Our Navy at war

by Josephus Daniels

That was not overstating it in any particular. No nation in history had ever attempted to transport so huge an army overseas. It would have been difficult enough under the most ideal conditions, with nothing to hinder or molest.

The German navy could have no greater object than to prevent our troops from getting to France. There could have been no greater victory for them than to have sunk a transport loaded with American soldiers. Words can hardly express the strain of those anxious days when our first transports were running the gauntlet to France; or our relief when we received the news that they had all arrived safely at St. Nazaire.

Sailing in a dense fog on June 14, 1917, the first group arrived on June 26th; the last, the cargo ships, on July 2nd. The first group, Gleaves reported, was attacked by submarines the night of June 22nd, at 10:15 p. m.; the second group encountered two, and a torpedo was fired at the fourth group on June 28th. That they had escaped the submarines was an added cause for rejoicing. Not a ship was damaged or a man injured, and an officer reported: "We didn't lose but one horse, and that was a mule."

"The German Admiralty had boasted that not one American soldier should set foot in France," Gleaves said. "The bluff had been called, and it could not have been called at a more psychological moment."

The question of the hour had been successfully answered; France, as well as America, celebrated the event in a very delirium of rejoicing. This was the beginning of that vast stream of troops and supplies that poured across the Atlantic until the Germans were overwhelmed.

Getting that first group of transports together was a job. The army had only a few troop-ships, none of them fitted for trans-Atlantic service. The Navy had only three—the Henderson, just completed; the Hancock, and the former German commerce raider, Prince Eitel Friedrich, which we converted into an auxiliary cruiser and renamed the DeKalb. The Army secured fourteen mail and cargo steamships, and hastily converted them. It had to be quick work. We had not contemplated sending troops so soon. From a military standpoint it would have been better, many experts in this country and Europe held, to have retained the regulars for a while to aid in training the new officers and raw recruits, and not to have begun transportation until we had a larger army.

But war-weary France, grimly holding back the Germans, and England, beset by submarines, needed cheering up; needed visible evidence that reënforcement was certain, that the Americans were coming. Marshal Joffre asked that some troops be sent at the earliest possible moment—"a regiment or two, if possible a division." He told Secretary Baker that he looked forward to the day when the United States should build up its "splendid army of 400,000 or 500,000." What must he have thought when he saw an American army of 4,000,000 men, with two millions of them in France! He appreciated the necessity, he said, of retaining the regulars to train the new army, and knew that few could be spared. But the very sight of American troops on French soil, of our men marching through the streets of Paris, would be a tremendous inspiration to all France. The wise old Marshal was right.

Secretary Baker immediately began his preparations to send troops. When he told Congress he would have an army of 500,000 men in France in the summer of 1918, a leading senator declared it was "impossible." It was impossible to those without vision. But the Secretary of War's figures were increased three-fold.

General Pershing was chosen to command the forces to be sent to Europe, and was summoned from the Mexican border. He arrived in Washington May 10th. Preparations were already under way by both Army and Navy. Officers of both services were working out in detail the system by which they were to secure ships and coöperate in transportation.

I selected Gleaves, then in command of our destroyer force, to direct the troop transportation, and I never had reason to regret this choice. No man could have done a big job better; no job was ever better done. On May 23, he was summoned to Washington and informed that he had been chosen to command the first expedition to France.