The World Remade

by G. J. Meyer

  The Twenty-Sixth, green or not, continued the pattern set by the First. Deadly clashes in No Man’s Land became an almost nightly occurrence. Finally the Germans decided that enough was enough; it was time to show the Americans what real professionals—their Stosstruppen, special raiding parties—were capable of doing. At three A.M. on Saturday, April 20, German artillery began raining down shells on a two-mile section of American-held front centered on the village of Seicheprey. Two hours later, a heavy fog having risen out of the ground, a rolling barrage began moving toward Seicheprey. Behind it, advancing unseen, were somewhere between one and three thousand German troops led by a six-hundred-man team of raiders known as Hindenburg’s Traveling Circus. They overran the American front line, destroying two companies of infantry as they did so. By breaking through to the east and west of Seicheprey, they encircled and then took the village itself. Every available doughboy—clerks, cooks, and bakers—took up rifles to stem the advance. Their dead lay, a lieutenant said, “in windrows almost, out in front of the fire trenches which by reason of the mud made poor places from which to fight.”

  The Germans did not attempt to advance beyond the village. In the day that followed, American counterattacks were ordered but for whatever reason never came off. (A major would be court-martialed for failing to attack when ordered.) When the sun rose on Sunday, it revealed that the Germans had withdrawn overnight. The Americans returned to Seicheprey, but 81 of them had been killed and 187 wounded, with another 214 suffering the effects of gas and 187 missing or taken prisoner. The commander of the Twenty-Sixth commended his men for giving as well as they got. The American press celebrated the AEF’s first victory. Pershing, however, was not pleased.

  Not exactly what the doctor ordered

  Healthcare on the front line.

  The AEF’s star performer in the raiding of enemy trenches was young Colonel Douglas MacArthur. As chief of staff to the commander of the Forty-Second Division, known as the Rainbow Division because it was made up of National Guard troops from across the United States, he was supposed to stay close to headquarters. As soon as the Forty-Second was placed in French sectors of the front early in 1918, however, MacArthur made it almost a game—without the approval of his commanding general—to venture out on raids almost nightly, carrying a swagger stick instead of a weapon, showing almost reckless daring. On one such raid, on February 20, he crept up behind a German colonel and got him to surrender by poking him with the swagger stick and pretending it was a gun. That night’s work earned him the French Croix de Guerre and the American Silver Star. Soon thereafter another venture resulted in his being awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, but early in March an encounter with poison gas caused him to be hospitalized for two weeks.

  By the end of April, Georgette being finished, an uneasy quiet descended upon the battlefields of the west. The panic of a month earlier was safely in the past, and the sense of imminent peril was subsiding. The Allied side assumed that the Germans would attack again, but the fact that two large-scale attacks had come and gone and been survived made the prospect less fearsome.

  The Allied commanders, grateful for this sudden calm, turned their attention once again to the fraught question of American troops: of how many were now in France, how many would be arriving that summer, what kinds of troops they would be, and where they would be assigned.

  David Lloyd George would appear to have had good reason to be satisfied on all these points. One hundred and twenty thousand American soldiers were slated for delivery to France in May, which was good news in itself. Still better, in accordance with what had been agreed at Beauvais, all of them were to be infantrymen, armed with rifles or machine guns, and all were to be assigned to the BEF. What better way to ease the slaughter that Britain had been enduring for almost four years than to replace the fallen with Americans? Let Haig throw their lives away for a change.

  Lloyd George thought the agreement for May a good start, but only that. He wanted more. He wanted the May arrangement repeated in June, and again in July, and so on for as long as possible. The French, however, observed all this with impatience. They wanted their share. To get it, they were prepared to turn the May 1 meeting into what it in fact became: a clenched-teeth, table-pounding clash of words and wills.

  At issue was who was going to get how many doughboys and when. Clemenceau and Pétain were on one side, Lloyd George and Haig united for once on the other. Then the supreme Allied commander spoke up. There was no need to quarrel, said Ferdinand Foch, because there would be plenty of Yanks to go around. The transporting of infantrymen only would continue through August at least. And from June 1 they could be parceled out equally to Britain and to France.

  Pershing was present, and what he was hearing became more than he could endure. Yes, it had been agreed at the height of the Michael emergency that only infantrymen would be shipped to France for the time being. And yes, all those sent in May would go to the BEF. The president of the United States himself had consented to these things. But as he did so, he had reminded the Allies that all American troops in France were ultimately Pershing’s to use as he saw fit, and that those serving temporarily under Allied command were to be restored to the AEF as speedily as possible.

  But here were Foch and Clemenceau and Pétain, Lloyd George and Haig, all taking it for granted that only infantrymen were going to be sent indefinitely, and all would be given to them. If all this came to pass, there would never be an American army in France. Pershing would never be more than a kind of glorified personnel consultant, advising from the sidelines—if even that—as arriving doughboys moved from their ships into the trenches of the Allies. The U.S. Army would never be more than, in his words, “a recruiting agency for either the British or the French.”

  He informed all there assembled that they had no authority to decide anything that had not already been agreed. These words were not well received. When Clemenceau protested that Foch must have the power to meet his “great responsibilities,” Pershing was unmoved. When Foch said it was “my duty to insist on my point of view,” the American was again unmoved. Nor did he care about Lloyd George’s disappointment.

  Foch, playing his last card, asked Pershing if he was willing to risk a retreat of the Allied armies all the way south to the Loire. The question implied the abandonment of Paris.

  “Yes,” the American replied, “I am willing to take that risk.”

  He watched impassively as the others poured out their anger and frustration. “Gentlemen,” he said finally, “I have thought this program over very deliberately and will not be coerced.” And that ended the dispute for that day. It was clear to all, as Pershing departed, that the heart of the matter was the kinds of soldiers to be sent to France. Everyone wanted as many doughboys as possible; when enough of them were on hand, equipped as only the United States could afford to equip them, Germany would be doomed. But if only infantrymen were sent, Pershing would never be able to organize them into divisions. Whatever their numbers, they could never become a fully functional army.

  This must have been on everyone’s mind as they reconvened the next morning. Tension was high, and another round of fruitless argument seemed inevitable. But then, to the surprise of all, Lloyd George made an announcement that brought the impasse to an end. He had, he said, found the shipping to transport an additional fifty thousand Americans to France every month through the summer. This meant that the full quota of infantrymen could be shipped over as planned, and Pershing could still have the artillerymen, engineers, and supply and transportation specialists he wanted. He could have them now, this summer, not at some uncertain future time.

  Pershing and the French were pleased without being exactly grateful. It was impossible not to suspect that Lloyd George had known all along that the additional shipping was available but had kept it a secret in hopes of not curtailing the movement of food and munitions to Britain. The Americans and the French had been given a reminder of why Lloyd George was called the Wizard—to
o full of tricks for anyone’s comfort.

  The transatlantic transport problem was thus solved at a stroke. The question of how many of the doughboys would be handed over to the Allies and for how long, however, remained. For the present, everyone was content to leave it that way. They were worn out with fighting each other.

  Back in the States, meanwhile, the war in Europe was providing ever-better cover for a war of a different kind, the one that the government was waging on persons and organizations of which it did not approve. The Justice Department, supported by local law enforcement and its nationwide network of quasi-official vigilantes and amateur secret agents, was effectively finishing off the IWW. One hundred and thirteen of the Wobbly officials who had been rounded up in the dragnet of September went on trial in Chicago in April. They did so under monstrously difficult circumstances. In the months preceding, rallies to raise money for their defense had been broken up by federal and local authorities. Sympathizers had been arrested and taken to court themselves for expressing their support. Persons attempting to help prepare the defense found themselves under relentless harassment.

  There were numerous charges against the defendants, all of them falling under the general heading of conspiracy to impede the war effort. The prosecution was able to introduce much evidence of Wobbly opposition to intervention, but most of it predated the American declaration of war. The government’s lawyers depicted the union’s strikes as intended to disrupt the nation’s ability to wage war. The defense argued that the strikes had nothing to do with the war, and everything to do with working conditions and wages.

  After weeks of testimony by more than three hundred witnesses (eighty-four of the defendants among them), the jury needed only fifty-five minutes to find ninety-six of the accused guilty of all charges and almost all the others guilty of some. Fourteen were sentenced to twenty years in prison, thirty-three got ten years, another thirty-three five, and so on down to the man who got only one year but was fined thirty thousand dollars. The longest sentences and biggest fines usually went together and were imposed on the highest-ranking officials. All this was celebrated in the press. Trials of other Wobblies followed in Sacramento and Kansas City, and the number convicted and given years in prison reached 168. That some of the accused had broken one law or another is undeniable. That most had been proved guilty only of belonging to the IWW is equally certain. The ultimate objective of the raids and trials had been achieved: the evisceration of a hated organization.

  Bill Haywood, who had been on the witness stand for three days, was inevitably among those to receive a sentence of twenty years. In 1921, free on bail pending an appeal, he would flee to Russia, there to die seven lonely years later of the effects of alcoholism and diabetes. He had repeatedly expressed his wish to return home. Half his ashes were buried in the Kremlin Wall, half in Chicago near the site of one of the epic events in the history of American organized labor, the Haymarket Riot of 1886.

  In France, the British and French were still recovering from Michael and Georgette. For Pershing and thousands of his soldiers of all ranks, it was a frustrating time. They were eager for action, none more so than Robert Lee Bullard, now commander of the First Division. Unhappy at having been moved out of Ansauville too soon to participate in the clash with Hindenburg’s Traveling Circus, certain that his men would have done better than their replacements, Bullard wanted an opportunity to show what the Big Red One could do. He went to see General Eugène Debeney, commander of the French corps of which the First Division was now a part. He asked for an offensive assignment. Debeney was happy to give him one. He and Bullard agreed on an attack on the ruined village of Cantigny, at the westernmost tip of a small salient the Germans had punched into the French line as Operation Michael was coming to a close.

  The attack on Cantigny was in every way a minor operation, its objective of very little importance. For Pershing and Bullard, however, it was a momentous undertaking. It was their opportunity to demonstrate that the best American divisions were ready to join the war, worthy of being pulled together to form an American army. It would be on such a limited scale, with attackers advancing on a line only fifteen hundred yards wide, that there would be room for only a single regiment. That regiment would be roughly equal in manpower to Cantigny’s German defenders.

  Success was regarded as certain from the start, with good reason, and everything possible was done to widen the odds. The regiment selected to make the attack was taken out of the line and trained, on terrain similar to the approach to Cantigny, in how to follow a rolling artillery barrage as it moved toward enemy positions at the stately pace of four minutes for every hundred yards. Debeney promised to provide 250 artillery pieces, including some heavier than anything the Americans possessed. He would also contribute twelve of France’s new Schneider heavy tanks, a flamethrower platoon, and aircraft for observation and bombing. Intelligence reported that one of the defending German battalions was classified as third rate—barely fit for frontline duty. General Bullard was not being unduly optimistic in expecting a walkover.

  The attack was scheduled for early on the morning of Tuesday, May 28, and preparations went forward. But one day before, on the Monday, word came that the Germans had launched yet another major offensive, the third of the spring, sending seventeen divisions against fifty miles of the French-held line east of Soissons. The breakthrough was as complete as on the Somme two months earlier, the Germans overrunning one French position after another in a race for the River Vesle and after it the Marne. Every available man and gun was summoned to help plug the holes. The heavy artillery and observation planes that Debeney had promised Bullard immediately went elsewhere.

  It is perhaps surprising, in light of this new emergency, that the Cantigny operation was not called off. But it went ahead as scheduled, perhaps because the French understood how much it mattered to the Americans. First came the usual early-morning saturation bombardment. Then Colonel Hanson Ely’s Twenty-Eighth Infantry Regiment, heavily laden with equipment, began its long uphill trudge behind the creeping barrage and tanks. The Germans not killed by artillery had positioned themselves in the basements and rubble that were almost all that remained of the village. French flamethrowers made quick work of them. The attackers had possession of Cantigny by about seven A.M., and soon thereafter they reached the ridge, five hundred yards farther on, that was their final objective. They had suffered perhaps fifty casualties, killed no one knew how many Germans, and taken more than a hundred prisoners. It had been a walkover as expected.

  The fight had just begun, however. After four hours of silence, time that the Americans used to organize their defenses and dig in, distant German guns opened up with a bombardment that would rain explosives and gas down on the doughboys without pause all through the rest of the day. Evening brought a series of advances by German infantry, but they were poorly coordinated with the artillery, the Americans’ light artillery was used to devastating effect, and one by one they failed.

  The punishment inflicted on the Americans was extreme. Bullard might have ordered a pullback, and Ely might have started one on his own initiative, if they had not understood that any such step was likely to mean the end of their careers. Pershing saw success as essential to getting the Americans accepted as a credible fighting force. Everyone understood that when he ordered the regiment to hold the village at all costs, he meant exactly what he said. Failure would not be tolerated regardless of the circumstances. Ely’s men desperately needed relief, but replacing them with fresh troops under such heavy bombardment would have been high in risk and probably higher in cost than a well-managed retreat. The men could only hunker down, expose themselves to the extent required to bring gunfire to bear on counterattacks, and hope for the Germans to give up. They finally did, but by the time it happened American casualties were in the neighborhood of one thousand. By one count they included two hundred men killed or missing plus 669 wounded, by another 1,069 in all, around 1,300 by a third.

  Ge
orge Marshall, then a lieutenant colonel serving as the First Division’s operations officer, would one day acknowledge that “the losses we suffered were not justified by the importance of the position itself.” He would maintain, however, that the symbolic value of a first successful American offensive justified the cost in lives. General Bullard, delighted to be able to give Pershing this victory, also took a bright view of what had happened. “To both friend and foe alike,” he declared, “it said, ‘Americans will both fight and stick.’ ”

  The success at Cantigny got less attention from the Allied high command than Pershing and Bullard thought it deserved, because it was overshadowed by more consequential developments elsewhere. The new German offensive, like Operation Michael, was unfolding in unexpected ways. For Ludendorff, a successful end to the war by year-end, unthinkable a few months earlier, suddenly seemed possible. At the start of their advance, which began on a line between Reims and Soissons, the Germans encountered only three under-strength French divisions and two British divisions that had, by a cruel irony, been sent to this supposedly quiet sector to recover from Operation Georgette. None of these units were prepared for what hit them, and all were quickly overrun. So were the reserves sent to reinforce them.

  The performance of the troops on both sides was at this point being affected by a new addition to the miseries of frontline life. Across Europe, starting in northern France but spreading rapidly, an infection that the troops called “three-day fever” was making it impossible for thousands and eventually millions of soldiers and civilians to function. Britain’s First Army, not an extreme case, reported 36,000 hospital admissions in May as a result; a typical unit of the Second Army reported that only fifteen of its 145 men were able to report for duty. The contagion drastically reduced the effectiveness of Ludendorff’s assault troops, but proved fatal only very rarely. Most physicians called it influenza, but some said it could not be that because its effects were so mild and so short-lived.