The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War

The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War (2003) edited by Robert Cowley is a collection of thirty articles taken from The Quarterly Journal of Military History. As a collection of articles, the book does not provide a chronological history, but instead provides a number of stories that the editor believes should be of interest to the reader. This certainly provides a bias that the editor wishes to impose upon the reader.

Unfortunately, the articles are written by historians, mostly college professors, who have never experienced combat and who were not veterans of WWI. As a result, they often make assumptions or draw conclusions that are questionable. The lack of footnotes and references throughout the book is a serious shortcoming for any reader with scholarly interest. It is quite surprising that articles from a Journal, mostly written by professors, would have such a glaring omission.

My Rating: Good (***). The advantage of a collection of articles put together by an editor is that they give the reader a good snapshot of the war. The disadvantage is the depth of each article is not enough to gain a thorough understanding or picture of an event or period.


Origination of Terms

"In 1921, Colonel Charles a Court Repington ... published his war diaries under the title The First World War" (p. xiv).

"The name seems to have originated in the deliberately misleading explanation given to the inquisitive who saw on of the secret machines under wraps and traveling by rail: 'It's a tank.'" (p. 352)

"... 'gone west' was the soldier's phrase" that someone was killed. (p. 477)

Poor Training

"...the British crews, in their determination to achieve the highest possible rates of fire in gunnery competitions, had removed anti-flash devices from the trunks without realizing that cordite flash in the turret labyrinth posed the gravest danger to dreadnoughts. A third of the British battle cruisers would be destroyed as a result." (p. 159).

"... only one pilot in every fifteen has a better than even chance of surviving his first decisive combat--but after five such encounters, his probability of surviving increases by a factor twenty. Only about 5 percent of fighter pilots become aces, and this tiny minority tends to run up large scores at the expense of their less gifted opponents." (p. 260)

Innovation

"Russian General Aleksei Brusilov ... recognized that the bludgeoning tactics of the Western Front would not work here. He counted on deception and surprise. He would rush his reinforcements not to places where resistance stiffened but to places that showed weakness." (pp. 217-218) "... he picked men for their ability, not their position in society." (p. 219) "Brusilov sadly noted that 'In war, it is no new discovery that a lost opportunity never returns, and we had to learn this ancient truth by bitter experience.'" (p. 226)

"[A] general who had the initiative to see the frontline obstacles for himself--from the rear cockpit of an airplane, a first in the Great War." (p. 244)

"The system of defense from shell holes had the advantage that the enemy's artillery had no recognizable target in the isolated shelters and machine-gun nests. It had to batter a whole area of ground, using an immense quantity of ammunition, instead of a known and easily located trench-line." (p. 352)

"... the Italians, in their 1911-12 war with Libya, were the first to use the airplane as a military tool, primarily for reconnaissance." (p. 257)

"... a [German] reserve captain named Bernhard Reddemann ... began to design, build, and test a number of prototype flamethrowers. ... Richard Fiedler, an engineer from Berlin who had been working on a similar concept. ... Fiedler's designs were accepted by the German Army. " (p. 311)

"[General Erich] Ludendorff's plan called for a fluid, flexible offensive, like an onrush of water sweeping irresistibly forward, swirling past large obstacles to gain territory and maintain initiative. ... 'We chop a hole, the rest follows'." (p. 394) "The spearhead troops--called Stosstruppen, 'storm troopers' ... were instructed to use the contours of the terrain and rush forward in small groups. Command decisions were to be made by officers on the spot, not by some general ensconced miles from the action." (p. 395)

"... the 210mm Pariskanone, with its 118-foot-long barrel, was the most sophisticated weapon of the Great War. The gun put a man-made object into the stratosphere for the first time in history: In its three-minute flight, a shell would reach a height of twenty-five miles, or some 130,000 feet. By the end of the war, modified versions of the gun could reach a distance of 100 miles, a record not exceeded until the 1960s." (p. 405)

"German artillerists had solved the problem of aiming guns accurately at night without registering fire, which had previously announced offensives on both sides." (p. 422)

Poor Leadership

"German leaders at all levels, from the young men in charge of companies and batteries up to the silver-haired commanders of divisions and army corps, were able to out command, and thus outfight, their French counterparts." (p. 36)

"Ivan Bloch, in his work La Guerre Future, published in 1898, had forecast with amazing accuracy that the power of modern weapons would produce deadlock on the battlefield and that the resulting attrition would destroy the fabric of the belligerent societies. Bloch's thesis was widely known and much discussed in military periodicals. But since he was saying in effect that the military was now faced with a problem it could not solve, it was unlikely that many soldiers would agree with him." (p. 12)

"On November 18 [1914] a week after his offensive had shut down [Ypres], Falkenhayn visited the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. He announced that the war could no longer be won and suggested that Germany initiate peace overtures. Bethmann-Hollweg turned him down, in effect pronouncing the death sentence for a generation." (p. 39)

"Max Heinz, A German who served at Vimy (and lived to write about his experience), could not contain his anger: In those days even the simplest infantryman had the feeling that his life was being played with--I can find no other word for this insensate squandering of human lives--in a manner which cannot be sharply enough criticized. Or should we give another name to this kind of leadership which flings company after company into the front line during the most severe bombardment--hunting them to their death without sense or reason?" (p. 71)

"[French] General Charles Mangin ... at Verdun in 1916 his willingness to pitch his division into costly attacks would win him the nickname of 'the Butcher.'" (p. 82)

"... in its continued reliance on these murderous offensives, the French command nearly destroyed its own army." (p. 86)

"The codebreakers had by this time expanded slightly and taken up the quarters in the Admiralty Old Building that soon gave them their unofficial name: Room 40, OB. ...But some of Room 40's effectiveness was lost due to excessively tight control by the director of the operations division, Captain Thomas Jackson. Boorish and self-opinionated, Jackson distrusted civilians' ability to deal with naval affairs and was unpleasant to them." (p. 150)

"No British commander on the scene had the initiative to attack on his own when the position was ripe for plucking, and when Aylmer's headquarters behind the lines was queried by telephone, the orders came back: 'Stick to the program.'" (p. 211-213) Not allowing commanders on the field to make their own decisions led to the British defeat at Kut.

"[General Maurice] Sarrail bombarded his subordinates with messages insisting that fighting spirit would overcome barbed wire. He relieved one general who had the initiative to see the frontline obstacles for himself--from the rear cockpit of an airplane, a first in the Great War." (p. 244)

" ... in the BEF sector there was no doubt that the [Somme] offensive had lost very heavily, so that the overall casualty ratio was around seven to one in favor of the German defenders" (p. 327).

"[General] Haig and the BEF's high command over the years [forced] the infantrymen to walk slowly across no-man's-land while carrying seventy pounds or more, thus offering themselves as easy targets to be mowed down by German machine guns." (p. 330)

"... the most influential military historian [Basil Liddell Hart] of our time would spend the rest of his life elaborating on the original lessons of the Somme. In eighteen days he had seen enough of generals who bungled and missed chances by what he called the rigidity of their own inertia" (p. 348)

"Cavan even persuaded Rawlinson to take a look for himself. At dawn one morning the two generals actually trudged 150 yards or so beyond the frontline wire. Rawlinson agreed that a general attack was impossible. But Haig overruled him. The attacks--and the casualties--continued." (p. 358)

"General Sir Arthur Currie, commanding the Canadian Corps ... his precise, schoolmaster's mind forecast that the assault Haig requested would cost 16,000 casualties. ... the Canadian Corps [had] 15,634 killed and wounded, almost exactly the figure Currie had predicted" (p. 387)

"Haig was a stubborn, inarticulate man, insensitive to the sufferings of others." (p. 396)

"The Marines advanced in massed formations unseen on the Western Front since 1914. Incredulous German machine gunners mowed them down in windrows. ...The Marines eventually captured Belleau Wood, after the French pulled them back and treated the Germans to a fourteen-hour artillery barrage that smashed the place flat. Pershing rewarded Harbord for his incompetence (there were 50 percent casualties) by making him commander of the 2nd Division in place of Bundy, who had stood around during the battle without saying a word while Harbord and Brown made their bloody blunders." (p. 424)

Failure to Meet Obligations

"Italy, which had joined the Entente in May, initially accepted responsibility for protecting the delivery of food and medical supplies to the small Albanian ports where the refugees had congregated. But when it came to the crunch, Italy's admirals were unwilling to risk their ships.

The AEF Fighting Ability

"The U.S. 6th Engineers, who had been building roads and bridges behind the lines at the start of the attack, dropped their shovels and picked up rifles to assist the British at Amiens, earning the dubious distinction of becoming the first American unit to engage the Germans on the Western Front." (p. 401)

"In the vanguard were American divisions, fighting under French generals. This little-studied Aisne-Marne offensive proved the courage of the American infantrymen ... over 90,000 Americans were dead or wounded." (p. 425)

"Too often, Americans found their flanks exposed by the failure of a French division to keep pace with their attack. ... The climax of this messy operation was on August 27, when an isolated company of the 28th Division was annihilated in Fismette, on the north bank of the Vesle River. Bullard had tried to withdraw the soldiers--they were the only Americans on that side of the river, surrounded by some 200,000 Germans--but [French General] Degoutte, now commander of the Sixth Army, had revoked the order." (pp. 425-426)

"The intelligence section of the German IV Reserve Corps filed a major report praising the valor of the Marines and predicting glumly that their tactical skill might soon match their heroism: 'The Second American Division must be considered a very good one and may even perhaps be considered as a storm troop. The different attacks on Belleau Wood were carried out with bravery and dash....The qualities of the men individually may be described as remarkable. ...They lack at present only training and experience to make formidable adversaries. ...the words of a prisoner are characteristic--We kill or get killed!" (pp. 446-447)

Questionable Conclusions

The author (Cowley) questions the truth of "The Massacre of the Innocents". (pp. 37-49). He presents some good points, and is probably accurate that the event had become a bit of legend rather than accuracy, and I am sure that the Germans needed the propaganda the event provided. However, his criticism of the event is relatively shallow and not scholarly. Cowley fails to establish enough support for his position. A qualified historian would have researched the event more thoroughly in Germany to acquire indisputable evidence.

Cowley also chides the accuracy of the numbers for the Langemarck Cemetery. I have been to that cemetery also, and suggest anyone in the area attend. I think it is well done as the Viet Nam War Memorial in the USA and there are some similarities. Cowley attempt to discredit the number of bodies buried by the fact it comes to "Nine men per square foot" in one area of it. His position is poorly thought out and contradicts the history of WWI. The vast majority of the victims were killed by artillery. Many were left of the battlefield for long periods of time, and therefore subjected to further ravages of the battlefield. The bodies were not originally buried at the Langemarck. They were buried at a number of cemeteries throughout the Ypres area. However, the residents of Belgium were quite angry with the Germans for invading their country and for the war, and they felt the numerous cemeteries were eyesores and lowered the value of their property. Therefore, they required the Germans to inter the numerous bodies into a few relatively small cemeteries, Langemarck being one of them. This was done over ten years after the war and the relative state of decomposition of the bodies had a long time to occur and well as the fact there were very few whole bodies. So while Cowley computes "Nine men per square foot" it probably a very conceivable number given the body parts recovered and over ten years of decomposition.

Cowley further questions the myth of "The Innocents" signing in battle and walking arm in arm. I don't think any serious student of military history would insist that green recruits would be brave enough to sing while walking into an artillery barrage and enfilade machine gun fire. They may have exited the trenches singing for confidence, but once the noise of the battlefield was upon them and the first members of their wave fell, it is obvious the singing would have stopped. So yes, it was an exaggerated claim so the focus of the massacre would not be on the stupidity of the commanding officers, but on the bravery of the young combatants.

Cowley uses the claim the "Innocents" walked arm in arm is false since "how could they carry a rifle" is totally missing the point. So what if they did not walk arm in arm. That is not relevant to the discussion of whether green recruits were naive in their introduction to battle and whether they were signing or not. Cowley also questions the number of "students" killed in the battle, stating "Recent research indicates that only 18 percent were". Of note is that the "Recent research" was not Cowley's, and similar to all of the articles, all facts and claims are devoid of footnotes and references, a minimum requirement for any scholarly publication.

The large number of casualties that occurred at Ypres is well documented. Even 18% of the total being students is quite a significant number. Without adequate reference and discussion about the 18% figure, it is impossible to determine what it included. Does it include only those soldiers who were in college or high school when they joined the army? How about those that recently graduated or dropped out of school. Officially, they are not students, but fall into the same age group. Cowley unfairly characterizes the 6,313 names of youth as only being about 1,000 students. A poor conclusion without adequate basis of fact.

The editor (Cowley) states "It is no accident that many of those responsible for the Holocaust were veterans of the trenches." (p. xiv). This statement shows the editor cannot be taken seriously as a historian. He is trying to justify German WWII atrocities. Hundreds of thousands of American troops had the same experience, but they did not commit atrocities. The editor made a totally irresponsible statement with no basis whatsoever.

The author states "we will never know" whether ground fire or another pilot killed the Red Baron. (p. 283). Unfortunately, the author does not watch the Discovery Channel which investigated all claims and scientifically proved that ground fire from a machine gun provided the lucky shot.

The author states "A speech his staff wrote for him to make at Lafayette's tomb on July 4, 1917, ended with the oratorical high note, 'Lafayette, we are here." Pershing crossed it out and wrote 'not in character' beside it. He let one of his staff officers who spoke good French say it instead." (p. 420) This is contradicted by other history books that state Pershing said he wished he thought of saying it. His staff officer was quite articulate and stole the show. The book, Over There by Byron Farwell (also in this blog) states on page 94: "Charles E. Stanton, a quartermaster lieutenant colonel, who was, as Pershing said, 'somewhat of an orator,' announced, 'Lafayette, we are here!' words later attributed to Pershing himself, who called it a 'striking utterance' and one he wished had been his. I am not sure which report is accurate, but without footnotes and references, it is difficult to support the author's position.

Some interesting facts raised by the authors:

• "A battalion of Greeks, complaining that they had enlisted to fight Turks, not Germans, had to be forced to attack by Algerian tirailleurs, 'riflemen,' with fixed bayonets." (p. 84)
• The small German cruiser, the Magdeburg ran aground in the Gulf of Finland and had to be scuttled. Russian Lieutenant Galibin "searched the wreck of the Magdeburg. He found a locker in Habenicht's cabin and broke it open. Hidden deep within it was the German codebook, forgotten in the excitement of the catastrophe. Galibin removed it ... The Allies thus came into possession of the key cryptographic secret of the Imperial German Navy" (p. 149) "...new [German] foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann ... would distract America by getting Mexico to wage war on her. ... He put his proposal into code and cabled it on January 15 via Sweden to the Western Hemisphere. ...The British intercepted the message, and Room 40 deciphered it. [The British] had a propaganda weapon of the first water ... [and] gave it to the Americans. ...The story made headlines in papers all over the nation on March 1. ... Five weeks later President Wilson--who had been reelected just months earlier on the slogan 'He kept us out of war'--went up to Capitol Hill to ask Congress to 'make the world safe for democracy' by declaring war on Germany." (pp. 152-153).
• Theodore Roosevelt sons, "First Archie, then Theodore, Jr., were badly wounded in the fighting along the river. Ethel's husband, Dr. Richard Derby, had a series of narrow escapes as he worked on the wounded in an aid station just behind the lines. ...Quentin [was shot down and killed] over the Marne ... with two machine-gun bullets in his brain." (p. 299-301) "For soldiers fighting to make the world safe for democracy, the death of a former president's son was symbolic proof that Americans practiced what they preached." (p. 302) "Ted Jr., also served in World War II, earning a Medal of Honor as a brigadier general at Utah Beach on D Day; he died of a heart attack in July 1944." (p. 303)
• "... a Canadian, Dr. Gerald Bull, entered the international arms market in the 1970s. ... He developed a series of experimental guns ... which succeeded in shooting a projectile 112 miles into low space. ... On March 22, just outside his Brussels apartment, an unknown assassin shot him twice in the head" (p. 409).
• "Pershing also decided to make an AEF division ... twice the size of an Allied or German division. ... Unfortunately, he did not double the size of the new division's artillery" (p. 419)
• "General Summerall, by then the commander of the V Corps, [marched] the 1st Division across the front of the 42d Division to get there first. In the darkness and confusion, the 1st Division captured Douglas MacArthur, one of the 42d's brigadiers, who looked like a German officer because of his unorthodox headgear." (p. 431)
• "I [was supposed to] lead the squad. I kinder think they almost led me." Medal of Honor winner, Corporal Alvin York, had a better idea of leadership than probably anyone in the AEF based on recent studies of successful leaders.
• "The unreality was underscored by the way you found out that your husband or son had died ... If you were lucky, an official letter or telegram brought you the news. But sometimes you simply glimpsed the name of a loved one on a huge casualty list posted on a city wall, or your last letter to the front came back to you stamped 'Dead--Return to Sender." (p. 477)

Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917-1918

Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917-1918 by Byron Farwell (1999) covers the United States involvement and contribution in World War I. This book is excellent for Americans who may not want to read about the war from its start in 1914, but wish to concentrate on the US involvement in the war. It does not provide an in-depth analysis of the war, but does a very good job at keeping the reader engaged and educating the reader about American involvement in WWI.

My Rating: Very Good (****). As an American, I enjoyed the book tremendously since it covered the war from the involvement of the USA and not from its beginning. It provides a good summary of World War I for the American audience. It is well-written, interesting, and provides relevant aspects of the history of the war without trying to cover every aspect in great detail.

Some strategies and themes presented in the book include the following:

Twisting the facts to provide unified backing for the war.

The sinking of the Lusitania is often considered the single event that brought the US into the war. It was positioned a defenseless ocean liner attacked by the inhuman Germans. Of its 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,195 perished including 124 of the 129 Americans on board (including multimillionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, actor Charles Frohman, and author Elbert Hubbard). The facts were that the Lusitania carried six million rounds of .303 rifle ammunition, fifty-one tons of shrapnel shells, parts for mines, 200 additional tons of ammo, and sixty-seven British soldiers. The Lusitania had 12 six-inch guns and was classified as an auxiliary cruiser. The Germans had even published in several newspapers a warning to anyone planning to travel on the Lusitania that it was a viable target for the Germans. "Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was one of the few who viewed the disaster realistically: 'Germany,' he said, 'has a right to prevent contraband going to the Allies and a ship carrying contraband should not rely upon passengers to prevent her from attack." (pp. 23-25)

"President Wilson revealed the Zimmermann note to the press. ...Alfred Zimmermann, German foreign secretary, sent a coded message ... proposing a defensive alliance with Mexico in case of war between the United States and Germany. It contained the proviso that 'Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona' ...British naval intelligence intercepted and decoded the message... Released to the public, it created a storm of outrage. Many now felt that war with Germany was inevitable." (p.34)

"Creel's committee [Committee on Public Information] soon developed into the United States' first propaganda ministry, disseminating Wilson's political views to every village in the country and eventually throughout the world." Creel used many channels including:

• A corps of 75,000 Four Minute Men recruited to speak during theater intermissions, before clubs, or at any other place an audience was available.
• Traveling salesmen were supplied with pamphlets and asked to speak with their customer base.
• Immigrants were urged to speak English, salute the flag, and cultivate patriotism in their children.
• Daily and sometimes hourly press releases proclaimed the enemy to be barbaric huns.
• Exhibitions of military equipment were arranged.
• Thirty propaganda bulletins and distributions were prepared in several languages and 75 million copies distributed.
• Artist were asked to draw and produced 700 poster designs, 122 streetcar advertising cards, 310 advertising illustrations, and 287 cartoons. The most famous was the "Uncle Sam Wants You!" poster.
• The motion picture industry produced "hate-the-Hun" films. (pp. 123-124)

"Americans grew suspicious of each other. Neighbor spied on neighbor and workers spied on their fellow workers. There developed a kind of national paranoia. ... Creel was later blamed for the hysteria. One critic observed that, 'Never have so many behaved so stupidly at the manipulation of so few.'" (p. 125)

"On 12 July the New York Times headlined a story with a dateline of the day before: OUR MEN TAKE BELLEAU WOOD, 300 CAPTIVES. This was not so. It was not even close." (p. 171)

"Colonel Stewart was ordered by the War Department to tighten censorship of letters that were 'most unsoldierly in tone and anti-British in sentiment'" in response to AEF discontent when serving in Northern Russia. (p. 282)

Elimination of Basic Rights of Citizens.

Many occurrences abused citizens without due process, including:

• Between April and November 1917 thousands of suspected citizens were arrested, often without a warrant.
• 1,200 were placed in internment camps.
• Factories established their own FBI.
• Federal troops put down strikes, raided unions, and arrested leaders.
• The fifteen top leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World were sent to prison with sentences 0f twenty years.
• The War Department listed 75 books as vicious German propaganda and they were removed from the shelves of libraries.
• On April 6, 1917 Wilson authorized the seizure of radio stations.
• The Espionage Act was passed.
• The postmaster general was authorized to refuse mail advocating treason and cut-0ff mailing privileges of assorted foreign language newspapers and magazines, bankrupting many. (pp. 125-126)

The Economics of War.

"Not everyone was driven by patriotism. It was noticed that some people were making more money than they had before the war, some a great deal more."

• "Paytriots," Secretary Daniels called them.
• Pierre DuPont offered to manufacture much-needed smokeless powder--for a price (making 25-50% profit).
• The assistant secretary of the treasury denounced the makers of American flags as unpatriotic profiteers.
• Coal mining companies were found to be "as fine a specimen of war profiteering as I have ever seen" according to Secretary of Treasury McAdoo with profits of more than 1,000% in one year.
• Bethlehem Steel increased its profits by more than 800%.
• "The law of supply and demand has been replaced by the law of selfishness" said Herbert Hoover.
• The number of millionaires doubled from the pre-war number.
• A manufacturer made army raincoats that dissolved in the rain.
• Labor wanted their fair share of the profits and resorted to strikes. (pp. 131-133)
• "The British, French, and others who supplied ships were not eleemosynary; the American government paid for every soldier transported in a foreign vessel. The French made an attempt to charge for every man sent to fight for them as if he were a prewar passenger on a liner instead of a human sardine on a troopship. When the Americans refused to be gouged the price was reduced from $150 per man to $81.75." (p. 81)
• "Except for small arms, almost all of the army's needs were supplied by Britain and France at exorbitant prices." (p. 104)
• "Through it all [the movement from St. Mihiel to Argonne], the French officer in charge of the trucks insisted on counting the men in each and collecting receipts for their delivery, for the French charged the Americans by the head for transporting their soldiers to fight for them." (p. 222)
• "Of the eight billion dollars loaned to the Allies, little was repaid. Only Finland paid in full." (p. 299)

Weak leadership during the War.

"Among the armies of the world, that of the United States ranked sixteenth, just behind Portugal." (p. 37)

"The punitive expedition of regulars and ill-trained and ill equipped National Guardsmen led by Brigadier General John Pershing against Francisco ('Pancho') Villa in 1916 had learned little that could be of value to them on the Western Front and their stumbling about south of the border illustrated all too starkly how unprepared the country was to fight a modern war. It had not even been able to suppress a Mexican bandit." (p. 37)

"Colonel McAlexander had narrowly escaped being sent home in disgrace. He had graduated near the bottom of his class at West Point ... a staff officer found him asleep in his dugout at 9:00 one morning. He was saved thanks to the pleading of his brigade commander ... explaining that McAlexander habitually spent his nights in the front-line trenches with his troops. McAlexander emerged from the war with the unusual distinction of having earned both the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal." (p. 179-180)

"The [French Army] mutinies were not against the war... They were a passionate protest against stupidity, incompetence and indifference, .... against fire-eating generals who threw away lives in futile stunts for the sake of la gloire." (p. 91)

"In July 1917 the country had begun production of the recently designed 8-cylinder Liberty engine, but Pershing asked for a 12-cylinder engine instead and 13,574 of the 12-cylinder Liberty engines were built ... but it was too heavy for pursuit planes. In May 1918 Pershing demanded the 8-cylinder plane again. ... Planning and organization remained in a state of flux. ... Much of the difficulty was the result of Pershing's continual changing of specifications. ... Thousands of changes in the details of planes were cabled by him, until manufacturers simply threw up their hands." (p. 199)

"General Charles P. Summerall, commanding V Corps, directed MacArthur: 'Give me Chatillon or a list of 5,000 casualties.' ... The hill was taken, but more than twenty-five years later MacArthur, reminiscing with General Robert Eichelberger, said, 'I have hated him ever since.'" (p. 230)

"George C. Marshall was taken aback to learn that the army that had fought at St. Mihiel was to be sent immediately to a new sector, for it was his responsibility to issue the orders for its transfer. 'I could not recall an incident in history where the fighting of one battle had been preceded by the plans for a later battle to be fought by the same army on a different front, and involving the issuing of orders for the movement of troops already destined to participate in the first battle, directing their transfer to the new field of action." (p. 221)

"President Wilson, attending the peace conference, made a grand tour of the European capitals but, although Chateau-Thierry was only an hour away from Paris, the commander-in-chief did not find time to visit it or any of the fields where his soldiers had fought and bled, nor did he see any of the military cemeteries. His neglect was noted." (pp. 264-265)

Inability to learn from experience.

"It seems not to have occurred to any general on either side that in a war of attrition the advantage lay with the defensive, that the attacker lost more men than the defender. It was a lesson never learned." (p.48)

"The marines attacked in waves, lines of men sometimes moving shoulder to shoulder, almost like a Civil War attack, without benefit of mortars or grenades, and German Maxim machine guns scythed them down. ... Belleau Wood proved a hard nut to crack. Fourteen days later it was indeed taken, but the marines sustained nearly 5,200 casualties, including 750 killed, more than fifty percent of its strength. One mile had been gained. It was the costliest battle in Marine Corps history and would remain so until the Battle of Tarawa in November 1943." (pp. 169-171)

"Parachutes were, however, used by observers in balloons, who jumped 116 times with only one fatality. ... Perhaps from bravado or perhaps from the belief that the falling plane would hit the parachutes before they could fall clear, pilots did not carry them until the last months of the war. (p. 194)

Innovating.

"In the first four months 2.7 tons of shipping had been sunk [by German U-boats]." US Rear Admiral William Sims asked if there was any solution. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Britain's First Sea Lord, told Sims: 'Absolutely none that we can see now.' Sims devised and recommended "a convoy system--merchant ships assembled and traveling together under the protection of destroyers--be instituted, but the Admiralty rejected the idea out of hand, declaring it to be a waste of cruisers and destroyers." When it was finally implemented later in the war, "During the last months of the war convoys lost only about one percent of their ships" (pp. 71-72).

The British use of depth charges was that "The drums were simply rolled off the decks until American investors developed the 'Y gun,' a specially devised apparatus which hurled the huge charges with greater accuracy and less risk." (p. 72)

"... a submarine detection device device developed by forty-year-old Professor Max Mason, a mathematician then at the University of Wisconsin. It not only could detect the sound of submarines as far as twenty miles away, but also could reveal the direction of the sound." (p. 72)

".. the development by two Americans, Commander S.P. Fullinwider and a civilian, thirty-seven-year-old Ralph Cowan Browne, a roentgenologist, of an electrical system and mechanism that made possible an improved mine." (p. 72) "... the British Admiralty rejected the idea" but after the US deployed them in the Northern Sea "they wreaked havoc with the German submarines" and were considered "one of the wonders of the war." (p. 73)

"As the war progressed the value of [native American Indian] languages, unknown in Europe, was recognized and many were used as telephone operators, speaking in their native tongues." (p. 160)

"The guns had difficulty hitting small targets twenty miles away until Edwin P. Hubble, an infantry captain who knew something about the mathematics of moving objects through curved space and time, provided solutions. Dr. Hubble later won a Nobel prize and built the 200-inch telescope on Mount Palomar. His name was given to the first space telescope." (p. 209)

Training.

"Many arrived in France without ever having fired their weapon. ...When the 90th Division shipped out in June 1918 only 35 percent of its personnel had received more than four weeks of formal instruction." (p. 65)

"As disdainful as he was of French training, Pershing lauded the skill of French cooks." (p. 101)

"On 30 March 1918 Lloyd George, and on the following day Clemenceau, dispatched messages to President Wilson urging him to send more American troops, even untrained and unorganized troops, as rapidly as possible." (p. 118)

"Many of the American divisions were still not fully trained or fully equipped. ... Some [American soldiers] did not even know how to insert rifle clips and it was said that experienced soldiers were getting $5 apiece to instruct them." (p. 221)

Wrong Priorities.

"The winter of 1917-1918 was the most severe of the war and the snow was unusually heavy in eastern France. In the newly arrived troops of the AEF clothing was in short supply, even boots for marching. Urgent appeals to Washington were rejected 'owing to need for supply of troops in the United States.' Soldiers at war could not be clothed as long as soldiers at home needed uniforms. ... Major Frederick Palmer referred to this period as the Valley Forge of the AEF." (p. 98)

"No one seemed able to tell the troops why they were fighting Russians in Russia and many felt they had been forgotten and abandoned. ... 'we were fighting a people against whom war had never been declared and we didn't know why we were fighting them." (p. 283)

Double Standards.

"223 French-speaking American women, called 'Hello Girls', were imported to operate a cable and plug switchboard. "The 'Hello Girls' wearing the uniforms required by the army and drawing army pay, had assumed they were in the Army Signal Corps. They discovered they were not only when they were discharged and informed that they had been merely employees and were ineligible for the status and benefits of veterans. Not until 1979, after a campaign led by former Hello Girl Mrs Louise Le Breton Maxwell, did the army give honorable discharges, war medals, and veteran benefits to the few survivors." (p. 307)

"In the 42nd Division several officers, out of the line for a time, were discovered to have rented rooms in Baccarat and Badonviller which they shared with local women or prostitutes. They were court-martialed, deprived of pay, and given a stern lecture by Douglas MacArthur, who after the war was to do exactly the same thing himself--without, however, receiving reprimand or punishment."(p.146)

"There was a reluctance to give medals to blacks until after a reevaluation was begun in 1988. In 1991 a Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously to Corporal Freddie Stowers of the 93rd Division (Provisional) for leading an attack upon a machine gun nest." (p. 251)

Theodore Roosevelt was a proponent for the war and his youngest son, Quentin, was killed in action in a dogfight. He was a pilot. Teddy Roosevelt did not have a double standard for his own children, all of which would serve in WWI. "Pershing rote to [him]: 'Quentin died as he had lived and served, nobly and unselfishly, in the full strength and vigor of his youth, fighting the enemy in clean combat. You may well be proud of your gift to the nation in his supreme sacrifice." (p. 192)

"When the army received complaints from several YMCA women that their superior, Mr. O. K. LaRoque, sexually harassed them, he was ordered out but refused to leave and went unpunished." (p. 271)

"Comparatively few American medals were awarded during the war. The War Department failed to recognize their morale value and good job done and Pershing had originally believed that the knowledge a soldier had of a good job done and earning the respect of his comrades should be reward enough. ...The Rainbow Division submitted nine recommendations for the Medal of Honor, a list headed by Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur ... Pershing chose six, MacArthur was not one of them. ..."The days for brigadier generals to rush forward in the firing line waving their hats and yelling 'Come on boys!' are in actual warfare at least a thing of the past" ... [Patton] feared he would not receive the Distinguished Service Cross and considered resigning if he did not get it. ... The Silver Star medal was not instituted until 8 August 1932, but during World War I small silver stars were authorized to be worn on the campaign ribbons of those cited in orders for gallantry. Essentially these were what the British called 'mentioned in dispatches.' Douglas MacArthur, who earned seven of these in World War I, equated them with the new medal and awarded himself seven Silver Star Medals." (pp. 295-296)

Fighting Ability of the AEF.

"General Walther Reinhardt, chief of staff of the German Seventh Army which opposed the Americans in this battle, praised their elan and will to attack. 'They may not look good, but hell, how they can fight!' he said."(p.183)

"Corporal Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ... in the 1st Moroccan Division and a witness to the fighting. ... 'We had the Americans as neighbors and I had a close-up view of them. Everyone says the same: they're first rate troops, fighting with intense individual passion ... and wonderful courage. The only complaint one would make about them is that they don't take sufficient care; they're too apt to get themselves killed. When they're wounded they make their way back holding themselves upright, almost stiff, impassive, and uncomplaining. I don't think I've ever seen such pride and dignity in suffering." (pp. 183-184)

"The Germans had such a high opinion of the fighting abilities of the Indians, their impressions drawn from Wild West shows and from highly popular German books about them, that German newspapers tried to conceal the fact that their soldiers were fighting against them. During the St. Mihiel offensive the commanding officer of the German 97th Landwehr ordered snipers to pick off Indians when they could be recognized." (p. 160)

General Joseph Helle ... said of the Americans: 'We were quite unprepared for such fury in an attack.' So were the Germans. General Walther Reinhardt, chief of staff of the Seventh German Army, agreed with Helle and compared the fervor of the Americans to the German volunteers in 1914." (p. 184)

"Men in the rear areas who went AWOL (Absent Without Leave) from their units and made their way to the battleline where at least 3,170 were killed and 6,471 were wounded. The total number of men so eager to see combat is unknown, but the practice ws so widespread that General Pershing made special arrangements for those men who had done good service in the rear to have the opportunity to go on the firing line." (p. 265)

"By war's end Americans held 101 miles or 23 percent of the battleline." (pp. 265-266)

Winston Churchill wrote: "To fight in defence of his native land is the first duty of the citizen. But fight in defence of some one else's native land is a different proposition... To cross the ocean and fight for strangersd, far from home, upon an issue the making of which one has had no say, requires a wide outlook upon human affairs and a sense of world responsibility." (p. 285)

"Belgium's Cardinal Desire Joseph Mercier [had] come to the United States to thank Americans for their assistance to his country." (p. 287)

"British military historian Captain Basil Liddell Hart best summed up the American contribution: 'The United States did not win the war, but without their economic aid to ease the strain, whithout the arrival of their troops to turn the numerical balance, and, above all, without the moral tonic which their coming gave, victory would have been impossible." (p. 299)

Fighing Under French Command.

"The worst disaster to Americans was sustained by four rifle companies of the 28th Division, a National Guard unit from Pennsylvania that had been integrated into a French unit which retreated without warning, leaving them to be killed or captured." (pp. 178-179)

"The Americans took the ridge, but the French had failed to keep pace and the Americans were forced to defend their own flanks. As a result, 3 October 1918 was the bloodiest day in the division's history, but on the following day the French could with ease assume their places in the line. General John A. Lejeune, then commanding the 2nd Division, sent off an angry telegram to AEF headquarters saying he would resign his commission rather than again fight beside the French units." (p. 249)

Opinions of Europeans.

"... Americans objected to British rations and never learned to prefer tea to coffee. 'We don't like their blooming tea or their blamed pet cats,' wrote one soldier. 'They said it was rabbit, but we used our own opinion. We had tasted rabbit in the states and we knew.'" (p.245)

After the war "Relations between occupiers [Americans] and the occupied [Germans] were soon cordial. Many Americans found the Germans friendlier than the British or French." (p. 269)

"Ambassador William Graves Sharp in Pris remarked that, 'Many of the French seem to have forgotten that but for us the Kaiser and his nobles would be running France.'" (p. 272)

"Pershing complained that the French 'had never once said a word of thank or complimented the American troops on what they had done.' According to Haig, Pershing told him that Americans would never forget 'the bad treatment which they had received from the French and that it was difficult to exaggerate the feeling of dislike for the French which existed in the American army.'" (p. 272)

Some interesting facts presented by the author include:

• "Because of the misuse of the word 'shrapnel' by several generations of ignorant journalists, many readers of World War i literature assume that the word 'sharpnel' meant shell fragments. But this was not the case. Shrapnel, invented by Major Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842) of the British Royal Artillery, was first used in 1804. " (p. 45)




• "58.51 percent of all battle casualties were caused by enemy artillery and mortar fire; rifle and machine gun fire accounted for 38.98 percent." (p. 46)
• "Charles E. Stanton, a quartermaster lieutenant colonel, ... announced, 'Lafayette, we are here!' words later attributed to Pershing himself" (p. 94).
• "When MacArthur was recommended for promotion to brigadier general, Pershing disapproved it, but MacArthur's mother so lobbied Washington that General Peyton March, the chief of staff, approved the promotion." (p. 98)
• "Sauerkraut became 'liberty cabbage. ... German measles became 'Liberty measles." (p. 125) "As of January income tax was increased so that many now had to pay what was billed as a 'Liberty Tax.' The number of American taxpayers rose to seven million in 1918 from only 500,000 the previous year. (p. 290)
• "General Pershing served as a first lieutenant in the 10th Calvary [a black regiment] from 1892 to 1898 and for his championship of black soldiers was called "Black Jack" Pershing. (p. 148)
• "Marine John C. Geiger, who was in an attack on 10 July, later confessed that after he and others surrounded a German machine gun nest the crew wanted to surrender: 'But there's not much use taking as prisoners men who fire at you until they see they are overpowered. I don't remember any prisoners walking back from that crowd.' Private Carl Brannen of the 6th Marines claimed that, 'Machine gunners were never taken prisoner by either side.' ... Lieutenant van Dolson wrote that the soldiers from Alabama 'did not take many prisoners, but I do not blame them much for that.' A Georgia soldier wrote home: "All of you can cheer up and wear a smile for I'm a little hero now. I got two of the rascals and finished killing a wounded with my bayonet that might have gotten well had I not finished him' (p. 174).
• "I never heard a man cuss so well or so intelligently, and I'd shoed a million mules ... The battery didn't say a word. They must have figured the cap'n could do the cussin' for the whole outfit." Private Paul Shaffer describing artillery Captain Harry Truman.
• "Of the more than 15,000 pigeons trained to carry messages in France some 5,000 disappeared, perhaps some into French marmites. ... One pigeon returned with the message: 'I'm tired of carrying this God-damned bird.'" (p. 225)
• "... Captain Frank Williams ... in the 82nd Division. He had been a sheriff in Montana and Wyoming and had performed as a fast-draw shooter with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Reconnoitering a hill north of St. Juvin on a foggy October morning he came upon five Germans escorting an American prisoner. Williams sauntered toward them, his pistol in its holster. Perhaps his empty hands put the Germans off guard, but when he drew near he pulled his pistol and shot four before they could raise their rifles. The survivor surrendered." (p. 228)
• "German soldiers they encountered there readily raised their hands and called 'Kamerad!' but as soon as the Americans lowered their rifles, the 'prisoners' fell flat and an assault team burst through them and cut up the platoon. Lieutenant Dwight H. Shaffner ... cut down several men with his Chauchat, then drew his pistol and seized the German captain who had organized the ruse: Dragging him back, he forced him to divulge information about the German positions ahead. For his valor, and in spite of his disregard of the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, he was awarded the Medal of Honor." (p. 230)
• "... novelist William Faulkner ... finished ground school on 13 November, two days after the Armistice, and never won the wings he nevertheless wore. Faulkner never flew solo or was sent to France or was injured in a airplane crash or was commissioned or did much else that he claimed; like Hemingway, he pretended to be what he was not and to have done what hedid not do." (p. 252)


• "It was said that the Germans fought for territory, the British for the sea, the French for patriotism, and the Americans for souvenirs." (p. 269)
• "March wrote: 'President Wilson only interfered twice with the military operations of the War Department while I was Chief of Staff, and both times he was wrong. The first of these was the Siberian Expedition; the other sending American troops to Murmansk and Archangel, in northern Russia." (p. 273) "General March called the Siberian expedition a 'military crime.'" (p. 284)
• The AEF officers in northern Russia "routinely instructed their men 'to take no prisoners, to kill them even if they come in unarmed'" and in many cases this was done. (p. 283)
• "Men who had left aid stations prematurely to return to the fighting discovered that they had no credit for their wounds." (p. 289)
• "Over in France and in the occupied part of Germany the doughboys feel peeved that Prohibition has been enacted in their absence." (p. 290)
• "The soldiers and sailors returned to a land of bootleggers, gangsters, speakeasies, and bathtup gin" (p. 290)
• "In late May 1932 some 17,000 unemployed veterans from all parts of the country decended upon Washington and demanded immediate and full payment of the [veteran] bonuses. The 'bonus army' camped in ramshackle huts assembled by its members almost within sight of the Capitol. In June Congress voted down their demands and most of them returned from whence they had come. However, some 2,000 remained. When President Hoover ordered them removed, Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur, aided by Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, sent soldiers carrying bayoneted refles to burn their shacks and move them on." (p. 294)

Five Days in October: The Lost Battalion of World War I

Five Days in October: The Lost Battalion of World War I by Robert Ferrell (2005) provides new material about the plight of five hundred men of the Seventy-seventh Division that were trapped and surrounded by German troops in the Argonne Forest from October 2 to 7, 1918. The author discovered new material in the U.S. Army Military History Institute and in the National Archives. This provides a more complete understanding of the story of the Lost Battalion. The Seventy-seventh Division was known as the "Liberty" Division and comprised mostly of draftees from the New York City area.

The "Lost Battalion" was not really lost. That was only a term coined by a newspaper to describe their isolation from friendly forces. They had been sent ahead of the main division line without proper flanking support which eventually led their being surrounded. It took five days for their comrades to break through to them.

My Rating: Good (***). World War I has not had the attention of historians that WWII has attracted. It is refreshing to see emphasis on obtaining a better understanding of WWI by a competent historian.

Some common strategies or themes included:

• Lack of Leadership:

Commander of the overall American forces, General Pershing, exhibited several failings as a leader which led to the entrapment of the "lost battalion." He put inexperienced forces into the front line. His veteran troops were involved in the recent St. Mihiel engagement and were unable to be deployed in time. He knew that would be the case, but he accepted the responsibility from the overall allied commander, Marshall Foch, even though it was an unrealistic task and ill conceived use of American forces. The troops had to be transported over 50 miles of poor roads to reach their starting point, and organization of the lines was inadequate. The Seventy-seventh received a five mile wide front line, the largest of any other unit. The problem was created by inadequate and aggressive planning without due consideration of logistics. Pershing's approach was to push, push, and push troops and commanders to advance, and he had little understanding of tactics. Without experienced officers and troops, that was an ill-advised approach. Pershing was more interested in the opportunity to be a hero in the Meuse-Argonne campaign than tactically using his forces with their fate in consideration. (pp. 4-6)

The Seventy-seventh's commanding officer, Major General Alexander, was considered a "stuffed shirt" by his peers, with some believing he would be relieved of command but it never happened. He treated his subordinates poorly, with some transferring from his command, and he also had little diplomacy in dealing with other units or headquarters. He did not have adequate flank support on the left from the French. The French were slow to advance because they preferred the Americans to bear the brunt of the combat (four years of war made them reluctant to accept casualties), leaving the flank open. Alexander never verified the French advance on the flank, and simply pushed his troops forward. Additionally, Pershing agreed to a French Army request to remove the Ninety-second division (which was under French command) from the front, and that further opened the left flank. The Ninety-second was an African-American division and the French were prejudiced against it, requesting its withdrawal. The combination of factors left the flank open on the Seventy-seventh and Alexander was unable to comprehend the danger of doing so (pp. 6-11).

General McCloskey's artillery regiments placed friendly fire on the "lost battalion", misreading the coordinates provided. Mysteriously, a division investigation of the incident never occurred and the command papers disappeared.

• Lack of Equipment:

One of the officers of the "lost battalion", Captain Holderman wrote in an after action report: "Never allow a force as large as a battalion to start on any mission without supporting weapons, in the form of 38 millimeter guns, trench mortars and machine guns." They had the machine guns, but none of the others since it was considered too difficult to transport them. (p. 25).

• Display of Good Judgement:

One of the machine gun officers of the "lost battalion", 2nd Lieutenant Maurice Revnes, wrote a note on the third or fourth day of the battle to Major Whittlesey recommending the battalion surrender because of the lack of food, low ammunition, and large number of wounded without medical care. He was court martialed, but the verdict was over turned by General James Mayes since the Lieutenant gallantly performed his duties while being wounded, and that it served no purpose to convict him a charge the General deemed petty (pp. 38-39).

After the "lost battalion" was relieved, everyone including Alexander (who put them in that predicament) and McCloskey (whose artillery bombarded them) claimed they saved the battalion. "The man who did save the Lost Battalion was [Major General] Summerall, who never laid claim, probably because it was not he who paid the price but the seven thousand men of his division who died or were wounded." (p. 83)

Interesting points raised or facts presented by the author included:

• The ranking commander of the "Lost Battalion", Major Charles Wittlesey, a New York lawyer, committed suicide three years after the war which many conclude was due to a failure to reconcile with his war experiences. (p. 84)
• "In an unchivalrous act the Germans directed trench mortar, machine-gun, and rifle fire at burial parties." (p. 31)
• The last messenger pigeon of the battalion was sent to stop the friendly artillery fire. The pigeon, named Cher Ami was shot through the breast and arrived with the message dangling from a shattered leg. It died of its wounds in 1919 and was stuffed, and is on exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (p. 36)
• The common used term "foxhole" was not used during WWI. They were called "funkhole".
• On November 11, 1921 the tomb of the unknown soldier was established, and during that ceremony all holders of the Congressional Medal of Honor were present, including the three officers from the "lost battalion": Whittlesey, McMurtry, and Holderman. Whittlesey committed suicide days after the ceremony. (pp. 83-84)

Click here to buy "Five Days in October: The Lost Battalion of World War I"

Forever A Soldier: Unforgettable Stories of Wartime Service

Forever A Soldier: Unforgettable Stories of Wartime Service by Tom Wiener (2005) is a collection of 41 war stories as told by veterans of several wars. The stories were selected out of 35,000 individual stories as part of the Veterans History Project.

My Rating: Good (***). The numerous points that follow show the quality of some of the selections. However, in general, oral histories are problematic. They provide the self-report by the participant, and express his or her first hand view of history. However, often, an individual's memory is affected by time or simply by the narrow view they may have had of events. This often differs with reality. The perfect example is Dick Winters' (Band of Brothers) comments regarding events told to the author (Stephen Ambrose) by various soldiers which were totally inaccurate. Winters, who wrote the after-action reports, was most familiar with the events and corrected the misconceptions. I question the author's choice of some of the stories, since out of 35,000 stories, I think more relevant choices could have been made to present the 41 most compelling oral histories in a book.

Strategies and themes presented in the readings include:

• Leadership Lacking: At Pearl Harbor, the damaged battleship West Virginia was filled with water that almost filled the officers' quarters. The Annapolis graduates asked sailors from the Tennessee, moored next to it, to retrieve their swords that they graduated with. (p. 11) Why didn't the officers go get their swords themselves? Sailors, doing the officers a favor, were later thought to be stealing items from the quarters and an armed guard had to be posted.
  

With the 18th Field Artillery, John Sudyk's lieutenant volunteered Sudyk and a few others to ambush tanks with a bazooka which was as dangerous as a suicide mission. The lieutenant watched from 200 yards away. The lieutenant received a commendation while Sudyk and his fellow soldiers received nothing. (p. 28)

In Viet Nam, Ken Rodgers "characterized the military leadership he saw there as weak. The messages the enlisted men got were mixed and contradictory. Some leaders were more gung-ho than others; they demanded a spit-and-polish approach that Rodgers thought didn't make sense in the jungle. There was little camaraderie among officers ... We treated everybody over there as the enemy, and not everybody was... I could never ever tell anybody to do some of the things we had to do to survive over there..." When preparation began for Desert Storm, everything seemed well organized and thought out. "It was a piece of cake from what I had seen in the past. "(pp. 44-47)

The Germans had the superior defensive position in the Hurtgen Forest, but the Americans were told to attack. The battle became "a killing field for both sides ... We lost so many troops in there, we often wondered why we tried to advance in an area like that." (p. 30)

During Viet Nam, Head Nurse Frances Liberty and her staff used a hose to wash off casualties. A high ranking woman officer from Washington was visiting and said "Oh my, do you have to use a hose." Liberty responded "Well now, you go back to Washington and sit behind your nice desk, and when you think of something you tell us." (p. 132)

"In Korea, when another officer came down hard on a recruit just arrived in camp who had accidentally fired his weapon--the captain wanted him court-martialed--Lieutenant Bertran Wallace came to the recruit's defense. Shortly after that, he was relieved of duty and sent back to the States." (p. 164)

After losing 832 sailors from being bombed off Okinawa, the Franklin returned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for repairs. Harold Lippard gave up "making a career out of the Navy ... [because] a new ensign came in and just tore things up and Lippard didn't want to deal with the political repercussions." (p. 187)

Marine sharpshooter Giles McCoy, on the island of Pelelieu, "almost got court-martialed a couple of times, once for not shooting two Japanese boys. They weren't any more than ten or twelve years old." (p. 189)

One of the most obvious examples of a lack of leadership was exhibited by General MacArthur. Yet historians almost universally fail to cite this most egregious act. First, he withdrew and "set up his headquarters on Corregidor ... [and] On March 11, MacArthur and his staff abandoned Corregidor for Australia to assume command of the Allied Forces in that area." (p. 264)

MacArthur failed miserably as a commander. His troops were poorly trained and equipped. He was unable to stem the advances of the Japanese even though, as the evading force, they were very susceptible to extremely high casualties from a dug-in defensive army. MacArthur failed to create such a defense which would have strained the Japanese supply lines and allowed time for the US to resupply the troops. The effort to resupply was abandoned because it did not look like the defense would succeed. MacArthur also could have placed his troops in the jungles and mountainous regions were they could have effectively fought a guerrilla war with the aid the locals. His troops saw first hand his lack of commitment to stopping the Japanese when he ran from the mainland to safety on the fortress of Corregidor. And when that looked bleak, he kept to form and sneaked away on a PT boat under the cover of darkness, like a meek night creature avoiding its carnivorous predator. MacArthur should have been demoted and placed stateside for the remainder of the war. His subsequent "accomplishments" were also questionable, since they were at very high cost of life, and any other commander could have achieved the same results, and probably with less losses and better overall results. A real leader would never abandon his troops and also never leave a second in command to face the music.

In Viet Nam, Denton Crocker with the 173rd Airborne found that "The officer types were mainly decent in their technical duties but over 50 percent are not intelligent enough, or perhaps I should say ambitious enough, to comprehend the political and deeper military aspects of the conflict. As for the NCOs, "many of whom are tops, I believe if it were not for them the unit could not function, and they have my real respect." (p. 311) A persistent theme, throughout all conflicts is that the quality of NCOs is far greater than the officers, and the success of the army is the result of their ability. Since that is obviously true, can anyone tell me why there is such a disparity in compensation between NCOs and officers. Also, why are officers needed to command if have not throughout history succeeded in their role which had to be taken over by the NCOs.


• Innovating: "the artillerymen invented a way to warm up their sleeping quarters. They took some unused powder charges, tossed them into their sleeping hole, lit a match, and Whoosh! We get a nice warm hole to sleep in." (p. 30)

  "...money [was] to be made on POWs. Every Kraut had a very good Swiss or German watch, which was usually grabbed... and thousands of dollars were made by POW guards" (p. 73).

  Nurse Frances Liberty found supplies were not adequate in Korea so "she used the bulky flight jacket like a shoplifter to conceal armloads of supplies" (p. 130)



• Flawed Policy: "The Division could still do its job and fight but would not willingly accept the casualty rate that it once could. When things got too tough or hopeless, there were ways, learned from bitter experience, to slow things down and reduce casualties. The cycle was typical of just about every division that fought in Europe in World War II and was a result of the American practice of keeping a division in the line and on the attack continuously even though it no longer had enough riflemen left to do any effective fighting." (p. 68)

  "More than thirty years after participating in the [Viet Nam] war, the typically blunt McCain was still expressing frustration at the way it was waged from the air" (p. 234)

  "The only bad thing about the infantry is you know you're going to be there until you're wounded and/or you get killed." (p. 285)

• Flawed Equipment: In Viet Nam, Phil Randazzo "couldn't depend on his M16 because it would jam on him, but that his machine gun was another matter. Those guns could really do a lot of talking." (p. 78)

  During Operation Iraqi Freedom, combat medic Wendy Taines' "biggest frustration was not having the equipment to deal with the various injuries they saw, especially those afflicting burn victims." (p. 139)
  

Some interesting points documented in the stories:

• "'...when we [101st Airborne, 506th Regiment] first approached Landsberg, you could smell it. ... [we] saw those poor, godforsaken human beings and the shape that they were in, they were walking skeletons.' The US soldiers went into town, rousted out all the old men, women, and children, and made them dig three common graves in which to put all the corpses. .. I believed everything now that I had heard in the past about the German atrocities. They did it, and they were responsible for it. How one human being can do that to another one, I don't have the answer.'" (pp. 15-16)
• Regarding a POW camp near Munich, "'The smell is what lingers with you.' Sudyk couldn't believe the German citizens when they said they didn't know what was going on." (p. 31)
• Sudyk served as an interpreter in Patton's entourage, and knowing Patton was a spit-and-polish guy, Sudyk had a local citizen put about ten coats of lacquer on his helmet. Sudyk allowed a trio of German nurses through his checkpoint so they didn't have to surrender to the Russian army. (p. 31)
• For a week or two several German shells were duds, saving many casualties. This was attributed to slave labor factory-workers sabotaging the fuses, as would later be documented in the book and movie Schindler's List. "Some Jewish factory worker probably saved my life." (p. 32)
• Arriving in Korea with the First Cavalry, Ball wondered "why he saw in the streets thousands of men younger than us who weren't fighting for their own country." "After his year of constant fear and primitive living conditions, Bud Ball found that people here didn't care about the war, that many Americans he talked to barely knew that he and his buddies were risking their lives in Korea." (pp. 53-55)
• Infantry in WWII were called Doughboys or Dogfaces. "They were not called GIs, an insulting term to a combat soldier. ...the only GI soldiers were those in the states that hung around service clubs, appeared in Hollywood movies, or had cushy rear area jobs." (p. 69)
• Charles Rembsburg, during WWII, noted "After seeing so much of France and observing its people of all walks of life, I can readily see why she fell. The nation itself is rotten to the core" (p. 87).
• Eugene Curtin, during WWI, found that whenever they took a new town, "everyone from the very old and bent women to the small kids saluted an officer when he passed, and when they were asked about it they said if they did not salute the German officers they were beaten or otherwise punished." (p. 117)
• During Operation Iraqi Freedom, "With liquor impossible to find, some of the men started drinking gasoline from trucks for the alcohol content." (p. 140)
• The 442nd Regimental Combat Team which was supposedly an all-Nisei (Japanese-American) outfit, "even selected men who were only one-eighth Japanese" (p. 169).
• Omaha Beach veteran, Johann Kasten "lauded the film Saving Private Ryan for recreating an accurate picture of that day's bloody mess. The first fifteen minutes [of that film] were so real that I was seriously affected for three days. Today, for the life of me, I still don't remember how we made it up the cliffs." (p. 226)
• In WWI, "The Frogs were the instructors and they were in no more hurry about flying than they were about anything else, so progress was slow." (p. 253)
• B-17 Navigator Milton Stern, parachuting from his damaged plane in Holland, "was fortunate that the first people he encountered when he hit the ground were not only Dutch citizens but Dutch citizens willing to risk their lives to help him." (p. 273) Stern was eventually turned in by a secret Nazi collaborator, but the Dutch figured out who it was and "That man was hung at the end of the war." (p. 274) While a POW, he watched as "14 of my Belgian friends were shot, one at a time, by a firing squad" for refusing to reveal information about the underground resistance (p. 276).

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The Test of Battle: The American Expeditionary Forces in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign

The Test of Battle: The American Expeditionary Forces in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign by Paul F. Braim (1998) is about the experience and contribution of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during WWI. It provides a brief background prior to the War, and prior to USA involvement, but concentrates on the AEF involvement in WWI. The author states the AEF had "a hard-working group of relatively inexperienced leaders, struggling mightily with a most unique and challenging set of battlefield requirements, which taxed their resources and capabilities to the limit" (pp. xv-xvi).

My Rating: Good (***). A scholarly written book by a former military officer with battlefield experience who walked the battlefields of Meuse-Argonne as part of his research for this book.

Strategies Used:

1. Safety in numbers with an escort. In spite of broad British opposition, US Admiral William Smith established the convoy system for shipping with a destroyer escort. This quickly ended excessive losses in Allied shipping and eased the supply shortage.
2. More effort and sacrifice will result in more influence in the new order. Presidential advisor Herbert Hoover stated: "Our terms of peace will probably run counter to most of the European proposals, and our weight in the accomplishment of our ideals will be greatly in proportion to the strength which we can throw into the scale." (p. 19)
3. Clearly establish the organizational reporting structure. The French and British wanted the US troops to act as replacements, filling the ranks of their under strength units. President Wilson and US commanding general Jack Pershing insisted the US troops only engage as a separate entity, under the command of American officers. Pershing was right and this may have been his greatest accomplishment in WWI since the Allies would have used the AEF as replacements and placed them in the most dangerous front lines to alleviate the strain on the French and British home fronts where almost every family lost one or more members to the war. Both the French and British sought the resources of the AEF, and they did not trust each other with regard to sharing the AEF support equally. Overall, the Allied command was not unified, and this was a factor in their ineffectiveness. This was something Dwight Eisenhower overcame in WWII and was probably his greatest accomplishment.
4. The key to battle was the efficacy of the well-trained soldier using his rifle and bayonet (General Jack Pershing). Pershing failed to learn from the results of the prior two years of war which clearly established the machine gun and artillery as the major factors on the battle field.
5. Training was sacrificed to meet operational demands. Historians, commanding officers, and veteran troops all concur the troops (both officers and enlisted men) were not adequately prepared for the warfare they would face. "Their leadership had revealed that it was insufficiently trained and experienced to meet this trial by fire." (p. 137)
6. Use enthusiasm and resources to overcome experience and knowledge. "The very size of the US square division, reaching 28,000, compared to the 9,000 of the understrength European divisions, infused great strength to the Allies. The US would play their trump--inexperienced but willing manpower....They would succeed by manpower and enthusiasm." (p. 50)

7. Use common sense and initiative. Allied leaders worried about the US infantry crossing barbed wire where artillery failed to breach it. Some troops simply "stepped on the wire and just walked over it. The French were amazed and claimed it was possible only because the Americans had big feet." (p. 71)
8. Leadership would make up for untrained troops. Unfortunately, the generals and senior officers did not come through for their troops. American troops under the British and French "did splendidly well", but "owing to inexperience, particularly in the higher ranks, American divisions ... under their own command, suffer wastage out of all proportion to results achieved." (p. 152) "Clearly, the AEF learned to fight by fighting" (p. 169).

I think the prevailing opinion that the British and French were better officers because of their experience fighting in the war since it started is a theme common in many history books. However, one only has to look at the casualties and especially the battles in Ypres, and the only logical conclusion is the British and French were as inept as the American senior officers. The average experience of a battlefield non-com or officer was quite short, given the casualty rate caused by the ridiculous strategy of frontal assault in the face of machine gun fire and artillery. Therefore, how is possible that the British and French were so experienced? I believe the American forces on the front line gained that battlefield experience quickly, in weeks, but the rear echelon officers making the biggest decisions were inept, to the same degree as their Allied counterparts.

9. The offensive strategy was to cause attrition of the enemy in its defensive positions (General Pershing). Unfortunately, "An offensive strategy based on the attrition of an enemy in strong defenses is really no strategy at all." (p. 159) "there weren't any tactics employed. Committing hundreds of thousands of infantrymen in a narrow zone directly against heavily fortified and defended positions guaranteed high casualties and small gains. ... why did Pershing, or his subordinate commanders not move to the flanks ... to break out of the killing cauldron of enemy fires?" (p. 160)
10. The ability to coordinate the use of all resources or forces available, can make the sum of those forces far more effective than each being deployed individually. Unfortunately, this appears to be the major shortfall of the AEF, and can be directly attributed to a lack of talent in the commanding officer ranks.


• "the artillery was poorly employed. ... it tended to move its rolling barrages forward too swiftly for the rate of infantry movement in difficult terrain" (p. 161).
• "Infantry and artillery commanders can also be faulted for their infrequent use of smoke to screen movements and their reluctance to use poison gas" (p. 161).
• "A major problem affecting all others was the failure to maintain communication ... the responsibility for maintaining communications is upon the higher headquarters to establish and maintain contact with its lower unit headquarters." (p. 162)
• "Insufficient attention was given to solving the problem of moving supplies over no man's land" and "many of the veterans commented about the lack of resupply of water." (p. 163)
• "Commanders at all levels of the AEF are also criticized herein for failure to employ reserves properly" (p. 163)
• "Failure to use natural cover and concealment in approach to enemy defenses" (p. 164)
• "Pershing and his 'old army' associates were deprecatory about the value of the tank in warfare." (p. 166)
• "the desire of senior AEF commanders to gain the assignment of cavalry to their forces." (p. 166) Cavalry was totally ineffective against machine guns and artillery.
• "Pershing's lack of attention to the employment of air power" (p. 167).
11. Attitude and morale can overcome many hurdles. "American soldiers ... morale, their stamina, and their competitiveness" were unanimously praised by the Allies. (p. 173)

Some opinions expressed by the American troops regarding their Allies and foes (p. 174):

• "They were critical of the food provided by the Allies, particularly the sour French wine and British 'hardtack.'
• "Some ... made uncomplimentary remarks about the French people."
• "they had very few complaints regarding their associations with the 'Tommy' [British soldier] and 'Poilu' [French infantryman]."
• "they felt a greater kinship with the Australians and Canadians than they did with the Europeans."
• They "described the Germans as good soldiers."

Did the US win the War for the Allies? This is a long standing question, still in dispute. The European position was that the AEF only entered the war in its last year, and did not even get to deploy many of its divisions that were still being formed, transported to Europe, and trained. The number of US forces on the front lines, and the percentage of casualties was not very large compared to the Allies. Those arguments are valid, but the AEF's major contribution was that it added fresh troops to the front lines who were willing and able to engage in combat, not being worn down by several years of bloodshed for little gain. Additionally, the troops in reserve and on the way to Europe signified that the Allies could continue the war for several more years--something the Germans could not accomplish. The German's knew the end of the war was coming as soon as the AEF began arriving in force and had a degree of success in battle.

The leader of the German forces, General Ludendorff, said, "The American infantry in the Argonne won the war." (p. 176) No matter what the historians conclude after the fact nor the opinion of the Allies is relevant on this issue. It is the opinion of the leader of the opponent, General Ludendorff, which only matters. After all, the German's sought peace since they knew the end was coming. What brought Ludendorff and the German leadership to the peace table? The performance and number of infantrymen in the American Expeditionary Forces.

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