CHAPTER VIIIAT THE FRONT
When Americans endeavor to estimate the value of their work on the lines of battle they are bound to see and should be glad in justice to admit that our actual fighting effort was small indeed compared with the vast and bloody and appalling struggles in which our war associates had almost exhausted themselves. They are bound to see that its importance in the final decision was incommensurate with the amount of what they actually did on the fighting lines, although not, perhaps, with the extent of the nation’s preparation. It fell to America to add the deciding strength after years of battle in which the combatants had been so nearly equal that their armies on the Western front had swayed back and forth over a zone only a few miles in width.
Nevertheless, no just summing up of the last year of the war can fail to award to America the credit of having been the final deciding factor, a credit that belongs alike to the valor and size of her armies, the ability of their officers and the overwhelming might and zeal with which the whole nation had gathered itself up for the delivery of the heaviest blows in its power to give. The rapidly growing evidence of how powerful those blows would be, as shown by our enormous preparations in France and the warspirit and war activities in the United States, had convinced the enemy that unless he won decisive results by the autumn of 1918 there was no possibility of his final victory. And therefore he put forth his supreme efforts during the spring and summer of that year. The enormous scale upon which this country entered upon and carried through its preparations for war both at home and in France sent to high figures the money cost of the war to the United States, but it made immeasurable savings in human life, for anything less would have meant more months of war, even more bloody than the preceding years.
The enemy’s determination to win a decisive victory in the spring or summer of 1918 before, he believed, it would be possible for the American Army to make itself felt at the front forced England and France and Italy to make what would have been, without our help, their last stand. They had reached the limit of what they could do and were fighting “with their backs to the wall.” Exhausted by nearly four years of bitter struggle they were almost but not quite strong enough to withstand the final, determined, desperate rush of the foe for which he was gathering together all his powers. And American forces gave the aid that was needed to drive him back.
Of high importance among the things that America did to help bring about decision between the battle lines was her share in the final agreement upon unified control of the associated armies in France. It was the voice of the United States Government through its representation in the Supreme War Council that carried the day for this measure and led to the appointment in March, 1918, of Marshal Foch as Generalissimoof the Allied and Associated Armies, an action which military authorities are agreed should have been taken long before and which, when finally brought about, was fruitful of the best results.
The aim of the War Department, as carried out by General Pershing, Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, was to make the American Army in France an integral force, able to take the offensive and to carry on its own operations, and with that end in view he shaped its training and planned for its use at the front after its arrival in France. While he offered and furnished whatever troops Marshal Foch desired for use at any part of the battle line, General Pershing refused to distribute all his forces, insisted upon building them up as they became ready for the front into a distinctive American Army—at the signing of the armistice the First, Second and Third American Armies had been thus created—and by the time the American forces had begun to make themselves felt at the front he had substituted American methods of training, finding them better adapted to his men than the European, and in his last battle, the decisive action in the Meuse-Argonne region, his staff work was all American.
The plan of training carried out, except in the later months when the demand for troops at the front was immediate and urgent, allowed each division after its arrival in France one month for instruction in small units, a second month of experience by battalions in the more quiet trench sectors and a third month of training as complete divisions. When the great German offensive began in Picardy in March, 1918, General Pershing had four divisions ready forthe front and offered to Marshal Foch whatever America had in men or materials that he could use. None of the Allied commanders believed that men so recently from civilian life could be used effectively in battle and it was only General Pershing’s knowledge of the character of his men, his insistent faith that they would make good under any trial of their mettle and his willingness to pledge his honor for their behavior under fire that induced Marshal Foch to accept his offer.
Brilliantly did these men justify their commander’s faith in them in this and in all the later battles in which they took part. In all, 1,390,000 were in action against the enemy. Less than two years before they had been clerks, farmers, brokers, tailors, authors, lawyers, teachers, small shop keepers, dishwashers, newspaper men, artists, waiters, barbers, laborers, with no thought of ever being soldiers. Their education, thoughts, environment, whole life, had been aloof from military affairs. They had been trained at high speed, in the shortest possible time, four or five months, and sometimes less, having taken the place of the year or more formerly thought necessary. But it was American troops that stopped the enemy at Chateau-Thierry and at Belleau Wood in June, when the Germans were making a determined drive for Paris and had reached their nearest approach to the French capital. They fought the enemy’s best guard troops, drove them back, took many prisoners and held the captured positions. Because of their valor and success the Wood of Belleau will be known hereafter and to history as “the Wood of the American Marines,” although other American troops fought with the Marines in thatbrilliant action. In the pushing back of the Marne salient in July, into which General Pershing, with absolute faith in the dependability of his men, threw all of his troops who had had any sort of training, American soldiers shared the place of honor at the front of the advance with seasoned French troops. Through two weeks of stubborn fighting the French and the Americans advanced shoulder to shoulder and steadily drove the enemy, who until that time had been just as steadily advancing, back to the Vesle and completed the object of reducing the salient.
Early in August the First American Army was organized under General Pershing’s personal command and took charge of a distinct American sector which stretched at first from Port sur Seille to a point opposite Verdun and was afterwards extended across the Meuse to the Argonne Forest. For the operation planned against the formidable enemy forces in front of him General Pershing assembled and molded together troops and material, all the elements of a great modern army, transporting the 600,000 troops mostly by night. The battle of St. Mihiel, for which he had thus prepared, began on September 12th, and this first offensive of the American First Army was a signal success. The Germans were driven steadily backward, with more than twice the losses of our own troops and the loss of much war material, and the American lines were established in a position to threaten Metz.
Two American divisions operating with the British forces at the end of September and early in October held the place of honor in the offensive that smashed the Hindenburg line, which had been consideredimpregnable, at the village of St. Vendhuile. In the face of the fiercest artillery and machine gun fire these troops, supported by the British, broke through, held on and carried forward the advance, capturing many prisoners. Two other divisions, assisting the French at Rheims in October, one of them under fire for the first time, conquered complicated defense works, repulsed heavy counter attacks, swept back the enemy’s persistent defense, took positions the Germans had held since 1914 and drove them behind the Aisne river.
The battle of St. Mihiel was a prelude to the Meuse-Argonne offensive and was undertaken in order to free the American right flank from danger. Its success enabled General Pershing to begin preparations at once for the famous movement that, more than any other single factor, brought the war to its sudden end. No military forces had ever before tackled the Argonne Forest. French officers did not believe it could be taken. With the exception of St. Mihiel, the German front line, from Switzerland to a point a little east of Rheims, was still intact. The purpose of the American offensive was to cut the enemy’s lines of communication by the railroads passing through Mézières and Sedan and thus strangle his armies. The attack began on September 26 and continued through three phases until the signing of the armistice. Twenty-one American divisions were engaged in it, of which two had never before been under fire and three others had barely been in touch with the front, but of these their commander said that they quickly became as good as the best. Eight of the divisions were returned to the front for second participation, after only a few days rest at the rear. Inall, forty German divisions were used against the American advance, among them being many picked regiments, the best the German army contained, seasoned fighters who had been in the war from the start. They brought to the defense of their important stronghold an enormous accumulation of artillery and machine guns and the knowledge that they must repulse the offensive and save their communications or give up their entire purpose and confess themselves beaten. German troops did no more desperate and determined fighting in the war than in this engagement.
Mobile Kitchen Back of the Front Lines
Mobile Kitchen Back of the Front Lines
Mobile Kitchen Back of the Front Lines
An American Big Gun in France
An American Big Gun in France
An American Big Gun in France
Day after day the American troops moved slowly forward, over rugged, difficult ground, broken by ravines and steep hills, through dense underbrush, in the face of deadly fire from artillery and nests of machine guns hidden in every vantage point, through incessant rain and mud and fog and penetrating cold, pushing the enemy steadily back, until they reached Sedan, cut the German Army’s most important line of communication, and so brought the end of the war in sight. For a few days later came the German request for an armistice and terms of peace.
Aiding the fighting men at the front were non-combatant troops who by their courage and zeal helped greatly and won high honor. Regiments of engineers worked with the lines at the front, keeping the roads open, building railways, repairing bridges in front of the advancing lines to enable them to pour across in pursuit of the fleeing enemy, and, in the earlier months, mining and tunneling under the enemy’s lines and constructing trenches. Much of the time they worked under fire and it sometimes happened that, suddenly attacked, they seized rifles fromthe dead and wounded around them and fought back the assaulting party. The camoufleurs worked close behind and sometimes at the front, disguising roadways, ammunition dumps, artillery and machine gun positions, concealing the advance of troops, most of the time in the shelled areas and often under fire. Immediately behind the front lines during the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives and under the protection of camouflage the map makers and printers of the American Army had big rotary presses on trucks and turned out the necessary maps at once as they were needed. British and French lithographers had told them it could not be done, but their mobile map-making trains kept in touch with the army, turning out a million maps during the Argonne drive.
The Signal Corps gave services of such inestimable value that without them the successes of the combatant troops would have been impossible. The war enlarged the personnel of the Corps from 1,500 to 205,000, of whom 33,500 were in France, where they strung 126,000 miles of wire lines alone, of which 39,000 miles were on the fighting fronts. Their duties were varied and highly specialized and demanded the greatest skill and efficiency. Regardless of danger the personnel of the Corps carried on their work with the front lines, went over the top with the infantry, and even established their outposts or radio stations in advance of the troops. A non-combatant body, it lost in killed, wounded and missing, 1,300, a higher percentage than any other arm of the service except the infantry. Its photographers made over seventy miles of war moving picture films and more than24,000 still negatives, much of both within the fighting areas.
The enemy captured 4,500 prisoners from the American forces and lost to them almost 50,000, so that the Americans took ten for each one they lost. The American Army captured also in the neighborhood of 1,500 guns. There were 32,800 Americans killed in action and 207,000 were wounded, of whom over 13,500 died of their wounds, while the missing numbered almost 3,000. The total casualties of all kinds, exclusive of prisoners returned, for the Army amounted to 288,500, while those for the Marine Corps totaled over 6,000 additional. The battle death rate for the expeditionary forces was 57 per thousand.
In recognition of their exceptionally courageous and self-forgetful deeds on the battle field nearly 10,000 members of the American Expeditionary Forces received decorations from the French, British, Belgian and Italian Governments. Our own rarely bestowed and much coveted Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest recognition for valor the Government can give, was won by 47 heroes, while Distinguished Service Medals were awarded to several hundred individuals and to a goodly number of fighting units.
Those of their own officers who had had a lifetime of military training and experience marveled at the spirit of these civilian soldiers and their feeling was voiced by one of them who said, “They have taken our West Point tradition of implicit obedience and run away with it, as they have with every other soldierly quality.”
Field Marshal Haig complimented the Americandivisions who had fought under him upon “their gallant and efficient service,” and “the dash and energy of their attacks,” said that their deeds “will rank with the highest achievements of the war” and told them, “I am proud to have had you in my command.”
Marshal Foch said that “the American soldiers are superb” and told how, when General Pershing wished to concentrate his army in the Meuse-Argonne sector, notwithstanding its many obstacles and forbidding terrain, he consented, saying to the American general, “Your men have the devil’s own punch. They will get away with all that.”
Other British and French officers on many occasions praised the “gallantry” and “the high soldierly qualities” of these civilian troops, their “energy, courage and determination,” their “discipline, smartness and physique,” said they were “splendid fighters with marked initiative,” and one French general commanding an American division that was in battle for the first time declared that their “combative spirit and tenacity” rivaled that of “the old and valiant French regiments” with which they were brigaded. German documents captured not long after our men had begun to take an important part showed that the foe already had a good opinion of the American soldier, for they spoke of his expertness with weapons, his courage, his determination, his fighting qualities and—curious soldierly quality for a German to recognize—his honor in battle.
Many observers of our own and other nations bore witness to the fine character of the American soldiers back of the fighting lines, among their fellow soldiers of the other armies and the civilian population.Their cheerfulness, high spirits, good nature and simple, human helpfulness gave new heart to the soldiers of the Allies with whom they fraternized and made warm friends of the people in the cities, towns, villages and countrysides with whom they came in contact. The Secretary of War, after several weeks of intimate study of our army in France, said that it was “living in France like the house guests of trusting friends.” And the Chairman of the Commissions on Training Camp Activities, after two months of investigation in all the American camps in France declared, as the result of this long and intimate association, that the question Americans should consider was not “whether our troops overseas were worthy of us and our traditions but whetherwe were worthy of our army.”