Pershing's A.E.F.

ARMY & NAVY

General John Joseph ("Black Jack") Pershing last week presented My Experiences in the World War, in book form, to take its place beside the military memoirs of Foch, Haig, Hindenburg, Ludendorff.-- Dedicating his volume to the Unknown Soldier, the only commander since George Washington to lead a U. S. Army throughout an entire war focused his full attention upon the military contribution of the U. S. to Allied victory. Outside the range of his crisp impersonal narrative are the billions of dollars, the tons of supplies and food with which the U. S. bolstered up France and Britain after April 6, 1917, without which its armed forces would have been a vain gift. My Experiences is a military history to be read with maps and a lively sense of strategy.

The Pershing story begins 14 years ago this week (May 10) when the General, aged 57, arrived in Washington from Texas to be put in command of the A. E. F. He long felt that the U. S. had made a "grievous error" for not doing something about the German invasion of Belgium. Reiterated throughout his book are complaints against a stupid bungling War Department which on the eve of War had on hand for issue only 1,500 machine guns, 400 field guns, 150 pieces of heavy artillery, 55 out-of-date airplanes. The Army's own General Staff had never considered sending an Army to France.

General Pershing and his staff sailed for England on the Baltic (May 28). He took with him one great conviction which guided his whole future course in France: the U. S. must have its own independent army and not serve as a "recruiting agency" for the Allies. Even before he left Washington Allied representatives began to pester him for U. S. troops to fill their ragged ranks. One long tiresome tussle ensued for the next 18 months as the A. E. F. commander resisted this continuous Allied demand. Before he ever fought the Germans, General Pershing was a veteran toughened by this form of combat against the British and French commanders and politicians.

At London General Pershing met George V,/- was ceremoniously received by high officials. Moving on to Paris (June 13), he began a round of official receptions, dinners, calls, parties and conferences that seriously distracted him from his job. The plate, the linen, the menu and the service at the -L-lysee Palace moved him to exclaim: "Nowhere are such things done so well as at the palace of the President!"

After swift tours of inspection to the French and British front, General Pershing settled down to the arduous preliminaries of creating a U. S. fighting force which he was confident would deliver the "decisive blow" to Germany in 1919. Question No. 1! where would the A. E. F. take its place in the line? Selected, after long conferences, was a sector east of Verdun in Lorraine. Question No. 2: how would this sector, eventually to hold 1,000,000 men, be supplied from the rear? In answer General Pershing began to map out a Service of Supply which stretched from the Bay of Biscay across all France below Paris almost to the Vosges Mountains.

First chosen were ports for U. S. cargoes (St. Nazaire, La Pallice, Bordeaux and, later, Brest). Docks and storehouses had to be built. Railroads had to be repaired or renewed. Base hospitals had to be set up. A complete telephone and telegraph system had to be installed because, explained General Pershing, "the lines throughout France were so inefficient and unreliable, as government-owned utilities usually are." Ammunition depots, training camps, aviation fields had to be laid out. And through this ever-expanding system had to be kept moving an ever-expanding supply for an ever-expanding army.

The War Department's foolish shipments caused great annoyance to the S. 0. S. When extra long piles were needed for piers, they were sent over--sawed in pieces to fit between a ship's bulkheads. General Pershing had to order a halt on such nonessentials as "bath bricks, bath tubs, bookcases, cuspidors, floor wax, stepladders, lawn mowers, sickles, stools and window shades." Winter clothing for troops did not arrive until long after the first snows.

Because the Army engineers had no expert staff to operate the A. E. F. railroads, General Pershing summoned William Wallace Atterbury, then general manager (now president) of Pennsylvania R. R., made him Chief of Transportation. He had "personality, force, grasp of the difficulties and willingness" which made him one of General Pershing's favorite subordinates. Between them there were endless conferences. Brigadier General Atterbury did a crack job with transportation and, in the eyes of his chief, contributed largely to the success of the A. E. F.'s later military operations.

When the S. 0. S. system finally got working, it performed the following typical feat: "At 8:15 one morning a telegram was received ordering [from the supply base] 4,596 tons of supplies, including 1,250,000 cans of tomatoes, 1,000,000 lb. of sugar, 600,000 cans of corn beef, 750,000 lb. of tinned hash and 150,000 lb. of dry beans. At 6:15 in the evening this colossal requisition which required 457 cars to transport was loaded and on its way."

The 1st Division began to arrive on June 28. By the end of 1917 the A. E. F. numbered 174,884 officers and men. Their training presented a constant problem. General Pershing believed that the War could be won only by driving the enemy out of the trenches and engaging him in open warfare. He believed also that the French had acquired a "defensive complex" and, wedded to trench warfare, lacked the ability to teach the kind of open combat he wanted the A. E. F. to have. Therefore he resisted French instruction methods, insisted that all U. S. troops be drilled for cross-country fighting.

On Sept. 1, 1917, General Pershing moved his headquarters to Chaumont, 155 mi. east of Paris, which put him directly behind the sector the A. E. F. was to take over. On Oct. 21 the ist Division entered the lines near Luneville for training. On Nov. 3 occurred the first A. E. F. trench fatalities, a corporal and two privates of the 16th Infantry trapped by a box barrage. . . .

General Pershing had two prime objections to U. S. soldiers in foreign forces: i) they would be infected by the low morale of the Allied troops; 2) they would learn only trench warfare. He pounded the table, talked as no general had ever before talked to foreign statesmen and soldiers. When they could not budge him, they made appeals behind his back to President Wilson. It was small wonder that General Pershing got the fixed notion that France and Britain were working to control U. S. troops and thus prevent the creation of a U. S. army as a means of reducing U. S. glory in victory and U. S. influence and prestige in peace negotiations.

The "amalgamation question" reached a crisis when the great German offensive of March-to-June 1918 pushed the Allies back to the brink of defeat. General Pershing rushed to Marshal Foch, impulsively offered troops to help stem the tide. The emergency created by the German attack dissolved disagreements, put U. S. divisions helter-skelter into the line for quick action.

The Western front fell into three divisions : the northern from the sea southeastward to Soissons before Paris; the centre from Soissons eastward along the Aisne past Reims to Verdun; the eastern from Verdun southeastward to the Swiss border. The British held most of the northern line; the French were in the centre and eastern sector. Also in the eastern sector were U. S. divisions in training. The German attack hit the northern sector first, gouged great salients in it. The 1st Division under General Bullard was despatched to aid the French. On May 28 it engaged in the first small battle of the A. E. F. by capturing Cantigny.

The French along the centre front were surprised by a violent German attack on May 27 that in three days rolled down from the Aisne to the Marne and within striking distance of Paris. France was in a panic. General Petain called for U. S. aid. General Pershing rushed the 2nd and 3rd Divisions forward to meet the German onslaught. The 3rd Division met the enemy in Chateau-Thierry (May 31), blocked his advance at the bottom of the bulge southward. The 2nd Division cleared Belleau Wood (June 25). This defensive engagement cost the A. E. F. 9,500 casualties. More than fighting, the U. S. contributed new morale to the French troops who turned in their tracks and stood off the invaders in the Second Battle of the Marne.

Still fighting under French command, the next big A. E. F. engagement, this time offensive, occurred July 18. The 1st and 2nd Divisions became spearheads for an attack launched eastward into the west flank of the new Marne salient near its base below Soissons. Simultaneously other U. S. forces attacked from below. The strategy was to squeeze the Germans out and eliminate the bulge. The attack was successful. On July 20 began the German retreat. Wrote General Pershing: "The magnificent conduct of our ist and 2nd Divisions . . . marked the turning of the tide."

These successes led directly to the creation of the First U. S. Army which General Pershing commanded (Aug. 10). Immediate preparations were started for its active use. East of Verdun on the southern sector was a deep inactive salient known as St. Mihiel which the Germans had held since 1914. General Pershing got permission from Generalissimo Foch to use his new army against this bulge. Early on the misty morning of Sept. 12 began the St. Mihiel battle, with the ist Army fighting under U. S. command for the first time. Though the salient was virtually a field fortress, U. S. troops, with an 8-to-i preponderance of manpower, stormed it resolutely, in four days blotted it out. Secretary Baker was a happy spectator of the battle. On a 25-mile front the U. S. had captured 16,000 prisoners, lost 7,000 men. Only drawback: the Germans, forewarned, had started to withdraw from the St. Mihiel salient 24 hours before the attack.

The final A. E. F. engagement--biggest in U.S. military history--occurred between the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River just west of Verdun. Foch's purpose was to drive the Germans back on the Ardennes Forest, coop them up, cut their rail communications to the western front. General Pershing had only two weeks to transfer his ist Army from St. Mihiel to this new sector and organize his attack. Many of his divisions were inexperienced in battle. Ahead of him lay rough, heavily fortified country.

The strategic effect of the whole 47-day engagement, beginning Sept. 26, was to cause the Germans to draw their divisions from farther west along the front to hold the A. E. F. here and thereby make the simultaneous British and French offensives that much easier. During the fighting General Pershing's headquarters were aboard his train at Souilly. More than 1,000,000 U. S. soldiers took part in this engagement, captured 26,000 prisoners, suffered 117,000 casualties. To the infantry, to the air service, to the medical corps went Pershing praise. Singled out for special mention were the "Lost Battalion," Lieut. Samuel Woodfill and Sergeant Alvin C. York who captured 132 prisoners.

Under the Meuse-Argonne attack the German morale crumbled. On Oct. 6 Berlin began to sue for an Armistice. General Pershing favored fighting to an unconditional surrender. When hostilities ended, he went straight to Paris where he concluded My Experiences thus: "I hastened over to call on M. Clemenceau. To my mind he was the greatest of French civil officials. . . . When we met he was much affected and indeed demonstrative. We fell into each other's arms, choked up and had to wipe our eyes. We had no differences to discuss that day."

*Stokes--($10). The Pershing articles were previously syndicated in the Press.

/-Eliminated from the book version of My Experiences is King George's quotation "Goddamning" the Kaiser.

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