The indefatigable industry of our workers, in preparation for the reception of vast hosts which at the inception of the great plan seemed visionary, now appeared as the most practical kind of prevision, a prevision which was to play an important part in winning the war. By results we had answered the fears of all skeptics. All the way from the North Sea, over four hundred miles to Switzerland, the traveler saw American soldiers behind the line; and they were scattered through all the villages of France. We had ten divisions who had been assigned to the British, we had soldiers in training in the Ypres salient on the old Somme battle field, in Champagne, in the Woevre, in Lorraine, and in the forests of the Vosges Mountains in sight of the Alps. The transports were disembarking men by the thousands every day and railroad trains were dispatching our divisions here and there with a frequency that left it out of the question that any man or woman in France should not now realize by their own observation that America was in the war in earnest and she was bringing her man power to bear on the battle front.
Our project for an army of our own had been abandoned for the time being in order to meet the emergency due to the German offensives. The American effort in France had been that of many scattered divisions called to fill breaches and then sent into the attack in order to make the most of the turn of the tide. We could not have an American army in our own sector until these detached divisions had assisted in making sure that Paris was forever out of danger, and that there was not enough spirit or force left in the German armies to undertake an offensive of any kind.
The situation of our forces meanwhile was unique and amazingly difficult. The British had their line from thirty to seventy-five miles from the coast which was only an hour's ride away from England itself, and the French were in their own country wherever they went. But the nearest homes of our soldiers were three thousand miles away and the homes of some of them were five and six thousand miles. When they received "leaves" they could not go to visit their families as the British and French might. While the British were in their permanent sector with all the system of supplies regularly established, our soldiers might be one day serving with the British army and the next day with the French; they knew the weariness of long rides on railway trains, billets in barns and haylofts, and no home associations except that of their own companionship and that supplied by the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Knights of Columbus, and the Salvation Army. They were under the strictest kind of censorship, their mail took weeks to reach France and then followed them about from place to place in trying to overtake them.
The rapidity with which they were being brought across the seas in unexpected numbers into a land which had suffered the strain of war for four years led to confusion and discomfort under the fearful pressure of the forthcoming tremendous effort which was to use all the will power, energy, and brains of every man that America had in France.
For we were now to know no rest until the armistice was signed. After the 1st and 2d Divisions had fought themselves to utter exhaustion in the drive to Soissons with a loss of nearly 50 per cent of their infantry, the work of reducing the salient fell upon the "Yankee" 26th Division, which had been hurried from a long tour in the mud and misery of the Toul sector, upon Muir's "Iron" 28th Division of Pennsylvania National Guard, coming fresh from the drill grounds back of the British front to the drive toward the Ourcq, upon the redoubtable 3d Division, which, despite its losses in resisting the German crossing of the Marne, took up the counteroffensive with a fiery zeal.
Then the 42d Division swung around to take the place of the "Yankee" 26th, after it had fought heroically to exhaustion in attacking through more forests and against more machine-gun nests, and Haans 32d Division of National Guard from Michigan and Wisconsin, "the Arrows," who always broke the line which came down the apron of the hills toward Cierges under artillery fire with the jauntiness of parade, conquered the wicked woods and heights of the ravines on the other side of the Ourcq in its first great action. Hersey's 4th Regular Division with but little experience lived up to the record of the other divisions by promptly becoming veteran and Duncan's 77th "Liberty" Division, of New York City, the first of the National Army divisions to arrive in France and the first to know active battle, pressed on to the Vesle. All these gave all the strength they had, all fought until in weariness they must accept relief, in that wonderful revelation of citizen America turned soldier.
There was not one of these divisions that did not regret that instead of being associated with French divisions they were not associated with American divisions. All were ambitious to be a part of our own army. They had finished their Château-Thierry job; they had done all that was expected of them; they had met the emergency. Château-Thierry had been an introduction, a preparation, a proof of quality for other and greater tasks which commanders had now learned that we could perform.
Now began the Hegira of our divisions toward our own American sector in Lorraine, where all but two, who were with the British, were to join them. With the assurance that by the first of December we should have more than two million Americans in France while the number of German reserve divisions were dwindling and the Germans could hope for no further reenforcements, the offensive of Château-Thierry was to be followed by the succeeding offensives with which, as opportunity offered, Marshal Foch was to conduct his final campaign. Germany had no hope now of winning the war. The question was how soon it might be won by the Allies.
With the attack on the Saint Mihiel salient our army entered upon its third and greatest phase, which was the cumulation of all the plans made in June, 1917. At that time it was considered that we should be ready for our first offensive operation as an integral force by the autumn of 1918, and the salient was considered as its objective; but, as I have said, we had not calculated upon a million men by midsummer of 1918, which our lines of communication would have to supply, let alone two million by November 1, 1918. The requirements laid upon transport and supply were more than doubled, while the emergency of scattering our divisions to resist the German offensives had introduced an unexpected feature, and the strain upon France and England, as the result of these offensives, had interfered with our receiving as much assistance from them as we might have originally expected.
As officers in France had foreseen, the promises of our ambitious program in the manufacture of aeroplanes, ordnance, and material of war at home, could not be fulfilled even by the most diligent application of energy and enterprise as soon as the War Department had hoped. We were still equipping all our divisions with British gas masks and helmets. Only in the last days of the Château-Thierry operations had a plane driven by a Liberty motor flown over our lines. All our artillery and machine guns were still French. The Browning machine guns were only just beginning to arrive; and we waited upon the American tanks and gas outfits and other weapons.