by John Mosier
—Herbert Bayard Swope1
As the epigraph to this chapter suggests, America had been involved in the war long before the actual declaration. However, it was not until the spring of 1918 that American troops saw serious combat, were present in large enough numbers to make a difference on the battlefield.
But the combat capabilities and the objectives of those troops are often misunderstood. That is hardly surprising, given how much of what happened during the war was either hidden, misrepresented, ignored, or denied. But then, alliances are chancy affairs. The Germans and the Austrians cordially disliked one another, even though to a great extent they had a shared language and culture.
So it’s not surprising that the French and British had mixed feelings about the enormous American force that was assembling in France. Their presence contradicted the growing British legend of how they won the war all by themselves, and although the French were realistic about their needs, they were at bottom no more inclined to give the Americans credit for stopping von Hindenburg’s final 1918 offensive than the British were.2 They were simply more polite about it.
THE BASIC MISUNDERSTANDING
It can hardly be said that the two great American offensives of fall 1918 are unknown, or that we are unfamiliar with their intense combats with the Germans.
However, their place in the Verdun battles is overlooked almost entirely. The British commanders were obsessed with Flanders, and the French were desperate to get back all the territory they had lost in spring 1918, when the Germans had gotten so close to Paris. So by the summer, the only Allied strategy seemed to be to attack the Germans in every way possible. There was no real thought given to where. In truth, the British commanders had no real strategy at all; they were simply following along behind the German general retreat.
In consequence, American operations were seen as merely a small simply part of the general bashing and chasing, particularly since the British never really understood what was going on in the 80 percent of the front the French controlled.
However, in reality, the two great American offensives had a clear purpose: to continue what the French thought of as the battle of the wings, the two flanks of Verdun.
The names given them are in themselves quite revealing. The first offensive is known as Saint-Mihiel, the second as Meuse-Argonne. Rather obviously, the first term refers to the German bulge on the right bank established in September 1914, while the second is simply another way of identifying the left-bank positions of Verdun, what the French called the battles of the wings—that is, the German attempts to bypass the Verdun forts, cut them off, and move deep into France, attempts that as we have seen led to a series of additional battles as the French tried to take the ground back.
But since the Battle of the Woëvre and the fight for Les Éparges were attempts by the French to eject the Germans from their gains on the right bank, then by definition so was the American offensive of 1918, as it covered exactly the same section of the front. The only difference between the American attack in 1918 and the French one in 1915 was that the latter was a disaster, the former a victory.
Similarly, in the second offensive, the Americans battled up through the Argonne, just as General Sarrail had attempted in 1915, crossing the Meuse directly above Verdun in their successful drive to the north. In fact, the American maps for these two offensives can be overlaid directly on the corresponding French maps for the earlier engagements.
Different names, but battles for the same end: Verdun.
SAINT-MIHIEL: ROLLING UP THE RIGHT BANK
While Foch and Haig deluded themselves into believing they could eventually beat the Germans on their own, Pétain was doubtful. In his view, the only real chance the Allies had for beating the Germans was to wait until the Americans arrived, and as their divisions appeared, he tried, as best he could, to slot them into what in his experience was the key section of the front: behind Verdun and the Saint-Mihiel salient.
Some American units had the misfortune of being seconded to the British sector, but the bulk of the American army in France was south of Verdun (and in the Vosges, where the troops could get actual experience).
The reader who has been patiently following this account of the fighting for Verdun will thus not be surprised that the Saint-Mihiel salient was chosen for the first great Franco-American offensive. Moving up the right bank was by far the best route both to bypass Verdun and to prepare for an assault into Germany.
It was at this point that the implications of the muddle that had lost them the Woëvre began to dawn on the French high command. The Germans did what they had done in 1917: withdrew from a bulge in the front, thus shortening their section of it and improving their supply lines in consequence.
Just as the GQG had planned to evacuate the right bank if attacked, the Germans now planned to evacuate the part of the right bank they held around Saint-Mihiel. Once again, the issue boiled down to a simple one: timing. As the Germans planned their withdrawal, Pershing and Pétain planned their offensive.3
Although this offensive is simply known as Saint-Mihiel, the area of operations extended from Haudimont south to below the town of Saint-Mihiel, and then straight across the Woëvre to Pont-à-Mousson. Given the French disasters here in 1914 and all through 1915, a successful offensive would do for the two allies what Pétain’s earlier 1917 offensives had done. Yes, the territory had a certain military importance, but it was more important for the boost it would give the two armies. It would show the Americans they could operate successfully where the French had failed, erase the black marks on the French record, and shake the defending Germans.
The performance of the American troops in stopping the great German advance of summer 1918, although it certainly was good for France, brought Foch and Haig (and their staffs) to a horrifying realization: What if the Americans, whose forces were growing at a dizzying rate, actually beat the Germans in the field? Given the size of the American units, that they were lavishly equipped with French equipment and assisted by some of France’s best troops, the possibility was quite real. And horrifying: if the Americans succeeded at Saint-Mihiel, while the British and the northern French armies were battering away fruitlessly up in Artois and Flanders, who knew what the result might be?
Foch had no interest in letting the Americans do anything on their own. So he wandered into Pershing’s headquarters and suggested that the operation be canceled. The whole idea of operating as a self-contained army was foolish; Saint-Mihiel was a terrible idea. Instead the American units should be dispersed among the French and British, who would then mount a great offensive in Artois. If this offensive succeeded, the Allies would then be . . . in Artois.4
By this point in 1918, Pershing had been fending off absurd and insane demands by the British and French for over a year, the most incredible being the serious British proposal to feed the Americans into existing British units, where they could get massacred in proper British fashion. So Pershing was accustomed to batting off ideas that were militarily ludicrous and politically disastrous; by mid-1918, even the Anglophiles like President Wilson were becoming wary of the British.
Besides, Foch had no real authority, either over Pershing or over Pétain, as the two senior generals actually commanded the troops. So he said no, the offensive would go ahead as scheduled. Desperate, Foch then began a campaign right on the spot to browbeat Pershing into mounting another offensive immediately, as soon as possible, on the left bank, in support of a French offensive in eastern Champagne (the theater immediately adjacent to the Argonne). This offensive was already set for September, Foch insisted, blandly proposing that the Americans mount two major offensive operations in different areas in two successive months.
The difficulty in evaluating Foch is that it is almost impossible to tell whether he was extremely crafty and sly, or simply incapable of grasping modern warfare. In either case, he clearly felt he had thrown Pershing into an impossible si
tuation; nor was anyone pleased when Pershing promptly called his bluff.
So the Saint-Mihiel offensive was duly launched on 12 September. The Germans had begun to withdraw, but their timing was off, so they were caught at the worst possible moment: some units had withdrawn; others were still there. Had Pershing followed the lumbering pace of his allies, this would not have been a problem. But after a short, massive bombardment that covered the entire salient, there was a coordinated assault all along the line. Given the size of the salient, the scale of the assault surpassed anything that had been done to date by either side.
The weakness of the German position was obvious: An assault on two sides could break through the base, cut off the defenders. That was the French aim in 1915, but they lacked both the resources and the tactical competence to achieve it. In this, Joffre’s theory was correct: only an overwhelming assault on a broad front would succeed. Otherwise the defenders would move reinforcements along laterally from the areas not threatened to those that were.
But there was more to it than overpowering force. As the Germans had shown over and over again, speed of deployment was all-important, whether one was playing defense or offense. Speed was one thing, the close coordination of artillery with the infantry advance another. With the exception of Pétain’s two offensives in 1917, the French and the British had never been able to do this on any scale in sustained fashion.
Despite the best attempts of staff gossips and their fellow traveling historians, the result was a major success. Von Hindenburg thought Saint-Mihiel was a smashing major defeat, and Ludendorff, his greatly touted by British historians chief of staff, basically had a nervous breakdown.5
In one great dash, the Americans had cleared the lower portion of the heights, gone up the right bank, were now very close to the original battle line of early September 1914.6 So the right bank of Verdun had finally been completely freed.
Now, the next logical move would have been the one the crown prince had worried about: a mighty thrust up the right bank and into Germany. But for Haig and Foch, it was more important to be seen winning on their own than to beat the Germans. Besides, they really believed that they could engage them in a classic battle and defeat them outright.
So the insistence on the Americans now tackling the left bank was partly to support what Haig felt was the main thrust. But given the terrain, the way the Germans had beaten the French like a rug there all through the war, the Argonne seemed like a good place to teach the newly arrived Americans the realities of combat.
RECONQUERING THE LEFT BANK
Given the experiences the French had there, it is not much of a surprise that the Americans found it tough going as well. If they broke through, they could cut the main lateral rail line the German army needed to keep the front supplied. They could then keep on going all the way up the Meuse, flowing around Verdun. A major breakthrough here could be catastrophic for Germany.
The American speed at switching from one offense to the other had stunned the British and heartened the French. But once the offensive began, and the AEF had tough going, a host of military experts declared them completely inept. The slow progress through the Argonne, as the Germans gave way elsewhere, allowed the British in particular to suggest that they won the war and the Americans were merely helpful.
Those claims are the window dressing to disguise a ferocious internal attack spearheaded by British officers. Having failed to prevent the formation of an American army as a unitary force, they engaged in serious attempts to destroy it. Back in London, General Wilson (the fellow who had told Lloyd George he was too stupid to understand military matters) tried to get Pershing’s Saint-Mihiel offensive canceled. The campaign went all the way over to Washington, and in Paris, Georges Clemenceau did his part, demanding that Pershing be removed from command, even going so far as to appeal to Lloyd George.7 Postwar, the internal intrigues were largely covered up, only to surface as the evaluations of British historians intent on preserving the fiction that their army won the war almost entirely on its own, and that the Americans were totally inept.
All through October the Americans slowly fought their way through the Argonne, systematically reversing the gains von Mudra had made in 1914 and 1915. If Belleau Wood was one of the bloodier engagements in the history of the American army, then Meuse-Argonne was certainly one of the bloodiest campaigns. In September, the AEF had about 5,000 soldiers killed outright, and in October the number climbed to 22,000. The American cemetery at Romagne-sous-Montfaucon has 14,240 graves; it is bigger than the cemetery at Normandy.
But on the other hand, the BEF, which was essentially just chasing the German withdrawal like a dog chasing a car, had 29,000 men killed and missing in September, and 44,000 in October. The French, who were encountering serious resistance in eastern Champagne, and in some cases were fighting side by side with American units, had 23,000 men killed and missing in September and nearly 40,000 in October—and it should be realized that at this point the nominal combat strengths of the three Allied armies were nearly equal.8
But the outcome of the struggle was victory. The Americans crossed the Meuse above Verdun, as attested by divisional markers at Brieulles and Velosne. That marks the definitive end of the battles of Verdun. Just as the Germans had attempted in 1914, the Americans had managed it in reverse, flowing around Verdun and on both sides.
There is a certain bizarre symmetry. The battles for Verdun began in 1914, but were folded into obscurity when Joffre’s staff created the somewhat fictional Battle of the Marne. They finally ended with the great American offensives, whose familiar names of Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne likewise obscure the relationship to Verdun. But then, as the patient reader has by now probably realized, everything about Verdun is in one way or the other obscured.
VON HINDENBURG’S APPRECIATION
The performance of the American troops in this war has been roundly savaged by British historians and their followers on this side of the pond, while even the defenders are handicapped by their lack of knowledge about the two main theaters of operations. Hopefully the story thus far has made the connection clear enough. From the very first, the battles for Verdun were conducted on the flanks. It was only in 1916 that there was a direct assault.
As to the significance of the American involvement, von Hindenburg sums it up perfectly in his rather lumbering and ponderous way, as he attempted to answer a question posed by an enterprising American journalist who had commandeered a car and driven straight to his headquarters in November 1918. The question was simple: “Who won the war?”9
“I will reply with the same frankness,” said Hindenburg, faintly amused by our diplomacy. “The American infantry in the Argonne won the war. . . . Without American troops against us, and despite a food blockade which was undermining the civilian population of Germany and curtailing the rations in the field, we could still have had a peace without victory. The war could have ended in a sort of stalemate. And even if we had not the better of the fighting in the end, as we had until July 18, we could have had an acceptable peace. . . . Even the attack of July 18, which Allied generals may consider the turning point, did not use up a very important part of the German army or smash all our positions. . . . But the balance was broken by the American troops. The Argonne battle was slow and difficult. It was bitter and used up division after division. We had to hold the Metz-Longuyon roads and railroad. . . . From a military point of view the Argonne battle as conceived and carried out by the American Command was the climax of the war and its deciding factor. . . . I repeat, without the American blow in the Argonne, we could have made a satisfactory peace at the end of a stalemate or at least held our last positions on our own frontier indefinitely—undefeated—the American attack won the war.”10
As indeed they did, although one would never know it from reading the British accounts. But then, one would never know what Verdun was about or what happened there. There are limits to writing histor
ies based on government press releases.
12
A Conclusion of Sorts:
The Temptations of Myth
The truth must be always repeated, because errors are preached over and over again, and not just by a few individuals, but by the majority. In newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, error predominates, and takes comfort in the knowledge that the majority is on its side.
—Goethe1
Verdun is a disappointing battle. Its beginnings were submerged in the start of the war, the middle parts deliberately obscured by the French army, and the 1916 battle trailed off in a bloody melee that was quickly eclipsed by the Somme, sputtered to a life in the late fall, only to be appropriated by French propagandists. The ending is equally obscure, so it is fitting that after four years of intense battle, the only real victors, the Americans, would find their part reduced to a mere supplementary note, their contributions to winning the war dismissed as mere logistics, their combat record the subject of derision.
So almost every part of Verdun is buried somewhere or jumbled in with something else. In that sense the heaps of bones scattered underneath the great ossuary on the battlefield are a wonderful metaphor for the struggles there, made all the more poignant by the remains still hidden deep in the forests that now cover the heights of the Meuse, and the battlefields of the left bank.
People who study battles wish to find winners and losers. In that sense, Waterloo is the great battle of the modern age. True, there are still debates. Napoleon’s many admirers come up with ingenious solutions to explain his defeat, and British students of history often seem to forget that it was the arrival of Blücher and his Prussians that brought about the victory. However, Napoleon himself conceded defeat, and no one has ever suggested he won.