It was said of him, as it was said of Grant, that he was not afraid of losses. Like Grant, he was a hammerer. Pershing could depend upon him, as Pétain could depend upon Mangin, to "break the line," and as Lee depended upon Jackson to arrive on time and ahead of the enemy. Considering the objectives he gained, his admirers regarded him as a master economist of lives, as he was, comparing what he gained for a given number of casualties with what many other divisions gained for their casualties. With an iron will be applied the principle that he who hesitates in war is lost. If you keep the upper hand, the enemy suffers more heavily than you. Summerall's standard was always what he was doing to the enemy, and his attitude toward the enemy was not that of a professional soldier who regards war as a game in which you are testing your wits against an adversary. He would at times exhibit a Peter the Hermit fervor when he spoke of his soldiers' crusade against the barbarians, or pointed out to them ruined villages and heart-broken peasants as another reason for charging again. With his staff around him in the midst of an action, he gave an impression of thorough grasp of their parts and his. In this, as in everything he did, he had a touch of the histrionic. He was most concretely modern in arranging his patterns of barrages, and at the same time it occurred to an observer that it would have taken only a change of garb and hardly of mood to make him perfectly at home among the knights before the walls of Jerusalem. By this time you will understand that he is of a type whose characteristics entreat a writer to fluency, and that there are several Summeralls.
There was the Summerall who might turn up at any point on his front at any time and talk to his men, while an officer stood apprehensively by, wondering what might happen to him; a Summerall who rounded on officers and men for carelessness about details that would mean a habit of carelessness which would accompany them into action; a Summerall surprising young officers who considered him a ruthless driver by telling them that they were working too hard—when it seemed to them that they never could work hard enough to please him—and that they must not worry over their maps and orders in a way to keep them from getting enough sleep to insure the strength necessary for self-command and the command of their men. Again, he would speak of his men and particularly of their deeds of initiative with a gentle, worshipful awe, as if every one were greater than any marshal of France in his estimation; again, he would be telling his young officers that they could not be worthy of their men, but that he expected their most devoted effort to that end. The men would always follow if they knew how to lead. He made it an almighty honor and a responsibility to be a second lieutenant, and yet he would censure colonel, lieutenant, or private in a manner which assuredly no politician would ever use in order to win the vote of a constituent. When an officer and a number of men standing in a group were all hit by the same shell, he had a glaring example to demonstrate how untrained we still were when an officer would allow soldiers to gather round him and become a target for the enemy's artillery, thus losing their lives without taking a single German life in return. The sight of those bodies spoiled the victory for Summerall. He burned the picture in the minds of his men in the course of their drills. One lieutenant said that if the spirit of the officer who had been the center of the group could have been given the chance to come back to earthly life, he might refuse it in fear of the lecture he would receive from Summerall for his inefficiency.
All the different Summeralls were the different strings to his bow in applying his teachings and gaining his ends, while he was unconscious of there being more than one Summerall. He was the A. E. F.'s negation of the propagandic habit of building up the characters of generals from one common attribute, when every one of them, whether French or British or American, was an individual human being.
When you went to Summerall's headquarters by day, you were pretty certain, unless there were a big action in progress, to find him absent, looking in on divisional, brigade, regimental, or battalion headquarters, moving about among the guns and transport and troops—wherever it pleased him to go in his insistence upon keeping in close human touch with the forces under his command. He left routine to his staff officers, and he expected much of his chief of staff. How his staff officers, hard master though he was, respected his ability!
He could be forensic on occasion, as he was searchingly brief at others. It was not beneath his military dignity to make a speech, either. On the day before the great final attack on November 1st, when the German line was broken, he was out from morning to night, gathering officers in groups around him and addressing his soldiers, reminding them of their duties on the morrow, when there must be no faint-heartedness. They must go through. When he returned to his headquarters, hoarse from talking in the raw open air, General Maistre, who had come from Marshal Foch, was there, and General Pershing came in a little later. Both asked the one question of Summerall: would he go through? He answered that he would, with the positiveness that he had been instilling into his troops.
If he had ever failed in one of his drives, there would certainly have been a smash, but he made no blind charges. He wanted to know where he was going, and he wanted to be sure that he had his bridge of shells for the men to cross in their advance. He prepared his lightnings well, but when they were loosed he would not stay them.
Major-General John L. Hines, the new commander of the Third Corps, had been a colonel under Bullard in the 1st Division, and had commanded the bull-dog 4th Division in the Third Corps, under Bullard, in the trough of the Meuse. He was of a wholly different type from Summerall, with whom he shared the honor for swift promotion won in the field. It was said of him that he was the best linguist of the A. E. F., as he could be equally silent in all languages, including English. If the accepted idea of General Grant is true, he and Grant could have had a most sociable evening together by the exchange of a half dozen sentences, of which I am certain that General Hines would not have used more than his share.
He came to France with General Pershing as a major in the adjutant-general's office, where he served for some time before he was sent to a regiment. He seemed to be out of place at a desk. It was like asking taciturn Mars—and I suppose that Mars was taciturn—to do drawn work. Sandy of complexion, sturdily built, he had that suggestive quiet strength, militarized by army service, which we associate with Western sheriffs who do not talk before they shoot. Without his having said a word, you understood, by the very way in which he was taciturn, that if you were in a tight place you would like to have him along. I used to think that if a section of the floor had been blown up in front of his desk while he was signing a paper, the shock of the explosion would not have interfered with the legibility of his signature. There was something in his manner which soldiers would respect. They, too, saw that he would be a good companion in a tight place. When someone had a troublous problem on hand, he would say: "Let me have it. I'll take care of it." He took care of it promptly too, once he had the paper in his strong hands.
Whether as a major or as a corps commander, he was quick to appreciate that a subordinate was preoccupied with unimportant things, and he had seen enough red tape in the old adjutant-general's office to know how to amputate it without too much hemorrhage. In common with Summerall he too had the endurance which no amount of work seems to faze, and that clarity of thought and readiness of decision which thrive on crises. He, too, went among his troops, impressing them with his cool, unchanging personality, his bull-dog tenacity, and his implacably aggressive spirit.
Having spoken his messages over the telephone which called to greater service the adjutants who had served him well, General Pershing might move about his far-flung kingdom again, though he was not to be long away from the battlefront. Nothing in the A. E. F. was better regulated than his own time and movements. Wherever he was, his special train was waiting upon him. In these later days he had a car fitted up as an office, with aides and stenographers in attendance. When the train pulled out from a station, two automobiles were on board. They were in readiness when the train arrived at its destination. If he had only a hundred miles to go, it was covered in the night while he was asleep. The day's beginning found him where he chose to be, at Marshal Foch's headquarters, at the main headquarters at Chaumont, in Paris, or at either Army headquarters. If he wished to speak over the wires, they were instantly cleared of other messages. The President of the United States may only ask a senator or a governor to come to see him; but a word from the C.-in-C. for any officer to report to him at a certain hour and place was an order. One might come clear across France for the ten-minute conference which was set down in the schedule of appointments on the pad of the aide to the C.-in-C. The democracy had bestowed unlimited autocracy and responsibility, too, upon John J. Pershing.