Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military)

by Gordon Corrigan

  By the morning of 5 June it was clear that, far from the US 2 Division holding behind the French to bolster them up, there were now no French troops between the Germans and the Americans. General Degoutte – completely contrary to what had been agreed between Foch and Pershing – now ordered the Americans to retake Belleau Wood. The plan was for the army brigade to capture the woods looking north to Belleau Wood, after which the Marines would capture Belleau Wood itself. The battle went on from first light on 6 June until 25 June, and, for the Marines in particular, was a smaller-scale version of the Somme. Long-service soldiers though many Marines were, their service in Mexico or the Philippines had done little to prepare them for the Western Front, and all the mistakes of the British in 1916 were repeated by the Americans. Moving in straight lines, without using fire and movement and with poor coordination between infantry and artillery, the Marines moved across open ground and suffered heavily. Once the Germans reinforced the wood the battle became a bloody slog, Marine and army units relieving each other in turn, with advances measured in yards. Finally, after a night and a day of artillery bombardment, the wood fell to an attack by the Marines’ 3rd Battalion. On the Marines’ right on the first day of the attack, 6 June, the 23rd Infantry Regiment (of the army brigade) should have been protecting the right flank; but in their eagerness one battalion pressed on into the edges of the wood, had twenty-seven men killed and 225 wounded, and withdrew. One company of Marines got into the village of Bouresches, but were then cut off when the army brigade withdrew. There they stayed until 25 June, facing repeated German counter-attacks and mounting casualties. The Americans were particularly appalled to find that the original French garrison had been using an antique grandfather clock as the seat for the officers’ latrine. An officer who visited the village some years after the war was intrigued to find the mayor driving around in a Dodge pick-up with US Marine Corps markings. Asked where he had got it, the mayor explained that he had been sold it by a Marine during the siege in June 1918!

  Belleau Wood might have been taken on 10 June, before the Germans reinforced it. On that day Lieutenant Colonel Wise, with the unfortunate nickname of ‘Dopey’, led an attack by the 5th Marines from the south end of the wood. Once in the wood he veered off to his right and emerged at the eastern edge overlooking the village of Bouresches. Thinking this was Belleau village, he reported the capture of Belleau Wood, and it was some time before the error was realised. As on the Somme, inexperienced officers were not using their compasses and were getting lost. Included in the American casualties were 334 men of the 23rd Infantry Regiment who had been gassed. Of these only two died, the rest being out of action for around two weeks. The battle for Belleau Wood was in some ways an unnecessary action, for the French could have regrouped and taken it themselves – or simply stayed on the defensive. It is probably an exaggeration to say that the action of the US 2 Division saved Paris, but it was by no means a wasted effort and, like the British on 1 July 1916, the Americans learned vital lessons which would stand them in good stead later on.

  The German attacks on the Marne had not achieved their aim – to force the Allied reserves south, thus allowing the Germans to attack the British in Flanders. By July General Degoutte was commanding the French Sixth Army, defending a crescent-shaped line that ran from Château-Thierry twenty-five miles eastwards to Reims, with the US 3 Division still holding its seven miles along the Marne between Château-Thierry and Varennes. The Commander 3 Division was an unlikely-looking example of the American officer corps. Major General Joseph T. Dickman was portly, a lover of good food and wine and an amateur painter, butwas a soldier to his fingertips. He had survived Pershing’s dislike of fat officers, and as a cavalryman he was a far better rider than Hunter Liggett. Dickman realised that the Marne west of Château-Thierry was not suitable for a river crossing, and thought that if the Germans came they would come at his division. He decided to hold his sector with a lightly manned forward line along the river, with strongpoints further back fromwhich counter-attacks could be mounted, and with his final defence line on the hills overlooking the river and about two miles south of it. The right of Dickman’s sector was held by Colonel Ulysses Grant McAlexander’s 38th Infantry Regiment, to whose right were elements of the US 28th Division (the Pennsylvania National Guard) interspersed with French units. General Degoutte did not like Dickman’s dispositions and felt that far more of 3 Division should be concentrated on the river line. This layout would have been acceptable for French troops, whose tactic was to withdraw the forward line when heavily pressed and mount counter-attacks by fresh troops. Dickman, however, was well aware that his men were inexperienced and that a tactical withdrawal could easily turn into a rout; he intended his forward line to remain in place and the Germans, should they break through, to be held by his backstops. Degoutte went on his way and Dickman ignored the orders to concentrate forward. The French corps commander turned a blind eye.

  Early on 14 July a French patrol near Reims captured a German major who was carrying a copy of a plan for a forthcoming offensive. It showed that the aim was as before: to force the Allies to move their reserves south, thus allowing the Germans to attack the British in Flanders. For Operation ‘Marne’, an artillery bombardment was to start at 0010 hours the next day, 15 July, and at 0130 hours fourteen German divisions were to cross the Marne between Reims and Château-Thierry, with another fourteen divisions following up, and with eighty-three artillery battalions concentrating on the US 3 Division sector alone. There would be a second German attack (Operation ‘Reims’) between Reims and Verdun with Châlons-sur-Marne, twenty-five miles south, as its objective. There would thus be two thrusts aimed at Paris; the Allies would have to move their reserves, and three German armies would fall upon the British in the north.

  Was the captured plan real, or a German ruse? The Allied Generalissimo, Foch, had little time to make up his mind but decided it was genuine, and so at 2345 hours on 14 July every available Allied gun between Château-Thierry and Reims opened up on likely German approaches, assembly areas and stores dumps. Had the captured plan been a plant, this would, of course, have given away the positions of the Allied artillery; but at 0010 hours, exactly as the plan had said, German artillery began to bombard the Allied lines, and an hour later German infantry stormed down to the river line. In McAlexander’s sector they began to cross in boats and suffered terribly from the 28th Regiment’s riflemen and light machine-gunners. Although some got across to the south bank and through the American outpost line, they were stopped by Dickman’s backstops supported by the divisional artillery on the reverse slopes. Lieutenant George P. Hays, an artillery liaison officer, had seven horses killed under him as he made regular sorties from the gun lines to the river. Eventually wounded himself, he survived. All day on 15 July the fighting went on, but the Germans could make no headway and by nightfall they were attempting to retreat across the river. They had not been as near to Paris since 1914, but they would get no nearer. McAlexander’s regiment was rightly known thereafter as ‘The Rock of the Marne’.

  With the failure of Operations ‘Marne’ and ‘Reims’ the German army found itself in a seriously exposed salient, running from west of Soissons to Château-Thierry, Dormans and Reims. Ludendorff decided to withdraw; Foch decided to attack. The Aisne–Marne counter-offensive, as it was later known, lasted from 18 July to 6 August and involved nine American divisions under French command. When it was over, all the German gains of Operations ‘Marne’ and ‘Reims’, and most of those of ‘Yorck’ and ‘Blücher’, had been recaptured, and the Allied line ran from Soissons eastwards to Reims. The American divisions had done well, but it was not all plain sailing for them, partly owing to the French habit of issuing only the vaguest of orders. Major General Harbord, now commanding the US 2 Division (the original commander, Bundy, had been sacked by Pershing as lacking in grip) complained:

  A division...was completely removed from the knowledge of its responsible commander, and deflected by truck an
d by marching through France to a destination uncommunicated to any authority responsible for its supply, its safety or its efficiency in an attack but thirty hours away. General Berdoulat [Commander French XX Corps] and his people were unable to say where it would be debussed or where orders would reach it which would move it to its place in time.24

  On the other hand neither was American staff work all it would become. The record of the headquarters French Sixth Army dated 22 July says: ‘1250 p.m. Arrival of a staff officer from the American 26th Division at Buire...This officer does not know the order in which the regiments are placed, neither does he know what elements they have had in action or what they have in reserve.’25

  The French were still pressing for American units to be incorporated into their army, but Pershing and the headquarters of the AEF were becoming increasingly disillusioned about their major partner. At the same time they realised that despite the British officers’ odd ways and constant making fun of themselves, it was the British who retained a fighting spirit. On 28 March 1918, during the worst days of the British retreat before the ‘Kaiser’s offensive’, a report by the intelligence Branch of AEF headquarters read:

  The morale of the British officer and man is just what could be expected of the British soldier. They do not have the attitude of a year ago, but they do show that they are full of fight. One gains the impression that they are out to stay with it to the last regardless of cost and that they expect to be able to hold the Germans until the French arrive [French divisions were on their way to bolster up the British front. By the time they arrived the German advance had been halted], and that ultimately he [the Germans] will be stopped as have all the offensives on the Western Front heretofore. There is no air of gloom and in watching the soldiers moving to the front they seem to be taking it all in a day’s work. Those coming back tell how many Boche they have killed and say that he [the Germans] can’t keep it up. Their spirit is admirable.26

  On the other hand, Colonel Fox Connor, Assistant Chief of Staff of the AEF, wrote to Pershing on 21 June 1918:

  ...there are two factors [factions?] among the higher French officers and staff officers. One faction has never abandoned the idea of drafting Americans into French units - the other realizes the necessity of forming larger American units but considers the morale of the French is so poor at present as to necessitate the dispersion of American units so as to bolster up failing French morale...There can be no doubt as to the necessity of bolstering up French morale...We are also face to face with another fact - many of our officers, and, it is believed, soldiers, are distinctly disgusted with French tutelage...we must never consent to permitting the French to control the preliminary instruction of our troops. The French methods are not suited to our troops, and we should not delay longer in telling the French so in very plain language.27

  To be fair, the British had not suffered wholesale mutinies in their army, and it was hardly surprising that French thoughts were now mainly on the defensive; but such impressions did strengthen Pershing’s determination to form an American army as soon as he could. Up to now American divisions, or elements of them, had assisted the French and the British in emergency. Such measures, however, useful though they were, were only stopgaps. There were now over a million US troops in France, and on 30 August the First US Army was formed. For this purpose American divisions had to be recalled, which caused friction with the British. On 8 August the BEF’s Fourth Army under General Rawlinson had launched a hammer blow on the Somme which ruptured the German line and advanced seven miles over a fourteen-mile front, taking 420 guns and nearly 30,000 prisoners with only light British casualties. This, the Battle of Amiens, was another of Ludendorff’s ‘black days’. One regiment of the US 33 Division had taken part in the attack, and the British were hoping to use some of the five American divisions training with them as they exploited their gains, but now Pershing asked for them back. Haig, who generally got on very well with Pershing, was furious, and in his diary of 12 August he wrote:

  He [Pershing] came to see me. He stated that he might have to withdraw the five American divisions which are training with British divisions. I pointed out to him that I had done everything to equip and help these units of the American army, and to provide them with horses. So far, I have had no help from these troops (except from the three battalions which were used in the battle near Chapilly [Chipilly] in error). If he now withdraws the five American divisions he must expect some criticism of his actions…all I wanted to know was definitely whether I could prepare to use the American troops for an attack (along with the British) at the end of September against Kemmel. Now I know I cannot do so. When he was going he thanked me for being outspoken to him: ‘at any rate I always know when I am dealing with you what your opinion is on the issue in question. This is not always the case with the French’.28

  One can understand Haig’s frustration. The British were now the only effective army on the Western Front: the French were exhausted and war-weary, the Americans inexperienced. The British had shipped over half the Americans to France and wanted some help from them in what was a critical battle. On the other hand, Pershing had already exceeded his instructions from Wilson, and the public and the press at home were beginning to ask if there would ever be an American army. Haig gave way gracefully and his relations with Pershing remained cordial, but on 25 August he wrote: ‘The last American division started to entrain today. What will history say regarding this action of the Americans leaving the British zone of operations when the decisive battle of the war is at its height, and the decision is still in doubt!’29 As it happened, the British coped perfectly well, and Pershing relented and let Haig have two American divisions, which were to stay with him and render excellent service until the end of the war.

  The First American Army was given its own forty-mile sector around the Saint-Mihiel Salient, held by the Germans since 1914 and a quiet area up to now. The army consisted of 450,000 American soldiers and 110,000 Frenchmen in four French divisions and in the artillery. Pershing decided that a useful rehearsal for the new army would be to reduce the Saint-Mihiel Salient. Foch was unsure of the value of this operation – he wanted the First Army to take part in a joint offensive in the Meuse–Argonne area in late September – but agreed to it provided Pershing then took part in the joint attack.

  The Germans had ten divisions in the salient, and Pershing planned to attack with nine American and four French divisions. He tried to procure 750 tanks from the British, but they needed all they had for their own offensive. Instead Pershing was given 267 light tanks by the French, half crewed by them, half by Americans, and the whole under command of the American Brigadier General Samuel D. Rockenbach, whose chief of staff was one Colonel George S. Patton, resplendent in cavalry breeches and sporting pearl-handled revolvers. Haig lent the Independent Bombing Squadron of the Royal Air Force,30 and immediate air support would be provided by a French aviation wing and American pilots flying French aircraft. The Air Commander would be the American Colonel Billy Mitchell. There would be artillery support from 3,020 French guns, half crewed by Americans. Pershing decided to attack on 12 September (incidentally his fifty-seventh birthday), and the deception plan consisted of sending Colonel Bundy (now down to his substantive rank after being relieved as a divisional commander) off to a comfortable billet in a French hotel with a good kitchen and telling him to prepare an attack through the Belfort Gap near the Swiss border. Pershing calculated – rightly – that German agents would go through Bundy’s waste-paper basket and conclude that it was the Rhine Valley that the Americans were after.

  After a four-hour artillery bombardment the attack began at 0500 hours on 12 September 1918, in drizzle and mist and under cover of a smokescreen. The Germans had already decided to withdraw from the salient that day, and many of their troops were caught in the open by the bombardment. For all that, they fought well enough, particularly in fortified locations strongly protected with barbed wire. The American method of surmounting wir
e obstacles was to use long-handled cutters left over from the Spanish–American War, and then throw rolls of chicken wire over the entanglements to make a sort of causeway. The French, intrigued by this novel approach, concluded that it was all right for the Americans – they had long legs and big feet! By 18 September it was all over. The Americans were not allowed to capture Saint-Mihiel itself – that was President Poincaré’s home town and had to be liberated by French troops – but they took all their objectives and captured 16,000 prisoners and 450 guns, at a cost to themselves of 7,000 casualties, of which about 1,500 were killed. It was an easy victory but a useful shake-out for the First Army, and it did wonders for both French morale and American confidence.

  Pershing, however, was now having increasing problems with the Army Chief of Staff and Congress at home. He found that officers whom he had recommended for promotion did not receive it, while those whom he had specified as unfit for preferment (like Douglas MacArthur) were advanced. He had great difficulty in getting his corps commanders promoted to lieutenant general, as the pre-war American army had never been big enough to have such an appointment. Congress had voted pilots a fifty per cent pay bonus. Pershing thought this was wrong – pay should be for rank, not speciality – and tried unsuccessfully to have the windfall annulled. The Army Chief of Staff objected to Pershing’s dealing direct with Secretary Baker and thought Pershing was getting too big for his boots, an opinion shared by Colonel House. Nevertheless Pershing retained the confidence of the President and of Secretary Baker, though procedural arguments by cable and letter did not assist him in planning for the First Army’s next engagement.