The American army had been trained for the offensive. We had, at the start, the natural initiative which the Canadians had so abundantly shown, and which in the introduction of the trench raid they applied in the only innovation of tactics with the exception of the tanks which the British army developed. The Canadians, coming from a more sparsely settled country than ours, with a larger percentage of its citizens of English-speaking origin than we have, if we except the French Canadian population, had the advantage, in the views of many, over American forces which must include a large number of draft men unfamiliar with the English language who had had only a brief residence in the United States.
If the American army was to be the decisive army owing to its youth and its numbers, then there must never enter any thought into our minds other than that once we were prepared for action that action should be continuously one of attack. If the old German trench line were to be broken and the war of movement were again to lead to an Appomattox for the German army that could only be won by tactics which, with unwavering determination, would eventually capitalize German exhaustion after four years of war in the conviction on the part of German soldiers that resistance against the immense forces of American reserves that were coming was hopeless. In brief, America must show the Germans that millions of Americans, who had the spirit of the Canadians, were to follow the Canadians across the Atlantic.
The greatest difficulty that Allied commanders had had was keeping soldiers from falling into the habit of trench defensive, which was the result of the early days of murderous fighting, when all attempts either by the Germans or the Allies to "break through" had failed. Our hope was that our soldiers would have the good fortune to escape the fearful attrition of trench fighting and that our offensive spirit would suffer no setbacks in actual experience.
Where we had been in the trenches we had insistently kept the upper hand over the enemy, meeting his trench raids with better than he gave, answering his artillery fire with heavier artillery fire and pressing him at every point. No feature of war is more underestimated than psychology. The psychology of conviction that you are going to win, confirmed by actual victory in the first shock of arms, is one of the best guaranties of continued victory.
Happily, our divisions, which were transferred to the active battle front in western France, were able to apply their offensive spirit with immediate offensive results. At Cantigny, on the eve of the third German offensive, in our first attack we took all of our objectives skillfully, and when the 2d Division was thrown across the Paris road to resist the advance of the Germans which was then slowing down, our men, who were in the pink of youthful vigor, immediately attacked. They were on a comparatively short front, but their conduct thrilled all the Allied soldiers and people with the rallying conviction that the Americans had brought to France a telling new energy into an old war. The British who had stood out stubbornly against the mighty German thrusts felt more than ever confidence due to the presence of American divisions with their army. More important than generals or staff, the American individual soldier stood in no awe of his enemy, but, on the contrary, was confident of his personal superiority. It needed no urging from his officers for him to attack. When in doubt his idea was to charge. Again, the 3d Division in the defense of the Marne bridgeheads at Château-Thierry, though it had had no trench experience and had never been under fire before, simply confirmed the quality which the old divisions had exemplified as something that was a common trait.
Against the great fifth German offensive the 42d, or Rainbow Division, which was represented with the National Guard of our twenty-six States and was conscious of holding the honor of the National Guard and of the honor of America in its keeping, showed that if stubborn resistance was requisite as well as attack they could be depended upon. Dickman's 3d Division, against that same offensive, broke the German crossing of the Marne and then, when the front line battalions had lost one-third to one-half of its men, counterattacked with a dexterity and a viciousness that thrilled the most veteran and phlegmatic of military critics.
For the Allied counteroffensive, which was the turning of the tide against the German offensives, the French High Command chose that the 1st (now under command of Summerall) and 2d (now under command of Harbord) Divisions, should cooperate with the best of French divisions in the drive toward Soissons which was to force the gradual evacuation of the Germans of the Marne salient.
This operation and the operations that preceded it in resisting the German offensives were all known to the general public as Château-Thierry, which is the name of the town lying in the lap of the hills on the bank of the Marne. No American soldiers ever fought in Château-Thierry with the exception of the machine-gun battalion of the 3d Division, which was in the town very briefly in a rear-guard action before retiring with its French associates to the other side of the Marne to prevent the Germans from crossing. In the counteroffensive it was the French who retook the town without any fighting as it was no longer defensible once the surrounding hills had been taken, and in their taking we assisted. But for all the splendid work of our divisions in the second battle of the Marne, as it is sometimes called, Château-Thierry has become the accepted name. Any one of the eight divisions engaged in the operations which began with the defense of Paris and ended with driving the Germans back to their old line was at Château-Thierry in the accepted sense of the term.
General Pershing had been convinced that the Marne salient, which extended into the Allied line in an immense pocket, not only from its configuration invited attack, but that the Germans had so far extended themselves in their giant efforts that the tables could be easily turned. If he had been slow to enter his divisions into active sectors until they had been trained, he was now, in face of this opportunity, not only prepared to send in his trained divisions, but to send in divisions which had only recently arrived. By this time we were beginning to feel the accumulated results of the work of our training camps at home in forming our untrained citizens into battalions and regiments and divisions, and we were having the actual results in France of the full awakening of the American people and the Allies to the danger of defeat which the German offensives had brought, and the shipping which had been provided for at the Abbéville Conference of the Allied statesmen and commanders was rushing the men from our training camps to Europe with a speed that surpassed the transport program by two to one by midsummer.
Instead of five hundred thousand in July, 1918, we had a million; and the two million would soon follow.