by Lloyd, Nick
For their part, American reactions to Europe and the war were also ambivalent. One American officer, Captain T. F. Grady, who would go on to fight in the Meuse–Argonne, left Portland on a heavily laden troopship on 29 March and endured two weeks of hellish pitching and rolling among the heavy seas of the Atlantic. ‘Waves just like mountains,’ he wrote on 8 April. ‘Quite a few sick. All drills called off. Plenty of vacant seats at mess.’ By the following day, only a few of his men were down for breakfast. Most were sick and drill was cancelled yet again. As if the seasickness was not bad enough, because of the danger of U-boats they had to sleep in their clothes with their life belts on. Eventually they reached Liverpool and sheepishly went up on deck for their first view of England. ‘Fine view of the city and the docks were very neat,’ he wrote. ‘The ferry boats are very different from ours . . . the trains were funny little box cars with six compartments each . . . fine farming country and the towns were very odd – but very neat. Young girls and women do most of the work and they waved to us as we rolled by. We were welcomed all along the line.’10
American soldiers were known as ‘doughboys’, a term, so they said, originating from the Mexican–American War of 1846–8, when US troops got so caked in dust that it looked like they had been covered in unbaked dough.11 The doughboys may have been welcomed in England, but they could clearly see how much it was suffering from the war. One officer, Lieutenant William Carpenter, arrived at Winchester station one evening to see a hospital train draw up on the other side of the platform. ‘There were boys with their heads tied up, boys that were blind, those with legs and arms off,’ he remembered. ‘Those able to sit up shouted greetings to us: “Hi there Yank. Hi sir, are you going to France? Well give ’em ’ELL!” Up to this time the boys had been skylarking on every possible occasion, but this touch of the real thing put a damper on the nonsense, and it was a very thoughtful bunch of young soldiers that followed me up the High Street of Winchester.’12 Indeed, for many Americans the novelty of being in a foreign country quickly wore off. Doughboys often found themselves cold and hungry in England: bored with regular muddy hikes; annoyed that they could not buy bread because of the rationing restrictions; and sick of the taste of coffee made from chlorinated water – making them long for home.
For those who went straight to the Continent, things were little better. Most of the Americans expected France, particularly Paris, to be something straight out of the much-thumbed pages of Vie Parisienne: a mysterious land of culture and fun, with well-dressed, dark-eyed beauties on every street corner. One soldier, Herbert McHenry, had often dreamed about meeting ‘handsome, willowy, French girls’, but recorded his disappointment that the only French women he saw ‘were haggard and emaciated from hardships’.13 They found France to be an exhausted country, drab and grey, where women dressed in black and there were few young men to be seen. When Frank Holden landed at Le Havre in May 1918 the first thing he saw was a hospital train full of wounded soldiers; a bitter reminder of the daily cost of the war and a sober illustration of what the Americans were about to enter.14 Within days of their arrival many American units had been assigned to British or French training camps, where they were supposed to be introduced to the ways of their allies and hone their fighting skills. Lieutenant-Colonel Ashby Williams, who would command 1st Battalion, 320th Infantry, in France, remembered being sent to a gigantic ‘rest’ camp outside Calais. It consisted of ‘row upon row of conical army tents so constructed that the floor of the tent was about twelve inches below the surface of the ground to protect the occupant against the lateral burst of aerial bombs’.15
For Ashby Williams, like many other Americans, it was at these rest camps that they first came into contact with British drill sergeants and officers who were tasked with ensuring they had the skills to survive on the Western Front. For many, the shock of this period – days of repetitive bayonet drill, exhausting gas training and exposure to bawling, sometimes brutal NCOs – left bad memories that never went away. For Ashby Williams:
It was at Calais that we first came in touch with the British army. Our men seemed to take at once a violent dislike for everything that was British. It is difficult to analyse the reasons for this first impression. It was doubtless due in large part to the fact that the British Tommy had been at the game a long time and he assumed a cocksure attitude toward everything that came his way; perhaps to the fact that most of the Britishers with whom the men came in contact were old soldiers who had seen service and had been wounded in the fighting line and sent back to work in and about the camp, and they looked with some contempt on these striplings who had come in to win the war. Perhaps it was due to the fact that on the surface the average Britisher is not after all a very lovable person, especially on first acquaintance. At any rate our men did not like the British.16
It was perhaps little wonder that so many Americans hated British training camps. Indeed, many ‘Tommies’ would have agreed with them. The gigantic base at Étaples was notoriously tough and had seen a mutiny in September 1917 when tensions between new recruits and military police had spilled over into violence. Gradually, however, initial disgust gave way to respect. For Ashby Williams, cultural differences were to blame.
Most of the Americans had been imbued with the idea that we must rush into the war and whip the Germans and have the thing over with, and they could not understand what they thought were the slow, methodical and business-like methods of the British. Many of our officers were particularly struck with the fact that here under the very guns of the enemy, the British officers had a commodious club and music and all that sort of thing, and the best of wines and whiskies, and they went in and about as calmly and serenely as if they were in London or in Kalamazoo. Later on we had occasion to be convinced that the Britisher knew how to make a business of war and that he was an expert in running that business.
Whatever the Americans thought about the British or the French, they soon acquired a healthy respect for the Germans: for their ability as soldiers; for their ruthlessness; for their professionalism wherever they fought. Within days of reaching the front with his division, Captain Grady saw a German plane fly low over the lines and drop a note addressed to their Commanding Officer. ‘Goodbye 42nd Division,’ it read, ‘hello 77th’. ‘Jerry sure is there with the humour,’ wrote Grady. For Frank Holden, his respect and admiration for the German soldier was summed up in his experience at Boucanville with 82nd Division. It was commonly said that the location of their battalion headquarters was well-known to the Germans, and that they could probably shell it any time they wanted. The divisional staff would joke about the time when three large shells – huge 210mm rounds – landed in a direct line near to the battalion headquarters; two shells behind, one in front. But no matter what the Germans did, they never moved their headquarters, simply because ‘we thought if we did then the Germans would drop a 210 on us just to show us that they knew that we had moved’.17
At first glance the doughboys looked little different from their British and French associates. They wore a version of the British tin helmet and used the small pattern box respirator. They ate bully beef. They fired French or British weapons, often Lee Enfields, Lewis guns or Chauchats, and threw Mills bombs. They went into action alongside French tanks – Renaults or Schneiders – flew French or British aircraft – Spads or Sopwith Camels – and grew to love the French 75mm field gun, the legendary soixante-quinze. But in other respects the Americans were remarkably different. While both British and French Armies recruited mainly from remarkably cohesive home societies (excepting, of course, their colonial contingents), Pershing’s men were drawn from the full spectrum of US society, and included many recent immigrants from Europe, Russia and Latin America, as well as Native Americans. A considerable number of black Americans also went to France, and although they were not permitted to serve alongside white soldiers and continued to suffer horrific racial prejudice, they did yeoman service on the lines of transport in France, helping to unload equip
ment and supplies, and doing the menial jobs without which Pershing’s army could not have survived.
The Americans were different in other ways too. They were much richer than their cousins in other armies. They could draw $30 a month, about ten times the pay of a French private, thus gaining the eternal jealousy of the poilus, who looked upon the arrival of the Americans with concern and insecurity.18 And in another odd, but still tangible way, the Americans differed from their British and French counterparts. They were big; physically big. Numerous commentators at the time noticed the physical presence of the first US soldiers, tall, well-built troops with high morale and an instinctive, almost cocky pride; the kind of soldiers that had not been seen on the Western Front since 1916, when Britain’s New Armies had entered the fray. For their commander, this was the key point. Pershing was confident that American valour – her aggressive frontier spirit – would be the answer to the stalemate in the west. When he had first travelled to France and met British and French commanders, Pershing had quickly come to the conclusion that their methods would never win the war. They were stuck in their ways, he would tell his subordinates, and obsessed with limited, artillery-heavy trench attacks. He wanted his troops to be trained, first and foremost, as individual soldiers and riflemen, able to think for themselves on the battlefield and engage the enemy on their own terms. ‘If the French doctrine had prevailed our instruction would have been limited to a brief period of training for trench fighting,’ Pershing wrote, dismissively, in his memoirs.
It would probably have lacked the aggressiveness to break through the enemy’s lines and the knowledge of how to carry on thereafter. It was my opinion that the victory could not be won by the costly process of attrition, but it must be won by driving the enemy out into the open and engaging him in a war of movement. Instruction in this kind of warfare was based upon individual and group initiative, resourcefulness and tactical judgment, which were also of great advantage in trench warfare. Therefore, we took decided issue with the Allies and, without neglecting thorough preparation for trench fighting, undertook to train mainly for open combat, with the object from the start of vigorously forcing the offensive.19
Had Pétain been privy to Pershing’s thoughts, he would probably have sighed deeply and shaken his head. The French Army had trusted in the offensive earlier in the war, but all it had brought were long casualty lists and a handful of square miles of shell-smashed countryside. What was required, Pétain would claim, were limited advances, exhaustive preparation and the employment of a great deal of heavy artillery.
In truth, the training of American units did not always proceed on the strict lines Pershing had laid down. Once soldiers got to France, the emphasis on the rifle and the bayonet, as he had wanted, tended to give way to the realities of modern combat, with French and British trainers rapidly acquainting their American students with trench mortars, machine-guns, grenades and everything else the Allies were using. The experience of combat also tended to shake off any pre-war naivety and reinforce the necessity for traditional trench warfare methods. Relatively quickly, a number of American commanders began to adopt British and French tactics in their attacks, making strictly limited ‘set-piece’ advances based on extensive preparation and overwhelming firepower, and quietly discarding the traditional emphasis on the ‘offensive spirit’ and the bayonet. Two of the most operationally successful US formations, 1st and 2nd Divisions, were fortunate in having intelligent commanders who recognized the limitations of Pershing’s approved combat doctrine and evolved their own methods, showing an impressive ability to learn. Major-General Charles Summerall, commander of 1st Division, became well-known for his reliance upon comprehensive fire-plans in his attacks, even attracting criticism from GHQ for this. Similarly, the senior Marine Corps officer in the AEF, Major-General John A. Lejeune, had been a brigade commander at Belleau Wood in June, and saw for himself how the lack of artillery support had proved fatal to numerous attacks, leaving American officers and men at the mercy of entrenched German machine-gunners and riflemen. Lejeune took over command of 2nd Division in late July and transformed the way it fought, only mounting attacks with as much firepower as possible and giving the infantry limited objectives. 2nd Division’s capture of the formidable Blanc Mont ridge on 3 October was emphatic proof of the success of his methods, and was regarded by many, including Pétain, as one of the finest actions of the war.20
The effort to raise what would become the US First Army was an epic story of hard work, improvisation, courage and determination. Like the British before them, the Americans had begun the war with a small, professional army more used to hunting insurgents and rebels than waging major combat operations. Like the British too, they had to go through a long and sometimes painful journey of growth and development to bring their forces up to the standards of the Western Front, where any mistake – any weakness – would be ruthlessly punished. Indeed, when the Americans entered the war, few believed it could be done, or even if such efforts could be made, they would take so long as to be irrelevant. Yet within eighteen months of the US declaration of war, American forces had begun to turn the tide on the Western Front, providing vital reinforcements, not just of men and materiel (including powerful naval strength), but of morale. For every month that Ludendorff’s offensives were held off, for every month that the German stormtroopers were beaten back, another nail was hammered into Germany’s coffin. It may have seemed like a close-run thing in March and April 1918, but the war had been decided a year earlier. The American declaration of war on Germany in April 1917 had settled it. Kaiser Wilhelm had lost; the only question was when it would happen and in what way.
Ever since the US had been in the war, Pershing had wanted an American sector of the Western Front where his army could fight. The German Spring Offensive had delayed this for some time, but by the late summer of 1918 his patience was running out. On 10 July, Pershing met Foch and told him that with the various US divisions scattered across the front, ‘we were postponing the day when the American Army would be able to render its greatest help to the Allied cause’. The time had come, he believed, for a definite American sector, served by its own lines of communication. Looking at the front, the British were ‘compelled to remain in the north’ and the French would undoubtedly stay in the centre to cover Paris and Verdun. It seemed logical, therefore, to put the Americans into the south and east, around the salient of Saint-Mihiel that jutted into French lines southeast of Verdun, across the plain of the Woevre.21 Pershing was confident that once American troops were concentrated in their own army under their own commanders, decisive results could be achieved; this was what he had spent months working towards.
Both Britain and France officially supported Pershing’s aspirations, but, unofficially, hoped to put them off for as long as possible. They were loath to give up the services of American divisions that had proved so useful during the heavy fighting of the summer. Foch would often try to mollify Pershing by shaking his hand and nodding vigorously.
‘Yes of course,’ he would say, ‘America must have her place in the war.’
The only problem was that it was difficult to justify the withdrawal of US troops from key sectors (where they had been relatively effective) at a crucial time, and concentrate them into what was regarded as a relatively insignificant corner of the Western Front. After the Battle of Amiens, Pershing had requested the withdrawal of five US divisions then serving with the BEF. An agreement was eventually hammered out to send three, but Haig was not pleased, writing to Pershing on 27 August:
As regards the movement of your divisions from the British area, I was glad to be able to meet your wishes at once, and I trust that events may justify your decision to withdraw the American troops from the British battle front at the present moment, for I make no doubt but that the arrival in this battle of a few strong and vigorous American Divisions, when the enemy’s units are thoroughly worn out, would lead to the most decisive results.22
Haig, for his part, r
egarded the concentration on Saint-Mihiel as ‘eccentric’ and unnecessary and, like Foch, would have preferred to see US forces put under French command east of Rheims for a push into the Argonne. Tension was never far beneath the surface of their relationship.
For much of the war, the salient at Saint-Mihiel had been regarded as a nasty thorn in the side of the French sector of the Western Front, a seemingly impregnable position that flanked the town of Verdun and interfered with France’s lateral communications. Much blood had been spent in this area in earlier years, but this time it would be different. Pershing was determined that this battle would be a clear-cut success, an undeniable expression of American military might that would justify the decision to form an independent army and send a clear message to the world that now they were serious. Pershing concentrated his most experienced units against the salient, and Pétain provided him with 3,000 guns, 150 tanks and over 1,400 aircraft to ensure success. On the southern face of the salient, US I and IV Corps would drive north towards Thiaucourt, while V Corps would move in from the west towards Vigneulles, thus pinching out the German defences and, theoretically, trapping any enemy survivors within it. The attack would go in on the morning of 12 September.23