A glance at the map of the whole western front, in reference to the coast line and the harbors of France and its railway systems, will readily indicate to any observer the strategic character of the conception of General Pershing in 1917, which had its climax of success in November, 1918. The British army was on the left of the long battle line from Switzerland to Flanders, with its bases close to the Channel and home bases. The French army was to hold the center of the line, fighting for the heart of France, and on the right the American army, drawing its supplies three thousand miles across the sea and across southern and central France, was to face the Rhine.
For any great final Allied offensive, unless some unforeseen circumstance favored, the Allies must wait upon the formation of an army of American citizens who would be made approximately as capable in all the complicated technique of modern warfare as the French and British armies. That this achievement was possible we knew because of the success of the British new army, and particularly that of the Canadians, who had not even had as much military preparation as the Australians, but had learned at the cannon's mouth the lessons of experience which no amount of theory or practice can approximate.
As the early introduction of small American forces into the Allied armies must be of relatively small effect in their relation to the immense whole, ample time must be taken for the training and preparation in order to assure the exertion of a maximum of pressure when we should begin to fight in earnest. It was equally important both for the effect upon Allied and German sentiment that when we did begin active campaigning there should be no setbacks for our army. According to the promise which we had made to the French Government we were due to have by July 1, 1918, some five hundred thousand troops in France. Even that number, when you include all the men who were required along the lines of communication, seemed a small force on the continent of Europe, and, at the time that this program was arranged, the suggestion of a million men in France was probably considered seriously only by the officers who were on the ground.
The first American troops to arrive in France was the 1st Division of regulars (then under command of Sibert), including the brigade of Marines. They were very largely raw recruits, in no sense a highly trained regular division; they were to be followed by regular divisions and National Guard divisions, which were to be established in their drill grounds for periods of training before entering the trenches.
Indeed the history of our operations may be divided into three phases:
The first was the period of preparation and training and of trench experience of the earlier divisions and of the organization of our general staff, the instruction of our reserve officers in the various schools and in the actual work at the front, and inaugurating the immense constructive work required for our lines of communication. Through the winter of 1917-18, whether drilling in the muddy fields of Lorraine or holding trenches, our men, in the penetrating, moist, and cold climate, knew as great hardships as any veteran of the Civil War or of the Revolution, Lorraine was aptly called our "Valley Forge" in France. It was a winter of discouragement including the disaster to the Italian army, the increasing submarine ravages, the want of shipping to keep up the program of troop transport, the failure of supplies to arrive, the final collapse of Russia and Rumania, the depression among the French and Italian people, the severe food restrictions in England, and the gathering of the German armies with their superior numbers for the great offensives for the spring of 1918.
So serious did the Allies consider the situation that they were willing to offer Germany a very favorable peace, but Germany, confident that the Americans could not exert their pressure in time and that Allied spirits were depressed to a point when at any moment Allied disagreement might lead to an Allied collapse, refused to consider the offers. History offers nothing in the record of great wars in affording more contrast than the pessimism in the inner councils of the Allies in the winter of 1917-18, and the spring of 1918, in comparison with the complete victory which was achieved in the fall of 1918.
Our second phase came with the first of the German offensives on March 21, 1918, against the British army. The success of this offensive startled the people of the Allied world to a full realization of the perilous situation of their cause. It was an innovation in tactics in that the Germans had swept through the front lines and support lines of the trench system, capturing the guns whose answering artillery fire had hitherto been the main reliance of the defense in stopping the enemy's charges, and carrying the warfare into the open. We had then only four divisions which had been in the trenches, Bullard's 1st Regulars and Bundy's 2d Regulars and Marines and Edwards's 26th, or New England, and Menoher's 42d, or Rainbow, National Guard Divisions. The plan had been to put them into a permanent American sector in Lorraine, but in face of this new emergency they were to be turned over to the French for such use as Marshal Foch, the new commander in chief of the Allied forces, might decide to make of them.
Up to this time the phrase "Too proud to fight" had haunted the minds of the Allied peoples when they thought of American troops. They considered that we had been very slow in beginning active warfare. Our losses in the quiet trenches that we had occupied had been thus far normally slight compared with those in an active battle sector. There was a disposition to think that probably America was not sufficiently in earnest to make any great sacrifice of lives. We were willing to loan the Allies money, to supply them with materials of war and to make some show of military force; but the contemplation of a nation three thousand miles away from Europe fighting with all the heroic disregard of life of the Allies on their own soil seemed a little out of keeping with the accepted traditions of military history to Europeans.
Never were soldiers watched with more critical interest or deeper appreciation of the influence of the result than our divisions when they were first engaged in violent action at Cantigny and in the Château-Thierry operations in the course of the trying months of the German offensives and the subsequent Allied counteroffensives. Not only had the Europeans wondered if we would fight, but they had grave doubts of our battle skill. The seriousness of the situation deepened their concern. Anyone who really knew America had no doubt that we would fight. At the same time thoughtful Americans, familiar with the increasingly difficult technique which was the accumulation of more than three years' experience, when they thought of how relatively little experience our citizen soldiers had had, saw them go into action beside veteran French and British divisions with misgivings lest their skill might not be in keeping with their valor. Their initiative and furious application led to more rapid learning than the most optimistic of their teachers had imagined.