" <»< %<,'''' ''if .«^ ■'=**-'^''*/ v-^\/ 'V'^-'y *' r^* ^^ -^^ AMERICA IN FRANCE BOOKS BY FREDERICK PALMER Going to War in Greece The Ways of the Service The Vagabond With Kuroki in Manchuria Over the Pass The Last Shot My Year of the Great War The Old Blood My Second Year of the War With Our Faces in the Light America in France AMERICA IN FRANCE BY MAJOR FREDERICK PALMER Author of " The Last Shot," " My Year of the Great War,' " With Our Faces in the Light," etc. NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1918 J-.^" ^^^ Copyright, 191S, By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. '«£)CI.A5()«765 ^^4 THE MEMORY OF OUR SOLDIERS WHO HAVE FALLEN IN FRANCE IN ORDER THAT THEIR COMRADES WHO SUR- VIVE MAY MAKE A BETTER WORLD TO THE READER Upon our entry into the war, I became one of the band of reserve officers who might do special service while they envied the men of the training camps their youth. My duties allowed me a wide range of information and observation with our expedition- ary force in France from its inception. Under the spell of our marvelous achievement, which is the greatest story any American has ever had to tell, I have written about it as I knew it through its phases of building, training, figljiting and of unremitting effort until we had won the Saint Mihiel salient and broken the old German line in the Argonne battle. Readers of My Year of the Great War and My Second Year of the War will have between two covers, if they choose, my third and fourth years. Frederick Palmer, Major, S.C., U.S.J. CONTENTS CHAPTER I Pershing Goes to France . PAGE I II Our Great Project II III The First Troops Arrive . 22 IV They Go to Lorraine . • 31 V Hard Training . 43 VI A Blue Print Era 56 VII Many Problems 66 VIII Building an Organization . 11 IX Faith in the Rifle 94 X Some Firsts for the First . 106 XI Three More Divisions 121 XII Pulling Upstream 138 XIII The Other " Over There " . 155 XIV The Secretary Comes . 166 XV Everyday Fighting 182 XVI All We Have .... 199 XVII Our First Offensive . 211 XVIII A Call from the Marne . 229 XIX Holding the Paris Road . 242 XX Belleau Wood and Vaux . 252 CONTENTS XXI Wounded and Prisoners . XXII Divisions with the English XXIII Our Army Travels . XXIV Busy Days for the C.-in-C. XXV Resolute Stonewalling . XXVI We Strike Back . XXVII Driving Toward Soissons . XXVIII Vierzy and Berzy-le-Sec . XXIX Forward from Chateau-Thi frry XXX The Heights of the Ourcq XXXI To THE Vesle XXXII Saint Mihiel XXXIII We Take the Salient XXXIV Our Argon ne Battle XXXV Aviation .... XXXVI The Great Project Realized 280 293 301 3-9 340 360 371 3S5 400 414 42S 441 455 467 AMERICA IN FRANCE AMERICA IN FRANCE PERSHING GOES TO FRANCE General Pershing at the War Department — Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces — Modest beginnings of our greatest national enterprise — Specialists in war take com- mand — 'The American crusader — Difficult even for the French to understand our distinterestedness — General Pershing and his staff sail from New York — Beginning staff work on ship- board — An American General reviews British troops — Ova- tions in Paris — The real General Pershing. It was In the May days of our early war emotion and war effort, after public Imagination had re- sponded to Marshal Joffre's call for American troops to fight beside his veterans. Long lines of private cars waited on the sidings of the Union Sta- tion in Washington while their owners were seeking to serve the government for a dollar a year. The word coordination had not yet become the bandied symbol of the thing most needed and most desired in harnessing the Niagara of our national energy into voltage. Anyone passing along the corridors of the War Department who looked Into the small room oppo- site the Chief of Staff's office might have taken the Major General and other officers within as engaged in some routine departmental work unless he had 2 AMERICA IN FRANCE heard someone remark: " Pershing is in there, get- ting ready to go to France." Such was the begin- ning, in a quiet office, isolated from the throbbing activity of Washington, of our greatest adventure in arms and our greatest national enterprise; and the modesty of it was in keeping with the lack of any large body of troops to send to Europe or the ships for their transport. Our public did not then conceive of a complete Russian military collapse, let alone a German of- fensive sweeping over the devastated areas of the Somme which the Allies had lately won. Joffre's candid message about the situation had not dis- turbed the serene conviction of many Americans that our weight in the balance would drop the scales of victory for the Allies. He was the commander of trained armies born of military traditions imbibed through generations in face of the enemy's frontier. We were a people who had built fortunes and vast enterprises, homes, schools and universities, con- quered wildernesses, taken riches out of the earth and set deserts abloom, but with the traditions of eight years of fighting which had made us a nation and of the fratricidal conflict in which our manhood had proved its fortitude and courage as a reminder to later generations, emigrants or home born, of what should be expected of them if they were to be worthy of our inheritance In some future trial. In t86i, few men foresaw the great armies which we should have to raise before a decision was reached. In May, 19 17, no one thought of an army of a million men in France except in the imaginative flights which were the privilege of all in that period. PERSHING GOES TO FRANCE 3 When you are ill you turn to the doctor. When you are at war you turn to the trained soldier. It is as easy to forget the one when you are well as to forget the other in time of peace. Although we were at war uniforms were rarely seen in our streets. In the training camps chosen young men were learn- ing the rudiments of drill in order to become officers who should train troops to go to France under Pershing. Our regular army had hardly been a part of our national life; it was a supplementary official neces- sity which we accepted along with our taxes. Sud- denly, the man trained in war had become the man of the hour; " he is a regular," the tribute to a type of professional specialism which made the owner of a private car envious. Upon the way that our little band of experts molded the raw material of our manhood and organized our resources in their sup- port depended the result of our effort, a thought that will be running through all these pages, which deal with the triumph of men as men and how they were undismayed when they lacked resources and how they utilized the resources which were forthcoming. In the Washington hotel lobbies, where the expert in railroad building and the expert in steel-making each respected specialism, it was only incidental to our traditions that they should think that an army was a force of armed men without considering how it was organized and directed. They lived in an- other world from that of the officers of our General Staff in the rooms along the corridors from where Pershing had begun his organization. You thought of the large, technically trained, experienced staffs 4 AMERICA IX FRANXE of our large corporations in comparison with the meager personnel which was to organize an in- finitely larger corporation, whose ledger account is reckoned in casualties in battle. These officers had no illusions; they understood how, in cold logic, the German Staft had reasoned that ruthless submarine warfare against Britain would gain results more than oftsetting any force which we might bring against Germany before she planned to win a de- cision at arms. For war is a soldier's business, and our soldiers realized the immensity and the com- plicated difficulties of Pershing's task. Given time and they did not lack faith in the out- come. To have lacked faith would have been un- American and shown their inappreciation of the forces that built our skyscrapers, our factories, our colleges and the spirit of our democracy and our cause. It would be confessing distrust in American manhood drilling at the training camps, !U themselves and their own progranmie; as. hap- pily, in this war we had taken expert adWce. We were to have a national draft: specialists in war were to be given the authority to form an army along sound professional lines. The architect's plans for the structure were right: the thing now was the building. If Joffre were a marshal of accomplishment, Pershing was a marshal of poten- tialities. The instructions which the General received be- fore he left the little room to sail were of an his- toric simplicit\\ He was to proceed with his staff to Europe, there " to command all the land forces of the United States operating in continental Europe PERSHING GOES TO FRANCE 5 Slid in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland," and to " establish, after consultation with the French War Oflice, all necessary bases, lines of communication, etc., and make all the incidental iirrangements essential to active participation at the front." Back of this charter of authority were all the principles that the President had enunciated in his messages. These are none the less live and true for iteration. They have been the inspiration of all our effort in France. No crusader of old went forth with a cause freer from guile than the American born of European blood returning to fight in Eu- rope a battle which cemented a kinship of right in the world, after we had kept faith with our peaceful intentions by not preparing great armaments. Often the French villagers asked our soldiers : "Why are you here? What do you want? Is it colonies? Is it power in the affairs of Europe?" The questions were natural from races rooted in their soil, with its defense their instinctive self- interest. Through all the months of labor in France the wonder of our being in France never ceased when thoughts took a certain turn. When they took another, the answer was, " Where else should we be? " Our troops would return with no tribute from victory; with only national consciences clear. When and on what ship was Pershing going? Curiosity pried at the curtain of military secrecy. Men occupying rooms in the War Department ad- joining the General's did not know, but the hotel lobbies knew. The embarkation was matter-of-fact enough from a government tender to the S. S. Baltic 6 AMERICA IN FRANCE in a May rain off Staten Island; and the next day the staff went to work — Commander, Chief of Staff, and other staff heads, and all Colonels, Majors, Captains, Lieutenants, interpreters and field clerks, orderlies and messengers — one hundred and fifty in all. A few were reservists who had jumped into their uniforms before sailing and were uncertain whether you saluted superiors on shipboard or not. Others wore the colors of campaigns in Cuba, the Philippines and China, and a few the red ribbon that indicated an Indian campaign, which were to mingle with the colors of South Africa and India, of Madagascar and Morocco, and those of the Military Cross, the D. S. O., the Croix de Guerre and Medaille MUita'ire. We were proud of our one handsome gray-haired officer who had won the Medal of Honor from Congress and ready to com- pare him with any winner of the Victoria Cross, Many of the officers had never been in Europe. Their knowledge of the European war was gained from the reports of our military observers and general reading. Late in the third year of the war they were going abroad as leaders who were to apply the experience of Europe's masters to their own army. Anyone who expected that their attitude, In keeping with our generally accepted characteristic of self-assertion, would be that they proposed to *' show Europe how " reckoned without the consid- eration that their professional training warned them that they had much to learn. Oh, those classes in French ! The interpreters organized the officers into groups of different grades, from those well-grounded in West Point book PERSHING GOES TO FRANCE 7 French to the ones who did not know how to ask the way or for something to eat, while arms sore from vaccination, and too much experience with Spanish on the border were offered as excuses for not immediately acquiring a Parisian accent. Gen- eral Pershing was in the first grade; he had once studied French in France. Lectures on bombing and sanitation were delivered in the dining saloon to fill in any spare time when an idler might have been playing shuffleboard. The American destroyers, which came out to es- cort us at the edge of the submarine zone, were a reminder that the service which is always ready for action in the ships which It has and the crews to man them was striking the only battle blows which we had yet delivered at the enemy. Without de- stroyer protection there would be no American army in Europe. Ever, the destroyer, weaving its watch- ful course of guardianship In all weathers, will remain the symbol of a devout gratitude to all men who have crossed the Atlantic in this war. Its sight Is as welcome as that of a policeman if you have a burglar In the house. When the General reviewed the Guard of Honor on the pier at Liverpool, of course someone said, " This Is historic." History had been too abun- (Irintly in the making of late years for one to be certain of values; yet It was a great moment when ^.•e leader of an American army come to fight beside ;>ritlsh soldiers stepped ashore on English soil. It was the more Important as there was no ceremony in London except an audience by the King, much to the relief of our little band of pioneers, which 8 AMERICA IN FRANCE was off to the War Office where each one was to meet some expert In his own line, with no lessening of his conviction of what a lot he had to learn. In France, however, there must be ceremony. Why had Joffre asked for the prompt dispatch of troops? For the immediate effect on French morale. Therefore, France refused to consider the modesty of a simple American soldier who wished particu- larly to avoid martial display when he was bringing only a staff to Europe. She needed the stimulus of the actuality of American soldiers on her soil, which was more convincing proof that we were in this war in earnest than ten thousand columns of cablegrams ( about our preparations at home. Ovations were the \ spontaneous outcome of Parisian feeling which ', should communicate its reassuring thrill to every ' village from Brittany to the Alps. General La- fayette's fame resplendently revived. The French schoolboy was learning as much about him as about the American. He had gone to America to help us; Pershing came to France to help the French. Not since the war had begun had the Parisian spirit, stilled to breathless silence in the days of the Marne, breathing free again in relief after the victory, and restrained ever since by the drain of life and the pressure of the grim monotonous proc- esses of sacrifice, broken forth In a manner worthy of welcoming a marshal returning from decisive victory. Our officers had no idea of what was in store for them. They were as embarrassed as girl graduates when, on the way from the station, the crowds surrounded their cars and threw flowers at them. PERSHING GOES TO FRANCE 9 *' Look pleasant, please \ " called an American to a colonel. " Only then," said the colonel, " did I realize that I was sitting as stiff as a wooden Indian and looking as serious as a Puritan at the benediction — it was so staggering to be a hero of Paris." Our General found himself bowing from balconies to cheering multitudes and the recipient of atten- tions which were once reserved for visiting mon- archs. Fortunately, he had traveled much and studiously and met all manner of men. Within the army the distinction among his fellows which he had already won before he left West Point gave him the opportunities of varied service which ranged from the General Staff in Washington to building roads and schools in the jungle and ruling the Moros, who called him " Datto," followed by eleven years of command experience. He had been of the group of attaches with Kuroki's army in Manchuria who were the eyes of the armies of the world in observing the first great war fought with modern arms. There I first knew him and Captain Peyton C. March, who later became our Chief of Staff. Colonel Enoch H. Crowder, who was our senior attache, was to be responsible for our Na- tional Draft, as Provost Marshal General. The others included Sir Ian Hamilton, who led the Gal- lipoli expedition; Captain von Etzel, who was to command a German corps at Verdun; Colonel Corvissart, who was to command a corps opposite von Etzel's; Captain Hoffman, very guttural and very Prussian, who became the representative of the German Staff at the Brest-Litovsk Peace Con- lo AMERICA IN FRANCE ference and engineered the collapse of Russia; and Captain Caviglia, who was to distinguish himself as an army commander in the battle of the Piave. We were to have, then, as our leader in France a man thoroughly trained for his task since the day he left Missouri to go to West Point, intrinsically ^J^erican, and representative of our institutions. No soldier could have criticized his speeches for length and no diplomat for lack of appreciation of his position as the ambassador of the hundred mil- lions. France looked him over, and liked his firm jaw, his smile, his straight figure and his straight way of looking at everyone he met. He brought cheer and promise of the only aid which France '•.ould understand, that of an armed force which fights on land. For France is of the soil and vine- yards and well-tilled fields and thrifty peasants, and thinks little of the sea. Our oflficers remarked with dry American humor that they were receiving all the honors due immortal heroism before they had done any fighting. The realization of the long months of waiting before we should have troops ready to go into the line put the double edge to their appreciation of the welcome by thoughtful Americans in the midst of the cheers. II OUR GREAT PROJECT First American uniforms in Paris — Modest headquarters on the Rue de Constantine — Where all Americans in Paris flocked — Crowded quarters — Difficulties of making a start — Laying plans for a great army — Where should our soldiers fight, train, disembark? — Our national characteristic of thinking " big." Other pioneers had been in France In behalf of the AUIed cause before our staff. We had given freely of our money and effort. Our doctors and nurses manned hospitals that we had equipped. The fliers of the Lafayette Escadrllle were a little legion of American chivalry fighting in the air; and hundreds of drivers of the two American ambulance associa- tions coursed the roads back of the French front. They wore uniforms which distinguished them as Americans and they carried our flag In spirit or by courtesy, but their uniforms did not have U. S. on the collar and the flag was not official. The uni- forms now seen in the streets were official; and the authority of the nation raised the flag at the new army headquarters In Paris, which, in its magic sym- bolism that where formerly some Americans had been striking Germany, now all were, was the harbinger of American flags appearing in the re- motest corners of France; of busy hours for needle- women who were sewing the stars of the States, 12 AMERICA IN FRANCE while the Red, White and Blue of their own tri-color made the stripes and the field of ours. The modesty of the premises which the staff occu- pied in Paris was in keeping with the modesty of the beginnings in Washington. Instead of taking pal- aces or hotels on the Champs-Elysees, the officer who had the arrangements in charge sought the other side of the Seine, where he took two private houses in the Rue de Constantine overlooking the Invalides, as if the one thing that the A. E. F. wished to do after the furore of its Parisian recep- tion was to escape further publicity. In the corner house, No. 31, General Pershing settled down in his office, which was the corner room upstairs, and began his service in France. In the adjoining room the Chief of Staff had his desk and in the one on the other side the aides had theirs. The atmosphere of the aides' room was more like that of a political candidate's anteroom than an army headquarters. Every American in Paris seemed to have some reason for calling. Why not? For three years he had longed for the day when he could hold up his head with the thought that his country was in the war. Usually, he considered it necessary to see the General in person. At first, an orderly tried to hold the wooden gate which was put up as a check at the foot of the stairs, where, in other days, a servant had opened the door for callers and to receive cards. The orderly had learned some fortitude in Mexico, but quailed nnd yielded before this onslaught. An officer, a gallant and polite gentleman who could alternate his attitude between that of a diplomatic usher and a traffic OUR GREAT PROJECT 13 policeman, took his place. While he was consider- ing the application of one caller, others would slip by him to advance on the General's aides. It was amazing the number of people the General saw; amazing how any work was done in the limited space of No. 31. Young America in France wanted commissions in the army; old America in France had advice to offer; the pressure on the War Department v/as repeated in Paris. The small room over the stairs held a group of French officers who were the intermediaries, the liaison, in all the relations of the pioneers with the official world of France, arranging for the innumerable conferences required for co- operation with the French, when necessarily all our action was related to French military policy. In other parts of the building the rest of the staff overflowed kitchens, bedrooms and butler's pantry. Two or three officers occupied the same desk at the ".ame time. A captain who thought that he had a desk of his own, when he left it for half an hour found his papers pushed to one side and a major in his place when he returned. A score or more of newspaper correspondents called every day in answer to the eager curiosity of the people at home. There was relief from the congestion when the Quartermaster's Department and other branches moved Into the Hotel St. Anne, Rue St. Anne, where desks took the place of bedsteads, while everybody there as at the Rue de Constantlne was on the jump with a French Interpreter at his elbow. Loss of motion for the want of supplies because of the limi- tations of army forms and of lack of knowledge of the language, was an Inevitable affliction to a staff 14 AMERICA IN FRANCE which In answer to a hurry call had rushed across the Atlantic. Our personnel, which might have seemed large in Washington, became ridiculously small in the theater of the European war. Hun- dreds of problems buffeted and laid siege to the pioneers, who were trying to familiarize themselves with conditions at the same time that they organized for immediate future requirements. Each branch must lay out its programme and these programmes must be combined into a whole. For the first time the military secrets of the Allies were open to us. Officers of the Operations Section could look into every detail of the operations of the French and British armies, familiarizing themselves with the infernally complicated system of tactics of trench warfare. They could sit in a battalion com- mander's post of commandment or at corps head- quarters and watch the routine of command. The Medical Corps, without supplies, could observe the care of the wounded, from the stretcher-bearers to the base hospitals. The signal corps, without sup- plies, might follow the many strands of wire along the walls of a single communication trench and gain some idea of the material for communications which our army would require. Officers of the Intelligence Section could stretch their imagination as to forces needed by meeting the company of experts at a Grand Headquarters — experts in language, in ques- tioning prisoners, in censorship, in counter-espionage, in all the business of keeping information from the enemy and gaining information about him. As for the Quartermaster, reserve the bulk of your sym- pathy for him. Everybody seemed to want some- OUR GREAT PROJECT 15 thing from him which he could not supply, when he had brought no more baggage to Europe than any other staff officer. He might buy what he could in the open market, and bid those who wrote " It is requested " to wait until our trans- ports arrived. In any army the inspiration of action comes from its leader. His decision is final, upon the advice of his generals and his staff. He links all the strands together under his driving hand; he is the ultimate authority in the provision of any programme next to that of the Secretary of War and the President. In the days when submarine ravages were heavy, when our armies were in the making, when Russia was still in the war and British confidence high after the perfect " limited-objective " battle of Messines, when many people thought that peace would arrive in another six months, and when our camps at home were still busy with the primer lessons of soldiering. General Pershing laid his plans for the patient build- ing of a great, thorough army organization in France and an adequate plant to maintain it. Time was to justify his vision, as time more than justified Kitchener's vision of a three years' war. Where should an American force go into the line? Where should it be trained in France? The bases established for its maintenance must be more or less permanent, as a modern army is tied fast to its source of supply. What ports were we to use? Harbor space was a first consideration, for we must have ample gateways for an ample enterprise. The question of training brought up the problems where errors may be most glaringly costly; the i6 AMERICA IN FRANCE preparation of soldiers for the test of battle. Dif- ference of systems, variation of ideas, national psychology and changing political and military con- ditions all played a part. It will be recollected that the French Staff had strongly advocated, early in the war, not only the introduction of French Staff con- trol into British units, but even the introduction of British battahons into French regiments, for the reason that the French Staff was experienced in the handling of large bodies of troops and had ample reserves in trained officers, owing to the application of military training to all classes of French man- hood for two generations. The British could not accept this view, even if the military advantage were granted, owing to causes inherent in pride of coun- try and in the traditions of a self-reliant people. It was only natural that the French should want to apply the same system to us and that the British should consider that the bond of com.mon language alone was the unanswerable argument that we should train with them. Either of two gallant hosts begged us to become a member of his family. It was only human that the British master and the French master should want the American as his disciple; a proof of either's faith in himself and his system. Each one wanted the privilege of instructing the novice, the giant beginner; of exerting his influence upon the young nation from over the seas which was bringing its legions to bear for the first time in an European war, in violation of Washington's policy for a struggling infant now become of ele- phantine strength. Full compliance with the request of either side OUR GREAT PROJECT 17 that our troops should be introduced into its army in small units might mean that we should have no distinct staff, or bases, or lines of communication, while our training camps at home became recruiting depots for British and French forces. In that event, would the most important unit of war, the man in the ranks, develop the maximum of power against the enemy when he was not a part of a distinct American army? It is a question which will recur again; a question which sinks the plummet deep in human psychology and in our part in the war. Our live national sympathy for France, the needs of French morale and many other considerations associated us with the French army, while instruc- tions and wisdom kept our forces integral under the tutelage of the French, who generously offered their best officers and troops as our teachers. Nature was niggardly in supplying western France with large harbors; and her harbor masters ;iever contemplated such an enterprise as ours de- manding anchorage and wharf space. The value of New York Bay and the piers of the North River transferred to a point between Boulogne and Bor- deaux is something beyond conjecture. Already the . British occupied the northern ports in maintaining their replacements, in feeding their immense army, in caring for their wounded, in supplying all the material for the offensive which they were con- ducting. We must turn to other harbors not already occu- pied. If there were not enough piers we must build them. If there was not enough anchorage space we must dredge it. The officers who were i8 AMERICA IN FRANCE dashing about France in the company of French officers, going over French reports and suggestions, were dreaming great dreams as the pleasant land- scape whisked by — dreams of forming the plan which was to be the basis of all our future effort in France and our effort at home in preparing for war in France. I know of nothing more in keeping with our na- tional character of seeing " big " and thinking " big " than the visions which we put into cold official recommendations when the submarine rav- ages were at their worst and we had no illusions about the supply of American shipping for transport. A year later, with a deep understanding of their foresight, we could the better appreciate how of- ficers who had been dealing with companies of infantry and supplies for the Mexican border ex- panded their conception to our needs in France. It was not for them to consider that the sudden end of the war would stop their building. They had seen enough to know that Germany was far from beaten, and they proposed to prepare a force which should be equal to our part in assisting the Allies to compass her defeat. *' Any consideration of operations," said the recommendations to Washington, " must include of- ^.cnsive operations on a large scale, which would oquire twenty combat divisions for action." These "id all the personnel of supply necessary to support > lem, after studying the French and the British systems, "must look toward a million men, the smallest unit which, in modern war, will be a com- plete fighting organization." At home, the plan -^ OUR GREAT PROJECT 19 should contemplate the completion in two years of a programme for three million men. The officers in the crowded rooms in the Rue de Constantine, when we had not two platoons of in- fantry or a single gun in France, having outlined their project for the millions as an indication of what was expected of Washington, then worked out their tables of organization and their system for re- placement, and the difterent types of schools required in France and in the States to teach officers of our new army not yet commissioned and soldiers not yet in uniform the latest technique in every branch. There, within a stone's throw of the Invalides and in sight of Napoleon's tomb, these men of from thirty-five to forty-five years of age of our little General Staff, with the help of sober field clerks who ran the typewriters, created armies out of the youths still walking our streets, transferred them across the Atlantic, marched them and fought them against the Kaiser's armies, not in War College theory, but in abundant conviction that their proj- ects could be realized. A von Tirpitz or a Ludcn- dorff, looking over their shoulders, might have said, '* You may as well imagine you are playing ball with the stars." But Napoleon, who had created armies out of republican crowds, could have said, " I, too, dreamed." Whatever Napoleon come to life might think, aren't we the people who lay out the streets of a town across the fields and name them all before a house is built? How old is Chicago? How long since Kansas City was a trad- ing post? We must not only have ports, but great ware- 20 AMERICA IN FRANCE houses, depots and regulating stations — everything across the Atlantic that the British had across the Channel. In conference with the French, we studied the map of France as railroad builders and town builders had studied the geography and the resources of the West. Instead of pioneering in a new coun- try with everything at hand for building, we v/ere to pioneer in an old land, whose resources were under the strain of war. Were we to fight in France, we must bring our own supplies with us and in our own transport as surely as the Forty-Niners had to bring theirs. With the size of the army contemplated in a given time known, we could prepare for its requirements in a given time. With the sector of the front we were to occupy known, officers could go about say- ing with an Aladdin confidence, " Here is where we shall build a twenty-thousand-ton cold storage plant " and " there we must have warehouses to accommodate a million tons." The southern At- lantic ports of France and the railways of Central France and the free swing with plenty of room which we should require for our national effort, combined to locate our future theater of action be- tween Verdun and the Swiss border, with the possi- bility of turning further northward from Central France as an axis in case of emergency. A people used to distances, we were set a problem in dis- tances, after our troops and supplies were landed, farther than from London to the Somme battle front. Our lines of communication were to stretch clear across France to the hills and valleys of Lor- raine, facing the Alsace-Lorraine of French desire. OUR GREAT PROJECT 21 Of all the cablegrams, ever increasing in volume from the days of meagerness in June, 19 17, which have passed between " Agwar " and " Pershing, Amexforce," none of these better expressed the " make-it-brief " spirit than that of July ist, in which the whole plan for our operations was outlined to the War Department, which might well have been stunned when it thought of all that had to be done to carry out the gigantic conception. These thou- sands of pages of cablegrams are a skeleton history of the expedition which recollection makes live with the tired muscles of soldiers in training, the heart of determination and the nerves quivering under strain held in leash by will and the spirit that con- quers obstacles. V Ill THE FIRST TROOPS ARRIVE Building for an army of millions — The first convoy — The first American troops unlike any soKiicrs France had ever seen — Emotions of an American watdiing his own troops arriving in France — Surprising variety of Americans in the first con- tingent — Cu-neral I'ershing pays a visit to see his boys ilis- emliark — The First nivisit)n — I'verything to do to transform gretii recruits into traineil soldiers. Until troops arrived, the Staff woiiUl have tlie feel- ino; of a head witliout a body; of a delegation rather than of an army. It awaited impatiently the coming of the di\ision of re<>ulars which was to follow Gen- eral Pershing to France and witli some curiosity as to- its character. Already the expansion of our regular regiments had left one trained man tt) stiffen and educate three . ocruits. Pride would Ikuc skimmed the best of- I cers and men from several divisions in order to nake a good showing abroad; and ettect would have demanded that the large cities of France should have a glimpse of their veteran precision. We might have even rushed over two such di\isions. A different view, which prevailed in profit of British experience, had in mind how the flower of the British army went to the sacrifice at Mons at jJie expense of instructors for the future new British army. Our regular army, at the beginning of 1917, THE FIRST TROOPS ARRIVE 23 was even smaller than the British in 19 14, while our man-power was more than double that of the British Isles. As the Germans were then held on all fronts, no emergency, then in sight, required any such concentration of our best available troops of the kind which hurried Sir John French's army against the German advance through Belgium. Thus, we could safeguard our own experts for school-mastering. Although they might long to be among the " first in France," we distributed them among the new divisions which were forming at home, in order to develop an army of that uniform quality necessary to a commander's confident han- dling in action. One or two or three crack divisions, selected at the expense of the others, would have been earlier in the trenches than a recruit division, but they would have a long wait before they were reinforced by other trained divisions. Indeed, we should have had a small corps d' elite in France and a large military mob at home. Those bold young staff officers, working out their ambitious projects on paper in the Rue de Con- stantine, approved this decision. It fitted in with the splendid theory of building according to their professional ideals. They kept right on thinking in terms of millions as if from the force of habit. When they thought of effect it was military effect. The display of a crack division might thrill the Al- lies with the idea that we were impressing Germany, when the one authority to be impressed was the German Staff, which was watching to see whether or not America meant to make a real army of a size commensurate with her population and resources. 24 AMERICA IN FRANCE If anything ought to be kept a secret it should be the port of debarkation of the first American force to pass through the submarine zone, and the time of its arrrv^al. The navy, which had the responsibiHty of safe conduct, was not lacking in self-consciousness in this respect. Meanwhile, we had to make preparations for re- ceiving the troops at some particular port. The more mysterious the French and the American of- ficers delegated to the task appeared the more they confirmed the purpose of their presence. Everybody in that port knew that it was to have the honor of being host to the Americans; and people traveling up to Paris carried the news. I heard the port identified as a matter of gossip before I heard its identification in the Staff as a matter of strict con- fidence. The mayor of the por^ issued a proclama- tion of welcome. He wanted a public ceremony and speech making. French journalists and photog- raphers went out on a dispatch boat to meet the first incoming transport. While we still had seven thousand men at sea, the bonds of censorship were broken and the initial landing of troops announced. That port was far from the French front. Ma- terial of war came to its piers, but no soldiers. Pros- perity and distinction beckoned to it from the first American transport that arrived, while our Admiral of the escort decided that he had a right to some relaxation and dinner on shore when the last was in. He had received a consignment of soldiers with orders to deliver them to France, and they were safely delivered. He had not thought that any acci- dent might happen. But suppose there had ! THE FIRST TROOPS ARRIVE 25 The character of the ships which we had gath- ered as transports was significant enough of our lack of a merchant marine; a former German auxiliary cruiser and sea-going and coast-going vessels of a plodding speed. Above the gunwales of their gray sides was a crowded mass of khaki spotted with white faces, and all the parts of the superstructure were blotted and festooned by khaki, freed of the long nights in the close quarters of the hold when no lights might be shown on deck, now out in the sunlight of a June day having their first glimpse of France, which was having its first glimpse of an American army. Nothing that these soldiers saw was like what they had left — boats, piers, houses, streets, people — and they were like no soldiers who had ever come to France before. Their talk had the rattling twang of the bleachers before the ball game begins, unmistakable wherever you hear it. Well, here they were. The " subs " had not got them. They wouldn't have to knock about deck in the dark or be packed in the hold any longer. The sea was all right; let the navy have it! But give them the land; they were soldiers! When did they get ashore? And what next? A different set of questions rose in the observer's mind. How many more thousands and hundreds of thousands would come? When and where would their services end? Their landing resolved the landing of the Staff at Boulogne into a prologue in front of the curtain which now rose on the play. Town and quay fell into insignificance; the ships dissolved into the sky, leaving only the troops visible, supreme — the first of our fighting men in France. The wonder of Amer- 26 AMERICA IN FRANCE ica in France never exerted its spell more com- pletely. To one whose emotions had lost their resiliency after watching the war for three years, here was somethinp; new. As he thought of all that the picture stood for to him, an American, the war was beginning afresh for him even as it was begin- ning in the minds of these men. As he tried to articulate the thrill of his emotions, something tightened his throat and left him silent with a mil- lion little needles running a riot of prickles through his veins. For these were his own soldiers, the soldiers of his own people, come from his land to hazard their courage in the greatest of wars. When I saw an American battalion marching through the streets and discrimination laid its re- straint on sentimental exhilaration in the recollec- tion of the columns of British regulars, every man molded by long training, which had marched out of Boulogne in August, 19 14, I almost wished that Staffs were less particular about all-round pro- grammes and that we had sent over a crack division of regulars as an example of the kind of trained soldiers that we could produce. "The babies!" said an old regular sergeant. " You can't blame them for their ignorance, and vou can't tell them all they've got to learn without taking the heart out of them. You've got to nurse them along by degrees, animad^•erting righteously to those who take their education best that way at intervals." They did know how to keep step and which is the business end of a rifle and that when you march in a column of fours this does not mean threes and THE FIRST TROOPS ARRIVE 27 twos. Many were as they had come to the recruiting station plus a certain amount of drill at home, and all stilf-lcggcd, pasty and somewhat unkempt. If the sardines in the can were alive and flopped about they would not look neat when the can was opened. You noticed all kinds of Americans in the ranks as they went by — Americans who hardly spoke English as well as college graduates, including the veteran regulars whose straight backs and square shoulders stood out in admonitory superiority to youths who had yet to develop a soldier's physique before they went into battle. But they were troops, American troops, and in France I To no one had this fact a greater appeal than to General Pershing, who had come down from Paris as eager as a schoolboy to see them. Furthest removed of all officers from his men by the grada- tions of rank, the Commander-in-Chief, if he is a human leader and not a bureaucrat, is nearest them in thought. It is they who count. All organization exists to supply, equip, train and inspirit them. A walk through the streets of a depot of great warehouses leaves emotion dead where it thrills at sight of a platoon moving up to the trenches, or the gunners of a battery at work. Who, if not their leader, his firm features and erect carriage as an example of the iron will and bearing he would have them achieve, could realize the training these men needed? But they were troops — troops — troops; their presence in France meant that he had the nucleus of an army. There was a glad light in his eyes and also a light which was a promise of the course he was to put them through before they were 28 AMERICA IN FRANCE to go into the trenches, which was for the sake of the United States and of their own mothers who would not want them heedlessly sacrificed in their callow unpreparedness. In numbers they were only half a full division, with their total of about thirteen thousand men, including a regiment of Marines, who, being used to ship life and having a larger percen- tage of veterans, showed the results in their appear- ance. This First Division was to have the handicap as well as the honor of being first. It was to be the object of the most experiments in training. From its experience were learned the lessons by which later arrivals profited. It came first out of democ- racy's individualism to the untried business of ship's discipline through the submarine zone; to the first censorship and all other kinds of regulations and to the first arrangements for landing and camping. Three-fourths of the oflScers were reserve, set over recruits sent to the scene of expert warfare. All this is not in criticism; only to indicate the nature of the travail which was to be theirs — the travail which wrought the First Division into finished sol- diers, as we shall see. At the camp outside the town where the men were to stretch their sea legs and brush up and acclimate themselves before moving to Lorraine, we had the first glimpse of that American soldier world which was to expand in France. There was an atmosphere of the border, no less than of home, in the queues of soldiers receiving their American rations, in the officers sitting down at their messes with the same food as the men; an expeditionary THE FIRST TROOPS ARRIVE 29 effect which suggested that a landing in France of a force bringing the regulation army supplies was much the same as a landing at Vera Cruz, where three years previously I had seen our transports disembark troops and cargo — only the troops at Vera Cruz were all regulars, as you knew by the sight of them when they marched off the piers. It is only fair to say, too, that the details for the dispatch of this expedition from home had not been rehearsed according to accepted Prussian Staff thoroughness. The Quartermaster's Department, under the strain of providing for the training camps and the influx of recruits, must have given that ex- pedition such a blessing as this: " Joffre wanted troops in a hurry. Here they are. We've got them started, anyhow." Yes, we were to learn much about war organization in the next six months. The quar- termaster who had to receive the expedition may have cursed the home quartermaster in his heart; I never heard him curse aloud. He had to do the best he could in everything, from organizing mili- tary police to unloading cargo. The pioneers who had only to build themselves a house of hewn logs in the wilderness and bring in fresh meat with their rifles had a relatively simple task compared to his. He needed automobiles; he needed motor-trucks; he needed everything. Some of these were in the hold once they could be sorted out, for the different parts of a motor-truck might not be on one ship or two ships or three, and one essential part for the assembling might be altogether missing. Thus, there were other items than troops for General Pershing to consider in realizing his 30 AMERICA IN FRANCE problem — which did not interfere with the im- pressiveness of his meeting with Admiral Cleaves, as the army shook the navy's hand, in congratula- tions over the fact that, regardless of the troubles of the quartermaster, the first contingent was safe In France. American mules went through the streets of that little port town, drawing army wagons piled high with officers' bedding rolls or sides of beef; motor- trucks that had been on the Mexican border ran past them on the way out to the camp; military police began keeping the crowds off the piers; the navy blue of sailors on shore mingled with khaki on the curbs or sat in front of the cafes; and under the covering barrages of gestures the vanguard of the expedition was making its first frontal attack on the French language. IV THEY GO TO LORRAINE Touring versus fighting in France — Wonderful roads of France — Billets — Introducing soldiers into the family life of the French — Lorraine and the I^rrainers — Actions and reactions between French as hosts and Americans as guests — Those do- mestic manure heaps — Why our boys respect the French — French " kiddies." In years to come the remark of the summer tourist, " I have been to France," will be an idle super- ficiality to the veterans of the A. E. F., who can say, " I have fought in France. I have marched the roads of France. I have ridden in box cars and slept in barns and dugouts and shell craters in France and lived in the homes of the people." As an educational institution the A. E. F. had the advantage of disciplinary application over Chau- tauquas and university settlements. Nineteen out of twenty of our men would never have gone to France if tlie nation had not put them in uniforms and given them a free passage. When they left America they were thinking only of a great adventure overseas. Their ideas about France were generically concrete, perhaps, though utterly vague in detail. Before the war they thought of the French as a polite, effemi- nate people ; since the war France had come to stand for courage and gameness. 31 32 AMERICA IN FRANCE An old traveler, who knew France well, might renew his youth by seeing France through the eyes of youth fresh from a new land. To our soldiers, I may repeat, there had been only one kind of rail- road cars, only one kind of surface cars, only one kind of towns, villages and farms — the kind they knew at home. As the French landscape unrolled before their eyes they saw the well-tilled fields stretching between the villages, where the farmers lived, as if forming a national garden. Everything in France seemed to have been built to last for a long time. There were rarely any yards in front of the houses which were Hush with the sidewalk; and then, to your surprise, you found cloistered gar- dens and lawns in the rear, hidden from the street. The people were polite and they smiled like the landscape. It was the roads, the great main roads, which won our chief admiration. They bound the farms anci the provinces together in still closer unity and they had a practical appeal which is so vital to armies moving on foot, on horseback or on wheels. Our first motor-truck company to arrive in France had come straight from Mexico, where it had been in pursuit of Villa. After the trucks were assembled and the captain, a reserve officer, announced that they were ready to start the next morning, the ser- geant7 an old regular with a sandstone face, desert- wrinkled, who treated the new captain with a kindly patronage, felt it his duty to remonstrate. " We've no frogs and chains," he said. These had been most essential in getting out of desert sloughs. THEY GO TO LORRAINE 33 " Never mind. That will be all right! " the cap- tain said. *' Yes, sir, but I warn you we've got no frogs and chains," the sergeant concluded. He had given fair notice. Now let the captain find out for himself that handling army motor trans- port was a different business than running out from his office to the golf-course in his own machine. Straight and smooth a Route Nationale beckoned the sergeant the next morning when he left the port. The veteran trucks sped on for half an hour with that road seeming to have no end. But the ser- geant was still unconvinced. That Harvard college captain would yet see that frogs and chains were necessary. Two hours later, when the road was still the same taut ribbon stretching away into the dis- tance, he capitulated to the captain's foresight with a few dry remarks. *' Well, I hand it to these people in the matter of roads. They sure got Mexico beat and got us beat. Down in IVIexico I thought I was earning about five hundred dollars a month. I guess the prospect is now I'll be owing the Government something for the privilege of being in the army. In Mexico there don't seem nothing to do but make war and cussed- ness; but why should anybody want to go to war in a country like this? I guess the Kaiser wants some of this — that's what's the matter. Don't it kind of make your eyes sing after Mexico? — Every- thing so green and neat and all the little groves and trees like columns of soldiers guarding the roads. You can see that the people have been planting and reaping and sticking on the job generally for hun- 34 AMERICA IN FRANCE dreds of years and they have certainly got a big bank account laid up in old mother earth." He was reminded by the captain how Caesar had built roads for the passage of his legions and how Napoleon had built more roads for the passage of his, all of which became a legacy to future genera- tions. Perhaps the necessity of the war which brought us to France may set our national thought to flowing on the straight broad way as the legacy of the A. E, F. to our future. Though our men wanted to take the roads of France home with them, none wanted to take his " billets." There is the word which spells the most significant feature of army life in France to every officer and soldier. " Tenting on the old camp ground to-night!" will hardly do as a song for future veterans' associations. In our mind army life was still associated with tents until the barracks of our training camps at home were built and the men began writing from France about their billets. The French were our hosts in more than a formal sense. We entered their homes as officially assigned guests. Reverse the situation and suppose that an army speaking another language came to help us against an invader, and when a company marched into a village every house became a hostelry to which a certain number of soldiers were assigned. It would create a flutter in our domestic circles, to say the least. In Europe to-day no man's house is his castle when the army wants it. The chateau be- comes the general's headquarters and other officers get quarters in a descending scale of comfort in keeping with their rank. It is the thought that an THEY GO TO LORRAINE 35 invader will arbitrarily exercise the same authority, ever present in the French mind, which reinforces patriotism with a sovereign self-interest in national defense. " If you want a job that will tear your nerves to tatters be a billeting officer," said a weary colonel, after the First Division had arrived in its training area. The journey across France hardly recalled the luxury which private soldiers had enjoyed at home when they were sent to the Border in sleepers. Xow they went in box cars marked " 36 men or 8 horses " — just as the sons of the best families in France travel on their troop trains, singing the songs of France and exchanging the quips of trench jargon — and after their arrival they were assigned to bil- lets in the village houses and barns. When an officer or a man says that he liked his billet in any particular village it means not only that he liked his quarters, but also his hosts and his neighbors. -KJur First Division was to train in the land of Joan of Arc. The Lorrainers are a stiff-necked people, less volatile than the people of other parts of France, but polite as are all the French. While they fought stubbornly in this war and in others to hold their frontier they were standing between the Germans and the sun-blessed southern France, which profTts by their wall of heroism as England profits by her Channel. In August, 19 14, the invaders swept as far as Charmes as the Bavarians aimed for the great gap of Mirecourt; and the people on the other side of Mirecourt heard the battle's roar recede with a feeling of thanksgiving whose devoutness central or southern France could only faintly appreciate. 36 AMERICA IN FRANCE When you know Lorraine it seems fitting that it should have given Joan of Arc to France, To-day you may still see such peasant girls as she was, straight as young birch trees with eyes wide apart and sensitive mouths and firm chins. The villages have changed little since she tended her flocks and the character of the people is much the same as when she went forth from shepherding her flocks to lead an army. From high ground clusters of red roofs break into view on the rich river bottoms and in valleys mottled with woodlands and pastures, but proximity removes some of the charm and pic- turesqueness as you enter narrow streets where manure is piled in front of the house door. Local customs in this respect were something of a shock to the sons of progressive American farmers. Say that early in July you were in an automobile that had left a Route Nationale for a winding road that played hide and seek with a winding stream. A village slipped by and you saw men in campaign hats and khaki shirts and still more and more of them in the villages for the next sixteen miles. This was the American training area, and the inhabitants who had never seen even tourist Americans to speak to them might marvel at the dispensation of fortune which had made them the hosts of the American army. It was a surprise to some of them that we had not red skins. Our names were puzzling. Peo- ple to whom a German is a German and a French- man is a Frenchman, born on opposite sides of a frontier and predestined to war, might wonder how Private Schmittberger U. S. A., could fight on the French side. THEY GO TO LORRAINE 37 Our theory of a melting-pot, amalgamating all races into a nation which was ready to shed its blood for the cause which was France's, required elucida- tion to a peasant of Lorraine steeped in racial an- tipathy. Even educated Frenchmen were appre- hensive lest our troops include German sympathizers. The convincing answer kept to practical grounds. Didn't Private Schmittberger look as American as Private Smith or De la Croix? Weren't there Ger- man names in France, particularly in Lorraine? The best time to make the run through our area was in the late afternoon when the companies were mustered for evening roll call, supple shoulders showing under soft khaki shirts and features with dry skin sharply outlined, inherently, appealingly American in the golden light of the evening sun. Later, you saw them in groups about the doorways of the old houses in the dusk, the novelty of their presence still dominating everything. They had made that valley theirs by the very character of their uniforms which identified any man in silhouette to the eye at a distance. Products of a different language and different customs, introduced into strange surroundings and other people's homes, we must play a worthy part as guests. General Orders No. 7, issued on July 3rd, had in mind the irritations and difficulties that might /^arise from the peculiar situation. It appealed to the self-respect of the thoughtful " in the good name of the United States," with a reminder for the thoughtless that those who offended would be brought to trial under the 89th Article of War^ The spirit of Lee's order to his army upon the in- s 38 AMERICA IN FRANCE vasion of Pennsylvania shone through this order, it was expressive of our idea that a man's house is a castle; of the very principle for which we were fighting against militarism. *' The good name of the United States and main- tenance of cordial relations require perfect deport- ment of each member of this command," the order read in part. " It is of the gravest importance that the soldiers of the American army shall at all times treat the people of France, especially the women, with the greatest courtesy and consideration. The valiant deeds of the French armies and those of her Allies, by which they have together successfully main- tained their common cause for three years, and the sacrifice of the civil population of France in the sup- port of their armies, command our profound respect. This can best be expressed on the part of our forces by uniform courtesy to all the French people and by faithful observance of their laws and customs. *' Company and Detachment commanders will in- form themselves and advise their men as to local police regulations and will enforce strict observance thereof. " The intense cultivation of the soil in France and the conditions caused by the war make it neces- sary that extreme care be taken to do no damage to private property. The entired French manhood capable of bearing arms Is in the field fighting the enemy. Only old men, women and children remain to cultivate the soil. It should, therefore, be a point of honor with each member of the American army to avoid doing the least damage to any property in THEY GO TO LORRAINE 39 France. Such damage is much more reprehensible here than in our own country." In contravention of army sanitary regulations about the removal of such nuisances, did this warn- ing apply to the manure pile whose odors pene- trated into the haymow where Privates Schmitt- berger and Smith had their home? Their grand- fathers would not have minded. Only in the pres- ent generation has sanitation become a cult with us, which makes our nostrils delicately sensitive and requires sleeping porches lest we breathe anything but fresh air. Our men had been punched or vac- cinated for every known disease for which there is an injective antidote. They were bred into the great bath-tub-filter-and-sanitary-plumbing era,