American liaison officers at G.H.Q. "made good" with the British Staff very quickly. They had a downright earnestness of manner which was very engaging. The American Staff seemed to have been chosen strictly for efficiency reasons and, there being no obstacles of established custom to overcome, the best men got to the top very quickly. The appointment of Mr. Frederick Palmer, the famous war correspondent, to a high post on General Pershing's Intelligence Staff was an example of their way of doing things. Colonel Palmer as war correspondent had seen much of this and of many other wars. For his particular post he was an ideal man. But it would be difficult to imagine him stepping at once into so high a position in a European Army.
American rank marks were puzzling to British officers at first. An American liaison officer obliged me with a mnemonic aid to their understanding.
"You just reckon that you are out to rob a hen-roost. Right. You climb up one bar; that's a lieutenant. You climb up two bars: that's a captain. When you get up to the chickens, that's the colonel" (the colonel's badge was an eagle on the shoulder-straps). "Above the chicken there's the stars" (a star was the badge of a general).
To the same officer I was indebted for a flattering summing up of British character.
"I don't say you British people are over-polite. But you are reliable. Go into a pow-wow and a British officer may strike you as a bit surly. But if he says he'll do a thing you can reckon that thing done and no need to worry. Some other people are very polite; and they say awfully nicely that they'll do anything and everything you ask; and six months after you find nothing has been done."
The Americans, when they got into action, first as auxiliaries of British and French Divisions, then in their own Army organisation, were fine fighters. Their splendid physique made them very deadly in a close tussle, and they had a business-like efficiency in battle that did not appeal to the Boche. A favourite American weapon at close quarters was a shot gun sawn off short at the barrel. It was of fearful effect. The enemy had the sublime impudence to protest against this weapon as "contrary to the usages of civilised warfare." This was cool indeed from the folk who made us familiar with the murder of civil hostages, the use of civilians as fire-screens, and the employment of poison-gas as methods of warfare. The Americans answered the impudent protest with peremptory firmness, and kept the shot gun in use.
It was stated, too, and generally credited, though this matter did not come within my personal observation, that the American Divisions in their sector set up and maintained a law in regard to Machine-Gun fire. They did not consider it fair war that a machine-gunner in an entrenched position should keep on firing to the very last moment and then expect to be allowed to surrender peaceably.
The Americans played the game, but they did not play it on "soft" lines, and the enemy soon got a very wholesome respect for them. There was, in the early stages of the American participation, an evident attempt on the part of the German Intelligence to encourage an "atrocity" campaign against the Americans. German atrocities had a way of casting their shadows before. A usual method was to accuse Germany's foes in advance of doing what the Germans proposed to undertake themselves. That was the way in which Germany ushered in her lawless use of prisoners of war in the firing line, and her enslavement of the civil population of occupied Belgium and France. When the German Press engaged in "propaganda" work on the subject of the American forces coming into action, it took the line of representing the Americans as altogether despicable and murderous adventurers, who had come into the war to kill Germans without any reason whatsoever and when taken prisoners wondered "that they were not shot on the spot, as the French had told them they would be." As one German paper put it: "To the question why America carries on the war against Germany they knew no answer. One can feel for our soldiers who become enraged against this alien hand which fights against us for no reason. Our men believe the French fight for glory and to wipe out the stain of 1870, that Britain struggles for mastery on the sea and to prove which of the two giants is the stronger. But the American! Our field-greys despise him and do not recognise him as a worthy opponent, even though he may fight bravely."
But that sort of talk was soon dropped—as was the suggestion that American prisoners should get "special treatment" when captured. It was rather amusing to watch from our Intelligence side the manœuvres of the well-drilled German Press on the subject of the Americans. Early in 1918 there was a general disposition in the German papers to write of the Americans as tomahawkers and "scalpers" and so on. Then we learned from our tapping of German field reports that officers commanding German units complained that this sort of propaganda was having such a bad effect on their men, that they "got the wind up" as soon as they knew that Americans were in front of them. As a result a great silence suddenly fell upon the German papers on this point.