by Barrie Pitt
In view of the economies of force which he had practised with such success of late, one would expect a more sympathetic reception to what was little more than a friendly warning; but perhaps he suspected friendly warnings from that particular quarter. Possibly too, the warning came at an unfortunate psychological moment, for a vision had just been vouchsafed to Haig of victory in 1918, instead of a long, hard-fought but triumphant campaign in 1919, which was the course of war predicted by practically everybody else in the Allied Governments and High Commands.
There had been many occasions during the previous years when Haig’s optimism strikes the historian as fatuous. At last it was to be justified, although whether this was owing to a genuine intuition of the state of enemy morale or merely the result of Haig’s continually chanting the same refrain until at last circumstances conformed to give it a truth which it had lacked before, is difficult to decide. But whatever the cause – wishful thinking or genuine insight – Haig believed by the end of August that continued pressure on the enemy would break them before the turn of the year, whereas a slackening of effort now would give to Ludendorff the breathing space he needed for withdrawal to shorter lines of defence and consolidation within them. In these circumstances, it can be seen that Wilson’s note must have been extremely irritating – especially as there was no chance now of making up numerical deficiencies on the British front with American troops.
For with the end of the immediate and urgent dangers caused by the spring retreats, Pershing had insisted upon the withdrawal of American divisions from British and French command, and their formation into an American army under his own. From the point of view of the United States – and there was not the slightest reason why Pershing should have paid attention to any other country’s – there were several excellent reasons for him to follow this course of action. It was thus somewhat ungracious of him to insist upon every occasion when opportunity offered, that his main reason for doing so was that his officers and men were refusing to participate in battle with troops of other nations. It was also untrue, for in Rawlinson’s army the Americans had made firm friends with the Australians, and if they never developed a taste for British Army tea, they at least accorded unqualified admiration to the British Tank Corps. In the event and despite Pershing’s wishes, two American divisions – the 27th and the 30th – remained with the Fourth Army to participate in the attack on the Siegfried Position.
But these divisions were the exceptions, for Pershing – who was a man accustomed to getting his own way – was intent upon commanding a separate American army in a separate American sector of the front; and as such a wish fitted, at this time, rather neatly into Foch’s plans for the autumn fighting, it received what support was necessary to make it a reality.
For many years, the existence of the St. Mihiel Salient immediately below Verdun had been a painful thorn in France’s side. It was not only an affront to her pride, but also a curb upon her freedom of action, as it blocked the main supply route to the Lorraine front. Thus the salient had not only precluded an attack along the shortest line leading to the enemy homeland, but during the Verdun battles of 1916 it had been such a serious menace to the supply lines leading to the front that a secondary road had perforce to be widened and strengthened during the height of the battle, occupying the attention of many men whose endeavours were urgently needed elsewhere.
The Salient also guarded Germany at her most vulnerable point.
Fifteen miles behind the eastern shoulder of the Salient was Metz – itself a city of historic significance to both French and Germans, and from a strategic point of view vital to the German cause. It was the eastern terminus of the Antwerp–Metz railway system which fed the German fighting front, and once in Allied hands would give them a nodal point from which to turn every defence line to which the Germans might retreat until such time as they were back across their own frontier.
That no major attempt to capture Metz had been mounted by the Allies during the previous four years is in itself a reflection upon the poverty of strategic insight with which the war had been waged. Granted that the Flanders front was more convenient to the British lines of communication, and that the French had been naturally zealous at all times to protect Paris – but if Passchendaele or the Somme battles had been attended by ten times the success they had each achieved, they could not have threatened Germany so shrewdly as an advance in this sector. If previous Allied offensives be compared to attempts to knock out a boxer by heavy punches to the chin and under the heart, an assault towards Metz would be a kick in the stomach: and war in this century is too bloody an affair to be regarded as a sporting contest.
In late July, Foch had issued a memorandum in which he had suggested that, as soon as conditions allowed the release of forces from other sectors, the American army should pinch out the Salient in order to accomplish ‘The clearing of the Paris–Avricourt railway around Commercy.’ Even now, Foch appears to have possessed no appreciation of the threat which might be developed there, but when, after the Amiens battle, the staff of the American First Army moved into the area south of the Salient in order to draw up the necessary plans, they quickly produced a paper urging that their attack should not be limited by the bounds of the Salient itself. Whether ambition or genuine strategic sense prompted their vision is difficult to decide, but their suggestion was that after reaching the base-line of the Salient (formed by the Michel Position) the Americans should press on at least as far as the railway opposite the centre of the baseline, possibly then extending eastwards along it to attack Metz itself.
The plan called for the use of fifteen American divisions to attack the sides of the Salient, while four French divisions occupied the attention of the Germans at the tip. Pershing approved the plan on August 15th, while two days later, Foch – characteristically – endorsed it heartily, increased the French contribution to ten divisions, and suggested an extension of the frontage of the attack to a width which would most probably have wrecked its chances of success. But it would have made a nice, wide frontal attack, of the kind which he thoroughly understood … and Pershing agreed.
Haig didn’t.
With all the singlemindedness of a convert to a new religion, Haig now saw ‘convergent attack’ as the golden means to victory – and if this was a narrow and limited view of the wide field of strategy, it should be appreciated that it was nevertheless a considerable intellectual advance upon the doctrines of either attrition or the ‘Spirit of the Offensive, direct and brutal’, which had previously obsessed those in High Command. Moreover, there appeared to Haig to be an excellent opportunity for a convergent attack on a hitherto unprecedented scale, in connection with his forthcoming assault on the Siegfried Position. While the British attacked towards Cambrai from the west at the northern end of the Line, the Americans should attack St. Quentin from the south at the southern end; thus each attack would help the other, and another heavy punch would be delivered to Germany’s ribs.
This was far better, in Haig’s opinion, than allowing the Americans to go far off to the remote corners of the country, delivering attacks which so far from following his lately accepted creed, actually diverged from his own line of attack: and if they were already in that remote area and it was not to be thought of to bring them all the way back, then a compromise should be reached. If Pershing wanted the American armies to attack Metz while Haig wanted them to attack St. Quentin, then the reasonable and amicable course to follow was for an objective to be chosen halfway between the two places. Haig therefore suggested to Foch that Mézières, north of the Argonne Forest, should provide the line of attack of the American armies, should Pershing refuse to co-operate in a closer assault on the Siegfried Position.
Foch might have refused to consider this strategy had not Haig at the same time given him a glimpse of the vision of victory in 1918. To one of Foch’s enthusiastic temperament, this prospect was too glorious to deny – and possibly the fact that the two main subjects of Haig’s thesis were n
ot necessarily inseparable, escaped him. Moreover, when Foch consulted Pétain on the subject of an American attack towards Mézières instead of towards Metz, he found that cool and lucid individual unexpectedly agreeable. For to Pétain, the advantages of a British attack eastwards from the area of Bapaume together with an American attack northwards from anywhere between Rheims and Verdun, were obvious: French forces between the two attacks would hold the curve of the bulge, and by advancing always one step in rear of the two flank offensives, carry out their part without undue exertion or expense in lives.
So on August 30th, Foch visited Pershing at the American’s headquarters at Ligny-en-Barrois. If he had merely presented Pershing with the change in strategic objective, it is probable that the latter – who on principle always suspected his Allies – would have withstood him completely; and as a result the Americans might have collapsed the St. Mihiel Salient, breached the Michel Position, and then advanced at least halfway to Metz before their supply problems overwhelmed them. What the tactical developments would have been after that it is impossible to say, but it is evident that the attention of the German High Command would have been jerked violently away from the more western theatres, in order to concentrate upon the immediate protection of the Fatherland – or at least that portion of the Imperial Lands which since 1870 had been graciously allowed to call itself ‘Lothringen’ instead of by the effeminate and surely too beguiling name of ‘Lorraine’.
This could hardly have been to Haig’s disadvantage.
But Foch elaborated the plan. He suggested not only the substitution of Mézières for Metz as the prime objective for the Americans (the St. Mihiel Salient to be merely eliminated so as to free lines of communication) but that this larger attack should be mounted by two armies, one wholly American under Pershing, and one Franco–American under the command of a French General. Moreover, with a tactfulness which must have been the more infuriating for its transparency, he proposed that General Degoutte should join Pershing’s Staff in order ‘to guide his tactical decisions’.
It must have made a memorable scene.
From the historical point of view it is also of considerable importance, for by now – either by accident or design – all Pershing’s native antagonism was directed against the relatively unimportant issues of French control of American troops, and in his emphatic and categorical rejection of this part of Foch’s suggestions, he accepted without argument Foch’s right to dictate to him where his army should fight. Thus if all Americans fought under American commanders (and Degoutte was eventually foisted off as military adviser to the King of the Belgians) the American First Army was still committed to an attack up through the Argonne – which bore striking resemblance to Belleau Wood but was far more extensive – instead of across the relatively open and level plains of the Woevre and the Moselle.
© CASSELL & co. LTD. 1962
This was not only to prove unfortunate for the Americans, but was not to contribute very largely to Allied victory.
It was raining on the evening of September 11th – and it was to continue raining almost all night. As light faded, the dripping darkness was filled with men, the roads leading to the chosen sectors of the St. Mihiel front rumbled dully under the wheels of the transport, and under the tracks of the light French tanks which were all that could be spared for this now relatively unimportant operation. Six American divisions only would now attack along the southern face of the Salient, while only one (the 26th Yankee) would attempt to break through the western face to meet the others at the village of Vigneulles, just short of the centre-point of the Salient baseline. Five French divisions would participate in the operation, three pressing gently against the opposition in the nose of the Salient, in order to occupy their attention until the Americans had cut the lines of retreat. The other two would accompany the Yankee Division through the western flank.
The remainder of the American divisions which should have been participating in the operation were already moving towards their attack positions east of Verdun, facing the ominous height of Montfaucon and the gloomy menace of the Argonne Forest.
At 1 a.m. on September 12th, the artillery bombardment began, ploughing through the enemy wire belts, pulverizing their trenches, plastering the road-junctions and identified control centres in the rear areas. For four hours this bombardment was maintained – from 2,971 French or British guns – and when at 5 a.m. it was suddenly shortened and concentrated into a creeping barrage, the tanks moved forward, the infantry rose to their feet, and along a twelve-mile stretch of the southern flank the advance began.
It met virtually no opposition until after midday, as the German commander in the neighbourhood had begun the withdrawal of his troops from the Salient the previous evening. As well aware of the impending attack as any other European newspaper reader – and one Swiss paper had even published the time of the bombardment and its intended duration – he had appreciated the enormous difference in men, material and morale between his own force and the attackers, and rightly decided that the time for sacrifice on a large scale was over. Leaving behind them the inevitable machine-gun posts, the mass of the German army in the Salient had quietly departed by the time the Allied bombardment began. An earlier departure would, in fact, have been more beneficial, for the longer-range Allied artillery caught some of the last of the retiring units, but in general the Allied bombardment had been wasted and the Americans advanced at first across virtually deserted country. The isolated machine-gun posts took their inevitable toll before they were crushed, and when on occasion contact was made with the retreating German infantry, there were many short and sometimes brisk actions; but in the main, the Germans marched stolidly towards the Michel Position and the Americans followed them. On one section, an over-enthusiastic American commander authorized a probe forward by a cavalry patrol – a piece of impertinence which was summarily dealt with – and on another it seemed at first that the men of an Austro–Hungarian division preferred death to dishonour, for instead of retreating they advanced in formation towards the Americans. Before much damage had been done to them, however, it was seen that those who had brought their weapons had not bothered to unsung them and the division in fact merely wished to be shown the quickest route to the nearest American prison-cage.
By evening, a gap of only ten miles separated the leading troops of the American 1st Division from those of the Yankee Division advancing from the west, and in response to urgent telephone calls from Pershing, aided by the competitive spirit of the New World, one battalion of National Guardsmen from the 26th Division abandoned its attack formation and marched into Vigneulles in column of route. By 6 a.m. on September 13th – Pershing’s birthday – the American line was thus continuous across the Salient, some 14,500 prisoners and 443 guns had been captured, at a cost of less than 8,000 casualties; from their forward positions, American observers could watch small, ant-like figures digging furiously in the positions of the Michel Stellung – which had, apparently, never been completed. An American attack now would undoubtedly have ruptured the line, though whether it would have penetrated far beyond is questionable, for there were reasons other than Foch’s orders for it not being undertaken.
When the war was over, both Pershing and the Commander of the American IV Corps, General Dickman, proclaimed vociferously that Foch’s limiting directive had kept the Americans out of Metz. But General Liggett, commanding the I Corps, nearer the baseline, has pointed out that such an advance would only have been possible had the American Army been a well-oiled, fully co-ordinated machine, ‘which’, he remarks sadly, ‘it was not as yet.’
There had been considerable organizational chaos.
But the American First Army had carried out its first operation with marked success – and if it had been so easy that afterwards the St. Mihiel Salient was referred to as the sector in which the Americans relieved the Germans, it is fair to say that such a victory might not have been accorded to any other army. To frighten the enemy out of his p
ositions is just as valid a tactic as to bomb him out, and infinitely more economical – and those Americans who had not been killed in the Salient were now available for the slaughter of the Argonne.
The American sector of the vast offensive which Foch now planned to deliver against the Germans, lay between the Meuse and the Aisne where the two rivers, flowing northwards, cut the front line at points respectively five and twenty-seven miles west of the corner of the Verdun fortress position. The Argonne Forest lay across the westernmost ten miles of this sector – between the Aisne and the Aire – and in view of the difficulties of the ground, Foch had offered Pershing an easier sector between the Argonne and Rheims.
Possibly because to fight on this more westerly sector would complicate his supplies, and possibly also because to do so would come perilously near to falling in completely with Haig’s first suggestion of an attack towards St. Quentin, Pershing chose, instead, to fight ‘east of the Argonne’ – a decision which was to cost his army dear.
It was originally intended that this Meuse–Argonne attack should be the right-hand curving pincer of a vast encircling movement, of which the British attack through the Siegfried Position should be the left-hand arm, and the bulge held by Pétain’s armies the sack in which the Germans should be caught. Ignoring such factors as the inexperience of some troops in open fighting, the inexperience of all Staffs in supplying a lengthy advance across the chaos and desolation of the battlefields, and the still potent menace of the German machine-gunners – for there were comparatively few tanks available for such an extended front – there was really very little chance of this scheme of operations ever being put into effect. Although Foch was delighted to pay lip service to the virtues of the plan, he was totally incapable of leaving it alone – and the army commanders had hardly had time to appreciate their own parts in it before Foch was, once more, urging everyone to attack everywhere.