.”18

  The next day, MacArthur’s brigade fought and clawed its way up one hill and around the other until at last, as night was falling, the 167th Alabama stealthily worked its way through a gap in the German wire. Every moment it seemed would bring a burst of machine-gun fire, or blasts from hidden German 77s, or a deadly explosion of enemy mortar shells from hidden positions.

  Then out of the mists would suddenly appear Americans with bayoneted rifles, grim faced and bloodshot. On October 16, after three days of slaughter, Captain Thomas H. Fallow observed three companies’ soldiers from the 167th Alabama pinned down by German machine-gun fire. He had had enough. He rose up and “jumped out in front of the men,” leading a mass charge on the machine-gun nests. This produced an unexpected reaction in the German gunners, who, seeing the Americans “swarming down the hill in droves,” jumped up and ran away, leaving even their guns behind.19

  It was charges such as this that dispatched the Bosch until, as dusk fell, MacArthur’s 84th Brigade had silenced the last German resistance and the Bois de Châtillon and the Tuileries Ferme were in American hands. The price was high, however—awful, really. Of the Iowa regiment’s original twenty-five officers and 1,425 men, only 300 men and six officers were still standing, and the 167th Alabama took similar casualties. “That is the way the Côte-de-Châtillon fell,” MacArthur said afterward, “and that is the way those gallant citizen-soldiers won the approach to final victory.”20

  MacArthur’s breakthrough at the Krunhilde Stalling put the Americans in rear of the Hindenburg Line, an untenable position, and the entire German army began to evacuate to the Meuse River, leaving behind tons of supplies and equipment that were invaluable and irreplaceable.

  FOR HIS PART, the kaiser was waffling about abdicating his throne—which obviously would have been a condition of any armistice request—proclaiming that “a successor to Frederick the Great does not abdicate.” He blamed Germany’s present woes on Jews and Communists, a dubious elucidation that was quickly seized upon by a woebegone Austrian-born corporal named Adolf Hitler somewhere in the lower ranks of the German army.

  On October 4, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson received a telegram through German diplomats remaining in New York asking him to intervene with the British and French to call an armistice. Ferdinand Foch, now convinced that victory was in his grasp, was aware of this and determined to crush the German army before such a thing could happen. Thus racing against an armistice he now feared, Foch ordered an enormous assault by both French and American armies set for November 1.

  Within two hours of the initial push, it was reported that the Americans had punched through the German line and were fanning out across the countryside. This sent the Germans into a general retreat while a mutiny convulsed the German navy and socialist riots broke out in almost every large city in Germany. Clearly the end was near and Foch was determined at least to capture Sedan. Because of the laggard French Fourth Army, it now lay squarely in the path of the Americans and Marshall had issued orders to take the city. But Pershing generously overruled his operations officer so the French could have the satisfaction of reconquering this emotional and symbolic landmark.

  Marshall was in the process of issuing further orders for the Meuse-Argonne attack when word came down that the Germans were negotiating with the Allies and an armistice was declared beginning on November 11, 1918.

  In some so-called quiet parts of the Western Front there was wild celebrating with German and Allied troops meeting in no-man’s-land to trade caps, badges, and other souvenirs, and some French troops were said to have festooned their uniforms with flowers. But in those parts of the line where the fighting had been heavy there were still bad feelings and the Germans lay resentfully behind their fortifications with some weeping and much ugly mutterin
g. In the British sectors, the mood was somber as well, and little was heard save an occasional rendition of “God Save the King” by a regimental band. Many on both sides merely poked their heads up above the trench line and looked around, as larks and other birds wheeled overhead, astonished that they weren’t shot at.

  THE AMERICANS, IT WAS SAID, cheered wildly, which seems a bit odd considering that they had sustained more than 122,000 casualties—26,227 of them killed since the Battle of the Argonne Forest began six weeks earlier.† Many of them were from Patton’s division. Of the officers, Patton had two majors, seven captains, and thirty-six lieutenants in the fight. Of these, both majors and all but one captain were hit, as well as seventeen of the lieutenants—plus himself. Almost all the tanks were either destroyed or rendered inoperable. On October 1 alone, fifty-nine of eighty-nine tanks that went into the battle were lost. Finally the outfit was reduced to a company-size “provisional” unit assigned to the 42nd Rainbow Division, consisting of twenty tanks, ten officers, and 140 men—all that was left of Patton’s First Tank Brigade. And by the end of that day only 80 men remained of the original 834 who had started out the week.

  On October 17 Patton received word that he had been promoted to full colonel and had been put in for the Distinguished Service Cross, America’s second highest medal for valor. He told Beatrice he’d rather have the medal than the promotion.

  One of his friends, a major in the French army, visited Patton at the hospital and said this: “My dear Patton, I am so glad you are wounded. For when you left I said to my wife that is the end of Patton. He is one of those gallant fellows who always gets killed.” Patton wrote his father, “You know I have always feared I was a coward at heart but I am beginning to doubt it.”

  The battle for the Meuse-Argonne roared on for forty-seven days, until the war ended, inflicting 122,063 American casualties, the highest casualty rate of any U.S. battle, before or since. Patton finally got rid of his bandage the day that peace was declared, which was coincidentally his thirty-third birthday. To celebrate, or commiserate, he wrote a poem entitled “Peace—November 11, 1918,” the last stanza of which is fraught with insolence and as much awful meaning as a Greek tragedy.

  Then pass in peace, blood-gutted Bosch

  And when we too shall fall,

  We’ll clasp in yours our gory hands

  In High Valhalla’s Hall.

  THE RAINBOW DIVISION WAS PULLED OUT of the fighting to rest, heal its wounds, and receive replacements. It remained on the deadly killing ground near the Krunhilde Stalling and the Côte de Châtillon and was there when the armistice was announced. There was no cheering, for the men were “glad beyond expression,” according to the regimental historian. The regimental chaplain of the 167th Alabama held an impromptu service in a half-ruined church. One of the members of the band played a doxology on the old organ, while more than three hundred men poured out their thankfulness by singing “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.”

  Afterward they were told to march to the Rhine River and occupy a sector of Germany on its border with France. It took three days of walking but on December 16, 1918, the brigade marched down the valley of the Rhine with the regimental bands playing “The Star-Spangled Banner”—except for the 167th Alabama, whose band played “Dixie” for the curious and bewildered German spectators who lined the roads. During this procession, almost magically, the regimental historian said, a giant rainbow appeared over the valley of the Rhine.21

  The Rainbow Division was largely MacArthur’s creation and he would soon be appointed its commanding officer when General Menoher was given a corps to command. Secretary of War Baker continued to be fulsome in his compliments of MacArthur, calling him “the greatest American field commander produced by the war.” Menoher was probably closer to the truth when, in citing MacArthur for promotion, he wrote, “On a field where courage was the rule, his courage was the dominant factor.”

  The Rainbow Division continued to rankle Pershing and other martinets but the soldiers remained oblivious. By comparisons such as ground gained, prisoners taken, enemy killed, days in combat, and decorations awarded, the 42nd Rainbow Division was second only to the Second Division, half of which was composed of marines. “They couldn’t salute worth a damn and cared less what they looked like. The only thing they did superbly was fight.”22

  MacArthur was put in for the Medal of Honor but Pershing’s headquarters disapproved the recommendation.‡ Instead he received a second Distinguished Service Cross and his seventh Silver Star, which “more than satisfied my martial vanity,” MacArthur said.23

  FOR HIS PART, George Marshall had missed coming out of the war with a general’s star by only a hair, but he would face a long wait—sixteen more years, to be exact—a stern test in the backwaters for a man who could have resigned and entered civilian life at any point very high on the hog. But George Marshall was a soldier, and he was determined to rise as high as possible in the service of his country.

  * Both flanks need constant protection and security lest an enemy get into the unprotected rear of the formation.

  † This was by far the nation’s deadliest battle. By comparison, at the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War the combined total of battle deaths of both Union and Confederate soldiers was 7,863.

  ‡ Pershing did not think that officers, and especially general officers, should get the Medal of Honor, and furthermore he believed it should be awarded only in specific cases of uncommon valor.

  PART II

  BETWEEN THE WARS

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE SAD, GREAT HEAP OF FLEURS BLANCHES

  Colonel George Marshall did not return to America and his devoted wife, Lily, until August 1919, almost two years since they had last seen each other. After the armistice with Germany, the question arose—posed chiefly by two of the major Allies, England and France, as well as by General Pershing himself—of whether or not Germany should be subjected to a major military occupation, including its capital, Berlin, for the purpose of proving to the German people that its army had been beaten.

  Marshall was dead set against the proposal and said so in a letter to Pershing. It would be a different matter, he said, if occupation was required to put down an insurrection by the German Bolsheviks, but otherwise he proposed that the Allies send food to the defeated and starving Germans. This would later mark him as a target for criticism when, in the 1930s, Hitler rose to power partly because of his assertion that Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield but instead sabotaged by a craven government.

  Most of Marshall’s duty after the armistice was spent dealing with the nearly two million American soldiers in France who needed to be fed, clothed, and kept occupied and healthy in the face of one of the most deadly flu epidemics in history. After the continuous stress of planning for battles during the war, it might have seemed like a routine chore, were it not for the size of the undertaking.*

  In April, Marshall went to Metz to receive the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre, along with other members of Pershing’s staff. By this juncture Marshall had decided to keep the army as a career, despite being offered $30,000 a year (about $400,000 in today’s money) to join J. P. Morgan & Co. by one of the firm’s partners, Dwight Morrow, who had become a top civilian aide to Pershing. Instead of leaving for Wall Street, Marshall became Pershing’s aide-de-camp, even though he knew it would keep him from troop duty.

  From then on, Marshall and Pershing were caught up in the vast ceremonies of victory, beginning in France with a bittersweet grand parade through Paris on Bastille Day 1919. The four years of war had been so horrendous—some ten million soldiers from both sides lay dead, millions more were maimed for life, and at least seven million civilians had also perished; entire nations were prostrated physically, spiritually, and monetarily—that it took more than half a year for anyone to contemplate a celebration of anything connected with the conflict. It was inevitable, however, that the victorious countries ultimately would
need to find a way to memorialize the struggle.1

  On a warm July morning, millions of spectators thronged to watch the parade down the Champs-Élysées to the Place de la Concorde, thence past the Church of the Madeleine, which had unfurled huge red banners between its magnificent Corinthian columns, to the reviewing stand at the Place de la République. At the Arc de Triomphe lay a single white casket, representing the 1.4 million French soldiers (nearly 4 percent of the population) who had fallen in the war, decorated by wreaths placed upon it by President Poincaré and Premier Clemenceau. The parade itself was led by a somber procession of a thousand mutilated veterans—lame, armless, legless, and blinded victims of the fighting—the invalides who came in wheelchairs and carts and on crutches to receive their thanks from the grateful throng.

  Following this were Marshals Foch and Joseph Joffre and their staffs, on horseback, who arrived amid passionate cheering. Next came General Pershing and more wild accolades, followed by his staff including Marshall on a prancing white horse. Following them was the American “Victory Regiment,” composed of one thousand crack U.S. soldiers marching with superb military precision.

  Next came the British, Italians, Canadians, Algerians, Japanese, Senegalese, Australians, Serbs, Czechs, Poles, Portuguese, and others of the twenty warring nations of the Allies, each with accompanying marching troops (all except the Russians, who were not invited)—followed at last by the French with all the shining brass and polished steel for which its army was rightly famous. Marshall was deeply stirred by “the great military spectacle” of which he was now also a part, and he would have vivid memories of it for the remainder of his life.