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“ Were Not Fought In Lines”: , Industrialism and Progressivism in the American Discourse, 1865-1918

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Leif A. Torkelsen, A.B., M.A., J.D.

Department of History

The Ohio State University

2018

Dissertation Committee:

Dr. Geoffrey Parker, Adviser

Dr. Nathan Rosenstein

Dr. Bruno Cabanes

Copyright by

Leif A. Torkelsen

2018

Abstract

Although notably modest in size compared to its European counterparts, the was still acutely aware of the technological and tactical developments occurring overseas in the decades prior to the First World . Nonetheless, in the years 1914-17, US military planners were stubbornly reluctant to accept the extraordinary innovations then taking place on the battlefields of . Worse still, when the United States finally did enter the war, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in resisted adopting the techniques and tactics of their allies, developed in at such great cost. Instead, the U.S. Army’s Field Service Regulations clung to a vision of lines of riflemen, advancing in open order, overcoming all resistance with controlled fire followed-up with the bayonet. Trained in such outmoded and linear tactics (“open warfare”, as Pershing called it), the American troops fighting in France needlessly suffered heavy losses. This, despite the fact that the American army possessed a modern general , numerous service schools and journals, military attachés and observers the world over.

The reasons for this failure lay in the development of the military discourse developed by the U.S. Army in the decades prior to One. This discourse did not develop, as Samuel Huntington would have it, in the splendid cultural isolation of the western frontier. Rather, it evolved very much in the spirit of the times, embracing the cultural cross-currents of nationalism, industrialism, and progressivism. The result was that the U.S. Army filtered information about warfare abroad in such a way as to maintain its adherence to outdated tactical doctrine. This was further exacerbated by an increasingly centralized and technocratic approach to warfare that limited the army’s ability to adapt to change. In effect, the U.S. Army adopted the institutional architecture of modernity, not to improve its ability to wage war, but to symbolize its commitment to modernity as conceived within the broader national discourse.

In order to provide an accurate portrayal of the U.S. Army’s military discourse, I will rely heavily on the articles and books published by military officers in their debates over tactics, , and strategy. This approach gives the historian a more intimate look at what the corps was actually thinking. The generation after the witnessed numerous service

ii journals come into being. Importantly, these journals were all independent of the War Department. All were associations relying on subscriptions, membership dues, and limited advertising. As such, they enabled officers of all ranks to air their views with a minimum of official interference. Indeed, younger officers often tried to make their mark in a service plagued by glacial promotion through their writings. More importantly, government funds were provided to purchase and distribute copies of the various journals to the numerous military outposts on the frontier. These journals were not just read by a privileged few, but they were widely available.

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Acknowledgements The prolonged gestation of this dissertation, shocking even by pachydermatous standards, demands the acknowledgement of those who made it possible. Three people stand above all others: Linda Percival, Katherine Torkelsen and Geoffrey Parker. Together, they provided the hugs and kicks necessary for me to get the job done.

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Vita

1991………………………………..………..A.B. History, Princeton University 1995…………………………………..……..J.D., University of Michigan Law School 1996-2003……………………………..…….Managing Director, Princeton Technology Management 2006……………………………………….…M.A. History, The Ohio State University 2003-2008……………………………..…….Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University 2008-2011………………………………...…Managing Director, Dragoon Capital 2011-2016…………………………………...Chief Financial Officer, Carl Smith Pipeline 2017 to Present…………………………..…..Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Belmont University

Fields of Study Field: History Minor Fields: Ancient History Early Modern Europe The Spanish Empire

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Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………..….ii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………iv Vita…………………………………………………………………………..v List of Maps……………………………………………..…………………vii Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………1 Chapter 2: Towards an American Way of War, 1865-82…………………..15 Chapter 3: New Schools, Old Army: The Birth of the Military-Intellectual Complex, 1882-98……………………………………46 Chapter 4: The Army in the Age of Mahan, 1888-98………………………63 Chapter 5: The Confusion of Victory: Tactics in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, 1898-1905……….82 Chapter 6: An Army Reformed, 1898-1912………………………………..104 Chapter 7: Leavenworth Tactics: The American Way of War and the Foreign Military Experience, 1905-1914…………………..125 Chapter 8: “Very Special Conditions”: The American View of , 1912-17…………………………………………162 Chapter 9: A Baptism of Fire, April 1917 – September 1918………………185 Chapter 10: The Test of Battle: The Meuse-Argonne , September to November 1918…………………………………..234 Chapter 11: Conclusion……………………………………………………..262 Bibliography………………………………………………………………...274

List of Maps

Map 1: Gravelotte from Battles of the 19th Century by G.A. Henty (1897) …………..34

Map 2: The of Plevna from Under the Red Crescent by Charles Ryan (1897)…40

Map 3: The Battle of Santiago from The War With by Charles Morris (1898)…89

Map 4: The from Nations Online………………………………………….93

Map 5: Area of Mexican Punitive Expedition………………………………………..179

Map 6: Cantigny, April 27-July 18, 1918 from American and Battlefields in Europe (1938)…………………………………………………………………205

Map 7: 2nd Division Operations, June 4-July 10, 1918 from American Armies and Battlefields in Europe (1938)………………………………………………….209

Map 8: French-American Attack South of Soissons, July 18-22, 1918 from American Armies and Battlefields in Europe (1938)……………………………………..214

Map 9: Plan of Attack of First Army, September 26, 1918 from American Armies and Battlefields in Europe (1938)…………………………………………………..239

Map 10: Operations of First Army, November 1-11, 1918 from American Armies and Battlefields in Europe (1938)…………………………………………………..255

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Chapter 1: Introduction

On an oppressively hot day in July of 1918, the U.S. 28th Division, composed primarily of Pennsylvania National Guardsmen, was ordered to seize the German-held village of Courpoil. By late afternoon, the lead assault battalions had lost touch with headquarters. The commanding general sent Lt. Hervey Allen, the scion of a wealthy Pittsburgh family, to re-establish contact. As he made his way forward, Allen found the survivors of the two battalions scattered about in small groups, immobilized with exhaustion after clearing German nests from the nearby Bois de la Fère. Surveying the scene, Allen observed: “Fighting here was a great manhunt, every little group for itself. In the dense coverts all control was impossible… It was the grim common sense of the ‘doughboy’ and not our obsolete and impossible tactics that won us ground. Oh! The precious time wasted in our elaborate, useless, murderous ‘science’ called ‘musketry.’ It is as much out of style as the from which it takes its name. Teaching it should be made a court- offense. It is murder in print. Battles were not fought in lines.”1 Few American combat veterans would have disagreed with Allen’s words. How had it come to this? How did the American army, with a modern general staff, numerous service schools and journals, military attachés and observers the world over, still fail to learn any of the tactical lessons of modern warfare? Although notably modest in size compared to its European counterparts, the was still acutely aware of the technological and tactical developments occurring overseas in the decades prior to the First World War. Nonetheless, in the years 1914-17, US military planners were stubbornly reluctant to accept the extraordinary innovations then taking place on the battlefields of Europe. Worse still, when the United States finally did enter the war, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France resisted adopting the techniques and tactics of their allies, developed in battle at such great cost. Instead, the U.S. Army’s Field Service Regulations clung to a vision of lines of riflemen, advancing in open order, overcoming all resistance with controlled rifle fire followed-up with the bayonet. Trained in such outmoded and linear tactics (“open warfare”, as Pershing called it), the American troops fighting in France needlessly suffered heavy losses. One military historian described American tactics on the Western Front, with only modest

1 Hervey Allen, Toward the Flame: A Memoir of (Lincoln, , University of Nebraska Press, 2003 (orig. 1926)), pp. 138-139 1

hyperbole, as “smothering German machine with American flesh.”2 The question for historians is why American military planners failed to adjust their tactical doctrine despite years of observing the war in Europe? And, why did this reluctance persist so long into the war itself? The traditional narrative of the U.S. Army in the pre-World War One period revolves around its comparatively small size, impecuniousness, lack of real combat experience, and its dispersion into many small garrisons on the western frontier. While these factors all help explain the army’s inadequacies on the eve of World War One, they are by no means dispositive, especially when compared with other historical examples. It must be acknowledged that the creation of is primarily an intellectual exercise, one which has allowed other armies to overcome obstacles similar to those faced by the U.S. Army.3 For instance, in the 1920s the small and poorly-equipped Reichswehr nonetheless managed to develop extraordinarily advanced doctrinal concepts using cardboard and wooden pieces. Similarly, the pre-1914 German army had known over forty years of peace, with the exception of minor conflicts in China and Namibia. Yet, it entered World War One as the most advanced and battle-ready . Finally, the U.S. Army’s own pre-Civil War history gives lie to the traditional explanations. Despite being in an almost identical situation to the pre-World War One army, the antebellum army fought America’s first modern war, and in so doing yielded the finest crop of generals that this country has ever produced. It is therefore clear that the traditional narrative does not satisfy. Indeed, if one were to chart the evolution of American tactical doctrine in the decades before the war, it would approximate that of the great European powers. However, when World War One began, the paths radically diverged. In Europe, the erroneous pre-war doctrinal assumptions of the various belligerents were ruthlessly exposed by the staggering casualty lists. What followed was a period of rapid change, as the rival worked frantically to develop revised tactics to cope with new battlefield conditions. Yet, American tactical doctrine evolved hardly at all, as if indifferent to the titanic struggle being fought in Europe. Worse still, once the United States entered the conflict, the U.S. Army only grudgingly accepted advice from its battle-hardened French and British allies.

2 James W. Rainey, “The Questionable Training of the AEF in World War One”, Parameters, Vol. XXII, No. 4 (Winter 1992-93), p. 100 3 NOTE: I use the terms “military doctrine” and “tactical doctrine” interchangeably, as they do not yet differ to the degree that they will later in the . 2

Was it simply a question of confirmation bias or mere conservatism that explains the U.S. Army’s failure to learn the lessons of the conflict in Europe? Again, such characterizations fail to satisfy not because they are wrong per se, but because they are merely facile, ex post facto characterizations of deeper and more complex internal processes. Military institutions do not reject new weapons and doctrines on the explicit grounds of confirmation bias or conservatism. Major W.R. Livermore, speaking in 1889 on the army’s failure to adopt new , could console himself with the notion that, “[T]he spirit of conservatism was opposed to such innovations. The advocates of bad weapons were most ingenious in their arguments and in their assumptions.”4 However, such opposition to the new succeeds precisely because there already exists a of internal discourse, the structure of which enables confirmation bias or conservatism to win the debate on its own terms, and not through the “ingenious” arguments alluded to by Major Livermore. In other words, the bias is embedded in the very fabric of discourse. Therefore, for a scholar wishing to understand military innovation in its historical context, the military discourse must be the primary subject of inquiry. That discourse, with all of its implicit and explicit meanings, is inevitably a product of the larger cultural framework from which it evolved. Once the subject of American culture is raised, the historian is confronted by one of the most important works on the U.S. Army, Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State. In the book, Huntington argues that the U.S. military endured a pivotal period of isolation from the broader national life in the decades prior to World War One. Huntington contends that true American military professionalism only “became possible once all ties with society had been broken.” He characterizes this period as one in which, “The very isolation and rejection which reduced the size of the services and hampered technological advance made these same years the most fertile, creative, and formative in the history of the American armed forces.”5 However, it is the contention of this thesis that this period was not the Promethean wonder that Huntington claims. Moreover, far from being culturally isolated, the military discourse was very much influenced by the national (or “civilian”) discourse. Indeed, the excessively lauded “professionalization” of the American military was, in fact, merely the process by which the

4 Maj. W.R. Livermore, “The Modern Battle and the Effect of New Weapons (a speech given on April 8, 1889)” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 16 No. 2 (September-October 1901), pg. 173 (172-179) 5 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1957), pg. 229 3

military integrated itself into the dominant episteme, and its appurtenant hierarchy of power. Importantly, the national discourse, as reflected in the broader culture, significantly influenced how the U.S. Army intellectually engaged with military developments abroad. Therefore, the U.S. Army’s failure was not the product of ignorance, conservatism, or even a reluctance to experiment with new technologies. Rather, it reflected much deeper trends in American culture and the evolving national identity. Like the seeds of some future calamity, these trends had a prolonged gestation before bearing their bitter fruit on the fields of France. Accordingly, the development of U.S. Army doctrine prior to World War One should primarily be understood as a reflection of the broader cultural project of re-creating an American national identity in the half-century after the Civil War. Not surprisingly, that conflict left a bloodied nation still struggling with self-definition and the meaning of America itself. Equally important, the country emerged from the conflict poised for extraordinary growth by almost every measure, vaulting it to the status of a but for the size of its military. The by-products of this growth included industrialization, urbanization, and mass immigration. A greatly expanded and activist regulatory state also emerged, consistent with the intellectual influence of progressivism. New forms of communication, such as the railroad, telegraph, telephone, radio or cinema, steadily displaced idiosyncratic regional cultures in favor of a new, national culture. All of this put tremendous strain on the country and fostered a growing sense of unease, if not outright crisis, which the existing national identity could not prevent. An 1878 article in the Atlantic Monthly summed it up thusly: “We have a great increase and development of unfavorable and disorganizing forces in our national life, and no corresponding increase of wholesome or vital activities.”6 Thirty-five years later, the famed journalist, William Morton Fullerton, wrote of the work still to be done on national unification, as expressed in the 1912 presidential campaign, “It revealed the existence, after all, of a national spirit, capable of ultimately completing the work of unification, which even the Civil War, supplemented by the vast co-ordinating forces of our time – railways, electricity, the printed press – had not yet sufficed to achieve.”7(emphasis original) In this climate of national unease, the American identity remained contested throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the country endured the growing pains of becoming a great power. As

6 “Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life” in Atlantic Monthly Vol. 42 No. 252 (October 1878), pg. 394 (385-402) 7 William Morton Fullerton, Problems of Power: A Study of International Politics from Sadowa to Kirk-Killisé (, Charles Scribner’s Son, 1913), pp. 15-16 4 one of the few truly national institutions, the U.S. Army could not help but be drawn into the maelstrom (often literally, in suppressing violent labor unrest). For analytical purposes, the cultural response to these challenges, and the evolution of the nation’s identity that it entailed, may be grouped under three different (but by no means mutually- exclusive) headings: nationalism, industrialism, and progressivism. Each of these “isms” represented the fundamental means by which the contested nature of American identity was resolved. They each shaped the discourse of America (and by extension, the military discourse), restoring a modicum of stability through a renegotiated and redefined identity. Nationalism, as used herein, denotes the means by which one national community culturally defines itself relative to other such communities. In this case, it manifested as an American identity that believed itself to be unquestionably superior to that of the Old World, from which it had little to learn. Industrialism refers to the new managerial cultural of American business and the transformational methods of . It conditioned American military thinkers to develop a centralized, mechanistic, and risk-averse command philosophy. Finally, progressivism was the positivistic and technocratic governing philosophy that evolved towards the end of the 19th century as a response to national unrest. It strongly influenced the army’s ideas about education, military professionalism, and fostered a linear worldview. Tragically for the soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces fighting in France, the interplay of these cultural forces on the army’s internal discourse was decidedly unhealthy. A nationalistic myopia developed, one that became increasingly resistant to the evolving trends in warfare abroad, as U.S. Army doctrine became captive to the larger project of affirming the new national identity. This institutional mindset dovetailed disastrously with Pershing’s strenuous efforts to create and command a purely American army in France in 1917-18. Pershing not only resisted Anglo-French efforts to control his army, but he resisted any effort to influence how it fought. Only an “American” way of war would suffice, whatever the cost in blood. The lessons of industrialism turned leaders into mere managers, and soldiers into interchangeable parts. Finally, progressivism made linear thought an institutional philosophy, as progress itself was predicated on a linear conception of technological advancement. The predictability and control that “progress” promised over human events was possible only in a world of linear systems. Lieutenant Hervey Allen revealed much more than just a critique of U.S. Army tactics when he observed that “battles were not fought in lines.”

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Definitions and Methodology The development of military doctrine is primarily an intellectual endeavor. Even the smallest and most under-funded military can develop effective doctrine if it brings the right intellectual assets to bear. Military doctrine, in turn, is a form of technology insofar as it is an expression of that branch of practical knowledge having to do with the conduct of combat operations in war. That said, it is a fundamental premise of this work that technology does not always evolve (or “advance”) purely as a function of self-evident, objective superiority. Certainly, some aspects of technological superiority can be objectively measured, such as the output of a given engine as a function of input. Alas, the outcomes of military are not so easily measured as an objectively quantifiable variable. It necessarily follows that many of the criteria used to evaluate military doctrine and its impact on combat are inevitably subjective. For subjective criteria to have meaning within an exoteric context, such as in an institutional discourse, they must have a common definition anchored in that institution’s shared culture. And no institution is hermetically-sealed from the broader culture of the society in which it exists. Accordingly, the influence of the broader cultural discourse on the institutional culture of the U.S. Army is a primary focus of this thesis. Discourse, as an analytical term, is defined simply as “any piece of language longer (or more complex) than the individual sentence.”8 It is used herein to describe the shared language and culturally defined terminology of a given community, be it a nation or some subset thereof (such as a military institution). Integral to the concept of discourse is the relatively uncontroversial observation that words cannot represent ideas perfectly. Rather, the idea always transcends the words used to describe it. Accordingly, how we use language necessarily shapes the content of ideas in any public domain. As Lloyd Kramer succinctly observed, “Language does not merely reflect objective realities that are ‘out there’ in the world; it actively creates connections among sensory experiences, establishes hierarchies of significance, and brings philosophical assumptions into the most mundane actions of daily life. If human beings lost language, they would also lose their history, memory and culture; and it is this dynamic linguistic component of all cultural life that leads some theorists to claim that the past history of the world as we know it is really a history

8 Christopher Norris, “Discourse” in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (edited by Ted Honderich) (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995), pg. 203 6

of language.”9 Language, as embodied in the relevant discourse, is the genome of thought for that community. It therefore sets the intellectual parameters of debate and the resultant evolution of ideas. The concept of discourse, when not abused by post-modern theorists, is a fundamental recognition of the power that words exercise over ideas. To put it another way, it is the simple notion that assumptions influence conclusions. Moreover, discourse dictates what constitutes authority in argument. It is therefore a critical field of inquiry for a scholar, as it provides a key to understanding historical processes as they were understood in their own time. The actions and reactions of historical actors can only be understood in their own context. For the U.S. Army prior to World War One, the cultural content of nationalism, industrialism, and progressivism accordingly did much to give the internal military discourse its meaning. In so doing, it shaped the debate and rendered it incapable of adjusting to the reality of warfare on the western front until well after battle was joined. It must be recognized that warfare itself, and not just the military discourse, is necessarily conducted within a larger cultural context. A given action may have decisively different meanings to the belligerents, depending on the culturally-conditioned meaning ascribed to it. For example, one of Clausewitz’s most famous dictums is that “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.”10 However, Clausewitz uses the word Politik, which also means “politics” in all of its irrationality, as opposed to merely the more sanitized and rational notion of “policy”.11 Politics, in turn, is but the cultural articulation of power within a given society. It follows that war is itself an expression of the cultures engaged therein. Culture is the element that transforms the seemingly innocuous, linear relationship between military action and rational policy into the unstable, nonlinear vortex of war and irrational political passions. Clausewitz himself alluded to this potentially explosive cultural dynamic: “We can therefore take the political object as a standard only if we think of the influence it can exert upon the forces it is meant to move. The nature of those forces therefore calls for study. Depending on whether their characteristics increase or diminish the drive toward a particular action, the outcome

9 Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism in Europe and America: Politics, Cultures, and Identities Since 1775 (Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 2011), pg. 17 10 (trans. By Michael Howard and Peter Paret), (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1984), pg. 87 11 Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War” in International Security Vol. 17 No. 3 (Winter 1992-93), pg. 68 7 will vary. Between two peoples and two states there can be such tensions, such a mass of inflammable material, that the slightest quarrel can produce a wholly disproportionate effect – a real explosion.”12 (emphasis original) In other words, the avowed political objective of a war is relevant only insofar as it acts upon the energies latent in the deceptively inert body politic. The cultural context of that action has the potential for a wholly disproportionate, and nonlinear, reaction. Given the importance of culture to this work, it is imperative to give it a working definition. “Culture” in this context is meant in its broadest sense, and not the “high versus low” cultural dichotomy between the elites and the masses. At its most basic, culture is simply an integrated set of values, practices and meanings adopted by a given human society. However, this definition does not capture the true impact of culture on human activity. Metaphors are perhaps a more effective means of describing the relationship. In one sense, culture acts as a lens, amplifying, distorting, or even blocking the flow of information. Similarly, one may liken it to software operating on the hardware of the human brain. In this view, different types of software produce different outputs for the same input. Arguably the most compelling metaphor for culture comes from Nicholas A. Christakis of Yale University, who likened culture to a form of artificial intelligence. Christakis argues, “Culture is the earliest sort of intelligence outside our own minds that we humans created. Like the intelligence of a machine, culture can solve problems. Moreover, like the intelligence in a machine, we create culture, interact with it, are affected by it, and can even be destroyed by it. Culture applies its own logic, has a memory, endures after its makers are gone, can be repurposed in supple ways, and can induce action. So I oxymoronically see culture as a kind of natural artificial intelligence. It is artificial because it is made, manufactured, produced by humans. It is natural in that it is everywhere that humans are, and it comes organically to us. In fact, it's even likely that our biology and our culture are deeply intertwined, and have co-evolved, so that our culture shapes our genes and our genes shape our culture.”13 It is this definition that will be used in this work. Employing Christakis’ versatile approach to culture, one can readily explore the vast and fertile cultural terrain between the absurdist antipodes of Antonio Gramsci’s relativistic historicism and Victor Davis Hanson’s fantasy of 2,500 years of Greco-Western cultural continuity. In contrast

12 Clausewitz, pg. 81 13 Nicholas A. Christakis, “Human Culture as the First Artificial Intelligence” from Edge.Org (2015) 8

to Gramsci’s and Hanson’s intellectual cul-de-sac, the artificial intelligence metaphor posits a fluid and symbiotic relationship between culture and society, but importantly not a deterministic one. A dynamic tension exists between human and cultural intelligence, as each shape the other. Human intelligence reacts and adapts more quickly, but cultural intelligence has the advantage of representing the collective wisdom of generations (it is worth noting that pattern recognition is the primary means by which AI constructs “learn”). Each type of intelligence, therefore, has relative and complimentary advantages. In this context, nationalism as a construction of identity is one of the most pervasive and influential forms of culture in the modern world. It is also one that most obviously functions on the AI model, as people often do things for the logic of the nation and its interests that they would not otherwise do. Accordingly, it is a vital topic of interest for any historian of the modern era: “If social groups and individuals define their identities with the language of national cultures, then the historical construction of those cultures becomes crucial for understanding a whole range of historical issues – from politics and public conflicts to the interpretation of family life, gender roles, education, and death.”14 War, as the pursuit of national objectives, cannot be understood without first understanding how a nation defines itself. Certainly, America’s evolving self- definition enormously influenced U.S. Army doctrine in the decades prior to World War One. That said, it is important to note that the AI model of culture allows for the rejection of culturally-constructed solutions in times of emergency, as is apt to happen in the crucible of combat. This fact explains much about the development of U.S. military doctrine in the 1865-1917 period. Absent an existential military challenge, the nationalistic suppositions of American culture predominated in the decades before World War One. Accordingly, data from foreign military experiences was discounted, or interpreted to conform to American preconceptions. This also explains much of the dichotomy in the American Expeditionary Forces’ reaction to conditions on the Western front. As Mark Grotelueschen correctly notes in his superb The AEF Way of War, much of the real innovation in combat doctrine was done at the lower levels of command. Pershing and his staff were resistant to new techniques to deal with the reality on the frontlines. Insulated from the direct experience of combat, Pershing’s staff could afford to indulge their nationalistic fantasies of the American and “open warfare”. For the officers and men actually tasked with breaking through the German defenses, such cultural constraints were a luxury they could not

14 Kramer, pg. 11 9 afford. Related to the issue of how culture impacted the U.S. Army’s debate on military doctrine is the effect of commonly-used concepts and metaphors. For example, the rifle played a prominent role in American national culture. It was universally regarded as the tool by which America was built, whether in defeating the British or in conquering the West. More than just a sacred object of the nationalist narrative, the rifle even symbolized the democratic tradition itself, as its power theoretically made every man equal (“Abe Lincoln made men free, but Sam Colt made them equal.”). It therefore comes as no surprise that the rifle achieved an almost talismanic status among military thinkers. The American foot soldier was not a mere infantryman, but unquestionably a rifleman. This concept was so deeply ingrained that it tended to restrict the ways in which new technologies, such as the or hand , could expand the tactical repertoire of the . Just as the man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, so too did American tactical thinkers see all tactical problems as solvable by aimed rifle fire. Equally important were the concepts that emerged from the rapid industrialization of America. After the Civil War, the nation’s industrial and agricultural output soared by almost every conceivable measure. The era also witnessed the decisive evolution of homo economicus into homo industrialis. Society itself was increasingly understood as an extension of industrial, large-scale production. The business ethos permeated American culture at almost every level, and it was inevitable that concepts from this process entered the cultural lexicon. Theories from industrial management, such as the time and motion studies of Frederick Winslow Taylor, or the mass production techniques later popularized by Henry Ford, also shaped military thought.15 It comes, then, as no surprise that the conceptual language of corporate management and mass production became part of the American military discourse. Indeed, this trend would not reach its apogee until well into the 20th century, when a former Ford Motor Company executive, Robert S. McNamara, and a Harvard Business School graduate, , led the United States to humiliation in Vietnam. Current platitudes like “net-centric warfare” remind us of the lingering influence of business on American military thought. Likewise, it is only natural that in the Machine Age, that a consciously mechanistic view of war would feature prominently in military thought. Certainly, the idea of the machine permeated the national consciousness, and served as a metaphor for many of the changes brought about by

15 See “Scientific Management” in Army and Register Vol. 50 No. 1649 (July 29, 1911), pp. 4-5 10 industrialization. The machine as metaphor proved especially suited to American military doctrine, as planners sought to integrate the operations of an increasingly diverse array of systems. However, this was not without cost, as the rigid synchronization of combat units (analogized as a military “machine”) stifled individual initiative to the detriment of the AEF’s battlefield performance. Timetables and unit boundaries left commanders precious little opportunity to adapt to ever-changing battlefield conditions. To a great extent, this was necessary in an age of limited communications, but it became a dangerously inflexible shibboleth in application. Nor was this strictly a wartime phenomenon, but one also evident in pre-war concepts such as “safe leadership”. Although Pershing and the AEF headquarters paid lip service to individual initiative in command, the reality was very different. Officers who exercised independent judgement were liable to be relieved of command for any deviations from the overall plan. However useful a cognitive metaphor, there is always a danger of ideas becoming captive to the metaphor. For the U.S. Army, the borrowing from business and industrialization often meant that men were reduced to mere widgets, undifferentiated and interchangeable parts within the military machine (see, for example, the organization of squads by specialty in AEF platoons). They could simply be replaced like standardized parts on the battlefield. The psychological prerequisites for genuine small unit cohesion were ignored. Instead, soldiers were reduced to automata whose psychological needs were met solely in the context of mass. Progressivism left its mark on the evolving U.S. Army, as well. Progressivism was many things, but in essence it embodied the new governing philosophy of America’s expanded ruling class, which united business and government under the aegis of a technocratic system of higher education. The importance of education, technical expertise, and an excessive faith in scientific notions of progress all shaped the army in the years before 1917. The result was a clique of credentialed staff officers, all graduates of the professionally necessary service schools, whose narrow and imperious vision often limited the army’s ability to learn from experience. Indeed, a core principle of progressivism was to effectively denigrate lived experience relative to technical education. The revolution in corporate organization and communications technology also fueled the progressive faith in centralized management. It is arguable that the U.S. Army’s lingering problems with micromanagement date from this period in its history.

11

Structure The structure of this work attempts to follow the chronological development of U.S. Army doctrine from the end of the Civil War through World War One. It is not my intent to re-construct the detailed histories of Army tactics and professional schools, which have been chronicled already by scholars such as Carol Reardon, Timothy Nenninger and Perry Jamieson. Rather, I wish to weave their excellent monographs into a larger narrative of the cumulative ill-effects of a subtle, but profound, accretion of errors in American military thought. Those errors, in turn, are often the product of the structure of the military discourse. There are accordingly few villains in this tale. Indeed, it is too often this very need for villains that blinds institutions to their own failings. Inevitably, departures from the chronology will occur as the effect of different cultural influences are addressed separately. This will be raised in the chapters when their influence becomes most pronounced, but the reader should not imagine that the particular topics in question are limited to the temporal scope of the chapters in which they appear. Given the focus on the military discourse, it would be tempting to structure this thesis as a more conventional institutional history. However, it must be stressed that this work is not an institutional history, but a thematic history of ideas. This was a conscious decision to give the work a more general relevance to both historians and military thinkers.16 From this perspective, military institutions of higher learning are more profitably analyzed not as things unto themselves, but should instead be understood as the brick-and- manifestations of a broader intellectual culture and pedagogy. Therefore, a principle objective of this thesis will be to create a portrait of the broad intellectual culture as it evolved in the United States during this period. It would be a mistake to claim that there was but one unchallenged set of relevant ideas. Rather, there are always alternative ideas, particularly in a period of unrest and rapid change such as the United States endured during the post-Civil War era. Indeed, in previously citing Stephen Kern as an inspiration for my thesis, I am introducing one such set of alternative ideas and concepts. Kern’s seminal The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 portrayed the development of increasingly fluid concepts of time and space as they were experienced in light of new technologies and intellectual trends. In contrast, the dominant theme portrayed in my thesis is the need to reimpose the illusion of control and predictability on a

16 NOTE: One cannot describe this choice better than Stephen Kern in the Preface to his brilliant The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2003 (orig. 1983)) 12

turbulent society in transition via a new ruling class that combined elements of nationalism, industrialism, and the technocratic positivism of progressivism. The U.S. Army’s officer corps embraced this new ethos, as it sought to integrate into the emerging ruling class of “professionals”. The technical expertise of the professional elite set them above the common herd, representing a decisive rejection of the “talented amateur” officer of the Civil War. For such an ethos, a predictable, linear universe was a critical a priori assumption for this new class of professionals and their right to rule. Yet, as this thesis will demonstrate, this new intellectual architecture of predictability proved a poor framework for coping with the aleatory nature of battle, in what Stephen Kern has appropriately called ‘The Cubist War’.17 In order to provide an accurate portrayal of the U.S. Army’s military discourse, I will rely heavily on the articles and books published by military officers in their debates over tactics, weapons, and strategy. This approach gives the historian a more intimate look at what the officer corps was actually thinking. The generation after the Civil War witnessed numerous service journals come into being. Some were branch-specific, consistent with the trend towards professionalization and specialization, such as the Infantry Journal or the Journal of the United States Association. Others were dedicated to discussing a broad array of military topics, notably the Journal of the Institution of the United States. Importantly, these journals were all independent of the War Department. All were private associations relying on subscriptions, membership dues, and limited advertising. As such, they enabled officers of all ranks to air their views with a minimum of official interference. That said, anonymous articles were not infrequent, which indicates the need for a certain degree of self-censoring among the officer corps. Indeed, younger officers often tried to make their mark in a service plagued by glacial promotion through their writings. More importantly, government funds were provided to purchase and distribute copies of the various journals to the numerous military outposts on the frontier. These journals were not just read by a privileged few, but were widely available. In order to gauge the influence of the over-arching national culture on the military discourse, developments in academia, business, the arts and letters will be examined. As with Stephen Kern’s The Culture of Time and Space, the world of arts and letters will deserve special emphasis. While this may seem odd, at first glance, for a work on military doctrine, there are two good reasons for it. The first is that cultural undercurrents are often most clearly visible in the arts.

17 Ibid., pp. 287-302 13

The second is that war is a profoundly aesthetic phenomenon. Kern’s invocation of ‘The Cubist War’ and Modris Ekstein’s brilliant Rites of Spring are two of the best examples of historians approaching war as an aesthetic. As Ekstein noted in the opening of his 1989 book, “Our century is one in which art and life have blended, in which existence has become aestheticized.”18 Given that the distinction between art and life is itself a relatively recent concept, then this statement holds true for almost all of human history. Nor is this approach limited to historians looking back in time. The German author Ernst Jünger, who fought as a young officer through the entirety of the war, explicitly made this connection between art and war. Jünger asserted that in an atheistic Europe, only art could have provided a means to capture and develop the passions of youth. Given this, he then asked, “Did art in the of our day fulfill its duty towards us?” The answer was clearly in the negative, and so the war took its place in the hearts of the young. According to Jünger, when the war came, “It released us from a life in which the deeper aims were lacking.”19 Those deeper aims found their aesthetic expression in the experience and conduct of the war. In combat, Jünger and his kindred spirits found their highest aesthetic expression, and their tragic amor fati. In the interests of academic honesty, it is imperative to acknowledge some shortcomings in my methodology. First and foremost, it cannot be proven that U.S. Army officers during this period read and embraced each of the non-military works cited. The conceptual reconstructions that are the basis for any history of ideas must assume a degree of cultural diffusion. Therefore, these non-military writings are meant simply as representative examples of the relevant ideas influencing the military discourse. Secondly, a historian can only make an educated guess as to the influence of a particular military work on the overall military discourse. Clearly, the careers of certain authors, such as those of Arthur Wagner or Robert Bullard, indicate that their influence was not inconsiderable. Others, notably those of junior officers who never appear prominently as senior officers later in their careers, are of questionable value. This latter category can only be seen as representative of the military discourse insofar as they either reflect support for, or a reaction against, larger doctrinal trends within the U.S. Army.

18 Modris Ekstein, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern (New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1989), pg. xvi 19 Ernst Jünger, Copse 125: A Chronicle from the of 1918 (New York, Howard Fertig Inc., 2003 (orig. 1930)), pg. 164 14

Chapter 2: Towards an American Way of War, 1865-82 Introduction: In traditional American historiography, the story of the post-Civil War U.S. Army has been one of rapid de-, the constabulary demands of Reconstruction, and campaigning against the Plains Indians on the western frontier. However, diminution and dispersion were not the entirety of the army’s experience during these years. Indeed, throughout this period critical debates about the army’s future raged within the officer corps. Naturally, the most important of these was that of the U.S. Army’s proper role within the ostrich-like confines of American . An equally vital question concerned the evolution of battlefield tactics and integrating the lessons of the Civil War in the era of breech-loading . The experience of the Civil War naturally dominated both of these debates, and its presence would loom large well into the next century.

The Civil War Legacy It is almost impossible to over-state the impact of the Civil War on the national consciousness insofar as military affairs were concerned. Having fought and won a large-scale war with such a meagre professional military cadre, the American public and politicians were absolutely convinced of the nation’s innate military prowess. Not surprisingly, the also left an indelible impression of considerable self-satisfaction on the U.S. Army (World War Two and the 1991 are perhaps analogous in this respect). Indeed, the legacy of the Civil War loomed so large that it even served to justify AEF commander John J. Pershing’s refusal to learn from his French and British allies. Pershing sniffed, “Many Allied writers had proclaimed that trench warfare was a development of the World War which made open combat a thing of the past. But trenches were not new to the Americans, as both the Union and Confederate armies in the Civil War had used them extensively.”20 Quite simply, the Civil War banished any doubts about America’s latent military talent from the minds of its citizens. Subsequent military campaigns, such as those against the Plains Indians, the Spanish-American War, Philippine Insurrection, and the Punitive Expedition, did little to induce any serious self-criticism. So prevalent was this attitude that only a generation after the Civil War, George F. Price

20 John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (Vol. 1), (New York, Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1931), pg. 11 15 worried “that the United States ought to give practical attention to military affairs, so that they may not be defeated because of too great confidence of the prestige of past successes.”21 In terms of American strategic thought prior to World War One, the Civil War served as the paradigm for all future American (much as the Seven Years’ War did for Germany, or the for Britain). In particular, U.S. Army planners thought in terms of a war fought in North America by a small, professional army that would serve as the nucleus of a much larger wartime force of citizen-soldiers. Despite a broad consensus on this role, the army did curiously little planning was for such an eventuality. Aside from a degree of professional negligence, this lapse in planning can largely be attributed to a blind faith in America’s martial prowess. Certainly, it was undeniable that the country, however briefly, had catapulted itself into the front rank of the world’s major military powers in just a few years during the Civil War. Presumably, it could do so again with ease. A generation after the Civil War, a young Lt. Arthur L. Wagner, later to be one of the most prominent military thinkers in the late 19th century army, recognized, “With more than a million men under arms, most of them veterans who had learned their trade in the severe school of actual warfare; with ordnance second to none in the world; with a navy equal to any upon the seas; with the military prestige arising from the suppression of one of the greatest rebellions in recorded history, the American republic stood in the first rank of powerful nations.”22 This memory of past glory manifested as a supreme confidence in the nation’s ability to meet future military contingencies.

American Nationalism

“And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people – the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world. Seventy years ago we escaped from thrall; and, besides our first birthright – embracing one continent of earth – God has given to us, for a future inheritance, the broad domains of the political pagans, that shall yet come down and lie under the shade of our ark, without bloody hands being lifted. God has predestined, mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls. The rest of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World that is ours. In our youth is

21 Capt. George F. Price, “The Necessity for Closer Relations Between the Army and the People, and the Best Method to Accomplish the Result” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 6, No. 24) (December 1885), pg. 321 22 Lt. Arthur L. Wagner, “The Military Necessities of the United States, and the Best Provisions for Meeting Them” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States (Vol. 5, No. 19) (Sept., 1884), pg. 237 16

our strength; in our inexperience, our wisdom. At a period when other nations have but lisped, our deep voice is heard afar. Long enough have we been skeptics with regard to ourselves, and doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has come in us if we would be give utterance to his promptings. And let us always remember that with ourselves, almost for the first time in the history of earth, national selfishness is unbounded philanthropy; for we cannot do a good to America but we give alms to the world.”

- Herman Melville23

The aftermath of the Civil War inevitably required that America’s national identity be re- established on firmer ground. Fortunately for the country, the cultural, ethnic and religious differences between north and south were comparatively minor, save for the now abolished institution of slavery. Accordingly, the traditional sources of American nationalism could still serve as the foundation for resuming the project of nationhood. From its earliest roots as a destination for religious dissenters, America had nurtured a sense of itself as a “ upon a hill,” a veritable New Zion. It was almost a millennial society, founded on a new continent, and free from the decadence and corruption of the Old World.24 Although the religious element cooled over time, few Americans doubted that their nation was destined for greatness. Nor did this conviction fade over time; indeed, it gained strength as America grew rapidly in size and industrial output. Quite simply, America was the future. The famed progressive reformer, Rev. Josiah Strong, even claimed that, “Mr. Darwin is disposed not only to see, in the superior vigor of our people, an illustration of his favorite theory of natural selection, but even intimates that the world’s history thus far has been simply preparatory for our future, and tributary to it.”25 Given the nation’s origins, it is no surprise that a defining feature of American nationalism was its skeptical attitude towards Europe. Almost from the first, and especially after the American Revolution, there was a national desire to supplant the authority of the Old World with something new and uniquely American. Noah Webster, the famed early American lexicographer, went so far as to create an American guide to grammar (The Grammatical Institute) in the knowledge that,

23 Herman , White-Jacket, or, The World in a Man-of-War (New York, United States Book Co., 1892), pg. 144. Also, see Kramer, pg. 127 24 Benjamin T. Spencer, The Quest for Nationality: A Literary Campaign (Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1957), pg. 3 25 Rev. Josiah Strong, The United States and the Future of the Anglo-Saxon Race; and the Growth of the American Industries and Wealth (, Saxon & Co., 1889), pg. 45 17

“North America is destined to be the seat of a people more numerous probably than any nation now existing with the same vernacular language… It would be little honorable to the founders of a great empire to be hurried prematurely into errors and corruptions by the mere force of authority.”26 If the very grammar of America had to reflect the national culture and eschew “the mere force” of the Old World’s authority, then other intellectual endeavors were sure to follow. This search for a distinct American voice, itself an act of creating a unique national identity, was to dominate American culture for much of the 19th century. The American army was no less a part of this search. This process of self-definition was in contradistinction to the cultural heritage of Europe. From its colonial origins, American nationalism developed consciously as a rejection and transcendence of all things European. European culture was but the chrysalis from which a more perfect (American) culture was to emerge. As Benjamin Spencer concluded in his study of 19th and early 20th century American literature, “Certainly in an era which nationalism was a focus of values, the writers of a self-conscious young republic eager to surpass the civilization of the Old World could scarcely be indifferent to the interdependence of their art and society.”27 Indeed, an unstable mix of admiration, envy and contempt would characterize America’s attitude towards cultural products of the Old World. In 1881, America’s poet-laureate, Walt Whitman, urged America to find its own voice: “Now, and for a long time to come, what the United States most need, to give purport, definiteness, reason why, to their unprecedented material wealth, industrial products, education by wrote merely, great populousness [sic] and intellectual activity, is the central, spinal reality (or even the idea of it) of such a democratic band of native-born-and-bred teachers, artists, littérateurs, tolerant and receptive of importations, but entirely adjusted to the [American] West, to ourselves, to our own days, purports, combinations, differences, superiorities.”28 The rejection of the Old World’s authority was not limited to literature. The artist Sarah Wyman Whitman (a founder of Harvard’s Radcliffe College), wrote in 1882 of this very need in the decorative arts. In many ways, her perspective on European cultural ascendancy was very similar to that of the U.S. Army, in that the foreign experience was only applicable insofar as it

26 Noah Webster in E. Scudder, Noah Webster (Boston, Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1881), pg. 45 27 Spencer, pg. 338 28 Walt Whitman, “The Poetry of the Future” in The North American Review Vol. 132 (1881), pg. 207 (195-210) 18

was compatible with America’s idiosyncratic virtues. Whitman wrote, “Yet, in fact, so potent is the environment, so greatly are we involved in our circumstances, our locale, either as a nation or as individuals, that experience is not proved to repeat itself; it is found not to be enough that we see and understand why other people in other lands have attained success or been the slaves of failure, and we are driven back, not to the schools alone, not to succeeding modes of thought, but behind all methods to the abstract principles upon which the education of a people is to rest and of which we are to make anew the application, according to the conditions, the needs, the capacities, not of Romans nor Russians, but of Americans.”29 American artists devoted themselves to American subjects, notably the vast landscape, its people, and its natural beauty. The Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the most famous manifestations of this cultural movement. The imperative to reject the cultural legacy of the Old World even manifested in more prosaic, and ostensibly objective, intellectual arenas. As one reviewer in The Atlantic Monthly noted in 1883, “Our anxiety to satisfy American pride is, perhaps, even yet a frailty which draws us slightly from the strictness of scientific estimates.”30 It was therefore only natural that the United States Army should have itself grappled with the meaning of what it meant to be “American” in such a time. After all, the meaning of America was a question of no small importance for an institution designed to defend the American national interest. Certainly, the quest for an “American” way of war began innocently enough. After the Civil War, American military commanders were acutely aware of the shortcomings of their European-style tactics employed in that conflict. The physical and cultural environment of the United States was very different than that of Europe. Military leaders naturally sought a tactical system more conducive to operations in North America, better suited to the American volunteer, and which accounted for the impact of breech-loading rifles. However well-intentioned the search for an “American” way of war was at its beginning, it degenerated over time into an increasingly chauvinistic exercise in self-justification. This nationalistic process of self-definition led American military planners to a highly subjective, and very often prejudiced, analysis of military innovations abroad, despite the generally high caliber of reports sent to the War Department by American military observers. To advocate foreign ideas was to risk the pejorative epithet of “Europeanist”

29 Sarah Wyman Whitman, “The Pursuit of Art in America” in The International Review Vol. 12 (January 1882), pg. 11 30 “American Economics” in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 52 No. 309 (July 1883), pg. 128 (128-132) 19

or “Prusso-maniac”.31 Of course, many foreign ideas did permeate American military thought, but the controversy surrounding them often meant that they were adopted more in letter than in spirit.

The Myth of the American Citizen-Soldier Beyond the rejection of Europe as a source of authority, another element of American nationalism that often proved decisive in the debates over doctrine was the nature of the soldier. Two aspects of the American soldier stood at the fore of the nation’s mythological self-image: that of the American rifleman and the citizen-soldier. Both views were widely-held, but the former had a much greater impact on the army’s internal discourse than the latter. In the popular imagination, the Minutemen of Revolutionary War fame represented the archetypal American soldier. Their prowess with the rifle, their natural aptitude for war, and their civic virtue were the stuff of legend. As a typical example, the prolific author of children’s stories, Margaret Sidney (the nom de plume of Harriet M. Stone Lothrop) wrote a ballad of the Minutemen: Clinching the trusty gun, Keenly sighting the foe, With muscles unbound from the long , They lay the enemy low.32

To the delight of her juvenile readers, as the British regulars flee, they exclaim in their panicked flight, “Provincials are masters of war!”33 Such attitudes were not always appreciated by professional military officers. They embraced the natural superiority of American men as soldiers, but felt that was achieved only under the tutelage of officers such as themselves. A more circumspect view was that of Lt. Col. Theodore Ayrault Dodge, a prolific writer of , who admitted in 1895, “we English-speaking peoples slur over the deeds of all but our own heroes… All nations suffer from want of perspective in gauging their own military history… but we Anglo-Saxons are almost the worst offenders.”34 An American officer of a later generation, Lt. Hugh Johnson, complained bitterly in 1908 about such delusions being taught to school children:

31 Carol Reardon, Soldiers & Scholars: The U.S. Army and the Uses of Military History, 1865-1920, (Lawrence, KS, The University of Press, 1990), pp. 103 and 107 32 Margaret Sidney, The Minute Man, A Ballad of “The Shot Heard Round the World” (Boston, D. Lothrop & Co., 1886), pg. 27 33 Ibid., pg. 28 34 Lt. Col. Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Gustavus Adolphus (New York, Da Capo Press, 1998) (Original Houghton- Mifflin, 1895), pp. 711-12 20

“School histories make this fault an aggressive argument in a false direction – especially American school histories, padded as they are with complimentary, ‘brave boys in blue,’ ‘embattled farmers of Lexington’ and ‘patriot defenders of hearth-stones,’ with a complete hiatus as to the disgraceful exhibitions that have so often blotched the national sheet.”35 Elsewhere, Johnson lamented that the excessive glorification of the country’s past military achievements, “[E]ngenders that deplorable American conceit by which one sturdy farmer with a good elm club is believed equal to a squad of ‘Dutch’ soldiers[.]”36 Little seems to have changed in the intervening century. For many , especially politicians, there was a direct connection between civic virtue and martial prowess in American democracy. The myth of the citizen-soldier also served a larger purpose in civil-military relations beyond mere self-satisfaction. For taxpayers and politicians, the myth enabled them to avoid devoting any serious thought or resources to . National defense spending could be all but eliminated, as a professional military establishment was almost a luxury. In the event of war, the United States government, like Plutarch’s Pompey, had but to stamp its collective foot and a great army of born riflemen would arise to defend the nation. Peacetime parsimony mattered not a whit in such a scenario. In 1892, a prolific and eloquent critic of American military policy, Capt. James Chester, complained bitterly, “’In time of peace ‘prepare for war’ is a maxim which has little meaning to Americans. Indeed, they practically ignore it. They find it convenient to do so, and they laugh at the idea that it may be dangerous. The fool’s paradise is a happy enough home for them.”37 However, some officers, particularly those in the National Guard, were more apt to sing the praises of the citizen-soldier. One such officer, Col. H.M. Boies of the Pennsylvania National Guard, wrote just after the Spanish-American War (with a none-too-subtle dig at Regular army officers): “It is unique in that its battles were fought and its victories won by ‘the men behind the guns,’ rather than the ability of our commanders, to an extent not heretofore known… Never since the days of the Pythian phalanx and the Roman short sword have individual endurance, valor, and skill so decisively won the laurels of victory as at Manila and Santiago in these days of long range weapons of precision.”38

35 Lt. Hugh Johnson, “The Mission of the Service Magazines” in Journal of the Association Vol. 19 No. 70 (October 1908), pg. 307 (301-308) 36 Johnson, “The Mission of the Service ,” pg. 307 37 Capt. James Chester, “The French Grand Maneuvers of 1891” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vo1. 13, No. 58 (July 1892), pg. 716 (716-727) 38 Col. H.M. Boies, “Defense of a Free People, In Light of the Spanish War” in Journal of the Military Service Institute of the United States Vol. 24 No. 97 (January 1899), pp. 15-16 (15-27) 21

Although the professional military men often chafed at the notion of the citizen-soldier whose innate martial virtue obviated proper training, they wholeheartedly embraced the fantasy of the American rifleman. In the national narrative, the average American’s skill with the rifle reflected republican virtue, martial prowess, and an innate cultural superiority over the degenerate peons abroad. This attitude was aptly expressed in a speech given to the Military Service Institute of the United States in April of 1880. Entitled, “Marksmanship an Element of National Strength”, the speech touched upon all aspects of the myth of the American rifleman: “Admittedly the security of forms of republican government has depended, and ever will depend, not only upon the capacity, intelligence and patriotism of the people, but largely upon their military spirit, and upon their skill in the use of military weapons. Doubtless in the future defense of our country the American rifle will be found most prominent among the weapons of its defenders. We need not be reminded even, that, in the history of our republic, many of our national victories have been won, in a great measure, by the American sharp-shooter… Recognizing the rifle as the national weapon, should we not resolve that it is our foremost duty to become familiar with its wonderful capabilities, and proficient in its use? It may be safely assumed that no people or nation possesses in an equal measure with our own, those qualities and tastes, that intelligence and decision, that coolness and persistence inexhaustible, that courage ever enduring, that patient and at the same time energetic spirit, that we recognize in manly men, true citizens, invincible soldiers.”39 Undoubtedly, the prospect of a nation of sharpshooting super-men must surely have been comforting for American politicians and soldiers. An American writing for a British audience in 1883 boasted, “[T]he expression that ‘an American is born with a rifle in his hands’ figuratively describes the skill of the common people in the use of arms.”40 Of the militia regiment, the same author boasted that, “Not even the Tenth Legion of Rome, the Old Guard of , or the Guards of , have, among their countrymen, been more famous, respected, and feared[.]”41 Naturally, the recent Civil War had done much to further the myth. However, its effect went deeper in that it justified a skeptical approach to lessons offered by foreign military experience. Like the nation itself, American soldiers needed no longer sit at the feet of European

39 Col. Lichtfield, “Marksmanship an Element of National Strength” (April 15, 1880), reprinted in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 1, No. 3, 1880), pg. 287-88 40 Charles Sidney Clark, “An American Volunteer Regiment” in United Service Magazine (December 1883), pg. 674 (674-685) 41 Ibid., pg. 675 22

teachers. There was a uniquely American identity, which demanded a uniquely American way of war. The riflemen, the avatar of a prepotent America, represented this new reality, and the army’s tactics would be built around him. As previously stated, if the U.S. Army generally subscribed to the notion of the American soldier as inherently superior, it was decidedly less enamored of the myth of the part-time, citizen- soldier. As the Civil War slipped into the past, some reform-minded officers were willing to openly question the value of the semi-trained citizen-soldier. The prolific Arthur L. Wagner exercised only modest restraint in his 1886 commentary on the Minutemen: “It is not pleasant, even at the present day, to read of the inefficiency and cowardice of the American militia at Brandywine, Germantown, Camden, Cowpens, and Guilford Court-House, though an excuse for their conduct is easily found in their lack of discipline.”42 In a 1906 speech to officers of the Maryland National Guard, Col. Edward E. Britton lamented, “Only the ultimate success of the conflict and the figure of the Minute man of Lexington and Bunker Hill live in popular memory and affection today, while the wasted valor of undisciplined troops on many a lost field, and the heart-rending anguish of Washington over the difficulties of the situation, are forgotten.”43 Such pleas fell on deaf ears in Washington, D.. However, they did bear fruit in the form of a bitter enmity between the regular army and the political-powerful National Guard. Yet, the myth of the amateur citizen-soldier persisted. Captain George F. Price lamented that, “The theory of relying almost wholly on the courage and resources of the people, without any previous practical preparation, lulls many otherwise thoughtful and prudent citizens into a state of confidence, in the latent powers of resistance of the country, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, armed and equipped for the defense of the nation.”44 And as late as 1912, Captain Dana T. Merrill wrote that, “Improvising infantry is a delusion peculiar to the American mind, but this delusion will remain until the conditions on the modern battlefield are better understood, or until we fight foot soldiers trained in their work, such as the Russians faced in Manchuria.”45 Captain Merrill’s

42 1st Lt. Arthur L. Wagner, “The Military and Naval Policy of the United States” in Journal of the military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 7, No. 28) (December 1886), pg. 374 43 Col. Edward E. Britton, “The Moral and Patriotic Aspect of War and the Relationship of the Organized Militia to the Military Power of the Country (a speech given February 14, 1906) in Army and Navy Register Vol. 39 Vol. 1373 (April 7, 1906), pg. 17 (17-20) 44 Price, “The Necessity for Closer Relations Between the Army and the People, and the Best Method to Accomplish the Result”, pg. 322 45 Capt. Dana T. Merrill, “Infantry Training” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 1 (July-August, 1912), pg. 59 (59-70) 23

words were certainly prophetic, but (arguably) the U.S. Army did not fully absorb the lesson until it came at the hands of the North Vietnamese Army. The cult-like status of the American rifleman, however deleterious its impact on subsequent tactical doctrine, was not without some basis in fact. Brent Nosworthy, in his fascinating study of Civil War tactics, The Bloody Crucible of Courage, presents a compelling statistical argument. Using data gathered by both British and American military authorities, Nosworthy compared the casualties inflicted per bullet fired expressed as a percentage of shots that hit, or hit rate. In the Peninsular campaign during the Napoleonic wars, British soldiers armed with achieved a hit rate of between 0.3%-0.5%.46 During the Civil War, American soldiers armed with rifled muskets achieved an approximately 1% hit rate.47 Comparing these numbers suggests only that the rifled musket was a far more accurate weapon than its smoothbore predecessor. Where it gets interesting is when Nosworthy introduces the estimated hit rate for the Mexican-American War. In that conflict, the Americans were armed with smoothbore muskets, closer in performance to the British musket of the Napoleonic wars than the rifled musket of the Civil War, yet they achieved a 0.8% hit rate.48 The dramatic difference in the hit rate between British and American troops armed with smoothbore muskets suggests that there was some factual basis for the idea that the American rifleman was a superior shot. Indeed, the circumstances of life until quite late in 19th century America were such that many men would have grown up familiar with . However, by 1917, both war and American life had changed dramatically, but the myth of the American rifleman had not.

Home Schooling: Sherman, Upton and the Myth of the Citizen-Soldier: For Regular military officers, the pivotal lesson of the Civil War was not the innate superiority of the citizen-soldier, but that years of combat turned the volunteer into a de facto professional soldier. Only when those citizen-soldiers reached the level of professional soldiers was the war won. Accordingly, it was necessary to have a sufficient force of true professionals on hand in the event of a future war, until the hastily-raised levies of citizen-soldiers were made into hardened veterans. The enduring nature of this myth among politicians and the public is evident

46 Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War (New York, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003), pg. 582 47 Ibid., pg. 583 48 Ibid. 24

in the army’s position on this matter on the eve of World War One: “But while the history of the Civil War is instructive as a record of military evolution it cannot be invoked as a guide for military policy, for we can count upon it that in our career as a world power no serious competitor will ever oppose us with extemporized armies.”49 The post-war meaning of the citizen-soldier was a point of fundamental disagreement between military professionals and civilian politicians. Naturally, the nature of military service influences tactical doctrine, insofar as professional soldiers can be relied upon to master more complex tactics and to operate more effectively within a decentralized command philosophy. Hastily raised and trained citizen-soldiers, in contrast, require a more simple and controlled system of battlefield tactics and command. In both popular culture and the national political discourse, the American citizen-soldier was celebrated as an innately superior instrument of war without the intervention of professional military men. Such had been the case since the American War of Independence. However, just as lobbied tirelessly to establish the Continental Army, so did the veteran officers of the post-Civil War army push for a larger professional military. In 1884, retired Maj-Gen. Alexander S. Webb vented his frustration at the public’s refusal to countenance a larger, more professional army: “The first cause, therefore, to the present indifference to the growth of military affairs is the over-weening self-confidence of those who left our temporary service twenty years ago.”50 There was considerable skepticism about the effectiveness of the short-term soldier among the many Union veterans who remained in the post-Civil War Regular Army. The failure of such troops was blamed by many of these officers for prolonging the conflict. Sherman sarcastically wrote in his memoirs of the militia first called by Lincoln, “Then, when war was actually begun, it was by a call for seventy-five thousand “ninety-day” men, I suppose to fulfill Mr. Seward’s prophecy that the war would last ninety days.”51 In 1869, became Commanding General of the United States Army. He then began a long and frustrating battle against the national mythology to reform the army in the wake of the Civil War.

49 United States Army General Staff, Facts of Interest Concerning the Military Resources and Policy of the United States (Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1914), pg. 10 50 Alexander S. Webb, “The Military Service Institution: What Is It Doing; What It May Do; Its Relations to the National Guard” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 5, No. 17, 1884), pg. 1 51 William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs (New York, Penguin Books, 2000) (First Published by D. Appleton & Co., 1875), pg. 737 25

Sherman turned to Lt. Col. Emory Upton to wage the intellectual component of the battle on behalf of a more professional army. Upton was one of the brightest young stars of the post- Civil War army. A member of the West Point class of 1861, Upton’s first wartime posting was on detached duty, training newly-mustered volunteer units in Washington, D.C.52 This experience, needless to say, was a depressing eye-opener for the young officer. Upton’s post-war writing would reflect this fact, as he lamented how many lives could have been spared if only a properly trained force had been on-hand at the outbreak of the rebellion. In his book The Military Policy of the United States Upton declared, “Twenty thousand regular troops at Bull Run would have routed the insurgents, settled the question of military resistance, and relieved us from the pain and suspense of four years of war.”53 Army officers would repeatedly make this same point for decades after. For example, the influential military intellectual Arthur L. Wagner was sure that, “If 30,000 regular troops had been pitted against the raw levies of the South on the battlefield of Bull Run, the Confederate Army would have met with a crushing defeat; Richmond would have fallen within a month; and the of the undisciplined Southern troops… would have been so shaken that the war would have ended in less time than it really took to get military operations fairly under way.”54 Many senior officers hoped that the sobering experience of the war would cause civilian politicians to take military service more seriously. Sherman, for one, advocated a recruitment system similar to that used in Germany (although he was not at all sanguine about the chances of such a system being adopted). In his memoirs, Sherman frankly professed that, “The German method of recruitment is simply perfect, and there is no good reason that we should not follow it substantially.”55 Army officers who advocated the German system did so because it combined local recruiting (which fostered unit cohesion in Civil War volunteer regiments) with a professional cadre to create an army capable of rapid expansion in times of emergency. This was a theme that reformist U.S. Army officers would return to many times over.56 The jingoistic

52 See Upton’s letter to his sister (May 8, 1861) in The Life and Letters of Emory Upton (edited by Peter Smith Michie) (New York, Arno Press, 1979) (First Published by D. Appleton & Co., 1885), pg. 44 53 Maj. Gen. Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the United States (Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1912), pg. xv 54 Wagner, “The Military and Naval Policy of the United States”, pp. 392-93 55 Sherman, Memoirs, pg. 742 56 For example, see “Localization of Regiments” in Facts of Interest Concerning the Military Resources and Policy of the United States, pg. 26 26

historian Stephen Ambrose alleged that Upton failed in this regard because, “Upton did not look to the American past for guidelines.”57 This is a patently bizarre claim to make about a professional soldier and scholar who wrote extensively on U.S. military history. Indeed, Upton’s model from the past was the professional Continental soldier, and not the ill-disciplined and unreliable troops of the colonial militias. It is a powerful reminder of how deeply ingrained the mythology of the American citizen-soldier is that Ambrose cannot tolerate Upton’s alternative reading of history. Instead, Ambrose dismisses the efforts of Upton and his fellow reformers as mere Germanophiles: “Like his fellow professionals, Upton saw the victor in the Franco-Prussian War, not the citizen army that won the Civil War, as the model to copy.”58 Again, men like Upton and Sherman admired the German system precisely because it was an ideal combination of the professional and citizen-soldier, and, like the volunteer regiments of the Civil War, it was recruited on a regional basis. If Congress would not adopt a more European system of recruitment, army planners hoped that it would at least recognize the imperative of using regulars as cadres for wartime expansion, Many Union officers felt that the Confederates had benefited greatly from dispersing former regular officers throughout the newly-raised regiments of their army (albeit not as a matter of intentional policy). The Union, in contrast, maintained the regular army as a distinct force within the larger army, and therefore failed to benefit from its skill and experience. Northern states simply raised regiments on their own. The Confederate states, in contrast, incorporated the many regulars who had resigned their U.S. Army commissions into the newly-formed regiments. Ulysses S. Grant made particular note of this fact, writing in his memoirs, “[The Confederates] had no and, consequently, these trained soldiers had to find employment with the troops from their own States. In this way what there was of military education and training was distributed throughout their whole army. The whole loaf was leavened.”59 Upton, too, wrote in despair that, “Had this course been adopted every regiment of volunteer infantry, cavalry, and artillery might have had a regular officer for a leader, and with these to guide the instruction, three months would have sufficed to give us an army in fair drill and discipline.”60

57 Stephen Ambrose, Upton and the Army, pg. vii 58 Ambrose, Upton and the Army, pg. vii 59 Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York, The Modern Library, 1999 (orig. 1885), pg. 145 60 Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the United States, pg. 235 27

Upton waged his struggle on behalf of a more rational national military policy through books, articles and speeches. However, he ultimately failed to convince the U.S. government of the need for a larger professional army. The myth of the citizen-soldier simply could not be punctured by Upton’s pen, however sharp it may have been. If America again found itself in military need, it was widely assumed, the modern equivalent of the Minute Men would spontaneously appear and prove equal to any challenge. However, it was as a tactician that Upton would leave his greatest mark on the U.S. Army, before a tragic suicide at age 41 abruptly ended his career.

Fighting in Fours: Upton’s New Tactics (1867): The bloody experience of combat in the Civil War left little doubt among post-war officers that tactical doctrine needed to be revised. Sherman again turned to the indefatigable Emory Upton to lead the effort. Upton was ideally suited for the task beyond just his considerable intellect. During the Civil War, Upton had demonstrated a willingness to employ tactical innovations on the battlefield, most famously at Spotsylvania Courthouse. Furthermore, his wartime command experience included all three combat branches (i.e. infantry, cavalry and artillery). Upton actually began work on his revised tactical system during the war, and ultimately submitted it for consideration to the War Department in February of 1866.61 Upton’s Civil War experiences led him to develop a new tactical system using fewer ranks (usually two, but sometimes only one) than antebellum tactics had employed. Tactical flexibility was further enhanced by sub-dividing companies into groups of four, which were to replace the more cumbersome two-platoon structure of the wartime company. Still, Upton’s “fours” were not a true squad in the modern sense. They were temporary units of fire and field formation, not tactical units capable of independent action. Indeed, they were hardly a prescription for small-unit cohesion: “If under fire, the tactics prescribe that the unity of the fours will be preserved as long as possible, and, as casualties occur in the front rank, the vacancies will be filled from the rear rank.”62 Upton’s revised tactical system shared the priorities of his fellow veterans. Interestingly. the first of these was the was the need for greater maneuverability in the wooded and hilly terrain of North America, where they expected to fight their future wars. America, in contrast to Europe,

61 Stephen Ambrose, Upton and the Army, (Baton Rouge, State University Press, 1992), pg. 60 62 Emory Upton to Maj. George Leet (April 6, 1867), Michie, pg. 199 28

had not been agriculturally cultivated for millennia, and was far less hospitable to dense tactical formations. For example, Sherman wrote, “Very few of the battles in which I have participated were fought as described in European text books, viz., in great masses, in perfect order, maneuvering by corps, divisions, and brigades. We were generally in a wooded country, and, though our lines were deployed according to tactics, the men generally fought in strong skirmish- lines, taking advantage of the shape of the ground, and of every cover.”63 It is interesting to note that when the Tactical Board presented its findings on Upton’s system, the issue of firepower on the modern battlefield was clearly of secondary importance. Of seven advantages listed (two general and five special advantages), only one explicitly addresses the issue (and then, only second-to-last on the list): “That it provides for a single-rank formation specially adapted to the use of breech-loaders.”64 The rest have to do with the system’s adaptability to varying types of terrain, and its simpler system of maneuvering. The spread of breech-loading weapons was clearly an important development, but the veterans of the Civil War were not yet sure how important it would prove. For example, Sherman wrote, “The only change that breech-loading arms will probably make in the art and practice of war will be to increase the amount of ammunition expended, and necessarily to be carried along; to still further “thin out” the lines of attack, and to reduce battles to short, quick, decisive conflicts.”65 What Sherman failed to anticipate was that future armies would expend men with the same profligacy as they expended ammunition. Future battles would not be “short, quick, decisive conflicts,” but bloody, insatiable meat-grinders prolonged to the very limits of human endurance. The impact of the breech-loader was considered far more important than the rifled-musket. Sadly, the myth of the rifled musket’s revolutionary lethality persists in American historiography. In truth, the dense battlefield smoke from black powder weapons, and the numerous forests of 19th century America, limited the practical range of rifled muskets in most cases. Accordingly, as military manuals and eye-witness accounts from the period make abundantly clear, battlefield tactics remained decidedly Napoleonic in nature. For much of that war, large bodies of densely- packed troops fired away at each other at relatively close range. In 1889, one American military writer noticed exactly that, “In addition much of the fighting in the Civil War occurred in densely

63 Sherman, Memoirs, pg. 747 64 Tactical Board’s Report to the Secretary of War (July 15, 1867), Michie, pg. 202 65 Sherman, Memoirs, pg. 747 29

wooded districts, where the opposing lines came so close, at times within twenty or thirty yards of each other[.]”66 Further evidence for this comes from the ammunition types employed by the opposing armies. “Buck-and-ball” ammo was consumed in prodigious quantities during the Civil War.67 This was hardly the ammo of choice for long-range musketry. What did concern many military men about the advent of the breech-loader was the great quantities of ammunition that would be required. This increased consumption of ammunition was cited by military conservatives everywhere as a reason to reject the breech-loader. However, the fear proved exaggerated. New techniques had to be developed to keep ammunition flowing to the firing line, but the scale of the problem was greater in contemplation than in reality. The Army and Navy Journal noted after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 that, “The prophecy of the extraordinary expenditure of ammunition from the use of breech-loaders is not borne out by the Prussian experience.”68 However, it was ultimately not just the practical considerations of and terrain that drove American military planners in their quest for a revised tactics. It was also the need for a uniquely “American” tactical system. The new nation had declared its power to the world, and foreign models would no longer suffice. In practice, American officers justified their bias on the plausible grounds that European tactics were simply designed for a different physical and social environment. Ulysses S. Grant commented to the Board, “I have seen [Upton’s] system applied to company and battalion drills, and am fully satisfied of its superior merits and adaptability to our service; besides, it is no translation but a purely American work.”69 [Emphasis added] Curiously, historian Stephen Ambrose rejects Grant’s conclusion, arguing that “[Upton] performed the essential task of transporting European military ideas and techniques to the United States and presenting them in a coherent, understandable form.”70 Considering that the drill manuals of the Civil War and prior were largely translations of French manuals, this is a most curious criticism. The Tactical Board unanimously approved Upton’s system for adoption in January of 1867. However, a second board was convened in light of opposition within the army to Upton’s

66 1st Lt. H.J. Reilly, “Some Considerations on the Revision of Our Infantry Tactics” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 10 No. 41 (November 1889), pg.643 67 Nosworthy, pp. 373-377 68 “The Lessons of the Prussian War” in The Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 5, No. 3) (Sept. 7, 1867), pg. 38 69 Ulysses S. Grant to Henry Stanton, (February 4, 1867) in The Life and Letters of Emory Upton, pg. 197 70 Ambrose, Upton and the Army, pg. 4 30

proposal.71 This second board also approved Upton’s system for adoption in July of 1867. Accordingly, in August of 1867, the War Department issued General Orders No. 73, which mandated Upton’s tactics for the United States Army. Like any innovation in a traditionally conservative institution, Upton’s system raised a storm of controversy within the army. What was remarkable about the objections raised was their mutual inconsistency. Others thought that the numbering system would breakdown in the heat of combat, as soldiers had to be re-numbered with each casualty suffered. To some, Upton had merely recycled Casey’s Infantry Tactics (itself a recycled translation of earlier French infantry manuals). One diligent army officer went so far as to note that 1,428 of the 2,147 paragraphs in Upton’s manual were copied from Casey.72 However, the changes made by Upton marked a significant revision from the old tactics, whatever similarities remained in the less important paragraphs. The editor of the Army and Navy Journal, William Conant Church, was so impressed by Upton’s effort that made him the Journal’s new tactical editor.

Assimilated Tactics and the Board of 1869 In 1869, the War Department decreed that a new board should be formed to prepare an “assimilated” tactics for all branches of the army. “Assimilated”, in this context, meant similar tactical procedures for the infantry, cavalry and artillery (based on Upton’s system). It was hoped that this would foster inter-branch co-operation. Given the procedural conception of military tactics still in vogue, such an approach to combined arms was entirely logical. Upton opposed the effort, at first. Writing to his friend and fellow reformer, Col. Henry A. DuPont, Upton confessed, “I fear that the assimilation of tactics will be detrimental.”73 DuPont, a scion of the wealthy and influential DuPont family, was to serve as a close collaborator in Upton’s efforts to reform the army. The two men had known each other before the Civil War, but their disparate backgrounds did nothing to foster mutual affection. However, DuPont proved a brave and talented commander of artillery during the war. Moreover, his love of the army and his reforming zeal made DuPont a close ally of Upton in the post-war years. However, Upton slowly warmed to the idea of assimilated tactics, in part because Sherman

71 Ambrose, Upton and the Army, pg. 62 72 Ambrose, Upton and the Army, pg. 65 73 Emory Upton to Col. Henry A. DuPont (June 30, 1870), Michie, pg. 208 31

allowed Upton to select the members of the board.74 Nine months after first expressing his reservations to DuPont, Upton wrote to him in a somewhat more cautiously optimistic tone, noting that, “While there is no objection to assimilation, it should only take place when it will not prejudice either arm; but to inflict a single movement in infantry or artillery simply because it is necessary in cavalry is absurd.”75 The Board spent several years carefully reviewing and editing the proposals. By 1873, the Board’s work was finished. The revised Infantry Tactics was published in 1873, followed by Cavalry Tactics in 1874 and, finally, Artillery Tactics in 1875. Each work was received with fulsome praise by William C. Church at The Army and Navy Journal. If the editor of The Army and Navy Journal approved of the assimilated tactics, many serving officers did not. In particular, cavalry officers seemed to have disapproved of the new, “assimilated” tactics.76 While the U.S. Army worked to complete its new tactical doctrine, war erupted between the German states, led by Prussia, and France. The lessons from this conflict were to dominate European and American tactical thinking into the early 20th century.

Lessons from Abroad I: The Franco-Prussian War During the Franco-Prussian War, one of the American Civil War’s most talented commanders, Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, was sent as the official military observer. He was attached to the Prussian army headquarters for this purpose. The short, wiry and pugnacious Ohioan somehow charmed the Prussian court, and became particularly close to Otto von Bismarck. As insightful as he often was, Sheridan’s observations of the conflict only reinforced the U.S. Army’s belief that it had nothing new to learn after the Civil War. Looking back on his time in France, Sheridan wrote confidently that, “Of course I found a great deal to interest and instruct me, yet nowadays war is pretty much the same everywhere, and this one offered no marked exceptions to my previous experiences.”77 (italics added) He was generally impressed by the German army, noting that the infantry was “as fine as I ever saw”.78 Like Sherman, he lauded the German practice

74 Ambrose, Upton and the Army, pg. 77 75 Emory Upton to Col. Henry A. DuPont ( 17, 1871), Michie, pg. 208 76 Ambrose, Upton and the Army, pg. 81 77 Philip H. Sheridan, Personal Memoirs of P.H. Sheridan (Vol. II), (New York, Charles L. Webster & Co., 1888), pg. 447 78 Ibid., pg. 450 32

of recruiting units from the same district. However, he felt that the German regiments were too large for a to easily command.79 All in all, Sheridan wrote, “I may, in conclusion, say that I saw no new military principles developed”.80 The enormous destructive power of the French chassepot rifle only strengthened the growing cult of the rifle in the U.S. Army. In particular, it was noted that long-range musketry greatly reduced the efficacy of direct-fire artillery.81 Yet, the Germans’ use of artillery would have a profound effect on the world’s artillerists in the following decades. It was only through the aggressive and skillful handling of their heavy guns that the Germans were able to offset the chassepot. Phil Sheridan, in contrast, was unimpressed by the Prussian artillery. After the battle of Gravelotte, Sheridan noted, “When we got inside the French works, I was astonished to observe how little harm had been done to the defenses by the German artillery, for although I had not that serene faith in the effectiveness of their guns held by German artillerists generally, yet I thought their terrific cannonade must have left marked results.”82 Later, near the French of Bazeilles, Sheridan toured a battlefield, “where the fight had largely been an artillery duel, to learn what we could of the effectiveness of the Krupp gun. Counting all of the French dead we came across killed by artillery. They figured up about three hundred – a ridiculously small number; in fact, not much more than one dead man for each Krupp gun on that part of the line.”83 Sheridan’s characterization of the German artillery is difficult to reconcile with the historical record. Eye-witness accounts of the battle of Gravelotte provide vivid testimony of the power of the Krupp guns. The French General Ernest Pradier described his command as having been “smothered in shells.”84 Another French veteran of the battle, the Baron des Ormières, wrote “We were the superior infantry, but that made no difference, for throughout we were just cannon fodder (viande à canons) for the Prussian batteries.”85 A post-battle analysis of the casualties found that nearly 70 percent of the French dead had been killed by artillery.86 Given the weight that

79 Ibid., pg. 450 80 Ibid., pg. 451 81 Antulio Echeverria II, After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers Before the Great War (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press, 2000), pg. 29 82 Sheridan, pg. 384 83 Ibid., pg. 412 84 Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War: The German of France in 1870-71, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), pg. 174 85Ibid., pg. 174 86Ibid., pg. 174 33

Sheridan’s views must have carried within the U.S. Army, it is worth trying reconcile the discrepancy between his characterization of the German artillery and that of the participants.

Map 1: Gravelotte

34

In the case of Gravelotte, Sheridan’s observations were likely the result of the portion of the battlefield he inspected. The village of Gravelotte was on the far right of the German line. It was on their right flank that the Germans failed to use their artillery to its full effect, with the result that they suffered most severely at the hands of the French infantry firing their superb chassepots. The French position along the Gravelotte-St. Privat line was very strong, and some of German commanders were unsure whether they should even attempt an assault. Eventually, von Moltke ordered the army into action, but things started to go wrong almost immediately. Gen. Albrecht von Manstein, commanding the IX Corps on the German right, prematurely pushed his artillery forward to bombard the French. Having failed to conduct a proper , von Manstein’s guns blundered into an intense cross-fire from multiple French batteries (a rare instance of the French artillery besting their German counterparts).87 The Prussian Lt. Col. Verdy du Vernois (later the Minister of War) described the carnage, “A hail of and shrapnel, the latter traceable by little white clouds, looking like little balloons, which remained suspended in the air for some time after their bursting, answered the war-like greeting from our side. The grating noise of the mitrailleuses was heard above the tumult, drowning the whole roar of battle.”88 Undeterred by the destruction of his artillery, von Manstein pushed his infantry forward. Hearing the sounds of battle, von Manstein’s immediate superior, von Steinmetz, pushed the rest of his army into action. A large concentration of 150 German guns bombarded the French left. However, they seemed to have concentrated their fire on the advanced French positions running from the Point du Jour to the Moscou Farm. These positions were devastated by the guns, but the main line of was relatively unscathed. The subsequent assault was a total failure, as the French chassepots and mitrailleuses shredded the attacking German infantry. Ultimately, the battle was won on the German left flank, near the village of St. Privat. Here the German guns were skillfully handled, notably those of the Prussian Guards, commanded by the influential artillery theorist, Prince Kraft zu Hohenloe-Ingelfingen.89 However, the victory at St. Privat was marred by the Guard Corps commander, Prince Augustus of Württemberg, who launched his infantry into action before the supporting Saxon Corps was ready to attack. The

87 Ibid., pg. 172 88 Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War, (New York, Routledge, 2002 (original, 1961)), pg. 170 89 Ibid., pg. 176 35

Guards suffered appalling casualties, as described by a then-young company commander, Paul von Hindenberg, “Every man tried his hardest to get to close quarters with the enemy in order to use his rifle, which was inferior to the chassepot. The sight was as terrible as impressive. The ground behind the mass surging forward, as if against a hailstorm, was strewn with dead and wounded, and yet the brave troops pressed on without stopping.”90 From these descriptions of the battle, it is likely that Sheridan inspected the French positions northeast of Gravelotte. His memoirs make it very clear that he approached the French positions from the town of Gravelotte itself.91 Here, the French defensive positions suffered the least from German artillery, as von Manstein’s guns were silenced early in the battle, and von Steinmetz’s great battery concentrated on the French outposts, and so left the main defensive line relatively unscathed. Accordingly, Sheridan failed to appreciate the decisive impact of the German artillery from his vantage point. Sheridan’s appraisal of the artillery at Bazeilles is also likely due to the particulars of that combat. The village itself is southeast of Sedan, on the right bank of the Meuse river, and it then controlled the main road into Sedan. In the prelude to the pivotal battle of Sedan, General von der Tann’s I Bavarian Corps approached the village from the south, on the left bank of the Meuse. An artillery duel across the river did take place (the French Gen. MacMahon was wounded by a shell fragment at this time).92 As they advanced, von der Tann’s men surprised a group of French engineers preparing the bridge at Bazeilles for demolition. A Bavarian battalion rushed the bridge, scattered the French engineers, and threw the explosives into the river. The Bavarians maintained a toehold in Bazeilles, against fierce opposition from French marines. Under pressure, the Bavarians withdrew late in the afternoon, but again infiltrated the village that night. A small, but no less brutal, battle for the village occurred the next day (it is the subject of Alphonse de Neuville’s famous painting, The Last Cartridges). The circumstances of the fight for Bazeilles are such that they may explain the paucity of artillery casualties noted by Sheridan. The house-to-house fighting (which claimed quite a few civilian lives) may have led to some restraint in the use of artillery on the town itself, as it was impossible to tell friend from foe from a distance under such conditions. That said, the French

90 Paul von Hindenberg (trans. By F.A. Holt), Out of My Life (Vol. I), (New York, Harper & Bros., 1921), pg. 44 91 Sheridan, pg. 383 92 Michael Howard, pg. 208 36

guns seemed to have devoted themselves to bombarding the initial Bavarian position within the village itself.93 However, the French guns were weaker than their German counterparts (the French Napoléon was a four-pounder, in contrast to the Krupp six-pounder).94 Although influential, Sheridan’s conclusions were by no means dispositive, as other American military thinkers were not so dismissive the role played by German artillery in the Franco-Prussian war. One of the most astute military commentators of the pre-World War One period was Francis V. Greene. Greene was best known for his role as the official American military observer in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78). In his published report of the conflict, Lt. Greene unfavorably compared the impact of artillery in the Russo-Turkish conflict to the Franco-Prussian war, “where the superiority of the Prussian artillery contributed very materially to the success of the campaign”.95 Nonetheless, even Greene did not fully grasp the future promise of artillery, as will be seen in his deeper analysis of the Russo-Turkish War (see below). Another young artillery officer destined for fame, Tasker H. Bliss, wrote an 1880 article on artillery in the Russo-Turkish War that strongly echoed Greene, “In 1870, the Germans made a proper use of , in 1877 the Russians made [sic] a correspondingly bad use.”96 Another young officer, 1st Lt. William Birkheimer, wrote in 1885, “It will never be known just what part of their artillery success in 1870- 71 the Germans owe to superior training of personnel, what part to tactics, what to material, these being so happily blended”.97 It is worth noting here that American artillerists would often prove among the more astute military observers in the U.S. Army during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were also the most apt to use German examples to buttress their arguments. There are several reasons for the generally high quality of the artillerists’ prognostications. First, artillerists represented some of the most accomplished students of West Point, second only to the engineers in academic stature. Secondly, the virtual elimination of the U.S. Army’s field artillery in the post-Civil War period

93 Wawro, pg. 213 94 Ibid., pg. 58 NOTE: Unfortunately, this is just speculation after the fact. It is impossible to determine exactly why Sheridan found so few casualties caused by artillery at Bazeilles. 95 Lt. Francis V. Greene, Report on the Russian Army and Its Campaigns in in 1877-1878, (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1879), pg. 454 96 Lt. Tasker, H. Bliss, “The Siege of Plevna” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 2, No. 5, 1880), pg. 55 97 Lt. William E. Birkheimer, “Has the Adaption of the Rifle-Principle to Fire-Arms Diminished the Relative Importance of Field Artillery?” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 6, No. 23) (September 1885), pp. 196-97 37 meant that these men had little to lose by challenging the status quo in advancing unpopular theories. Finally, the arc of military technology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was such that artillery would prove among the most disruptive technologies. More than anything else, World War One would be a war fought and won by artillery. Like Sheridan, the influential tactician Emory Upton saw little to emulate in the German infantry tactics of 1870-71. In 1874, Upton gave a paper at the Thayer Club at West Point on the tactical lessons of the France-Prussian War. In the paper, entitled “The Prussian Company Column”, Upton rejected the notion of superior Prussian infantry tactics. The Prussian formation used a three-rank system, in contrast to Upton’s two rank tactics. Naturally, Upton therefore considered the Prussian system cumbersome and archaic, crediting victory to poor French morale and Prussia’s greater numbers and movements against the French flanks.98 Insofar as Prussian drill regulations were concerned, Upton was certainly correct. The Germans themselves freely admitted that the company column did little to shield their infantry from punishing losses at the hands of the French. Upton’s conclusion was that “no new principles in strategy or grand tactics have been established, and the only important change in minor tactics is the use of skirmishers to an extent heretofore unknown in Europe, but for which both parties would have been prepared if they had studied our civil war.”99 However, one vitally important lesson which both Sheridan and Upton missed was the nascent revolution in , pioneered by the German army in form of Auftragstaktik (or, more properly in actual German military parlance, Selbständigkeit der Unterführer (“the independence of the subordinate commander”)).100 Broadly defined, Auftragstaktik was the idea that the complexity and chaos of modern warfare was such that hard- and-fast rules simply had no place on the battlefield.101 It followed that subordinate officers had to be given more leeway in developing a battleplan, but always with the over-arching objective in mind. Veterans of the Franco-Prussian were often at the forefront of based on Aufstragstaktik. Influential proponents included the previously mentioned Verdy du Vernois and Col. Sigismund von Schlichting (a company commander in 1866 and a battalion commander in

98 Emory Upton, “The Prussian Company Column” in International Review Vol. II No. 3 (May 1875), pg. 313 99 Ibid., pg. 303 100 Robert M. Citino, Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943 (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press, 2012), pg. xix 101 Echeverria II, pg. 38 38

1870-71).102 Many junior French officers noticed its influence on the battlefield. One young French officer, writing an analysis of the battle of Wissembourg (August of 1870), noted the dangerous ability of German infantry battalions to break down into their component parts, yet continue working towards the same goal, like “an intricate machine of small moving parts”.103 Unable to appreciate the rise of Auftragstaktik on the battlefield, Upton, in fact, criticized the relative paucity of Prussian officers compared to their American counter-parts. Like many American officers of his time and thereafter, Upton was obsessed with control, and did not trust enlisted men or non-commissioned officers to possess or exert the necessary moral influence in battle.104 While an American infantry company of 100 men had three officers, the 250 men of a Prussian infantry company only had five officers. According to Upton, this made command-and- control more difficult for the Prussians on the field of battle. He castigated those who encouraged the Americans to cede more power to non-commissioned officers as being “under the influence of the Prussian mania[.]”105 This need to micromanage soldiers on the battlefield was to become an obsession for American officers, and it remains a burden that the U.S. Army has yet to fully shake- off. Lessons from Abroad II: Francis Greene and the Russo-Turkish War In late 1877, the , joined by several Balkan countries, declared war on the Ottomans. Fighting took place in both the Balkans and in the Caucasus. Coming as it did in the aftermath of the German victories of 1866 and 1870-71, the Russo-Turkish War enabled military men throughout the world to fully gauge the impact of the breech-loading rifle. In this regard, they were not disappointed. The Russians were mostly equipped with the Krnka musket (a rifled muzzle-loader modified to function as a breech-loader) and the more advanced . The Turks were equipped with a broader array of firearms, notably the Winchester repeating rifle with a 15-round tube magazine, and the Peabody-Martini (a variant of the British Martini-Henry). In response, the United States dispatched Lt. Francis V. Greene, the U.S. military attaché at the legation in St. Petersburg, as its official observer to the fighting. Greene’s narrative is notable for unusually accessible prose, and a thoughtful analysis of the conflict’s implications for future

102 Ibid., pg. 39 103 Sous-Lt. Charles Ebner in Wawro,, pg. 56 104 Ibid. pp. 311-12 105 Upton, “The Prussian Company Column,” pg. 310 39

wars. The central focus of Greene’s book, and that of almost all military observers of the conflict, was the siege of the Turkish garrison at the town of Plevna. Plevna commanded a critical crossroads at the northern entrance to the Balkan Mountains, and so prevented the Russians from advancing any further south towards . The Turkish consisted of hastily built, but steadily improved, earthworks. Although the Russians ultimately captured the fortress, it was only at great cost after many months of siege.

Map 2: The Siege of Plevna

The bloody siege of Plevna forced many military observers to face some hard truths about the growing volume of small arms fire via the breech-loading rifle, and the widespread use of simple field fortifications. The Civil War convinced many American officers that they knew how to tackle field fortifications, but they had not faced an enemy lavishly equipped with repeating firearms. The French and German armies had the opposite experience in 1870-71, with plentiful breech-loaders paired with a sparing use of entrenchments. Greene put forth this critical military

40

issue in the opening paragraph of his final chapter on the war: “But there is one feature, a question of tactics, in which this war finds no parallel in past history, and which is of the highest importance for the conduct of future wars, particularly to us in America. I refer to the great use which was made of hasty fortifications in connection with modern firearms.”106 For Greene, modern firearms, with their much greater range and higher compared to the 1861 Springfield musket, radically shifted the balance of power on the battlefield towards the defense.107 However, even Greene could not bring himself to utter the heresy that the lessons of the Civil War were already approaching obsolescence. During the Civil War, attackers typically advanced in thickened skirmish lines, steadily building-up the volume of firepower against the defenders until they were able to beat down the defensive fire as the prelude to a final rush.108 The successful Russian assaults were also marked by the extensive use of skirmishers to cover the attack. Accordingly, for Greene, the lessons of the Russo-Turkish War “amplify but do not change in any way the lessons of our civil war; and had these lessons been more carefully studied in there would have been far less slaughter at Plevna.”109 Twenty years later, the influential Arthur Wagner would repeat this same mantra in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States.110 Far from being an affirmation of American tactics, the costly Russian successes were the beginning of the end for the unsupported infantry assault. That is not to say that infantry could never successfully attack entrenched defenders, rather, they could only do so at an ever- greater loss of life, as the blood-soaked fields of Manchuria would one day attest. Although the preponderance of the evidence was against successful assaults by unsupported infantry against entrenchments, there were enough examples to the contrary to keep hope alive (much as many cavalrymen justified their faith in the arme blanche in the rare, but costly, successful cavalry charges during the Franco-Prussian War). Emory Upton had gained no small degree of fame for his assault on the Confederate trenches at Spotsylvania Courthouse. In that case, Upton took advantage of the terrain to bring his command within 200 yards of the enemy positions. Furthermore, he forbade his men from firing during the in order to maintain

106 Greene, Report on the Russian Army and Its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877-1878, pg. 421 107 Ibid., pg. 422 108 Williamson Murray & Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh, A Savage War (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2016), pp.379-81 109 Greene, Report on the Russian Army and Its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877-1878, pg. 451 110 Maj. Arthur Wagner, “Hasty Intrenchments [?] in the War of Secession” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 22 No. 92 (February 1898), pg. 245 (225-246) 41

momentum and so cross the killing zone as quickly as possible.111 The initial attack was a success, but ultimately failed for lack of support. There were similar episodes during the Russo-Turkish War. For example, a French officer serving as a volunteer with the Russian army witnessed such an attack on the Turkish fortress of Gorni-Dubnik. Writing under the nom de plume of Dick de Lornay, he breathlessly describes the attack by the Russian Guards, “At about ten o'clock in the morning the regiment of the of the guard began to assault this redoubt. In spite of the violent and murderous fusillade which the Turks directed over this fort and the main redoubt, the grenadiers carried themselves forward with an irresistible impulse, and penetrated into the redoubt with cries of hurrah! The resulting brilliance had scarcely required a few minutes, but nearly eight hundred green tunics with sky-blue facings littered the edges of the fort.”112 As with Upton’s assault at Spotsylvania, the Russian Guards had relied on speed and momentum, and not firepower, to carry them into the Turkish redoubt, “Throughout the course of the action the Russian soldiers constantly attacked with the bayonet. Hardly a and half was fired per man.”113 Other than the issue of entrenchments, the matter that really captured Greene’s attention was the breech-loading rifle. The power of the breech-loader was such, in Greene’s eyes, that it even threatened to artillery. Greene noted that, “The breech-loading musket keeps the artillery at a distance of not less than 1,000 yards, otherwise its horses will all be ; at this or greater distances, the angle of the fall of the projectile is so great (with the guns in use by the Russians during the war) that it buries itself in the ground before exploding, and often expends its whole force in throwing up a cloud of dirt while the pieces of the projectile remain in the crater… The damage which shells can do against earthworks is now well acknowledged to be very slight; and as the infantry fights in open order, shells can but evidently do little against it.”114 Given this situation, Greene felt that artillery’s role in future conflicts would be somewhat diminished. The conclusion to his report was as follows: “But all other weapons are dwarfed before the breech-

111 Murray & Hsieh, pp.379-81 112 Dick de Lornay (N. Hardoin), A La Bulgarie: Souvenirs De Guerre Et De Voyage Par Un Volontaire Au 26ͤ Régiment Au Cosaques Du Don, (, Garnier Frères, 1888), pg. 13: “Vers dix heures du matin, le regiment des grenadiers de la garde se lança à l’assaut de cette redoute, Malgré la violante et meurtrière fusillade que les Turcs dirigeaient sur eux de cette ouvrage et de la redoute principale, les grenadiers se portèrent en avant avec un irrésistible élan et pénétrèrent dans la redoute aux cris de hourrah! Ce brillant résultant avait à peine demandé quelques minutes, mais près de huit cents tuniques vertes à parements bleus de ciel jonchaient les abords de l’ouvreage. 113 Ibid., pg. 14: “Pendant toute la durée de l’action, les soldats russes attaquèrent constamment à la baïonnette. A peine fut-il brûlé une cartouche et demie par homme.” 114 Greene, Report on the Russian Army and Its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877-1878, pg. 454 42

loading musket, firing easily 5 to 6 shots a minute and carrying to a range of a mile and a quarter. Therefore the infantry is now more than ever the arm of the service upon which all of the hard fighting devolves, which inflicts and receives the greatest damage, and to which all other parts of an army are merely subsidiary.”115 And so, like Sheridan, one of the U.S. Army’s most important observers of modern warfare prophesized a new relationship between artillery and infantry that would prove opposite of what would ultimately emerge. He was not alone in this conviction, the Army and Navy Journal wrote in 1883 that, “Field Artillery, whose range is now less than that of arms of precision, has suffered perhaps more than cavalry by the great changes.”116 This view persisted until the end of the century, as demonstrated by an 1897 article in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States in which the author wrote of infantry, “With its fire more decisive and deadly than that of artillery[.]”117 Given the inherent potential of artillery versus small arms, Greene’s failure to understand that this battlefield disequilibrium was but a temporary aberration is odd. After all, considering the greater constraints on the improvement of small arms, which are severely limited by their size and weight, Greene should have seen that the future power of artillery would eclipse that of any small arm. His failure can be explained only by his time horizon (i.e. that breech- loading small arms would dominate artillery for just the immediate future). Not surprisingly, Greene’s great faith in the breech-loader was not universally held within the army. Gen. , of Civil War fame, wrote, “There is little doubt that the effect of breech-loading arms is greatly exaggerated. Military men have been too quick to attribute the failure of the French cavalry, in the war with Prussia, to the breech-loader. The truth is that it failed, as did the infantry and artillery, because it was not properly organized, disciplined, and equipped.”118 He further cites the battles of the Little Big Horn and Isandlwana as examples of the breech-loader’s exaggerated reputation.119 After all, the breech-loader was also seen as a threat to

115 Ibid., pg. 455 116 P.S.G.C., “Tactics” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 21 No. 7 (September 15, 1883), pg. 123 117 Lt. J.G. Harbord, “The Necessity of a Well-Organized and Trained Infantry at the Outbreak of War, and the Best Means to Be Adopted by the United States for Obtaining Such a Force” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 21 No. 88 (July 1897), pp. 5 (1-27). It should be noted that there was push-back on this topic in the same magazine. See 1st Lt. William E. Birkhimer, “Relative Efficiency of Infantry and Light Artillery” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 21 No. 88 (July 1897), pp. 50-60. 118 Maj-Gen. Wesley Merritt, “Cavalry: Its Organization and Armament” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 1, No. 1, 1880), pg. 51 119 Ibid., pg. 52 43

cavalry, as it could no longer cross the “danger space” with acceptable losses in the face of rapid- loading weapons. Like cavalrymen the world over, Merritt was naturally reluctant to accept the obsolescence of his arm.

The Relevance of Cold Steel Like all armies of the late 19th and early 20th century, the role played by the bayonet was the subject of intense debate. In the age of the smooth-bore musket, the bayonet remained an essential part of the infantryman’s fighting kit. However, the dominance of firepower, especially with the advent of the breech-loading rifle, meant that the bayonet’s worth was increasingly called into question. In 1880, the U.S. Army Chief of Ordnance’s report stated, “For hundreds of years the war between gunpowder and steel has been going on, with the advantage and gain always in favor of the former, and the sabre and bayonet must in their turn take their places in our museums by the side of old pike and the cuirass. They must yield to the revolver and rifle – cold steel to gunpowder and lead.”120 The linear logic of progress, so reflective of that time, consigned melee weapons to the dustbin of history. In one sense, the Chief of Ordnance’s logic was irrefutable, but to many officers, it was the right answer to the wrong question. In other words, the question was not which was the superior weapon, as that was not in doubt. The real question was whether the gunpowder was superior to cold steel in all combat situations. Here, the answer was much more difficult. In his report of the Russo-Turkish War, Greene noted that the utility of the bayonet was in question, and that the German army was considering abandoning it altogether.121 Yet, he advocated retaining the weapon, arguing that “in a well conducted assault it is still possible for the assailants to reach the defenders’ trench and come to hand-to-hand blows, and then the side which has the bayonet will win if the other side has it not” (italics original).122 Certainly, the previously cited French observer, “Dick de Lornay”, noted the extensive use of the bayonet by the Russians in their assaults. Likewise, another foreign observer serving with the Russians, the Prussian Richard von Pfeil (a much-decorated veteran of the Franco-Prussian War), recorded its use during the fighting for the Shipka Pass. After the battle, von Pfeil inspected one of the Turkish earthworks seized by

120 Cited in 2nd Lt. John Bigelow, “The Sabre and Bayonet Question” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 3, No. 1, 1882), pg. 65 121 Greene, Report on the Russian Army and Its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877-1878, pg. 436 122 Ibid. 44 the Russians: “In a circle round it lay the Russian soldiers, mostly hit in the head, and fallen forward on their faces, their outstretched hands digging into the snow, and many still retaining their grip of their rifles. Behind the parapet lay the corpses of the Turks, who had defended their redoubt bravely to the last, and in the interior the Russian and Turkish bodies, mingled together, showed that a fierce hand-to-hand fight with the bayonet had taken place.”123 Lt. John Bigelow, Jr., scion of a prominent New York political family, wrote passionately in favor of keeping the bayonet. Part of his argument was based precisely on the impact of field fortifications on modern warfare. Bigelow declared, “Now if there is anything that the shelter trench has not replaced, but which it has on the contrary fostered and developed, it is the single combat. Ask any old campaigner where he has seen the hardest hand-to-hand fighting, and ten-to- one he will say it was the storming of such a redoubt, or the taking of such a village, the clearing of such a wood, the seizing of such a trench; in short, the expulsion of the enemy from behind some cover.”124 Despite misgivings about the utility of the bayonet, it would remain a standard part of the soldier’s kit.

123 Richard Graf von Pfeil (trans. By Col. C.W. Bowdler), Experiences of a Prussian Officer During the Russo- Turkish War, 1877-78 (London, Edward Stanford, 1893), pp. 212-213 124 Bigelow, “The Sabre and Bayonet Question”, pp. 81-82 45

Chapter 3: New Schools, Old Army: The Birth of the Military-Intellectual Complex, 1882-98

Introduction From a purely military perspective, the years between the end of the Civil War and the Spanish-American War were marked by desultory campaigns against the Plains Indians and the stultifying isolation of garrison life on the western frontier. However, this period also witnessed critical debates about the future direction of national strategy, and the beginnings of the army’s contribution to the military-intellectual complex. The creation of a military-intellectual complex was not simply the establishment of new service schools, the most important being that at Ft. Leavenworth, but also the creation of the service journals. The latter provided officers of all ranks, both active and retired, forums to discuss military matters outside of the institutional confines of the service. These developments greatly enriched the military discourse, but they also forced a reckoning with the foreign military experience. A greater awareness of military developments abroad required that those developments be accorded a place in the hierarchy of acceptable evidence in debate.

Hard Campaigning: The Reality of Frontier Fighting The conquest and settlement of the American West was inextricably bound up with the nation’s identity as whole. That connection was even more intense for the U.S. Army. In 1883, the Army and Navy Journal declared proudly that, “Since the war, our Army have been the real pioneers of our great West, not only clearing the frontier of hostile Indians, but building their own quarters and Government store houses, and building miles of public roads.”125 Both before and after the Civil War, frontier service was the proving ground for the most ambitious and energetic officers. With opportunities for promotion so few, frontier service provided these officers with a rare chance to distinguish themselves. Indian fighting placed great emphasis on the skill of the individual soldier, particularly in terms of marksmanship. James S. Pettit, an officer with experience of frontier fighting wrote, “Fortunately also the hostiles are not crack shots, for had they been skilled marksmen, at least two commands in the past year would have been well-nigh massacred.”126 The Plains Indians adopted

125 Editorial, “Causes of ” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 21 No. 4 (August 25, 1883), pg. 74 126 1st Lt. James S. Pettit, “Apache Campaign Notes – ‘86” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the 46 the rifle within the context of their existing culture, which meant that young braves learned how to use the weapons in buffalo hunts. Accordingly, did not practice long-range musketry, although they were capable of great accuracy at shorter ranges (<200 yards). This became an advantage for the encroaching whites. At a buffalo hunters’ camp in the panhandle called Adobe Walls, twenty-eight skilled hunters armed with long-range rifles mauled a much larger attacking force of Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne warriors in 1874.127 That same year, a similar incident took place near the Washita River. In that case, a small infantry detachment escorting a supply train was attacked by Kiowa and Comanche warriors. The soldiers dug rifle pits and were able to hold their attackers at bay for five days before being rescued by cavalry under Captain .128 General Nelson Miles, for one, also noted this discrepancy in marksmanship in his experience fighting against the Plains Indians.129 During the Sioux War in the wake of the disaster at Little Bighorn, Miles’ infantrymen were able to inflict significant losses on the Sioux at little cost to themselves, thanks to their commander’s emphasis on long-range shooting.130 As these practical lessons reinforced previously-held convictions about the American rifleman, the U.S. Army responded by obsessively training its soldiers in long-range musketry. Another example of U.S. Army marksmanship making the difference between victory and defeat was at the battle of the Big Dry Wash in the summer of 1882. The Big Dry Wash was a branch canyon off of the Little Colorado River. A large band of Apache warriors had taken a strong position within the canyon. General William H. Carter, then a junior officer, described it: “The Indians occupied a strong position on the north side of the canyon, where from a vertical wall they overlooked and commanded the trail leading across the canyon. They had built circular rifle pits of stones, and their position was impregnable from a frontal attack.”131 The highly accurate American rifle fire enabled the attackers, led by Capt. Chaffee, to suppress the defensive fire to a degree such that the cavalrymen were able to progressively surround the defenders. Aware that the noose around them was tightening, the Apache abandoned their position during the night, and a

United States (Vol. 7 No. 47) (October 1886), pg. 331 127 Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891 (Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1973), pg. 213 128 Maj. Gen. William H. Carter, The Life of Lieutenant General Chaffee (, University of Chicago Press, 1917), pg. 75 129 Peter R. DeMontravel, A Hero to His Fighting Men: Nelson A. Miles, 1839-1925 (, OH, Kent State University Press, 1998), pg. 104 130 Ibid., pg. 88 131 Carter, The Life of Lieutenant General Chaffee, pg. 95 47 fortuitous hailstorm obliterated their tracks and enabled their escape. The Apaches left behind much of their supplies and sixteen dead. Only one cavalryman died as a result of wounds sustained during the assault. The long distances and rapid mobility of the Plains Indians meant that the U.S. Cavalry tended to be the premier service arm during this era. However, this fact did little to diminish the cult of the rifleman. Much of is an attempt to impose on the enemy one’s own preferred style of fighting. In this regard, the Plains Indians were largely successful, forcing the Americans to rely on their mounted arm to the detriment of their infantry and, most importantly, their artillery (indeed, the latter abandoned their guns almost entirely, serving instead as infantry or cavalry). In the Indian style of warfare, the arme blanche was of little use, so the U.S. Cavalry served more as mounted infantry. Doctrinally, this was no great leap, as the Union cavalry operations in the final year of the Civil War were precisely along those lines. As mounted infantry, marksmanship became paramount on the western frontier for the U.S. Cavalry. Combat against the Indians influenced tactics beyond reinforcing the cult of the rifleman. The frontier experience also provided ammunition to those who wished to resist European influence on the U.S. Army. Maj. Gen. August Kautz argued that, “With our capacity for civilized warfare, when we are required to fight Indians we can avail ourselves of very little of all the tactics that we have derived from the great military nations of Europe. No troops have been successful in our service on Indian campaigns that have not been able to adapt themselves to the methods of their savage foes; on the contrary, the most serious disasters recorded in the annals of our Indian wars have been due to too rigid adherence to the tactics of civilized warfare.”132 An emphasis on individual skills was both natural and laudable for soldiers on the frontier, but more would be required if the United States Army was to fight a modern war.

Sherman and the School of Application at Ft. Leavenworth It was not lost on senior American officers that institutional changes were required to enable the U.S. Army to fight a modern war. American unpreparedness at the outbreak of the Civil War compared most unfavorably with the impressive performance of the Prussian General Staff in 1864, 1866 and 1870-71. This convinced American military leaders that their situation had to

132 Maj. Gen. August Kautz, “Military Education for the Masses” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 17 No. 78 (November 1895), pg. 488 (486-501) 48 be remedied, ideally by a general staff of its own, but at least by an institution of higher military learning. If the army were to remain small, it could at the minimum train officers with a solid theoretical knowledge of the handling of large formations. The effort to create a general staff was too politically sensitive for any officers to take the lead. It was a retired officer, Senator , who led the doomed effort in Congress. However, Sherman, John Pope and Upton were able to lead the charge for a more politically palatable army service school. Upton wrote, “But, notwithstanding the superior preparatory education we have secured to a portion of our officers, we have not as yet, except in the artillery, provided for them a means of acquiring a theoretical and practical knowledge of the higher duties of their profession. Abroad, it is the universal theory that should be studied only after an officer has arrived at full manhood, and therefore most governments have established post-graduate institutions for nearly all arms of service, where meritorious officers, from whatever sphere they may enter the army, may study strategy, grand tactics, and all of the sciences connected with modern war.”133 Finally, in 1881, Sherman established the School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. The post-Civil War army marked a low-point in the influence of West Point graduates. Of the 1,530 officers appointed in the years 1866-67, only seven percent had graduated from the United States .134 Liberated from West Point’s stranglehold on the officer corps, albeit only temporarily, the army was able to realistically evaluate the issue of officer training. By the time Leavenworth came into being, West Point’s shortcomings were patently obvious: “By 1881 the Military Academy’s curriculum had become a relic of what had once been the nation’s finest technological education program.”135 Worse still, classroom training in at West Point was limited to learning the various tactical manuals. Allan Millett writes, “The largest part of the military training was tactical drill, the cadets performing with as much speed and precision as possible the evolutions of Emory Upton’s tactics for infantry, cavalry, and artillery.”136 Memorizing tactical evolutions took priority over thinking critically about tactics.

133 Emory Upton, The Armies of Asia and Europe: Embracing Official Reports on the Armies of Japan, China, India, Persia, , Russia, Austria, Germany, France and England (New York, Greenwood Press, 1968) (First Published by D. Appleton & Co., 1878), pp. 362-3 134 Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784-1898 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986), pg. 219 135 Allan R. Millett, The General: Robert L. Bullard and Officership in the United States Army 1881-1925 (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1975), p. 37 136 Millet, The General, pg. 38 49

Higher military thought was almost completely absent. Moreover, the professors themselves were West Point graduates often with no education beyond that of their cadet days.137 Nor was it a simple matter to reform the West Point curriculum, as few graduates were willing to admit to any deficiencies in their education. The establishment of Leavenworth was a recognition of the fact that professional development in the peacetime army left much to be desired, and that West Point was not much help. The U.S. Army was then scattered across the West in numerous, small military posts did little to encourage professional development among the officers. The boredom and isolation of life in an army post, combined with the glacial pace of promotion, left most officers bereft of the incentive or desire to pursue professional education in their spare moments. Worse still, the disproportionate number of officers in these small garrisons, compounded by an ever-officious military bureaucracy, resulted in a culture devoid of initiative. A letter to the editors of the Army and Navy Journal in 1886 complained, “There is too great centralization in the administration of Army affairs. Subordinate commanders are constantly ‘checked like bondmen’ by the ubiquitous and inquisitorial telegram. The tendency is to make officers timid and to rob them of mental initiative. As a school for training commanders and staff officers for great responsibilities nothing could be less hopeful than an Army post under the usually prevalent conditions.”138 However, there was some push-back to this idea that the small garrisons stifled professional development. The Army and Navy Journal admitted that the great generals of the Civil War had been schooled in exactly such garrisons” “The manly reliance, soldierly skill, boldness of action and quickness of perception acquired by these men, were gained, not in large garrisons, but at remote, dangerous, and independent posts with only a handful of men under their command; and their services in the great war which followed, fully attest the value of such training.”139 Nonetheless, the editors felt that larger posts were still preferable, if only because they facilitated larger troop maneuvers. Despite an inauspicious beginning as a dumping-ground for undesirable officers, Leavenworth steadily improved.140 This was due, in part, to the fact that education was starting to

137 Millet, The General, pg. 38 138 Anonymous, “Practical Army Improvement” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 23 No. 44 (May 29, 1886), pg. 894 (894) 139 Editorial, The Army and Navy Journal Vol. 22 No. 38 (April 18, 1885), pg. 765 (765) 140 NOTE: Until 1888, Leavenworth was derisively nicknamed “The Kindergarten” in the U.S. Army. See T.R. Brereton, Educating the U.S. Army Arthur L. Wagner and Reform, 1875-1905 (Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2000), pg. 16 50

play a more prominent role in American society. As the influence of progressivism expanded in American society, education became ever-more important as a means of establishing authority and professional recognition. Rush Welter, in his study on education in late 19th and early 20th century America, wrote, “In the progressive movement the Americans would attempt once more to solve their social problems, to restore their liberal democratic utopia, by educational means.”141 Moreover, as this educational movement dove-tailed with the managerial revolution, technocratic education became the wave of the future. Naturally, this broader intellectual movement influenced the way that U.S. Army reformers came to understand the role of military education. It was not only broader intellectual trends that advanced the cause of Leavenworth, it was a new generation of military intellectuals who took up the fight when Emory Upton had fallen. The most prominent of these men was Arthur L. Wagner, a West Point graduate and prolific author. Carol Reardon notes that, “Under the influence of Arthur L. Wagner, the instruction at Leavenworth was shaped by the methods of the German officer-training system, primarily the historical study of campaigns and the use of , either on maps or with troops. After 1888 the curriculum included problems teaching tactical problem-solving and the command of forces of all combatant arms.”142 The army even went so far as to develop its own version of Kriegspiel, the war game designed for use by the German General Staff. The American version was designed by 1st Lt. Totten of the U.S. Artillery. The game was much simplified, as its German counterpart was considered too complex (even the Germans reduced the complexity of their game under the guidance of Verdy du Vernois in 1876).143 Nonetheless, wargames would never achieve the prominence in American military planning and education as they did in Germany. Despite this German influence, the curriculum at Leavenworth would remain ruthlessly focused on the battles and campaigns of the Civil War. If Wagner promoted German methods of military education, he also made sure that the material studied would be purely American. He was distressed by the Eurocentrism of the early Leavenworth curriculum, and feared “the existence of a clique of Prussophiles”.144 Wagner conducted his battle against the Prussophiles with a published volume entitled, The Campaign of Koniggratz in 1889. The book was well-written and researched,

141 Rush Welter, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (New York, Columbia University Press, 1962), pg. 242 142 Millett, The General, pg. 73 143 Lt. C.A.L. Totten, “Strategos: The American Game of War” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 1, No. 1, 1880), pg. 185 144 Brereton, pg. 21 51

but it was a clear attempt to denigrate the Prussian army and its accomplishments. A typical example is Wagner’s claim that, “The superiority of the Prussian to the Austrian army, as a collective body, was not greater than the individual superiority of the Prussian soldier to his antagonist.”145 This was almost the exact opposite of the truth, as the individual Prussian had no advantage over the individual Austrian soldier: rather, it was the Prussian officer corps and general staff that provided the edge. Clearly, Wagner’s conclusion was more political than analytical. To credit the Prussian command system with the victory meant that the American army had something to learn from them; but if it was merely the quality of the individual soldier that made the difference, then America had nothing to learn from the Prussians. After all, what U.S. Army officer would be so foolhardy as to suggest that a foreign soldier was superior to the American rifleman? As Wagner himself declared, “[W]hen our volunteers in the Great [Civil] War had thoroughly learned their trade, and had become regulars in everything but name, they displayed a degree of courage and war-like skill unequaled in the contemporary armies of the Old World[.]”146 As the role of Arthur Wagner makes clear, Leavenworth’s emergence as the center of army intellectualism gave it a concurrent role as the center of indoctrination.147 The central tenet of U.S. Army faith was the primacy of the American rifleman and the irrelevance of the foreign military experience. The dominance of infantry, and the subservience of all other service branches, was Leavenworth orthodoxy. When any heresiarch arose within the ranks, it was almost always from the artillery branch. The pointed critiques of artilleryman James Chester, and his losing battle against the increasingly abstract and theoretical bent of military education was the most prominent example. Other artillery officers, such as John P. Wisser (who spent the great majority of his career as an instructor at West Point in chemistry), were decidedly more prescient in their estimates of future military developments.

Military History as a Professional Necessity Through the School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry at Ft. Leavenworth, military history started to become an essential part of military professional development. Arthur Wagner, for one, hoped that military history would counteract the complaisance of peace. Since his days as

145 Arthur L. Wagner, The Campaign of Koniggratz: A Study of the Austro-Prussian Conflict in the Light of the American Civil War (Kansas City, Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Co., 1899) (Orig. 1889), pg. 19 146 Ibid., pg. 9 NOTE: Wagner here refers to the American Civil War as the “Great War”. 147 J.P. Clark, pg. 229 52

a young lieutenant, Wagner had been a prolific writer on military affairs in the various service journals. In 1884, he wrote caustically of, “The failure of the American people to profit by the lessons of costly experience has made the military history of the United States a record of blunder and extravagance. Satisfied with the successful termination which their boundless resources have enabled them to give to each war, they do not often consider the exorbitant price in blood and treasure that they have paid for victory; and, salving their wounded vanity with the balm of final triumph, they close their eyes to the blots which a want of warlike preparation has placed upon the national honor.”148 Wagner, during his critical tenure at Leavenworth, sought to rectify this. If skepticism towards the relevance of foreign military experience was rife, at least military history itself gained respect within the U.S. Army. Carol Reardon has noted, “By the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, several literary traditions coexisted among the army’s growing corps of theorists. A small minority of traditionalists, like [Capt. Herbert H.] Sargent, found it difficult to break from the attraction of the European military experience. Many more, like [Col. Arthur L.] Wagner and [Maj. John] Bigelow, had been weaned from European military history to examine the as practiced in the United States. No matter whether an author was an “Americanist” or “Europeanist,” he invariably used historical example to illustrate a larger point.”149 Naturally, given the cultural climate, it was American military history that often had the greatest authoritative weight in debate. For reformers, the long peace of the late 19th century made the choice of American historical examples more problematic. That said, no examples were more powerful than those from the early part of the Civil War. The state of military unpreparedness, and the North’s failure to use the Regulars as a cadre for the volunteer regiments, was a potent argument. A young Lt. J.G. Harbord, who would later prove one of Pershing’s favorites during the World War, evoked the record of needless defeats in his argument for military preparedness: “Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, Big Bethel and a dozen other defeats tell that lack of preparation means disgrace and disaster.”150 On the eve of the Spanish-American War, another officer wondered, “It is questionable in the writer’s mind whether the results of our civil war have not been detrimental rather than beneficial in a military sense… They apparently believe that our civil war has demonstrated that the lessons of

148 Wagner, “The Military and Naval Policy of the United States”. pg. 371 149 Reardon, pg. 107 150 Harbord, “The Necessity of a Well-Organized and Trained Infantry at the Outbreak of War, and the Best Means to Be Adopted by the United States for Obtaining Such a Force”, pg. 4 53

history have no application to the United States and that while in other countries, and even in our Revolution, it has been an axion that even levies of patriotic citizens are but armed mobs (as has just been demonstrated in ), with us at the present time, they will be for some unaccountable reason, be disciplined soldiers.”151 As previously noted in the discussion on the myth of the citizen- soldier, George Washington was another source of historical authority for reform-minded officers. For example, in Gen. William H. Carter’s 1915 book, The American Army, every chapter began with a quote from the first president on military policy. Given that American military history was paramount in the hierarchy of authority, reformers wishing to adopt foreign practices often tried to connect them to the American experience. A late example of such an approach comes from Major John Philip Hill, a National Guard officer who was able to witness German army maneuvers in the fall of 1911. He clearly admired the German “nation in arms”, and sought to connect it to the earliest American colonies. Hill compared the unity of the people and the army in Germany to that of the colonial militias in New England. He wrote, “The necessity for self-preservation placed in the hands of the New England farmer the firelock; that necessity having passed, the village commons of the New England townships are no longer the training grounds for the bands of local militia who formed the citizenship and army of the New England settlers.”152 As previously stated, the teaching of American military history functioned primarily as the Trojan Horse of nationalism, overturning the hitherto unchallenged authority of European military theory.153 This nationalistic approach to history was hardly exclusive to the military, as it could be found throughout the profession. Indeed, arguably the most famous historian from this period, Frederick Jackson Turner, was of this bent. In 1889, Turner reviewed Theodore Roosevelt’s multi- volume history, The Winning of the West. Roosevelt’s book portrayed the conquest of the American West as the triumph of a vigorous and entirely new race, which was itself the product of the mixing of many races. “Americans,” Roosevelt wrote, “belong to the English race only in the sense in which Englishmen belong to the German.”154 Turner lauded this history, writing, “Aside from the scientific importance of such a work, it would contribute to awakening a real

151 Gen. George W. Wingate, “The Urgent Necessity for an Increase in the Artillery” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 21 No. 90 (November 1897), pg. 431 (429-441) 152 Maj. John Philip Hill, “The Autumn Maneuvers of a German Army Corps” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 3 (November-December 1912), pg. 339 (339-355) 153 Reardon, pg. 5 154 Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, Vol. 1 (New York City, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), pg. 38 54

national self-consciousness and patriotism.”155 In this regard, the U.S. Army was very much in step with the times insofar as its use of history was concerned. Few military men could resist this impulse to glorify the nation through military history, and if the nation profited, it was at the expense of historical accuracy. The Civil War often served as the benchmark against which all other military endeavors were judged and often found wanting. Upton demonstrated this nationalist myopia that would prove so prejudicial to the development of American military thought and doctrine. For example, in this conceit, Upton claimed that open order tactics were, “Transplanted to Europe by French officers who served in our armies[.]”156 In so doing, Upton completely ignored the fact that such tactics were popularized in Europe after the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48), when the brilliant performance of the Austrian light troops, notably the Croatian known as Grenzers, literally saved the kingdom of Maria Theresa from the army of Frederick the Great. Similarly, in a speech to the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, Major W.R. Livermore bizarrely claimed, in an otherwise perceptive argument, that almost all of the military innovations of the previous half-century were American. He stated that, “Our civil war has been followed by a long peace and if we ourselves have failed to learn all of its lessons, we have taught our pupils on the other side of the ocean to make good use of them, as their fathers made of the lessons of the American wars of the eighteenth century.”157 Such an approach to history made it easier to apply the same intellectual filters to the observation of modern wars.

Old Army Officers and the New Military Professionalism The new school system for military post-graduate studies was about more than just professional education; it was about establishing officers on par with other professions. Shortly after the founding of the School for Application for Infantry and Cavalry in 1881, an anonymous army officer wrote to the Army and Navy Journal calling for professional military exams, “If we want to have a profession, then we must keep our profession up to the standards of other professions[.]”158 In the late 19th century, theoretical knowledge, technical skill, educational

155 Frederick Jackson Turner in Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York, Hill and Wang, 2007 (orig. 1982)), pg. 13 156 Emory Upton, The Armies of Asia and Europe (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1878), pg. 270 157 Livermore, “The Modern Battle and the Effect of New Weapons (a speech given on April 8, 1889), pg. 172 158 Line (pseudonym), “Examinations for the Line” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 21 No. 6 (September 8, 1883), pg. 113 55 standards, and group self-identification are the necessary prerequisites for claim to the status of ‘professional’. Not surprisingly, “The officer corps of the Old Army, like its civilian counterparts, used all these measures to establish its claim to professional status.”159 The highly influential Arthur L. Wagner was a great believer in this new professionalism: “Just as civilian professionals pursued specialized education, certification, discrete knowledge, and status, Wagner followed and advocated a similar course by engaging in many of the same professionalizing activities as his civilian counter-parts, particularly those in the sciences or political sciences.”160 The desire to be deemed “professionals” in the increasingly technocratic and progressive America of the late 19th century was particularly pressing for the officer corps. There was no getting around the fact that the American soldier was held in low esteem by the civilian world. Thorstein Veblen, the famed Progressive Era economist, noted in his seminal 1899 work The Theory of the Leisure Class, “In this country the aversion even goes the length of discrediting – in a mild and uncertain way – those government employments, military and civil, which require the wearing of a livery or uniform.”161 He further characterized the military as a “servile organization.”162 One young officer wrote, “The soldier is a social outcast, not on account of his uniform, but because he is a soldier. To the minds of many, the words “soldier” and “loafer” are synonymous… On every possible occasion, the soldier is made to feel that he is a beat and a fraud; and this general indifference, dislike and contempt for the Army is one of the chief causes of desertion. It is hard to retain an honorable man in a calling that is stamped as ignominious and classed as disreputable.”163 Captain M.B. Stewart lamented that, “the army has for years labored under the burden of a popular theory which relegates to it the function of a dump-ground for recalcitrants and derelicts.”164 A British observer wrote, “During his enlistment the solider is debarred from all respectable civilian associates; for the native American shows only contempt for his soldiers.”165 The low esteem in which soldiers were held was further exacerbated by the

159 Reardon, pg. 3 160 Brereton, pg. xvi 161 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1902), pg. 80 162 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Business Enterprise (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904), pg. 391 163 Lt. W.A. Campbell, “Comment and Criticism on ‘Desertion in the U.S. Army’” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 10 No. 41 (November 1889), pg. 767 164 Capt. M.B. Stewart, “The Army as a Factor in the Upbuilding of Society” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 36 No. 135 (May-June 1905), pg. 391 165 “In the Ranks of the United States Army” in Blackwood’s Magazine Vol. 149 No. 906 (April 1891), pg. 475 (471-76) 56 relatively humble origins of most army officers, which was decidedly more modest than their counterparts in the navy.166 The imprimatur of education also served to further entrench the West Point clique within the military hierarchy. The immediate post-Civil War period actually witnessed a weakening of their grip, as proven veterans of the conflict were able to ascend to high rank without a West Point education.167 Over time, by virtue of their typically longer terms of service, West Point graduates came to again dominate the officer corps. The introduction of higher education requirements for professional status only accelerated the trend. By the Spanish-American War, the social distinction between West Pointers and those promoted from the ranks was, according to one veteran of that conflict, “an issue not far behind that of the racial color line.”168 Such was the power of professional accreditation in the new American society.

Rise of the Professional Journals One of the most important developments for the United States military in the decades after the Civil War was the rise of the professional journals. If officers were to be separated from each other by distant postings at sea on in garrisons on the western frontier, they would be able to present and debate their ideas through the journals. These new forums for debate helped catalyze the intellectual components of military professionalism. They also provided their readers with a regular flow of information on foreign developments, including translations of the latest articles from overseas. The physical isolation of the U.S. military no longer translated into an intellectual isolation. The first of the service magazines was the Army and Navy Journal (1863), which emerged at the tail end of the Civil War. It was a source of general information, often pedestrian and picayune, but helped provide a sense of community. Even such mundane matters as births, marriages and deaths were covered in its pages. The social life of the various posts was covered, as well. In contrast to many of the other service magazines, it lasted only until the early 20th century, when it gave way to the more comprehensive Army and Navy Register founded in 1879. The latter remained in publication, with varying name changes, until 2014.

166 Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784-1898, pg. 222 167 Ibid., pp. 222-23 168 Charles Johnson Post, The Little War of Private Post (Boston, Little Brown & Co., 1960), pg. 212 57

The vanguard for new ideas was the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (1879), the primary journal for reform-minded officers.169 It covered a broad array of subjects, often pertaining to the core functions of the United States military and national strategy. Financial woes brought its publication run to an end in 1917. The specific branch journals came into existence in rapid succession: the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association (1888), the Journal of the United States Artillery (1892), and the Infantry Journal (1893).170 The branch journals varied in terms of their willingness to challenge the status quo. Generally speaking, the cavalry was least likely to do so, and the artillery most likely. However, in the years prior to the First World War, the Infantry Journal stepped to the fore, particularly under the editorship of .

“Almost Anything Is Better Than European Tactics”: The Service Journals and the Foreign Military Experience171 The spread of service journals in the later 19th century certainly gave American officers a better understanding of tactical developments overseas. However, many of the advantages of these expanded intellectual horizons were counter-balanced by a blinkered nationalist perspective that discounted the relevance of foreign experience. Even when there was no national bias, there was a marked tendency to report on foreign military developments in profoundly detached, bureaucratic fashion, bereft of any meaningful analysis. An example of this tendency was an article on the Italian artillery by Brevet Maj. J.P. Sanger. Sanger’s account includes an exhaustive review of the organization, personnel, and training of the Italian artillery, but his review of its doctrine is one sentence long: “There is no feature of the artillery tactics essentially different than our own.”172 In 1885, the Army and Navy Journal ran a series of articles on the European armies, which covered only their uniforms and organization. It would be unfair to claim that the analysis of foreign doctrine was always so indifferent. There were notable exceptions, such as that of Major-General (later to be the

169 Millett, The General, pg. 71 170 NOTE: These journals all remain in publication, with some name changes (for example, the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association in now Armor Magazine. 171 Capt. Charles Ayres, quoted in Perry D. Jamieson, Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865-1899 (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1994), pg. 94 172 Brevet Maj. J.P, Sanger, “The Italian Artillery” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 1, No. 3, 1880), pg. 511 58

Commanding General of the United States Army) when he was sent as an official observer to the French army maneuvers in the fall of 1881. His analysis was printed as an article in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States the following year. Noting that the French had adopted a loose-order tactical approach, Schofield actually thought that this would increase the degree of control exercised by higher commanders, as their view of the battlefield was no longer obscured by the smoke of dense firing formations.173 Nonetheless, Schofield recognized that the widely-dispersed troops required a greater effort by their junior officers to maintain the forward momentum of the attack. He wrote, “These operations require the utmost skill, coolness and good judgement on the part of junior officers commanding small subdivisions which must act in a great degree independently of each other, and yet in general harmony.”174 Schofield also argued that the power of the defense enjoyed a relative increase with the breech-loading rifle, and that assaulting such defenses required some tactical revision: “A tolerably well defended line can no longer be taken by the bayonet nor by the rush of a cloud of skirmishers. It must be first crushed by a superior and well directed fire sustained a sufficient length of time and then increased to its utmost volume during the final advance. This method may require a much longer time than the old charge of bayonets, but the result under favorable circumstances as to relative strength should be none the less certain.”175 Inevitably, a considerable amount of commentary on foreign military developments was negative. One of the most pejorative terms in the U.S. Army was to be labelled a “Prusso-maniac”. For example, in 1875 the Army and Navy Journal lamented that since the of Napoleon III at Sedan, a “new Prusso-mania has set in, and at present rages with even greater violence than the Prusso-mania of the eighteenth century.”176 Naturally, there was nothing that mere Germans could have to teach the victors of the American Civil War: “The new Prussia shows only the powers of careful preparation of enormous numbers of men to crush an antagonist by mere weight.”177 That same year, the Army and Navy Journal scornfully dismissed those who, “In blind and unreasoning admiration of the success of German arms in 1870-71, France, Austria, Russia,

173 Maj.-Gen. John M. Schofield, “Report and Observations Upon the Maneuvers of the French Army and the Military Systems of France and Other Nations of Europe” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 3, No. 1, 1882), pg. 155-56 174 Schofield, “Report and Observations Upon the Maneuvers of the French Army and the Military Systems of France and Other Nations of Europe”, pg. 156 175 Ibid. 176 “Autumn Manoeuvers” in Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 13 No. 7) (September 25, 1875), pg. 104 177 Ibid. 59

and Italy, have been hard at work ever since, copying the non-essential and faulty tactics of Prussia[.]”178 Like Upton and Sheridan, the Army and Navy Journal saw little that America could learn from foreign examples. America was a different, and far superior, place than Europe. On the cusp of the new century, 1st Lt. Elmer W. Hubbard complained in the pages of the erstwhile reformist Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, “Papers are not infrequently written, inspired by European methods, and drawing conclusions, which, based upon conditions which will probably never be fulfilled here, are as inapplicable to us as though we inhabited a different .”179 Not only was the foreign military experience denigrated, it was even blamed for errors committed by the U.S. Army itself. For example, Lt. John H. “Machine Gun” Parker blamed the army’s reluctance to embrace the machine gun on foreign military writers. In a thinly-veiled reference to himself, Parker extolled the “heroism of the plain American Regular, who, without hope of preferment or possibility of reward, boldly undertook to confute the erroneous theories of military compilers, who, without originality or reason, have unblushingly cribbed the labored efforts of foreign officers, and foisted these compilations of second-hand opinions upon the American Army as textbooks of authority and weight.”180 Parker heaped further scorn on the “servile imitators of foreign pen soldiers” who ridiculously claimed that artillery was necessary to assault a fortified position held by infantry equipped with modern rifles.181 Sadly, for tens of thousands of Doughboys in France, it was these “foreign pen soldiers” and their “servile imitators” who would have the last laugh. There were officers, particularly those who wrote for the reformist Journal of the Military Institution of the United States, who tried to take a middle path. This view was most sensibly articulated by 1st Lt. C.D. Parkhurst, who wrote “We doubtless can learn much from the study of foreign methods, equipment, armament, etc. But it is also doubtless true that methods of our own, better suited to our country and ideas would have to be devised. The conditions of a service, and the peculiarities of a people always finally determine the details of all such work[.]”182 Capt.

178 “American Tactics in Europe” in Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 13 No. 10) (October 16, 1875), pg. 152 179 1st Lt. Elmer W. Hubbard, “The Military Academy and the Education of Officers” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 16 No. 73 (January 1895), pg. 2 (1-24) 180 1st Lt. John H. Parker, History of the Detachment Fifth Army Corps, at Santiago, With a Few Unvarnished Truths Concerning That Expedition (Kansas City, MO, Hudson-Kimberley Publishing Co., 1898), pp. 11-12 181 Ibid., pg. 12 182 1st Lt. C.D. Parkhurst, “Mountain Artillery” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 11 No. 60

Edward Field hoped to find middle ground by identifying the common features of the German, French and British tactical systems, and using these as a basis for a revised American doctrine. He pleaded, “Would it not be the wise part to accept as practically settled the question of general formations, and, without any Prussi [sic] or Franco mania, see what can be done towards adapting the valuable features to their systems to our wants and capacities[?]”183 Still, nationalist tendencies were not easily overcome, Lt. Joseph Bachelor, who seemed open to learning from foreign examples, still argued that any new military textbooks should “not be translated or imported, but clear, concise, and American.”184 [emphasis added] August Kautz similarly called for an approach to war rooted in the national political culture: “Our military system should be essentially American and republican.”185 Some American officers were bolder in their willingness to learn from foreign military experience. Captain Dana T. Merrill hurled the gauntlet down in front of his fellow officers, “There are many officers in our army who constantly decry copying foreign models and shout for the American methods of training, but none of them have told us what these American methods are like, other than to give accounts of Indian fighting on the plains. We must admit that in spite of our supremacy in industrial life, our advance in the military arts has not kept pace with the world.”186 Merrill listed what he believed to be some of the shortcomings of American infantry training, concluding that, “In the end an [American] officer becomes a first-class sportsman, a good athletic director, a good barker, but he has forgotten that he was intended first of all to become a good infantry officer.”187 If American officers were determined to reject European tactics, the Europeans, in turn, were quite content to ignore the U.S. Army altogether. In 1887, the United States had a sobering reminder of where it stood in the estimation of the world’s militaries. That year, the armies of the world were invited to send representatives to a grand exhibition in Chicago. Called the International Military Encampment, it coincided with the Inter-State Industrial Exhibition then taking place in the city. It was expected that a minimum of 15,000 troops would attend, with some projections running as high as 50,000. In the end, only 1,800 men showed up, and they were almost

1 (January 1890), pg. 53 183 Capt. Edward Field, “Battle Tactics” in The United Service Vol. 1 No. 2 (February 1889), pg. 175 (162-78) 184 Bachelor, pg. 68 185 Kauntz, “Military Education for the Masses”, pg. 488 186 Merrill, “Infantry Training” pg. 65 187 Ibid., pg. 66 61 all from the U.S. Army. Norway, Sweden and Denmark did, however, send small contingents. The rest of the world declined the invitation. The Army and Navy Journal, with considerable understatement, noted that, “The International Military Encampment at Chicago has not apparently proved a brilliant success thus far.”188 In 1897, the German General Staff produced a comprehensive survey of the world’s militaries, but did not bother even including the U.S. Army. As Allan Millett noted, “However slighted American officers may have felt, they would have agreed that the military posture of the United States was hardly worth serious note by Europeans.”189

188 “International Military Encampment” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 25 No. 11 (October 8, 1887), pg. 201 (201) 189 Millett, The General, pg. 69 62

Chapter 4: The Army in the Age of Mahan, 1888-98 Introduction The gradual disappearance of the western frontier coincided with the transformation of American life through unprecedented economic expansion. The extraordinary growth of the nation in this period argued strongly against the validity of examples from the Old World, as America re- wrote the rules on economic progress. American business not only transformed the nation through industrialization and urbanization, but also the fabric of American culture itself. It was therefore inevitable that this process would shape the military discourse. The most obvious effect was that as the nation’s commercial power and reach grew, so too did the possibility of armed conflict with commercial rivals. Naturally, the U.S. Navy played a leading role in this debate, but the army was not far behind. As the military demands of the western frontier diminished, the U.S. Army sought to redefine its strategic role within the context of war with the country’s European commercial rivals. Another important effect of the nation’s industrial success was the growing influence of business terminology and industrial management theory on the military discourse. American business provided a wealth of ideas that figured prominently in the hierarchy of evidence that refereed debate within the military discourse.

Shield and Sword: The Strategic Implications for the U.S. Army of Mahanian Strategy With the end of the Indian wars and the rise of America as an economic power, the U.S. military began to look abroad for its future role. Previously, geographic isolation made the European powers remote threats. After all, it is only natural that the geographical reality of a nation should dominate and shape its strategic thinking. Germany, for example, was never able to escape the grip of geography in its strategic planning. The strategic shortcomings of German planning in the two world wars provide ample evidence of this fact. In each case, the Germans attempted to take on the world within the intellectual context of a state fighting for dominance in central Europe, surrounded by hostile powers (i.e. Russia and France). Britain, in marked contrast, always thought in the broadest strategic terms precisely because of its global empire. Military inferiority never prevented an British victory over Germany precisely because of its superior strategic perspective. However, the effect of geography changes with technology. In the late 19th century, steam engines and railroads greatly reduced the distances between the United States and the great powers of Europe. Moreover, the dramatic growth of the American economy meant that the nation had

63

more commercial interaction with the Old World. The possibility of armed conflict slowly permeated the nation’s collective conscience. Not surprisingly, it was the U.S. Navy that led the war, as the nation’s premier armed force and first line of defense. With the 1890 publication of ’s seminal The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, the matter was thrust into the public forum. The increasingly aggressive stance of American naval theorists induced military planners to envision the army’s secondary role as one of defending the continental United States and overseas naval stations. In other words, a more aggressive Navy is complemented by a more defensive army. In 1897, Gen. John Schofield, Commanding General of the U.S. Army, wrote: “In a country having the situation of the United States, the navy is the aggressive arm of national military power. Its function is to punish the enemy until he is willing to submit to the national demands. For this purpose entire freedom of action is essential; also secure depots whence supplies may be drawn and where necessary repairs may be made, and harbors where cruisers or other vessels may seek safety is temporarily overpowered. Hence arises one of the most important functions of the land defense: to give the aggressive arm secure bases of operation at all the great seaports where navy yards or depots are located. It may be that in special cases military forces may be needed to act in support of naval operations, or to hold for a time important ports in a foreign country; but such service must only be auxiliary, not a primary object. Foreign conquest and permanent occupation are not a policy of this country.”190

With the navy leading the way, the army took its first tentative steps towards thinking outside of the North American context. Even so, the Civil War retained its unbreakable grip on the American strategic imagination. The assumption was always that any major conflict will take the form of a European army invading the continental United States. So, for example, a letter in the Army and Navy Journal, warned darkly of, “The coming Canadian war, in the possible, nay probable future[.]”191 Similarly, decades later, the Army War College would continue to run student exercises based on an British via . Of course, it was presumed by military planners that the army would quickly (and magically, given the planners’ assumptions) expand, as it did during the Civil War, to meet this threat. The Army and Navy Journal itself was incensed when an Ohio congressman, Henry B. Banning, scoffed at the notion of war against Canada or when he introduced a bill to reduce the size of the U.S. military: “The fallacy of asserting

190 John M. Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army (Charleston, SC, BiblioBazaar, 2007) (Original Published in New York, 1897), pp. 527-28 191 “Dragoon” (pseudonym), “Sabre and Pistol” in Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 11, No. 43) (June 6, 1874), pg. 682 64

that we shall never be invaded from Canada or Mexico is obvious. Mexico is raiding into Texas almost daily, and only our extreme forbearance saves us from a war, on innumerable pretexts, on that frontier. The [C.S.S.] Alabama treaty is too recent, and the rankling causes of discontent between this country and England are too well known to remove any fear of complications in the direction of Canada.”192 The 1886 Prize Essay for the Journal of the Military Institution of the United States was an examination of the defense of the border against an invasion from Canada.193 Given the nature of its mission, it is no surprise that the navy led the way in terms of wider strategic planning. It should therefore come as no surprise that the Naval War College was founded in 1884, well before its army equivalent. However, it was not simply an issue of ships at sea, but of the more pressing reality of the . The steam powered ship made the world a dramatically smaller place. One very insightful army officer who appreciated this fact warned, “Our first century was spent outside of the arena of the world. Remote in position, without great local accumulations of wealth, without complications of interest, we lived our quiet youth. Now steam has brought us close to Europe. Now near our frontiers, great centres [sic] of our business nerves, offer to an enemy vulnerable points which paralyzed, would paralyze our prosperity. Now we are likely to become, and in fact must soon become formidable competitors in every market with the great trading nations. Now we have interests abroad which are endangered by threats of aggression far from our own borders, and no question can excite Europe without agitating us.”194 [emphasis added] In a similar vein, Lt. George Scriven warned in 1889 that, “Europe watches us closely, and knows as much of us as we know ourselves; our geographical isolation has grown less with each mile of increase in the speed of sea-going ships, and with every foot of cable laid; and the which separate us from Europe now serve only to connect.”195 A new strategic world beckoned, one created, in no small part, by American industry.

Industrial Management On a visit to America in the years before World War One, the English poet Rupert Brooke

192 Editorial, “Army Reduction” in Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 11, No. 44) (June 13, 1874), pg. 696 193 1st Lt. Thomas M. Woodruff, “Our Northern Frontier” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 9 No. 33 (March 1888), pp. 1-32 194 Lt. Joseph B. Bachelor, “A United States Army” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 13 No. 55 (January 1892), pp. 55-56 195 Lt. George P. Scriven, “The Army and Its Relation to the Organized and Unorganized Militia” in The United Service, Vol. 1 No. 5 (May 1889), pg. 522 (519-32) 65

was walking down Broadway in New York City when he had an epiphany. Looking at the scene around him, it struck him: “It all confirms the impression that grows on the visitor to America that Business has developed insensibly into a Religion, in more than the light, metaphorical sense of the words. It has its ritual and its theology, its high places and its jargon, as well as its priests and its martyrs.”196 Brooke was observing the culmination of a process that had been radically transforming America for nearly fifty years prior. Commerce was the engine, the very life-blood of the United States, both materially and culturally. The power of industrialization was undeniable, and it left no aspect of American life untouched. As the economist Thorstein Veblen wrote, “The material framework of modern civilization is the industrial system, and the directing force which animates this framework is business enterprise.”197 Indeed, the industrialization of America, and the close of the frontier, demanded a reconceptualization of modern civilization and what it meant to be an American. For much of the early history of the United States, economic development was synonymous with the process of civilizing the untamed land and claiming the frontier. Only by becoming economically viable could the new land accommodate the nation’s growing population. Economic activity in the early republic, particularly the proverbial family farm, gave rise to a self-reliance and stewardship of one’s own affairs that was portrayed as the wellspring of public virtue. If one was not the owner of one’s own business or farm, at least one had the feeling of being a stakeholder. As industrialization transformed a growing proportion of the population into wage-earners with no stake in the firms which employed them, the connection between labor and public virtue became more tenuous. Homo economicus was evolving into homo industrialis, and “the virtue of self- reliance had become as anachronistic as small-scale production.”198 The Progressive Era spawned numerous responses to this crisis, but the one that took hold among the upper echelons of American business, politics, and academia was that this transformation was the inescapable result of progress. As a product of progress, it was, in Panglossian terms, “the best of all possible worlds.” Perhaps more than anything else, it was industrialization that transformed America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The scale of the transformation was staggering. In 1860, American industrial output lagged behind Great Britain, Germany and France. By 1900, American

196 Rupert Brooke, Letters from America (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), pg. 26 197 Veblen, The Theory of the Business Enterprise, pg. 1 198 Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1995), pp. 82-83 66 industrial output exceeded that of Great Britain, Germany, and France combined.199 The industrial workforce quadrupled, and grew to 25 percent of the total labor force.200 It would be more accurate to say, as Walter Licht argues in his seminal work, Industrializing America, that the varied and complex nature of economic development during this period is better expressed as the commercialization of America, rather than the more geographically-limited industrialization.201 Nonetheless, it was the imagery and ethos of industrialization that captured the popular imagination. Albert Bushnell Hart, a Harvard professor of history, confessed, “If the intellectual man is wanted in the world of affairs, that is a lucky thing for him, because in most of the concerns of America the dominant person is the man of business.”202 The extraordinary growth in American industrial output made the modern industrial era a profoundly American phenomenon. Russell Sturgis, a prominent art critic of the late 19th century, even called for American artists to embrace industrialism. In doing so, they would escape the shackles of the Old World and establish the authority of the New: “We shall pay for the and universal civilization of the future by giving up something, not inconsiderable, of the limited civilization of the past.”203 The Craftsman, the intellectual journal of the Arts & Crafts movement in America, opined: “Whence it happens that in this one instance our youth as a people, our freedom from precedent and convention have advanced us in an important branch of the greatest and most useful of the arts, beyond the point occupied in that same branch by the English or by any continental nation. Enterprise, courage and wealth speak from the great assemblages of iron, brick and stone which dominate our American streets as eloquently as the older architectural piles of Europe tell their story of religion, popular rights, or seigneurial power. Henceforward, the erection of the building devoted to business uses is the prerogative of the American architect, who is even now passing into the history of the fine arts, in which he will be studied in the number of those who have really created[.]”204

This is all the more remarkable given the relatively anti-industrial bias of the Arts & Crafts movement. Even if they could not embrace industrialism, they could not help but praise business

199 Walter Licht, Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pg. 102 200 Ibid. 201 Ibid., pp. xv-xvi 202 Albert Bushnell Hart, National Ideals Historically Traced, 1607-1907 (New York, Harper & Bros., 1907), pg. 233 203 Russell Sturgis, “Modern Architecture” in The North American Review Vol. 112 No. 231 (April 1871), pg. 391 (370-391) 204 “The American Style” in The Craftsman Vol. 4 No. 4 (July 1903), pg. 278 67

as a truly American phenomenon. Moreover, the obvious success of American industrial know- how lent authority to ideas associated with it. This made American business doubly attractive to the U.S. Army as a source of inspiration, in that was both undeniably effective and uniquely American. It appealed equally to the strong nationalist and positivist impulses of the age. Industry was not just a source of good ideas, it was the quintessence of modern American civilization. Industrialization was certainly integral to the progressive movement in both purpose and method. For progressives, the wrenching social and economic changes transforming America were largely the products of industrialization. That is not to say that progressives universally condemned it. On the contrary, many openly acknowledged and celebrated the country’s economic power, seeing it as the engine of modernization and the path to a brighter future. As Teddy Roosevelt stated, well before Calvin Coolidge’s pithier observation to the same effect, “We are a business people. The tillers of the soil, the wage-workers, the business men – these are the three big and vitally important divisions of our population.”205 Accordingly, Roosevelt argued, “It is our prime duty to shape the industrial and social forces so that they may tell for the material and moral for the farmer and the wage-worker, just as they should do in the case of the business man.”206 Indeed, industrial theory often rose to the level of philosophy, if not theology, with its transformative powers. The American psychologist and feminist leader, Ethel Puffer Howes, wrote enthusiastically of a modern industrial town: “This it is which makes the aesthetic value of efficiency in the industrial system. This ultimate integrity of the industrial organism is gained by guarding the self-respect and the moral and mental growth of the employee by the mutual practice of industrial efficiency.”207 It would replace the small farm or business as the new wellspring of public virtue. Naturally, the business acumen that was the hallmark of America would now even be applied to government. Writing in 1897, Harvard president Charles W. Eliot wrote, “Democracies will not be safe until the population learns that government affairs must be conducted on the same principles on which successful private and corporate business is conducted.”208 Moreover, the

205 Theodore Roosevelt, “A Charter of Democracy (An Address to the Ohio Constitutional Convention, Columbus, Ohio, February 21, 1912)” in Progressive Principles: Selections from Addresses Made During the Presidential Campaign of 1912 (edited by Elmer Youngman) (New York, The Progressive National Service, 1913), pg. 54 206 Ibid., pg. 61 207 Ethel Puffer Howes, “The Aesthetic Value of Efficiency” in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 110 No. 1 (July 1912), pg. 91 208 Charles W. Eliot in Welter, pg. 196 68

regulatory agenda of the progressives had the practical effect of giving the federal government a managerial role in the largest corporations. As Roosevelt advocated, “The administrative officer should be given full power, for otherwise he cannot do well the people’s work[.]”209 The result would be a technocratic government exercising “industrial statesmanship”.210 The rise of industrial management was more than a technocratic effort to better administer the disparate functions of a modern corporation. It also fostered a culture of risk-aversion. The trends in American enterprise organization were, in no small part, a response to the economic volatility which characterized the late 19th century. Vertical integration brought raw materials, production, and distribution under one entity. By this means, “The visible hand of managerial direction had replaced the invisible hand of market forces in coordinating the flow of goods from the suppliers of raw and semifinished materials to the retailers and ultimate consumer… More importantly, a firm was able to coordinate supply more closely with demand, to use its working force and capital equipment more intensively, and thus to lower its unit costs.”211 In so doing, risks were lowered as well as unit costs. The formation of industrial trusts, such as U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, or American Sugar, were also intended to lower risks by negating the effects of unchecked competition. These ideas created a wave of corporate consolidation that swept through the U.S. economy between 1897 and 1903.212 The new, risk-averse mentality of large corporations inevitably manifested itself in the internal managerial culture. The new generation of corporate managers were salaried employees. In contrast to the earlier generation of swashbuckling empire-builders, such as Carnegie or Vanderbilt, these managers generally had no equity stake in their companies. This further incubated a culture of risk-aversion, as the managers gained little from radical experiments and innovations; those gains went to the shareholders, while the risk of failure was most acute for the responsible managers. As one historian of the period wrote, “The new managers were the servants of the corporation, salaried employees rather than owners, and they were more cautious and less- willing to take extreme risks. They wanted to control, not exploit, ruthless price competition[.]”213

209 Theodore Roosevelt, “A Confession of Faith (Address Given to the National Convention of the Progressive Party in Chicago, August 6th, 1912)” in Youngman, pg. 122 210 Ibid., pg. 130 211 Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1977), pg. 286 212 John Whiteclay Chambers II, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1992), pg. 55 213 Ibid., pg. 56 69

This managerial philosophy would later find its expression in the “Safe Leadership” mantra of the U.S. Army. Another important aspect of industrial management in the United States was the maximization of throughput. represented a massive outlay of capital into fixed assets, such as plant and machinery. The most obvious way to secure a generous rate of return on such an investment was to maximize the speed and volume of raw materials flowing in, and finished product flowing out, also known as “throughput.” As Alfred Chandler noted in his seminal work on the management revolution in American business, “For managers of the new processes of production a high rate of throughput – usually in terms of units processed per day – became as critical a criterion of performance as a high-rate of -turn was for managers of mass distribution.”214 The concept of throughput would exert a profound influence on American , with combat divisions serving primarily as administrative formations designed to maximize the throughput of interchangeable riflemen and (in World War Two) high-explosives on the battlefield. Given industry’s status as the fulcrum of the new American civilization, United States Army officers frequently appealed to business as an authority in their internal debates. Major George Q. Squier, in a 1906 article, wrote, “The principle of ‘team-work,’ when applied to guide human endeavor, is the paramount discovery of the present century. It is the principle which made it possible for the Standard Oil corporation in a minimum time to plan a campaign and defeat its enemies in any part of the world. It is the principle which allows the citizen to travel in comfort and safety from Chicago to , a distance of 2,000 miles, in less than three days. It is the principle which has concentrated at San Francisco, after the appalling recent earthquake disaster, unprecedented assistance and succor of all kinds. In fact, it is this industrial discovery which has placed the United States ahead of the world in material progress.”215 (italics added) The Infantry Journal noted the considerable overlap between business administration and its military counterpart. The magazine’s editors wrote, “But after all, war and the preparation for war are but a kind of business, though a very serious kind, and it is only natural that the means whereby success in war has been attained and military capable of successfully conducting war

214 Chandler, pg. 241 215 Maj. George O. Squier, “’Team-Work’ in War” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 17 No. 61 (July 1906), pp. 5-6 (5-10) 70

have been created should be models for the lesser affairs of mankind.”216 Gen. William H. Carter argued that officers, “[C]an not have too much knowledge of science, the law, business and the various trades, for all have more or less application to military purposes.”217 General J. Franklin Bell, speaking to the students at Ft. Leavenworth, encouraged the officers to look to business for inspiration. Bell observed, “Though differing in many important respects, there is a certain parallelism between the management of armies and the management of large business enterprises. The management of an army, and each of its units, should as far as possible resemble that of any large, highly organized business undertaking. We need to study common sense business methods, which have demonstrated their sense beyond cavil.”218 Bell also cited modern business practice in arguing for improving the lot of enlisted men. In a speech at Ft. Leavenworth, Bell stated, “With the passing away of unreasoning automatons and the feudal social system of servile submission, has also passed possibility of success along old lines. Large business enterprises learned this long ago, and subordinates not gifted with intelligence, interest, and enterprise are promptly gotten rid of. Every effort is made to arouse intelligence, initiative, to encourage interest and pride – esprit de corps, so to speak – in the business.”219 Over time, American industry did not simply provide ideas to the army, but rather the army itself became a manifestation of the industrial ethos, almost a subset of business enterprise. In 1905, Brigadier-General Henry T. Allen declared, “The army is pre-eminently a business machine (or should be such), and like any other, should be administered on business principles.”220 Further developing the analogy, Prof. J.M. Johnston of Harvard University, the dean of American military historians in the early 20th century, characterized war as, “a business proposition of the most intense possible sort.”221 Germany was able to succeed at the war in Europe, Johnston argued, because of the technical brilliance of her business-like General Staff: “[B]y the calculations of strategists who have spent their lives mastering military history and theory, by playing on networks of railroads with the success and flexibility of a Harriman or Vanderbilt, by tabulating economic

216 Editorial, “Concerning Military History and Business Administration” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 3 (November-December 1912), pg. 399 (399-400) 217 Gen. William H. Carter, The American Army (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1915), pg. 245 218 J. Franklin Bell, quoted in “General Bell to Army Officers”, pg. 22 219 J. Franklin Bell, quoted in “General Bell to Army Officers”, pg. 22 220 Brig. Gen. Henry T. Allen, “Notes on Promotion” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 37 No. 136 (July-August 1905), pg. 2 221 Prof. J.M. Johnston, “The Growth of War” in Infantry Journal Vol. 12 No. 2 (September-October 1915), pg. 174 (173-185) 71

statistics on a larger scale than any university laboratory, and by securing in all these, and many other functions, perfect harmony and smoothness of action.”222 Johnston’s application of technocratic industrial organization, so dominant in the discourse of progressivism, to the subject of war led him to an inevitable conclusion: “[T]he fact remains that modern war demands greater study and skill than at any previous epoch, that it involves more deeply than ever before the prosperity of nations, and that unless a community has studied the organization and equipment of armies in as technical and scientific a spirit as it studies the organization and equipment of its great industrial enterprises, it can stand no chance when it comes to the final arbitrament.”223 How fortunate that America should have the very business skills required of a great military power, in Johnston’s estimation. Accountants and managers were now the Minutemen of modern, industrial warfare. In a similar vein, 1st Lt. William Dunn, in a lecture at the field artillery school at Ft. Sill, made the comparison between war and business insofar as the employment of human capital was concerned. Dunn noted that, “Competition in the industrial world between manufacturing industries is to-day what warfare is between armies – a struggle for supremacy. In this struggle, both armies and industries depend upon organized human labor, trained and directed to accomplish its task. The tasks are different, but the principles that make for efficiency in handling men in the industrial world have some bearing in the handling of men in the military service.”224 Dunn went on to advocate the use of Frederick W. Taylor’s theories of scientific management and time-and- motion studies to script every movement of the gun crew. In his most famous work, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), Taylor wrote, “[I]n almost all of the mechanic arts the science which underlies each act of each workman is so great and amounts to so much that the workman who is actually best suited to doing the work is incapable of fully understanding this science… either through lack of education or through insufficient mental capacity. In order that the work may be done in accordance with scientific laws, it is necessary that there shall be a far more equal division of the responsibility of the management and the workmen than exists under any of the

222 Ibid., pg. 183 223 Ibid., pg. 185 224 1st Lt. William E. Dunn, “The Principles of Scientific Management and Their Application to the Training and Instruction of Field Artillery (Lecture Prepared for the School of Fire for the Field Artillery, Spring Term, 1916; Recommended for Publication by the School Staff)” in The Field Artillery Journal Vol. 6 No. 2 (April-June 1916), pg. 230 72

ordinary types of management.”225 Rather than letting gun crews develop their own rhythm and teamwork, technocratic officers would dictate the movements of enlisted men like so many automata. Naturally, the paperwork and record-keeping for such a system would be voluminous, to say the least. The corporatized army mantra was standardization: “We should have a system of standards for all our work, standardized courses of instruction and training and standardized methods.”226 A doctrine emerged of standardized men on standardized equipment, using standardized tactics in standardized battles. The embrace of business concepts by the U.S. Army was more than a mere function of cultural permeation. It was also reflective of the general crisis of American republicanism. An aptitude for war was a traditional component of the republican identity, from the all-conquering legions of republican Rome to the virtù of Machiavelli. This republican was arguably present in the early United States, in the guise of the yeoman farmer, who defended hearth and home against Indian raids and the armies of King George III. However, by the late 19th century, the yeoman farmer had given way to the urban wage-slave and the white-collar overseer. It was not without some trepidation that, in 1917, one of the country’s most prominent philosophers wondered aloud, “What could the great business-loving republic do toward producing a fighting morale?”227 The author even likened morale to a stock-market, to express its extreme sensitivity to events.228 Reconciling this new socio-economic order with the tradition of republican militarism was not easy. The resolution came, in part, through a new interpretation of business acumen and commercial rivalry as being translatable into military power and prestige. The U.S. Army accordingly embraced the industrial ethos as part of this cultural reinterpretation of republican virtue in the industrial era.

The “Danger Space”: Offensive Tactics in the Age of Smokeless Powder As the wars with the Indians in the west died down, the U.S. Army began to consider its future, particularly against industrialized opponents (such as the British in Canada). A recent Leavenworth graduate, Lt. William Burnham (who would command the 82nd Division in World War One), wrote in 1889 of this transition, “The hardships endured by the men, often for days

225 Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1913), pp. 25-26 226 Ibid., pg. 288 227 William Ernest Hocking, Morale and Its Enemies (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1918), pg. 5 228 Ibid., pg. 6 73

without food or drink, struggling over the mountain crags in the deadly heat Southern and Mexico, and through all evincing a respect for and devotion to their officers, will be lasting proof of the merits of the American soldier. But the days of savage warfare in this country are numbered; and now, in time of perfect peace and quiet, should the training of our forces be devoted to their use in modern civilized battles.”229 For many officers, the dispersion of the army in numerous small outposts and forts throughout the west had been deleterious to the army’s professional development. Burnham echoed this sentiment in urging that, “The first move in this march of improvement should be the concentration of the Army in as large posts as practicable.”230 The prospect of facing a first-class European army in the forced the army to re-evaluate its tactical doctrine. American military officers were acutely aware the combination of field fortifications, rapid-fire breechloaders, and smokeless powder is making the tactical offensive an extremely difficult undertaking. After all, field entrenchments had become the norm during the later stages of the Civil War. The question still dividing officers was the relative importance of small arms versus artillery in the attack. Traditionalists believed that accurate and steady rifle fire would eventually beat-down the defenders, making them vulnerable to a final assault. Reform-minded officers made the case for ever-greater amounts of artillery. One such officer, Lt. William Birkheimer, wrote, “This greater use of temporary cover has rendered artillery more necessary than ever. The attack of infantry alone on an equal number of good infantry behind field-works of slight profile and armed with breech-loading rifles, is a desperate undertaking”.231 The fact remained that Upton’s writings still formed the basis of the U.S. Army’s tactics. For many officers, even many reform-minded officers, Upton’s system was capable of adapting itself to modern battlefield conditions. Captain John B. Babcock (a recipient), wrote confidently in 1886 that, “Fortunately for us, the Upton tactics are so sound in principle, and the formations they authorize are so elastic, that they seem to possess the germ of every change that could be desired.”232 Other military men were less sanguine as to the continued applicability

229 Lt. William Burnham, “Military Training of the Regular Army of the United States” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 10 No. 41 (November 1889), pg. 614 230 Ibid. 231 Birkheimer, “Has the Adaption of the Rifle-Principle to Fire-Arms Diminished the Relative Importance of Field Artillery?”, pg. 222 232 Capt. John B. Babcock, “Fighting Drill” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 7, No. 26) (June 1886), pg. 168 74

of Upton’s system. The details of drill prescribed by Upton belonged to an earlier era. One such critic unfavorably compared the more flexible German drill system with Upton’s minutiae: “The [German] subalterns have full discretion at drill, and they may manage their educational course as they please, provided that certain results are obtained within a given time. The War Department at Berlin only look to results, and there is no general manual for the instruction of the men, no Upton’s Tactics to worry lieutenants into an early grave.”233 Another officer echoed these concerns about the slavish obedience to pedantic parade ground drill, “We have wandered, in our military faith, from an orthodox preparation for war to the heresies of a mechanical manual, stiff lines, and magnificent ceremonies.”234 The unease over current tactical doctrine was even felt in Congress. In introducing a bill to increase the number of battalions per regiment from two to three, Senator Manderson of Nebraska argued that the proposed changes would be better suited to the modern battlefield, dominated as it was by rapid-fire breechloaders.235 The proposed reforms would increase the number of companies in each regiment from ten to twelves, organized into three battalions. Manderson’s reforms were hotly debated, not so much for their impact on the battlefield, but for the changes in the promotion system that they would entail. An artillery officer, writing in support of the Manderson bill, wrote, “It seems to be universally agreed that the necessary change in “battle tactics” brought about by the general introduction of long-range, breech-loading arms (artillery and small arms), and metallic ammunition, render a change in infantry organization, in the direction pointed out in the “Manderson Bill”, absolutely necessary to meet the new conditions of battle.”236 However, Congress balked at the expense of adding two additional companies to each regiment, and the reforms were not implemented until the Spanish-American War had begun. The War Department responded to the growing unease over tactical doctrine by convening the Bates Board (under Lt. Col. John C. Bates) at Leavenworth to review tactics in 1888. This ultimately produced the 1891 Drill Regulations, which continued the drift towards a more open order. The Uptonian squad remained the basic unit of fire and battlefield formation. However, although groups of four remained the basic unit of maneuver, the squad itself was now defined as

233 Army and Navy Journal Vol. 23 No. 11 (October 10, 1885) pg. 207 234 Lt. W.H. Johnston, “Practical Drill for Infantry” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vo1. 13, No. 58 (July 1892), pg. 708 (705-15) 235 “The Three Battalion Bill” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 23 No. 25 (January 16, 1886), pp. 496-97 (496-97) 236 D.D. Johnston, “All for Each in Turn” in Army and Navy Journal Vol 23 No. 28 (February 13, 1886) pg. 581 (581) 75

a double-rank of four, or eight men commanded by a . The company, in turn, remained the basic unit of tactical decision insofar as it was the captain who called out the commands, which the platoon commanders simply implemented. Nonetheless, the impulse for centralized control remained strong, as the Army and Navy Journal observed: “Careful instructions are given as to the use of cover and the exaction of rigid fire discipline.”237 Historian Perry Jamieson also noted the desire to increase control in the regulations, “To improve the chances of sustaining an attack in the face of heavy fire, the Leavenworth board tried to give field officers more direct control over their men than they had exercised during the Civil War.”238 However, the extent to which American tactical doctrine had been refined left many unsatisfied. Lieutenant C.J. Crane noted, “Since the days when Tilly and Wallenstein fought their dense brigades, almost solid squares, the tendency has been steadily to reduce the depth of the fighting formation of the infantry, and many hoped that the new drill regulations would continue the practice and give us a single-rank formation, something essentially American and well thought of by more than on leader of opinion on the other side, as well as being peculiarly adapted to our national characteristics.”239 One of the army’s more prolific military thinkers, in part thanks to his education in France and Germany before attending West Point, Capt. John Bigelow wrote during the Spanish-American War, “Since the Civil War, or in the last 32 years, we have made but two changes of drill regulations; I shall not attempt to state the number of changes that have been made in our uniform… It would seem that our general staff has had less time for thinking about tactics than for pondering on what Von Moltke called the ‘millinery of the military profession.’”240 The Uptonian squad system, with its cumbersome numbering formula, remained in place. Soldiers were expected to renumber themselves in the heat of battle to maintain their squads for the purposes of battlefield control and maneuver.241 One of the most debated issues was the trade-offs between closer and more open tactical formations. Open tactical formations, typically referred to as “skirmish lines” or “open order”, had the advantage of dispersing troops as they advanced across a field swept by small arms and artillery

237 “The New Drill Regulations” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 29 No. 1468 (October 10, 1891), pg. 114 (114) 238 Jamieson, pg. 108 239 Lt. C.J. Crane, “Our New Drill Regulations for the Infantry” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 13 No. 60 (November 1892), pg., 1148 (1148-1173) 240 Capt. John Bigelow, Jr. Reminisces of the Santiago Campaign (New York City, Harper & Bros., 1899), pp. 20-21 241 P. Borger, “The Squad Formation: A Few Suggestions for Its Improvement” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 18 No. 79 (January 1896), pg. 97 (97-102) 76 fire. Not only did the open order minimize casualties, it also was naturally suited to the more individualistic American character in the view of many U.S. Army officers. Major J.P. Sanger, the Inspector General, wrote in 1896 of the open (or “individual”) order that, “In fact it may be said that the individual order is in accord not only with our military experience but with the characteristics of the Americans as a people accustomed to shift for themselves under all circumstances, and thus trained to habits of independence and self-reliance, both of which are indispensable attributes on infantry soldiers deployed in this way.”242 Early in his career, it should be noted, Sanger had been selected to accompany Emory Upton on his world tour in 1875-76. However, many officers feared that this approach too readily forfeited the advantages of mass and control. Of course, mass and density meant casualties, but many military theorists accepted higher losses as the unavoidable price of victory in the age of industrial warfare. One such proponent of mass was Captain Edward Field. In 1885, he envisioned clouds of skirmishes covering immense, tightly-packed formations capable of shattering an enemy line: “For the moment must come when life becomes nothing, and minutes incalculable, when victory will remain with that general who will break through the curtain [of skirmishers] with a mass of men, call it line or what you will, but compact enough to be directed, and with a volcano of fire that will shrivel up every thing in its path.”243A similar blend of open and close formations in the attack was proposed in 1886 by 2nd Lt. L.W.V. Kennon. His analysis was based on the simple observation that, “Strength means numbers, and unless superior numbers be pitted against the defenders, it is as useless to expect success in the attack by fire as in the attack by assault, and the latter cannot, generally speaking, be made without the former.”244 Kennon called for a skirmish line reinforced by successive waves of support that would occupy the attention of the defender. Behind this protective screen, the main force would advance until it was in range to deliver close, overwhelming fire against the enemy entrenchments. Having secured fire superiority in this manner, the attackers could then take the position through a final charge with cold steel. In contrast to many of his fellow officers, Kennon cited extensively from foreign military sources to support his argument.

242 Maj. J.P. Sanger, “The Hunting Knife and Individual Rifle Pit” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 19, No. 84) (November, 1896), pg. 410 (409-415) 243 Capt. Edward Field, “No Footsteps But Some Glances Backwards” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 6, No. 23) (September, 1885), pg. 243 244 2nd Lt. L.W.V. Kennon, “Considerations Regarding the ‘Battle Tactics’ of Infantry” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States (Vol. 7, No. 25) (March, 1886), pg. 13 77

For many officers, one of the greatest arguments against more open order tactics was the loss of control that it would entail. In a time of rapid industrialization, and the rise of vast corporations and industrial trusts, centralized control seemed to be the wave of the future. Open order tactics flew in the face of this trend. Indeed, it even raised the possibility that non- commissioned officers would become tactical decision-makers, something for which few armies in the world were prepared. Writing in 1889, on American officer noted the beginnings of this trend overseas, “In fact, the New German Drill Book provides for group leaders who are non- commissioned officers, who take charge of small groups which are out of the immediate charge of their officers.”245 He was then so bold as to suggest that the U.S. Army do the same.246 Echoing this, Lt. E.M. Weaver wrote, “There is a suspicion abroad that the individual may not have received that attention in recent systems of drill… The matter is the subject of the most active thought in military circles across the sea; it stands out boldly in the new German drill system[.]”247

The Cult of the Rifleman In the late 19th century, the American cult of the rifleman bordered on obsession. In the words of historians Bruce Gudmundsson and John English, American infantry units, “came to resemble full-time rifle clubs.”248 The military periodicals of the time, particularly the Army and Navy Register and Army and Navy Journal, covered competitive rifle matches with the same fervor as a modern newspaper would cover a hometown college or professional football team. General S.V. Benet, Chief of Ordnance, proudly declared in 1887, “The American infantry soldier fires 800 rounds a year – about ten times the amount of soldiers of any other nation uses in the same time. This amount of practice makes them the best marksmen in the world. We have an Army of marksmen.”249 European armies were prone, albeit less so, to this same obsession with long-range musketry. This was particularly true of the .250 German Major-General von Boguslawski, a prolific military theorist, warned against this tendency: “The endeavor to utilize the advantages of a new rifle to the utmost is most natural. However, experience shows that such

245 Burnham, pg. 617 246 Ibid., pg. 651 247 Lt. E.M. Weaver, “The Individual Training of the Soldier” in The United Service Vol. 1 No. 4 (April 1889), pg. 341 (341-353) 248 John A. English and Bruce I. Gudmundsson, On Infantry (Westport, CT, Praeger Publishers, 1994), pg. 6 249 Gen. S.V. Benet quoted in “Modern Guns” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 25 No. 9 (September 24, 1887) pg. 169 (169) 250 English and Gudmundsson, pg. 6 78

endeavors always result in the infantry forgetting the conditions of real warfare, setting an exaggerated value on the advantages of the weapon, and ascribing to it an undue influence in tactics, which has many other factors to take into account.”251 The obsession with long range musketry had its critics. One more prominent, and puckish, critic was Gen. George Wingate, a National Guard officer and Civil War veteran. In an article criticizing Army rifle training, Wingate vividly conjured-up the following, “If twenty-five years ago some traveler returning, like Stanley, from an expedition into the unexplored recesses of Africa, had announced that he had discovered a rich, warlike, and ingenious people, maintaining at a large expense an army commanded by officers trained in a special school, and which army was provided with costly weapons, extremely destructive in the hands of those who knew how to use them properly, but that these specially trained officers devoted their energies to teaching their soldiers how to go through certain curious motions with their weapons in a prescribed cadence, and utterly neglected to teach them how to use them for purposes of warfare, the result being that these weapons were of little more practical value, in the hands of the men who carried them, than so many broomsticks, - such a traveler’s tale would have been treated with derision. Yet that is precisely the state of affairs in the United States at that date, although a great war had just closed.”252 Wingate praised Russian and German training techniques, notably the latter’s emphasis on volume of fire and realistic training conditions.253 Another critic, Lt. George B. Davis, wrote, “We have failed, in our Firing Regulations, to distinguish between firing in battle, and firing in a match.”254

Creation of the Division By the end of the 19th century, it was become ever-more apparent that if the United States was to become more engaged with the world, then better information-gathering was in order. Obviously, intelligence-gathering was nothing new to the army, but it lacked a dedicated intelligence apparatus. For example, during the Civil War, famed detective was

251 Maj.-Gen. von Boguslawski, “The Progress of Tactics from 1859 to 1890, and the Attack of the Future” (translated by Capt. Gawne) in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vo1. 13, No. 56 (March 1892), pg. 351 (346-355) 252 Gen. George W. Wingate, “Practical Workings of Rifle Practice Against an Enemy” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vo1. 13, No. 58 (July 1892), pg. 728 (728-737) 253 Ibid., pg. 737 254 Lt. George B. Davis, “Infantry Fire” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vo1. 13, No. 56 (March 1892), pg. 314 (306-20) 79

selected by Gen. George McClellan to create an intelligence service for the Army of the Potomac. McClellan had come to know Pinkerton, a railroad detective, when he served as vice-president of the Illinois Central Railways company.255 A variety of ad hoc intelligence services were organized by the Union, the most effective being that led by Col. George H. Sharpe.256 Intelligence operations were also necessary against the Plains Indians, but these were also organized on an informal, as- needed basis. There was no permanent organization entrusted by the gathering, interpretation and dissemination of intelligence. A major step forward in remedying the situation were the centralization of intelligence activities under the Military Intelligence Division (MID). The MID came into being as the result of an 1885 request by the Secretary of War to the Adjutant General for information on several foreign governments and their militaries. The Adjutant General had to confess that his office had no such information, so an embryonic MID was formed the following year.257 The MID received an important boost only a few years later, in 1889, when Congress authorized the appointment of military attachés to U.S. embassies abroad. Their reports, and any other information gathered by the MID, were then analyzed and released as pamphlets, or through the service journals, to a wider U.S. Army audience.258 The first real test of the MID as a wartime institution was the Spanish-American War. The MID was able to insert agents into to make contact with rebel leaders. It also worked with Frederick Funston, then a civilian recently released by Spanish authorities in Cuba (Funston was to go on to an extraordinary career in the U.S. Army).259 However, the subsequent operations in the Philippines proved the most challenging for the MID. Not only were they facing a guerilla force fighting on its own turf, but they crossed swords with Japanese military intelligence for the first time.260 During this time, the MID’s actions against Japanese espionage earned it the enmity of the Provost Marshal of the Philippines, J. Franklin Bell, a seemingly minor incident that was to

255 Col. Bruce Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff: 1775- 1941 (Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1986), pg. 29 256 Ibid., pg. 31 257 Maj. Gen. Ralph H. Van Deman, “Memorandum I (April 8, 1949)”in The Final Memoranda: Major General Ralph H. Van Deman, USA Ret., 1865-1952, Father of U.S. Military Intelligence (Edited by Ralph E. Weber) (Wilmington, DE, Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1988), pg. 3 258 Ibid., pp. 18-19 259 Ibid., pg. 6 260 Ibid, pp. 9-10 80 have unfortunate ramifications in the years ahead.261

261 Ibid., pg. 10 81

Chapter 5: The Confusion of Victory: Tactics in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, 1898-1905 “For years now we’ve been drilling, With now then a brush With a band of frisky redskins That don’t take long to crush. We have rounded up train robbers Put down strikes and riots, too. But as for real fightin’ We ain’t had none to do.” - From “Song of the Regulars 262

Introduction America’s geopolitical isolation came to an abrupt end with the war with Spain. In practical terms, the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection served only to reinforce many of the U.S. Army’s assumptions about tactical doctrine. As in the Civil War, the small Regular army successfully served as the nucleus (although not a true dedicated cadre) for a larger volunteer force. Equally important was the success of American musketry in suppressing defensive fire from entrenched positions. The conflict also reinforced American attitudes towards European culture. In a characteristic editorial, the hitherto anti-war Harper’s Weekly took Europe (with the explicit exception of Britain) to task: “The American people are at war because Spain deserves to be driven from the continent. Europe can tolerate this relic of medievalism, this inventor of the Inquisition, this lover of bull-fights, because Europe is tolerant of bigotry, ignorance, and cruelty – not only tolerant of it, but helpful to it. Nations that sustain the Sultan on his throne, and that are robbing China, pilfering land wherever the opportunity for grabbing presents itself, cannot find Spain a disagreeable neighbor[.]”263 At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Robert Bullard recorded in his diary a thought shared by few of his peers, “Military brag and conceit of officers of all grades are excessive, undeniably excessive and obtrusive. Officers, high and low, brag of our mental, physical, and moral qualities as soldiers in the most confident manner. They do not hesitate to put one American against ten Spaniards and give the former the victory. I fear that such

262 From Louis B. Coley, “Song of the Regulars” in Spanish-American War Songs: A Complete Collection of Newspaper Verse During the Recent War with Spain (edited by Sidney A. Witherbee) (Detroit, Sidney A. Witherbee, 1898), pg. 190 263 Editorial, “Our Way and Europe’s” in Harper’s Weekly Vol. 42 No. 2158 (April 30, 1898), pg. 410 (410-11) 82 a feeling is to bear bad fruits.”264 Spain, a relic of its former self, was a perfect symbol of the decay of the Old World. Even Carl Schurz, a former Union general, emissary to Spain and opponent of the war, used the metaphors of the nationalist discourse in stating, “there is no glory to a young robust giant in kicking a poor old cripple.”265 Contempt for the foreign, especially Europe, would be an increasingly common leitmotif of American military thought going forward. The Spanish-American War marked a milestone in the nation’s emergence as a world power insofar as it had defeated a European power on both land and sea. Although Spain was decadent even by the standards of a decadent Europe, few Americans doubted the significance of their achievement. The cultural and racial superiority of the United States was now manifest (at least in the nation’s collective imagination), and the world could not help but notice. Even the otherwise staid Scientific American could barely contain itself at the sight of American troops bound for the Philippines, describing them as “the finest, lustiest, and most magnificent specimens of manly strength to be found in the whole world”.266 The American sense of superiority would be further reinforced by its observation of the first major conflict to attract its attention in two decades: the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Many Americans, both military and civilian, would see themselves reflected in the hardy Boer citizen-soldiers, fighting to maintain their independence against British imperialism. The lessons of this conflict seemed to confirm the U.S. Army’s zeal for marksmanship and its cavalry tactics.

The U.S. Army at the Dawn of a New Era No state’ll call him “noble son,” He ain’t no ladies’ pet, But let a row start anyhow, They’ll send for him, you bet! He don’t cut any ice at all In Fashion’s social plan, He gits a job to face a mob, The Reg’lar Army man The millin’, drillin’, Made fer killin’, Reg’lar Army man.267

264 Lt. Col. Robert L. Bullard, “Reversion – A Reminder” in Infantry Journal Vol. 7 No. 2 (September 1910), pp. 274-75 265 Carl Schurz, “A Case of Self-Sacrifice” in Harper’s Weekly Vol. 42 No. 2157 (April 23, 1898), pg. 387 266 “Departure of Troops for Manila” in Scientific American (June 18, 1898), pg. 387 267 Joe Lincoln, “The Reg’lar Army Man” in Brownlee, pp. 120-121 83

The Spanish-American War came on the heels of the close of the Indian Wars. The Plains Indians had been pacified with the demise of the religiously-inspired Ghost Dance movement in 1890. Few officers knew which way the service should turn with the end of its long service as the frontier constabulary. Promotion remained notoriously slow, with Civil War veterans still occupying ranks as low as captain. One officer wryly commented in 1889, “The captain should be a father to his company, in our army – through no fault of his own – he is too often its grandfather.”268 It was a time of acute strategic drift for the U.S. Army. The traditional foe, the Native Americans, had been crushed, but no new threat was yet visible. However, domestic threats, in the form of industrial labor movements, were a tempting new focus for an army in search of a mission. The wrenching socio-economic trauma of industrialization, and the struggle to redefine the nation’s identity, often resulted in violence as the nascent labor movement sought to find its voice. As Allan Millett rightly observed, “For the line officers of the United States Army the last decade of the century was a period of intellectual crisis.”269 Some even went so far as to suggest that the Army should re-orient itself towards domestic policing duties, particularly in light of the labor unrest that marked the period.270 The experience of the Civil War and Reconstruction had certainly given the army considerable experience in quelling domestic troubles. The social upheavals of the Gilded Age seemed to warrant a greater role for the army in keeping the social peace. In 1896, a National Guard officer named Maj. Winthrop Alexander, wrote a sobering article detailing, on a state-by-state basis, the anti-riot activities of the military.271 The influential Arthur Wagner cited the violent railroad strikes, and the tense racial relations in the South, as potential military problems. The railroads were, of course, a very sensitive matter for the U.S. Army given their important strategic role in the event of war. Wagner concluded, “These, and other causes unforeseen, may render a prudent and determined use of the Regular Army necessary to calm the troubled waters of society.”272 The largest troop movement in the United States between the Civil

268 Lt. H.R. Lemly, “The Physical Training of the Soldier” in The United Service Vol. 1 No. 2 (February 1889), pg. 125 269 Millett, The General, pg. 69 270 Millett, The General, pg. 70 271 Maj. Alexander Winthrop, “Ten Years of Riot Duty” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 19 No. 82 (July 1896), pg. 1 (1-62) 272 Wagner, “The Military Necessities of the United States, and the Best Provisions for Meeting Them”, pg. 265 84

War and the Spanish-American War was for the suppression of the 1894 Pullman Strike in Chicago.273 A visceral dislike for organized labor is evident in much of the military commentary on the movement. For example, the Army and Navy Register veritably bristled with hostility in a 1903 article entitled, “The Enmity of Labor” in which it excoriated the practice of some unions to deny membership to veterans.274 The Register declared, “The effect is that of an outrage. It is as if the labor union confesses itself in sympathy with lawlessness and disorder. A hatred of the military and the ostracism and punishment of those in military organizations are sentiments and activity which ought not to be entertained in law-abiding, liberty-loving communities. It is a short step from that to anarchy.”275 Clearly, there was no ambiguity in the Register’s position. The Journal of the Military Institution of the United States ran similar, albeit more scholarly articles, on the suppression of labor unrest, such as Lt. Richard W. Young’s 1888 treatise on “Legal and Tactical Considerations Affecting the Employment of the Military in the Suppression of Mobs; Including an Essay on ”.276

Mobilizing for War The possibility of a more active role in domestic was soon dispelled by a more pressing and traditional threat: war with a foreign power. Spain’s hold over Cuba had long been in peril, and the turbulence it caused periodically rose to the fore in American politics (Presidents Franklin Pierce and Ulysses S. Grant, for example, had both offered to purchase Cuba from Spain). The latest round of fighting between Cuban rebels and the Spanish authorities had begun in 1895, and attracted considerable attention among the American public. In January 1898, the battleship U.S.S. Maine was sent to Havana to guard American interests on the island. Several weeks later, the ship was destroyed in a catastrophic explosion, which killed 258 of her crew. Despite Spanish protestations of innocence, the American public was outraged, and war declared in April 1898. The U.S. Army was called to prepare a force for the invasion of Cuba. Despite Emory Upton’s advocacy for the “expandable” army, the force that went to war

273 Coffman, The Old Army, pg. 251 274 Editorial, “The Enmity of Labor” in Army and Navy Register (Vo. 33 No. 1225) (June 13, 1903), pg. 12 275 Ibid. 276 Lt. Richard W. Young, “Legal and Tactical Considerations Affecting the Employment of the Military in the Suppression of Mobs; Including an Essay on Martial Law” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 9 No. 33 (March 1888), pp. 67-116 85

against Spain had more in common with its Civil War counterpart than the later American Expeditionary Forces. The popular and political pressure to enroll volunteer units formed at the state-level was simply too great. However, the War Department did adopt a policy that “each state regiment could include one career army officer, and that this officer did not give up his regular commission to assume Volunteer rank.”277 This provided some leavening of professional military experience in the Volunteer regiments, echoing Grant’s observation about the advantage enjoyed by the Confederate army in the early days of the Civil War. The service schools also provided an additional level of higher military training to the otherwise untested officer corps. In tune with the progressive faith in such institutions, Harper’s Weekly declared of the American officer corps, “Yet, their theoretical training has been so thorough, and their intelligence is so marked, that they can be depended on to pick up very quickly in the field of actual war what they might have learned in advance if the opportunity had been afforded them[.]”278 Harper’s also had great faith in the natural superiority of the American over his Old World counterparts, “There are very few soldiers in the world who compare, man for man, in physique, in courage, in discipline, and in effectiveness, with the troops of our service.”279 Oddly enough, for all of the paeans sung about the American rifleman, and the vibrant small in the United States, the U.S. Army was slow to adopt a modern rifle. From 1873 until 1892, the Army used the Model 1873 Springfield rifle (slightly modified in 1884), which was really just a breech-loading version of the Springfield muskets of Civil War fame. Such a laggardly approach to developments in small arms seemed incongruous for a nation otherwise at the forefront of technological change. Even Scientific American expressed concern about the army’s failure to keep abreast of military technology, hoping to shame the government into action in writing: “Fortunately, America is not dependent on an armed peace. But it would seem well for the nation to do something in improving the armament of her soldiers. The same administration that is creating a new navy might do something to supply a more efficient rifle to the army.”280 Nor was Congressional parsimony solely to blame for this shortcoming. In 1892, the Krag-Jørgensen, a Norwegian designed bolt-action rifle, was adopted as the new standard-issue infantry weapon for the U.S. Army. In contrast to the single-shot Springfield,

277 Millett, The General, pg. 92 278 “The Achievements of the War” in Harper’s Weekly Vol. 42 No. 2165 (June 18, 1898), pg. 582 279 Editorial in Harper’s Weekly Vol. 42 No. 2166 (June 25, 1898), pg. 606 280 “The Modern Military Rifle” in Scientific American (January 21, 1888), pg. 42 86

which fired a .45-70 round with black powder, the Krag fired a smaller .30-40 round using smokeless powder. The weapon had a five-round magazine, with a somewhat cumbersome side- loading mechanism. Despite being a long-overdue replacement for the antiquated Springfield, there was still institutional resistance to the new weapon. Writing in the Journal of the Military Institution of the United States, Capt. C.J. Crane strenuously objected to the new rifle on the grounds that, “The smaller and lighter bullet is more at the mercy of every breeze than was the bullet of our old Springfield rifle[.]”281 In a textbook example of using the cultural discourse to move the debate, Crane appealed to the mythological American rifleman: “European nations know that as a people we are the best shots in the world, and those not friendly to us must be pleased to see us to deliberately lay aside the only aid which might in the beginning make our volunteers and regulars capable of opposing the steady discipline of their soldiers with any hope of success at all.”282 Crane may have taken some pleasure in knowing that a shortage of Krag-Jørgensens meant that the Volunteer regiments went into battle with the older Springfields.283 The inferiority of the Springfield soon became apparent once battle was joined. In an editorial, Harper’s Weekly expressed its outrage that the black powder Springfield was still in use: “Although this is the richest and, in reputation at least, the most progressive country of the world, the soldiers of the effete monarchy used smokeless powder, while our men were obliged to depend upon the old-fashioned explosive, the smoke of which clearly revealed their position to the enemy, and made them an excellent target.”284 Nonetheless, it must be admitted that the antiquated Springfield still had one great advantage in the power of its massive bullet. Frederick Funston, who fought in both Cuba and the Philippines, quipped, “There was one thing to be said for those old Springfields that the volunteer troops were armed with, and that was that if a bullet from one of them hit a man he never mistook it for a mosquito bite.”285 The recoil was terrific, with one veteran likening it to “a hurled brick.”286 Another odd deficiency in the army was a lack of entrenching tools. Despite having prided

281 Capt. C.J. Crane, “The New Infantry Rifle” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 19 No. 84 (November 1896), pg. 488 (488-495) 282 Ibid., pg. 491 283 Graham A. Cosmas, An Army for Empire: The United States Army in the Spanish-American War (College Station, TX, Texas A&M University Press, 1971), pg. 154 284 Harper’s Weekly Vol. 52 No. 2169 (July 16, 1898), pg.683 285 Frederick Funston, Memories of Two Wars: Cuban and Philippine Experiences (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2009), pg. 176 286 Post, pg. 199 87

itself on pioneering the use of battlefield entrenchments during the Civil War, the U.S. Army never saw fit to provide its soldiers with the necessary accoutrements. In a prize-winning essay for the Journal of the Military Service Institute of the United States, Capt. R.K. Evans wrote in disbelief: “The most characteristic feature of our late war was the frequent use and wonderful development of hasty intrenchments by both armies, both on the defensive and offensive. We were the inventors and instructors of this new phase in modern war. All Europe has learned the lesson from us. In all her armies the intrenching [sic] tool is considered as indispensable of the infantryman’s equipment as his rifle… Yet we are the only first class power whose infantry to-day is without an intrenching [sic] tool.”287 Charles Gauvreau, a private in the , described securing their newly-won positions by digging trenches with their bayonets. With considerable understatement, Gauvreau admitted that it “was very slow work[.]”288 Thankfully, picks and shovels were delivered to his unit later that night.

The Trenches of Santiago: American Tactics in Cuba The day before embarking for Cuba, Capt. John Bigelow despairingly wrote to his parents, “The old blunders of the [Civil] War will be done over again with the same results. Lines of battle will be thrown against intrenched [sic] positions before the latter are accurately located; these lines of skirmishers will find themselves suddenly overpowered with fire, and be repulsed before they can be supported; attacks will be commenced before arrangements are perfected for following up such advantage as may be gained. No general, concerted attack will be possible with our troops. To think otherwise is a gross slander on the art of war.”289 Bigelow was not far off in his prediction, but Fortune smiled on American arms during the conflict with Spain – whose army, ravaged by disease and demoralized by years of bitter guerilla warfare, did not put up the level of resistance of which it was theoretically capable.

287 Capt. R.K. Evans, “The Infantry of Our Regular Army: Its History, Possibilities and Necessities” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 22 No. 93 (May 1898), pg. 463 (449-470) 288 Charles F. Gauvreau, Reminiscences of the Spanish-American War in Cuba and the Philippines (Rouses Point, NY, The Authors Publishing Co., 1915), pg. 35 289 Bigelow, Reminisces of the Santiago Campaign, pg. 72 88

Map 3: The Battle of Santiago

The war in Cuba centered around the port-city of Santiago, which harbored Spain’s Caribbean fleet. The U.S. Fifth Corps, under the Civil War veteran Gen. William Shafter, landed to the east of the city at Siboney and Daiquirí on June 22, 1898. The force then moved inland, intended to invest Santiago, its garrison, and fleet. The American vanguard, a cavalry division which included Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders”, encountered a Spanish rear-guard at Las Guasimias on June 24th. The Americans mauled the Spaniards, inflicting some 250 casualties for 68 of their own, but the defenders withdrew unmolested to Santiago.290 Shafter then took a week organizing his corps for the final push to Santiago. The main American attacks were launched on July 1st against El Caney and San Juan Hill. Losses on both sides were heavy, but the Americans prevailed. Fearful of losing their fleet, the Spanish ordered Admiral Pascual de Cervera to make a break for freedom, only to have the fleet destroyed by the waiting U.S. Navy. After prolonged negotiations, Santiago eventually surrendered to Shafter, effectively bringing the war in Cuba to an end. The battles of El Caney and San Juan Hill were hardly a vindication of American infantry

290 Cosmas, pg. 209 89

tactics against an entrenched enemy. Yet, in each case, the accuracy of American rifle-fire, augmented by some artillery and the new Gatling guns, proved sufficient to drive the Spanish defenders from their positions. Capt. Bigelow described the famed attack on San Juan Hill as an almost accidental affair. Without orders, he and his men started advancing against the Spanish positions when they saw nearby regiments doing the same. Like Emory Upton and Mikhail Skobelov before him, Bigelow counted on speed to get his men through the danger zone: “We had advanced without any command that I know of, and the men commenced firing of their own accord. I tried to stop the firing, as I thought it would dangerously retard the advance, and other officers near me tried also to stop it. I even pointed my pistol at the men. But it was no use. A constant stream of bullets went over the heads of the officers and most of the men towards the hill. The men covered about fifty yards of ground from front to rear. There was hardly a semblance of a line – simply a broad swarm… The men kept up a double-time, except when they halted to fire, which they did standing… Our fire, although wild, was not altogether ineffective, and retarded our advance less than at first I thought it would.”291 Bigelow found numerous dead and wounded Spaniards in the trenches, but later learned that most of these men had been hit prior to the assault by an advance line of picked marksmen.292 Looking back on the battle, Bigelow felt that the Spanish never really intended to hold the position on San Juan Hill: “It is hardly fair to say that we drove them from San Juan. They gave us the position.”293 Similarly, Theodore Roosevelt confessed to his friend, Henry Cabot Lodge, that the assault had come perilously close to disaster.294 It did not matter. A legend had been born, and myth was substituted for reality in the future evolution of American combat doctrine. Similarly, the battle at El Caney was hardly an unqualified success for the Americans. A Spanish defender recalled the textbook American advance, “As one who is sure of his subjective superiority, the Saxons in compact masses march out through the mouth of the plain that extends along our front; they advance rapidly and resolutely, three battalions conspicuously in the vanguard.”295 From their commanding position, the greatly-outnumbered Spanish were able to bring a withering fire down on the Americans. An American officer, writing of the brigade of

291 Bigelow, Reminisces of the Santiago Campaign, pg. 124-25 292 Bigelow, Reminisces of the Santiago Campaign, pg. 126 293 Bigelow, Reminisces of the Santiago Campaign, pg.128 294 Cosmas, pg. 218 295 Luis de Armiñan, “The Flag of El Caney” (translated by Frederick T. Wilson) in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 14 No. 49 (July 1903), pg. 92 (90-95) 90

Regulars at El Caney, noted, “the only check that it met was at El Caney where it encountered some four hundred regulars that Spain had in the fight. These brought more than a brigade of us to a standstill and only retired after losing their leader and when outflanked by greatly superior numbers.”296 A veteran of the campaign, General William H. Carter, wrote after the war: The defense of El Caney deserves more than a cursory mention. The garrison consisted of 430 men of the battalion of the Constitution; 40 men of the Infantry of Cuba detachment, and 80 volunteers, making a total of 550 men under command of General Vara del Rey. The American plan of battle had in view the attack of El Caney by an entire division to overwhelm it quickly and permit the troops to close in on Santiago. The heroic defense of General Vara del Rey gave some unhappy hours to the American army commander, besides inflicting a loss of 4 officers and 77 men killed, and 25 officers and 332 men wounded, a total of 438 casualties— almost as many as the entire number of the defenders. General Vara del Rey, his two sons and a brother, were killed in this battle.297

The American wartime tactics employed in Cuba were those promulgated in the 1891 Drill Regulations (a slight revision to the Drill Regulations was made in 1895 to account for the new Krag-Jorgensen rifle). They advocated a more open order approach, in recognition of the lethality of modern firearms. One veteran of the conflict, Charles Post, wrote many years later of his regiment’s training: “Those were the days of close order, and we drilled in it much as in the days of Waterloo or Gettysburg, when troops formed for battle at long range cannon shot, and in full view of each other, unless one side was entrenched. The only substantial innovation was the ‘advance by rushes’ when each squad alternatively advanced while the other covered them with volleys.”298 Francis V. Greene’s observations from the Russo-Turkish War on the danger posed by modern rifles to artillery was borne out in the fight against Spain.299 During the war, the American artillery still used antiquated black powder weapons, with their correspondingly limited range. The Spanish infantry, armed with the superlative Mauser rifle, were often able to keep the American artillery pieces out of their effective range. The new Gatling guns, however, had no such limitation: “Our artillery, using black powder, had not been able to stand within range of the Spanish rifles, but it was perfectly evident that the Gatling guns were troubled by no such consideration, for they

296 Capt. William Wallace, “Our Military Decline” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 5 (March-April 1913), pg. 639 (625-644) 297 Carter, The Life of Lieutenant General Chaffee, pg. 142 298 Post, pg. 22 299 NOTE: Greene actually served as Charles Johnson Post’s regimental commander during the war. 91

were advancing all the while.”300 A historian of the U.S. artillery branch confirmed Parker’s statement, writing: The Spanish-American War demonstrated the danger of lagging technologically. By using black powder field pieces, the Americans quickly revealed their battery positions and brought destructive counterbattery fire from rapid-fire Spanish field artillery and infantry. Also, the smoke slowed down the rate of fire since gun crews had to wait until the smoke cleared away before firing again. Because of this, the Army's field artillery was ineffective and extremely vulnerable to fewer but more sophisticated smokeless powder Spanish field pieces.301

“Civilize ‘Em with Krags”: American Tactics in the Philippines On May 1st, 1898 the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Squadron, under the command of Commodore George Dewey, decisively defeated the Spanish at the battle of Manila Bay. With the strategic harbor under American control, President McKinley sent a force to occupy the rest of the Philippines. In late July, the Civil War hero Wesley Merritt took command of the U.S. Eighth Corps. Merritt’s command soon found itself in a tense three-way stand-off with Spanish regulars in Manila, and Filipino irregulars outside of the city.302 On August 13th, after a short attack on the city, the Spanish wisely decided to surrender to the Americans, in exchange for protection from the Filipino rebels. Relations between the Americans and rebels soon soured, and the Philippine archipelago was plunged into a long and ugly guerilla war. Chasing Filipino guerillas across the islands now replaced the small wars against the Plains Indians as the new proving ground for young and ambitious U.S. Army officers.

300 “Preface” by Theodore Roosevelt in Parker, History of the Gatling Gun Detachment Fifth Army Corps, at Santiago, With a Few Unvarnished Truths Concerning That Expedition, pp. 1-2 301 Boyd L. Dastrup, King of Battle: A Branch History of the U.S. Army’s Field Artillery (, VA, Office of the Command Historian – United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1992), pg. 142 302 Brian McAllister Linn, The Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Lawrence, KS, University Press of Kansas, 2000), pg. 23 92

Map 4: The Philippines

93

Fire superiority was the necessary doctrinal predicate for any infantry assault, and in the U.S. Army, that superiority was generated by rifle fire. The bravery of the Filipino insurgents was not enough to compensate for their lack of military training, which enabled the Americans to obtain fire superiority in even the most disadvantageous situations. One example of this comes from the memoirs of Brig. Gen Perry L. Miles, who was a young lieutenant during the conflict in the Philippines. Miles’ command faced a well-entrenched enemy near the Zapote river. Under heavy defensive fire, Miles deployed his men in order to assist a nearby unit in crossing the river, “I assigned overlapping sections of the enemy entrenchments to squads of my company and told my men to aim accurately and produce a grazing fire, beating the enemy to the punch every time one stuck his head over the top. This they did like men on the target range… It constituted an example of what is meant by superiority of fire, an example I cited many times in after life as the best one in my own experience.”303 Nonetheless, Miles was under no illusion that it was anything but the poor marksmanship of the Filipino defenders that allowed his men to approach so closely in the first place.304 When carefully-aimed rifle fire was insufficient, the Americans employed more aggressive tactics with the rifle. One of the shining stars of the U.S. Army in this period, Frederick Funston (then a colonel of Kansas volunteers) tells of storming enemy entrenchments outside of Manila: “The five companies that constituted our firing line were working their Springfields for all they were worth, and their front was blanketed with a pall of white smoke that resembled a fierce prairie fire, for we had not yet received smokeless powder for these weapons. It was an impossible situation. The enemy in his excellent trenches was pouring into us a fire that we could not hope to overcome by merely firing back at him… Then the order was passed down to fix bayonets, and the ominous clatter could be heard along the whole front. Then to our feet, and forward at a fast walk, firing as we went… When we were within seventy yards the “Charge” was blown, and the men dashed forward on the run, and in a few seconds we were over the works.”305 A reporter from Harper’s Weekly witnessed the assault and astutely commented, “They kept right ahead, and nothing could live before the terrific fire of their old Springfields… the reason our losses were not greater was that our uninterrupted fire kept them down behind their breastworks. And when they

303 Brig. Gen. Perry L. Miles, Fallen Leaves: Memories of an Old Soldier (Berkeley, CA, Wuerth Publishing Co., 1961), pg. 79 304 Ibid. 305 Funston, pp. 184-5 94 fired they did not dare to stand up and take good aim, but were apt to shoot high in the air.”306 Funston gives another example of these tactics at work from later in the conflict: “For the first hundred yards, the woods screened our movements, but when we broke into the open at a distance of three hundred yards we could see that it was fairly alive with the straw hats of the Filipinos, and they opened on us as rapidly as they could fire. Our men, perfectly steady, did not reply until ordered to a few seconds later, and when they did, they fairly combed the top of that dyke with bullets. We were advancing at a walk and it was point-blank range, and our fire so disconcerted the enemy that though they plied their rifles with great vigor, they were not exposing themselves enough to get any sort of good aim.”307 Another veteran of the Philippines similarly noted of the Filipinos, “They would fire a few volleys from their trenches and scatter like a bevy of quail, to meet and some other point, and repeat… but fortunately for us their marksmanship was of the poorest, and very little damage was done.”308 First Lieutenant Louis McLane Hamilton was even more blunt: “their shooting is absurdly bad.”309 In analyzing the war’s lessons, the army paid more attention to its own strengths than the enemy’s weaknesses, and preferred to attribute victory to the superlative aim of the American rifleman. Unfortunately for the men of the AEF, the Germans would not prove such poor marksmen. Funston’s conclusion about suppressive rifle fire while advancing on entrenchments was shared (according to Funston) by Major Kobbé of the U.S. Third Artillery: “[I] confided to him that I expected my regiment to lose heavily, as it would have to carry the strong trenches covering Caloocan on the south, as well as the massive church and adjacent wall. That officer agreed that I had a hard job cut out, and coincided with my view that the best way to avoid heavy losses in the advance would be to cover the Filipinos with fire as we attacked. And to make no attempt to save ammunition. The experience obtained in our attacks of the 5th and 7th [of February] had convinced me by sweeping the ground that we were advancing over with a storm of bullets we could so demoralize the enemy that his fire would be badly directed.”310 Interestingly, the practical effects

306 John F. Bass, “Fighting in the Philippines – The Revolt” in Harper’s Weekly Vol. 43 No. 2207 (April 8, 1899), pg. 355 307 Funston, pg. 195 308 Col. J.A. Augur, “Cavalry in Southern Luzon” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vo. 13 No. 48 (April 1903), pp. 524-26 (517-558) 309 1st Lt. Louis McLane Hamilton, “Jungle Tactics” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 37 No. 136 (July-August 1905), pg. 24 310 Funston, pp. 199-200 95

of such a “storm of bullets” were not appreciated by many officers in the debate over machine guns (see below). Steady, aimed rifle fire was always the first love of the U.S. Army, as compared to the wanton “spray-and-pray” approach of the machine gun. Incredibly, such tactics not only worked against Filipino entrenchments, but also against the stoutly-built Moro villages. The Americans had a number of successes in assaulting the fortified villages of the Islamic Moros. For example, Leonard Woods’ Taraca expedition involved dozens of assaults on such positions, yet cost the Americans only a handful of casualties.311 Clearly, rifle fire, supported by some light artillery, proved most capable of reducing enemy fortifications and rendering them susceptible to direct assault. A young Captain John Pershing would have similar success in assaulting fortified Moro villages during his tenure in the Philippines. This experience undoubtedly exerted a baleful influence on his views on tactics in 1917-18.

War on the Veldt: The American View of the Second Anglo-Boer War If the American experience in Cuba and the Philippines did little to prepare it for modern warfare, conflicts abroad provided more compelling lessons. In the fall of 1899, long-simmering tensions between the Boer republics and the finally boiled over into war. Although the British were ultimately victorious, they suffered a number of humiliating defeats at the hands of the non-professional Boer armies in open battle. Although the Second Anglo-Boer War was closely watched by military professionals around the world, anxious to see England at war, the conflict attracted particular attention from the United States. For many Americans, the Boer cause was not dissimilar from their own war of independence. This fact prompted an estimated 300 American citizens to serve with the Boer forces.312 The American contribution included a group of Fenians (from The Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish nationalist group in the United States) under J.Y.F. Blake, a West Point graduate, former U.S. Cavalry officer, and veteran of the . Inevitably, most American officers read the British experience in as a vindication of their own tactical concepts. The killing power of Boer rifle-fire was seen as an affirmation of the American emphasis on the rifle. Indeed, the Boer rifleman, himself a citizen-

311 Millett, The General, pg. 182 312 Howard C. Hillegas, The Boers in War: The Story of the British-Boer War of 1899-1900 (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1900), pg. 241 96

soldier, proved a favorite of the American military and public. For example, the military writer, Arthur Wagner, in advocating for a civilian rifle program, praised the marksmanship displayed by Boers in the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-81): “we have only to remember the splendid victory of the Boers over the British, at Spitzkop, to appreciate the fact that green troops who can shoot well are sometimes more than a match for disciplined soldiers who cannot.”313 Similarly, Capt. Charles C. Rhodes, in a prize-winning essay for the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, declared, “The immense advantage of having an army of marksmen was very apparent to us in our war with Spain, and was made even more conclusive by the experience of the British in South Africa.”314 The Fenian Blake was caustic in his view of the timidity of the British in the face of the Boer marksmen: “In fighting negroes armed with sticks both Robots and Kitchener were enabled to add a list of letters to their names almost equal to the number in the alphabet; but when confronted with an armed Boer, both found themselves practically helpless.”315 The conflict in South Africa caused many of the world’s armies, including the U.S. Army, to reconsider their infantry tactics. A more open order was advocated by many, often referred to as ‘Boer tactics’. Yet, such an extreme open order threatened concepts of centralized control, exacerbated mistrust of the individual soldier, and forfeited the mass necessary for the traditional bayonet charge. Accordingly, many military thinkers pushed back against this tactical development. American military officers were no less vocal in their opposition to more open order tactics than their European brethren. Maj. Harold Fiske, later to be Pershing’s head of training in the AEF, gave a lecture at Leavenworth on British tactics in the Boer war, in which he noted “To minimize losses, they promptly went to an extreme in dispersion, even attempting at times to attack with intervals of 10 to 15 yards between skirmishers. These thin lines could develop little fire, the men were not under control, and the lines had no weight for shock action, that is, for assault with the bayonet.”316 Implicit in this critique was the idea that rifle fire, not artillery, would produce the fire superiority necessary for the assault. Incredibly, Fiske made this assertion in early 1917. Nor was this critique

313 Wagner, “The Military Necessities of the United States, and the Best Provisions for Meeting Them”, pg. 265 314 Capt. Charles C. Rhodes, “The Experiences of Our Army Since the Outbreak of the War with Spain: What Practical Use Has Been Made of Them and How They May Be Further Utilized to Improve Its Fighting Efficiency” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 36 No. 134 (March-April 1905), pg. 220 315 Col. J.Y.F. Blake, A West Pointer with the Boers (Boston, Angel Guardian Press, 1903), pg. vii 316 Maj. Harold B. Fiske, “Notes on Infantry”, Lecture Delivered to Provisional Second Lieutenants on January 29,1917 at Ft. Leavenworth, KS (Army Service Schools Press), pg. 15 97

simply a matter of firepower and bayonets: many military theorists of the time saw mass psychology as essential in getting troops through the killing zone. Major James Chester (then retired) was another opponent of the ‘Boer tactics’. He derisively commented, “The deer-stalking, do-as-you-please tactics would be excellent if the army consisted of perfectly trained heroes, who knew exactly what to do under any conceivable set of circumstances. But such an army never existed, and probably never will… But as the line of battle lengthens, the opportunities for getting away increase on portions of the line and desperation yields to the instinct of self-preservation unless discipline holds men to their duty.”317 Nonetheless, Chester stated that it was best not to attempt a frontal attack at all under modern battlefield conditions. The psychological challenge of getting infantry to advance against a lethal and unseen foe was acknowledged by many observers. “In these days of strong defensive lines and the great power of weapons in warfare, it is more difficult than ever to induce the soldier to come up to the enemy’s lines, to come into contact with the enemy – by which alone the tide of battle can be turned[.]”318Naturally, even in the U.S. Army, it was assumed that enlisted men and NCOs lacked the courage of their social superiors, “Consequently, the example set by the officer comes more than ever into play, is more than ever a necessity[.]”319 The bayonet was understood as another means to overcome the psychological hurdles of the modern battlefield. The prolific Captain John P. Wisser wrote of the Boer War, “The Lee-Metford and the Mauser gun, in spite of certain advantages of the latter over the former, must be regarded as practically equal in the field. But the possession of a bayonet gave the British a decided advantage over the Boers (who were without one), not because hand to hand conflicts are liable to be very common in modern war, but because the moral effect of its possession confers tenacity on the defense and confidence and esprit on the attack.”320 However, Blake claimed to have seen the bayonet used only once in the conflict, at the battle of Colenso in December of 1899. He described a British attack on a Boer artillery position: “After the [Boer] was blown up, a contest took place between the [M]auser and cold British steel. The [M]auser won easily, cold British steel was buried, and we have never heard

317 Maj. James Chester (Ret.), “Dispersed Order and Individual Initiative in Line of Battle Work” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 32 No. 123 (May-June 1903), pg. 361 318 Capt. John P. Wisser, “The ” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 13, No. 3 (May-June 1900), pg. 265 (249-271) 319 Ibid. 320 Capt. John P. Wisser, “The Second Boer War” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 15 No. 2 (March- April, 1901), pg. 164 (153-74) NOTE: Bayonet or no, the Mauser clip impressed American observers, and it was incorporated into the next generation infantry rifle, the Springfield M1903. 98

from it from that day to this.”321 Another psychological impediment to offensive action was found in the extensive use of trenches by the Boers. One of the American military observers with the British forces, Captain S. Slocum, wrote of the Boer trenches, “They destroyed the power of offensive or aggressive action; and the lack of continuity, caused by the separated and distinct holes, made communication extremely uncertain and hazardous. Their only merit was to me their irregular trace; in all other respects they simply demonstrated how a trench should not be made, for from the moment they completely and comfortably got into them the Boers' chance or even thought of counter-attack or initiative was gone.”322 However, if the Boers were overly-cautious, Slocum felt that the British were overly-brave: “If ever a people or nation exemplified the phrase ‘brave to a fault’ it is the British. If they were less brave there would have been many less faults and more victories in this war.”323 Although Slocum admired the British, he still came to the inevitable conclusion that, “I believe our men with their distinctive individuality and ability to think and take care of themselves to be the best soldiers in the world.”324 If the Boer War vindicated American infantry doctrine, it practically declared the U.S. cavalry to be the ne plus ultra of the mounted arm. One American military observer with the British army wrote, “I will state my belief that our cavalry, as drilled and instructed, is the best in the world to meet successfully the new conditions of war.”325 Capt. Walker felt that the Boers’ combination of accurate rifle-fire and excellent horsemanship completely vindicated the American approach to cavalry. He confidently stated that, “The Boer War has emphasized the value of our system of armament and training of cavalry. In future wars cavalry, well led, skillful in the use of its weapons, and trained to fight mounted or dismounted, will render such an account of itself as will be most gratifying to all lovers of that branch of the service.”326 It was an unfortunately bold claim for what would soon prove the twilight of horse cavalry in the western world. Interestingly, some of the most insightful analysis of the conflict came from artillery officers. Captain John P. Wisser, editor of the Journal of the United States Artillery, faulted the

321 Blake, pg. 91 322 Capt. S. Slocum in War Department – Adjutant General’s Office, Reports on Military Operations in South Africa and China (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1901), pg. 38 323 Ibid. 324 Ibid., pg. 82 325 Ibid., pg. 80 326 Capt. Kirby Walker, “Cavalry Experiences from 1898 to 1901” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 13 No. 45 (July 1902), pg. 43 (41-44) 99

British for their poor reconnaissance, insufficient artillery, and for their reliance on frontal assaults against the entrenched Boers. Wisser wrote, “Moreover, the tendency of the British to make simple frontal attacks, is to be condemned as too great a waste of life in these days of enormous strength of the defense.”327 He also stated that long-range field guns and, more importantly, , would be the artillery weapons of the near future.328 A similar conclusion was later reached by Maj. Harry , who cited the heavy artillery improvised by the British in attaching 4.7- inch naval guns to wheeled carriages.329 Based on his analysis of the Boer War, Captain A.D. Schenk, an American artillery officer, correctly prophesized in 1901 that the battlefields of the future “will be battlefields above all of artillery.”330 Captain Carl Reichmann, an infantry officer attached as an official observer to the Boer forces, agreed with his brethren in the artillery: “The artillery remains the close ally of the other arms, and more so than heretofore. It must overpower the enemy's batteries and keep down his infantry fire; it must utterly smash, wreck, and devastate the point of attack before the infantry can do its work with anything like reasonable losses.”331

Foreign View of the Boer War Unburdened by the cult of the rifleman, foreign militaries were more circumspect in their estimation of rifle-fire in combat. For example, a German observer wrote that, “Thus, again, from this war we draw the lesson as to the decisive effect of the rifle fire of skirmishers, but that must not lead us to underestimate the value of good artillery fire.”332 The German General Staff certainly recognized a problem in artillery-infantry cooperation that continued well into the First World War: maintaining an artillery until the attacking infantry was sufficiently close to the enemy positions. From the battle of Magersfontaine, the Germans observed of the British artillery that, “the was of no value even in preparing the way for the attack, because the British infantry had been kept back too far, so that there was nothing to compel the Boers to

327 Capt. John P. Wisser, “The Second Boer War (cont.)” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 14 No. 1 (July-August, 1900), pg. 46 (19-59) 328 Capt. John P. Wisser, “The Second Boer War (cont.)” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 15 No. 2 (March-April, 1901), pg. 165 (153-74) 329 Maj. Harry L. Hawthorne, “Heavy Caliber Cannon in the Field” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 29 No. 2 (March-April, 1908), pg. 139 (137-151) 330 Capt. A.D. Schenk, “Organization of the Field Artillery” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 16 No. 1 (July-August 1901), pg. 15 (1-15) 331 Capt. C. Reichmann in Reports on Military Operations in South Africa and China, pg. 252 332 Fritz Hoenig, “The Lessons of the South African and Chinese Wars” (translated from Die Woche No. 1 1900) in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 29 No. 1 (), pg. 115 100

occupy their trenches and offer themselves as targets to the English shrapnel.”333 The Germans became even more cautious about the future of cavalry. The lethal range of modern small arms was now such that even reconnaissance could not be safely done from horseback. The German General Staff concluded, “In any case cavalry will be compelled more than formerly to use the horse as a rapid means of locomotion, in order to reconnoitre the adversary on foot.”334 Writing after the First World War, the German military writer, Ge. William Balck, noted that the Austro-Hungarian army had come to very similar conclusions as to the Americans about the efficacy of rifle fire. Balck wrote that, “The [Austrian] regulations of 1903, written under the fresh impressions of the Boer War, placed too high a value on fire effect, and credited fire as the only decisive element.” He quoted the regulations to the effect that, “The infantry batters down the enemy with its fire, then with the bayonet breaks down his last resistance.”335 The Austrians would pay dearly for this logic in the opening months of World War One. By the end of 1914, the Austro- Hungarian army had lost nearly 1,000,000 men killed, wounded or captured. The war had only just begun, and the Austro-Hungarian army was, in the words of Holger Herwig, “nearly eliminated as a fighting force.” 336 The British officer corps did not operate within the same command philosophy of the German auftragstaktik. Accordingly, the German General Staff history found the British officers wanting as tactical decision-makers. For example, at the battle of Magersfontaine, “The leadership of some of the subordinate commanders, who showed a want of initiative, was not altogether beyond reproach.”337 They were particularly critical of Redvers Buller, the British commander at the battle of Colenso. During the battle, when it became clear that the Boer position was much stronger than Buller had anticipated, he largely abdicated command and took personal charge of a gun battery. The German history concluded: “Self-confidence and deliberate reflection had vanished; he was no longer the leader, but merely a fellow-combatant; no longer the general, but only a battery commander. The physically brave man had succumbed morally to the impressions

333 German General Staff (Historical Section), The War in South Africa (translated by Col. W.H.H. Waters) (London, John Murray, 1907), pg. 112 334 Ibid., pg. 75 335 William Balck, Development of Tactics – World War (translated by Harry Bell) (Ft. Leavenworth, KS, The General Service Schools Press, 1922), pg. 28 336 Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-, 1914-1918 (London, Arnold, 1997), pg. 119 337 German General Staff (Historical Section), The War in South Africa, pg. 119 101

of the battle-field.”338

The China Relief Expedition In 1900, American troops joined a multi-national force to punish the Chinese Boxer rebels and to relieve the besieged embassy compound in Peking. The reports of American military officers who observed this conflict were not so much focused on their opponents, but on their European allies. After all, if the Americans were convinced that they had little to learn from the Europeans, then they had nothing to learn from the Chinese. Capt. Joseph Dickman (head of the post-World War One Dickman Board on American tactics) was a noted expert on American tactics. Dickman’s opinion of the Germans was high, but he was more critical of the other nationalities. Nonetheless, in concluding his review of foreign troops, he stated, “In conclusion, I would say that the American soldier came back from China with a distinct feeling of personal superiority, and that when Uncle Samuel calls him, he will not be afraid to meet any of them.”339 Almost exactly the same sentiment was expressed by Capt. William Forsyth, who wrote, “Visits of inspection were made time to time by our officers to the troops of the foreign nations then represented in Peking, the greatest benefit derived being, I suspect, increased satisfaction and confidence in our own arms and equipments, our own methods, and our own service.”340 Not surprisingly, given the different nature of the , cold steel enjoyed something of a revival in this brief conflict. An American observer of the conflict, Major P.E. Pierce wrote, “In China we see how much dependence is placed by foreign troops upon the bayonet.”341 The use of the bayonet by the Japanese particularly impressed their American colleagues. Pierce continued, “From a careful observation of their work I believe they do this largely for the moral effect; to inculcate in their soldiers the desire to come hand to hand fighting with their enemy… There is very little of the finesse of fencing.”342 Accordingly, Pierce advocated a more aggressive bayonet training, with fewer safeguards, to instill a similar aggressiveness among American soldiers. Despite the relative military inferiority of the Chinese troops, battles during the Expedition

338 Ibid., pg. 72 339 Capt. Joseph Dickman, “Experiences in China” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 13 No. 45 (July 1902), pg. 40 (5-40) 340 Capt. William Forsyth, “The American Cavalry in China” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 14 No. 49 (July 1903), pg. 16 (5-20) 341 Maj. P.E. Pierce, “Bayonet Fencing and Machine Guns” in Infantry Journal Vol. 10 No. 3 (November-December 1913), pg. 425 (425-426) 342 Ibid. 102

still provided a chilling reminder of the lethality of even a semi-modern battlefield. During the attack on Tientsin, the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment suffered 22.8% casualties.343 Although the Chinese defenders greatly outnumbered the attacking allied forces (30,000 versus 6,000), they were a mix of Imperial troops and Boxers. The Chinese regulars were armed with Mauser rifles, and likely a few Maxim guns, but it is unclear how many of the defenders were Imperial soldiers versus Boxer irregulars.344 Nonetheless, they were still able to inflict heavy losses on the advancing American infantry. A U.S. Marine veteran of the battle wrote of the Chinese small arms fire, “The shooting of the latter was remarkably accurate, and had we not been covered in one direction by the railway embankment, the losses would have been immense.”345

343 Maj. W.B. Banister, “Surgical Notes on the China Relief Expedition” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 13 No. 48 (April 1903), pg. 626 (616-35) 344 Ibid., pg. 629 345 Capt. Henry Leonard, “The Visit of the Allies to China in 1900” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 29 No. 1 (July 1901), pg. 44 103

Chapter 6: An Army Reformed, 1898-1912 Introduction With the defeat of Spain, the United States suddenly found itself a player on the world stage. It was an economic powerhouse with a world-class navy, a colonial empire, and an army that had finally emerged from its cocoon on the western frontier. The Spanish army was hardly one of Europe’s best, but at least it did not want for bravery nor modern weapons. Most importantly, America began to emerge culturally from its geo-political isolation and assert its new sense of self. The Rev. Josiah Strong captured the public mood when he wrote, “The shock of battle between the Old World and the New, between medievalism and modern progress, together with its momentous issue, has precipitated discussions which have long been preparing.”346 Later, Strong continued: “The nation emerges from the late war with a new temper, a new national consciousness, a new apprehension of destiny.”347 One important effect of the Spanish-American War was a major transfusion of new blood into the officer corps. Many long-serving officers of the pre-war army were found to be too old or infirm for active campaigning. Concurrently, many volunteer officers found a real aptitude and taste for soldiering, such as Gen. Frederick Funston. Not only were the incapable officers weeded out, but the officer corps itself was expanded by act of Congress. The transformation was traumatic for some. One such officer, under the pseudonym “Grundy” wrote to the Army and Navy Register about these new officers, “These men are really worthy, but are ignorant, in many respects, of the orthodox, social customs of the Army. This is gradually breaking up the old esprit de corps, a lamentable fact, as nothing is more essential to good fellowship, than adherence to the old time honored courtesies.”348 The quaint life of the frontier garrison was rapidly fading away. The demands of empire now came to the fore. However sweet the victory over Spain may have been, the public was incensed by the unforced errors of wartime mobilization. Yellow fever and “embalmed beef” hardly rise to the level of Jena and Auerstedt, but they nonetheless put enormous pressure on both public officials and professional military men to reform the U.S. Army. Writing in the Infantry Journal, Major J.W. McAndrew ruefully admitted, “Perhaps no military lessons can be drawn from our Cuban

346 Rev. Josiah Strong, Expansion Under New World Conditions (New York, The Baker & Taylor Co., 1900), pg. 18 347 Ibid., pg. 19 348 Grundy (pseudonym), “Social Ethics in the Service” in Army and Navy Register (Vol. 33 No. 1219) (May 2, 1903), pg. 14 104

campaign of 1898, except in a negative way, in organization, in concentration, and in supply any more than in tactics or strategy.”349 In a similar vein, Gen. William H. Carter wrote, “As the results of the war with Spain unfolded and the causes of many unsatisfactory conditions were analyzed, it became evident that our state of preparation for modern war with a strong and resourceful nation was decidedly in need of improvement.”350 Perhaps the most forthright (and colorful) description came from Capt. William Wallace, who declared, “History presents no more grotesque spectacle than the endeavor in 1898 of our ninety million people to raise an army of two hundred and fifty thousand men. With no handicaps such as a bad cause, lack of desire, want of material or time, our efforts to perform this task would have been discreditable to children. What would have happened if this campaign had really developed into a war God only knows.”351 An indifferent Congress had long stymied reform, but now it was forced to act. Rival groups of military reformers began jockeying for position on Capitol Hill and in the court of public opinion.

Progressivism For the young men whose lives were cast in the generation between 1867 and 1900, Law should be Evolution from lower to higher, aggregation of the in the mass, concentration of multiplicity in unity, compulsion of anarchy in order; and he would force himself to follow wherever it led, though he should sacrifice five thousand millions more in money, and a million more lives. - Henry Adams352

The public push to reform the army happened at a time when the American public’s urge for reform was widespread. Progressivism provided the intellectual rubric for these efforts. Although there was a Progressive Party with an explicit ideological agenda, progressivism itself was a concept that was adopted across much of the political spectrum. It was very much a bourgeois movement, grounded in a positivistic view of human history. As such, it lauded education, scientific reasoning, social harmony and a profound mistrust of excessive individualism.353 As an American phenomenon, progressivism also had deep roots in the nation’s

349 Maj. J.W. McAndrew, “The Chief of Staff: His Duties Within the Division and the Field Army in the Field” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 2 (September-October 1912), pg. 183 (181-214) 350 Carter, pg. 20 351 Capt. William Wallace, “Our Military Decline” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 5 (March-April 1913), pg. 638 (625-644) 352 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (New York, The Modern Library, 1999) (originally published 1918), pg. 232 353 McGerr, pg. 72 105

view of itself as a culmination of historical processes. It was the new creed of a new people, and a new nation founded on a new continent. Equally important was that progressivism was also a distinctly Protestant movement, insofar as it represented the next phase of the long historical struggle of soi-disant “reason” against the tradition, authority, and supposed superstition of the Roman Catholic Church. Progressive ministers, known as “modernists,” emerged as the dominant clerical voice in many of the northern Protestant churches, notably the Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Unitarians and Quakers.354 Even the religion of the progressive ruling class conformed to the spirit of the times, eschewing the spirit of the ages. Progressivism as an ideological expression of the nation of the future also dovetailed with the extraordinary economic and technology progress of the era. For many progressives, the unparalleled productivity of industrialism and the unerring logic of science, as manifested in the social sciences, would restore social harmony if properly applied.355 Even essentially anti- industrial elements, such as the Arts & Crafts movement, valued industrial production for its liberating potential. Oscar Lovell Triggs, a leading theorist of the movement in America, wrote, “We want machinery. We want more and ever more of it. But when machinery has done its work, when all our common and primitive needs are satisfied by quantitative production, when everything that is really mechanical in conduct is mechanicalized, then we escape into a transcendental sphere where the will is free, where conduct is vital every moment.”356 Frank Lloyd Wright expressed a similar sentiment in a 1902 lecture: Handicraftsman and artist succumb to the inevitable as one man at a machine does the work of from five to fifty men in the same time, doing it better, the artist meanwhile prostituting to old methods and ideals the new possibilities of this same machine and again in the name of the artistic! Meanwhile new avenues open, new possibilities expand and notwithstanding injustice and perversion the condition of the workman betters as his margin of leisure widens, his wage rises and the ubiquity of the machine brings him creature comforts and educational advantage, the material comforts of life universally increase and art alone languishes as an element foreign to this condition, a parasite fastening itself at the bud of this growing power to the passing confusion of that power and its own destruction.357

354 Chambers, pg. 106 355 W. Noble, The Progressive Mind, 1890-1917 (Chicago, Rand McNally & Co., 1970), pg. 57 356 Oscar Lovell Triggs, “The New Industrialism” in The Craftsman Vol. 3 (1902), pg. 105 357 Frank Lloyd Wright, “The Art and Craft of the Machine” in The New Industrialism (Chicago, National League of Industrial Art, 1902), pg. 87 106

As a governing philosophy, progressivism believed itself to be a natural product of the technological forces then re-shaping society. On the eve of World War One, the literary biographer Oscar W. Firkins eloquently sketched the process by which technology moved through modern society: It is in science, and the industries and pastimes that are its brood, that discovery and invention are perennially active; that innovation, in the strictest and strongest sense, is omnipresent and all-powerful. The steps by which this influence passes from the laboratory to the , and from the factory to the hearth and the statehouse, by which a new science generates a new economics, a new politics, and a new ethics, must be traced by those specialists to whom this very movement is ceding the world.358

As Firkins intimates, highly-educated technocrats would be required to guide society towards the fulfillment of this new, manifest destiny. Admittedly, democracy and its mistrustful masses had not been kind to the expert in public life; popular wisdom had a jaundiced view of technical knowledge. One progressive activist, the wealthy Boston lawyer and social reformer Joseph Lee, complained, “Democracy’s attitude towards the expert is a mean and foolish attitude. No greater service can be rendered to the democratic cause than that which shall cleanse it of this fault.”359 The rise of the professional in modern society was strongly influenced by the flourishing cult of the expert, whose arcane knowledge of the technical separated him from the common herd. As previously stated, one of the central critiques levelled during the Progressive Era against American society was an excess of individualism. The Victorian ideals that had once held individualism in check had been overwhelmed by the changes in American society towards the end of the 19th century. Numerous Progressive Era reformers, such as the reformist Baptist minister Walter Rauschenbusch, blamed excessive individualism for many of society’s woes.360 Dr. Leete, a character from a futuristic utopia in Edward Bellamy’s hugely influential Progressive Era novel Looking Backward (1888), declared of 19th century society, “Their misery came, with all your other miseries, from that incapacity for cooperation which followed from the individualism on which your social system was founded, from your inability to perceive that you could make ten times more profit out of your fellow men from united with them than by contending with them.”361

358 Oscar W. Firkins, “The Cult of the Passing Hour” in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 113 No. 5 (May 1914), pg. 661 359 Joseph Lee, “Democracy and the Expert” in Atlantic Monthly Vol. 102 (November 1908), pg. 612 360 Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 58-59 361 Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 1887-2000 (Boston, Ticknor and Company, 1888), pg. 167 107

Another progressive reformer wrote that that, “thoughtful and influential sections of our society see that alterations are needed in our national life; and of the unavowed, but nonetheless unequivocal, abandonment of the social philosophy of laissez-faire, laissez-aller.”362 Influenced by Progressive Era culture, the U.S. Army would continue to pay lip-service to American individualism, but would henceforth harbor a lingering suspicion of individual initiative and an undue deference towards technocratic hierarchy. In an age of such rapid scientific advancement, it was perhaps inevitable that all human activity should come under the purview of “science”. Science and technology, particularly in the guise of steam power and electricity, had transformed the world to a hitherto unimaginable degree. It was almost as if by magic, as one American writer observed: “[T]here is nothing yet discovered in creation so marvelous, and we must turn to fairy land for a parallel: the story of Aladdin and his Lamp is realized; steam is our ‘genie,’ and electricity our ‘slave of the ring’ – the one has the power to remove mountains, the other to annihilate time and space.”363 It seemed only a matter of time before science became all-encompassing, as its influence spread throughout intellectual culture. The rise of the so-called “social sciences” is another example of this cultural phenomenon (indeed, was one). America, as the new World, was particularly keen to embrace the possibilities of science as applied to social problems. Oscar Wilde, who visited America in 1882-83, wrote that, “A remarkable characteristic of the Americans is the manner in which they have applied science to modern life.”364 America was, Wilde quipped, “a vast desert of practical common-sense.”365 With this embrace of rationalism and progress, the existing practices were often made suspect by the mere fact of their longevity. As the 20th century dawned, this spirit of progress had gained a foothold in the imagination of the U.S. Army. In a 1912 article entitled, “Progress and What It Entails”, Lieutenant Hugh M. Kelly breathlessly celebrated the fact that, “The Army is progressing. The Army is moving forward to better things. There is no doubt of it. The primal inertia, that greatest bar to all movement, has been overcome and we are started for the goal – the goal that we of little faith had heard and dreamed of; the goal that we knew existed somewhere there across the slough of despond,

362 John Martin, “Social Reconstruction Today” in Atlantic Monthly Vol. 102 No. 3 (September 1908), pg. 289 363 F.B. Thurber, “The Influence of Steam and Electricity” in The International Review Vol. 2 No. 5 (September 1875), pp.623-24 364 Oscar Wilde, Impressions of America (edited by Stuart Mason) (Sunderland, Keystone Press, 1906), pg. 23 365 Ibid., pg. 34 108

somewhere there beyond the far horizon; but a goal that we had scarcely believed possible of attainment.”366 Progress was never truly defined by Kelly, but whatever it was, it was surely a good thing. As wisdom gave way to science, August Kautz found a receptive military audience when he declared, “For the purposes of disseminating military knowledge throughout the land the “Old Soldier” is an impediment and he should be eliminated.”367 As the mania for scientism swept American culture, the term “military science” became ever-more common. As the new era dawned, one writer, embracing the new zeitgeist, enthusiastically noted in 1877, “Even the laws of war are being subjected to a novel process of systematic revision, and are being taught to conform to the demands of a better calculated utility, if not of an advancing morality.”368 Capt. T.A. Bingham, in a very perceptive 1892 piece on the true function of the German General Staff, expressed this linkage between science and war overtly, “Much as science has progressed in late years, the art of war has kept even pace. The former specialties of military science, technical as well as practical, are now complete sciences within themselves and the special art of generalship, which must utilize all the others to best advantage, has been pushed so far that no longer will the artillerist or cavalryman or infantryman necessarily make a good general.”369 Tactics themselves became secondary to specialized skills. Major John M. Palmer, a graduate of both Leavenworth and the Army , wrote in 1916 that, “the more we require of scientific technique in the modern soldier, the less we require of purely tactical training.”370 A scientific approach was, by its very nature, ruthless in its application to all knowledge. Bingham wrote, “Tradition no longer counts for much. The only question is ‘what is best?’ and everything that cannot show satisfactory modern and scientific reasons for its existence is abolished.”371 General J. Franklin Bell would later echo this sentiment, “Let harmful, hampering traditions which have long outlived their time and usefulness have an honorable burial[.]”372It

366 Lt. Hugh M. Kelly, “Progress and What It Entails” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 3 (November-December 1912), pg. 295 (295-303) 367 Kautz, “Military Education for the Masses”, pg. 496 368 “Modern Armies and Modes of Warfare as Bearing on Peace” in The International Review Vol. 4 No. 38 (September 1877), pg. 614 369 Capt. T.A. Bingham, “The Prussian Great General Staff and What It Contains That is Practical From an American Standpoint” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vo1. 13, No. 58 (July 1892), pg. 667 (666-676) 370 John M. Palmer, An Army of the People: The Constitution of an Effective Force of Trained Citizens (New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916), pg. 118 371 Bingham, pg. 669 372 J. Franklin Bell, quoted in “General Bell to Army Officers” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 39 No. 1372 (March 31, 1906), pg. 22 (21-22) 109

comes as no surprise that the European military experience, so grounded in tradition, would be discounted under such a standard. The U.S. Army’s embrace of the Progressive Era’s faith in science was not universally lauded. Lt. Col. James W. Pope, speaking at a 1906 banquet for the Military Order of Foreign Wars, indelicately posed the questions, “While no one should desire to belittle the ‘New Idea,’ is there not a tendency to go beyond commonsense in claiming brain or scientific knowledge the whole thing? Is there not a vast deal of human nature, of personal equation, of personal magnetism, in the production or composition of the glorious Captains of the Past, yes, and must there not be an equal amount of natural elements in the formation of the great warriors of the future?”373 Another prolific conservative officer was the artilleryman James Chester. Writing in the years before the Root reforms, Chester opined, “To say that the tactical tinkers [sic] are all cranky enthusiasts, dealing with ideal soldiers on ideal battle-fields in an ideal way, would, perhaps, be to overstate the case. But experience teaches us to accept improved theories with caution.”374 In the Progressive Era, an appeal to experience no longer carried the weight that it once did. The extraordinary advancements in military technology also mandated a new attitude towards the idea of progress within the U.S. Army itself. Progress itself was still a new idea, as the world had never before experienced a period of such rapid economic growth, technological innovation, and social change as it did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For some, this meant taking a more balanced view of one of the army’s most venerated commandments: Thou Shalt Not Question the Lessons of the Civil War. Naturally, as the most tangible aspect of progress, technological change threatened the army’s assumptions from that conflict. In 1895, military theorist Arthur Wagner, citing the myriad changes in military technology (particularly in terms of artillery), ventured the idea that, “[T]heories based on the Civil War are not always applicable to the changed conditions of the new era of warfare on which we have entered.”375 (emphasis original) The progressive impulse to re-work and improve individual Americans also appeared in small ways within the U.S. Army. For example, in 1910, Capt. F.J. Morrow published an article

373 Lt.-Col. James W. Pope, “The Old and the New Army” from a speech given January 9, 1906 in Army and Navy Register Vol. 39 No. 1362 (January 20, 1906), pg. 2 (2) 374 Capt. James Chester, “Impending Changes in the Character of War” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 19 No. 82 (July 1896), pg. 83 (83-89) 375 Capt. Arthur L. Wagner, “An Antiquated Artillery Organization” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 17 No. 76 (July 1895), pg. 56 (41-57) 110

in the Infantry Journal calling for the introduction of new ranks and pay increases for enlisted men who demonstrated a superior moral character.376 The army could not only work to improve the individual soldier, it could also function as a school for the nation. The massive influx of immigrants who fed the industrial economy’s insatiable demand for cheap labor created a crisis in American identity. National military service, it was proposed, could solve that problems. As Lt. Roy W. Winton suggested, “To develop a deeper sense of patriotism, to make the national feeling real and spiritual, not boastfully material, is one of our national tasks of fundamental importance, complicated, as it is, by our great mass of foreign-born citizens. We cannot count on race sentiment or ancestry for this; our traditions are too short and our national importance and greatness to purely financial and material to serve. We must come to the age-old discipline of service to create a sense of national value in our citizens.”377 In many ways, such a role came naturally to the army, as it was traditionally home to a disproportionate number of immigrants. Another progressive idea that gained some credence in military circles was the use of the Army as a tool to educate the public.378 One advocate of such an approach, assured his readers that, “Those familiar with military training and instruction realize at once that all military training is progressive.”379 For some officers, this meant the expansion of educational opportunities within the army, particularly for enlisted men. For others, it meant using the army as a means of infusing the public with military training. August Kauntz proposed a system based on restricted re- enlistments to provide every congressional district with enough trained ex-soldiers to provide the military know-how to raise a large number of volunteer regiments in the event of war.380 Military service was also touted as a way of producing superior employees for business.381 Progressive schemes for educating the masses were used by many officers as a fashionable means of arguing for a larger army. Another result of the Progressive Era was the effort to reform of the army promotion system. Traditionally, promotion was almost exclusively based on seniority. However, such a

376 Capt. F.J. Morrow, “Character: Excellent” in Infantry Journal Vol. 7 No. 2 (September 1910), pp. 181-195 (191- 95) 377 Lt. Roy W. Winton, “The Problem of Patriotism” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 6 (May-June 1913), pg. 777 (773-777) 378 For example, see Stewart, “The Army as a Factor in the Upbuilding of Society” 379 Lt. Daniel B. Sanger, “Army Training for Citizenship” in Infantry Journal Vol. 12 No. 2 (September-October 1915), pg. 190 (186-190) 380 Kautz, “Military Education for the Masses”, pg. 492 381 Dr. Lewis Sanders, “Commercial Value of Military Training” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 49 Nos. 1&2 (January-April 1918), pp. 99-103 111 system was antithetical to the Progressive movement, with its new and more scientific means of evaluating its world. To many serving officers this new system of promotion, which would rely more on examinations and review boards, was an unnecessary change to a system that had hitherto served the army well. The Army and Navy Register wondered whether the proponents of the new system “are liberal enough to realize that it is the exception that the senior officer is not entitled to advancement.”382 Changes to army promotion remained a contentious issue throughout the pre- World War One era. The Progressive Era, with its belief in a more technocratic approach to human affairs, also fostered a critical re-examination of the U.S. Army’s training regimen. The embarrassments of the Spanish-American War, and the examples of the Boer and Russo-Japanese Wars, gave impetus to such a movement. This was particularly true of large-scale maneuvers, that lack of which was acutely felt among reformist officers. Articles bemoaning the lack of such exercises abounded in the military periodicals. However, the dead hand of routine and bureaucratic red tape still weighed heavily on garrison life. Even basic field exercises were decidedly rare. One officer lamented, “The situation is so bad that it is given up by many as practically hopeless and little or no effort made while in garrison, beyond perfunctory compliance with orders, to have field training at all.”383 The physical development of the soldier also became an oft debated topic in the army during the Progressive Era. Physical exercises, particularly gymnastics, were introduced from Europe into American military training. In arguing for improving the lot of the average soldier and to stem the problem of desertion, Lt. William McAnaney wrote, “But make the instruction of the soldier (i.e. his daily duty) something that will exercise both his mind and body. Instead of practicing him, day after day, in the arts of the militiaman, teach him something that will make him a better fighting machine[.]”384 For some, the positivism of the era even meant a possible end to war. For example, the editors of Scientific American wondered in early 1915 whether military science and the technology of war had reached such perfection that the outcome of wars could be accurately predicted before they even began. In the future, “For representatives of the combatants could meet and, without showing the designs, the merits of their latest mechanisms could be demonstrated experimentally.

382 “Mr. Taft on Army Promotions” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 39 No. 1368 (March 3, 1906), pg. 6 383 Maj. Frank Winn, “Our Military Posts” in Infantry Journal Vol. 7 No. 4 (January 1911), pg. 533 384 Lt. William McAnaney, “Desertion in the United States Army” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 10 No. 40 (September 1889), pg. 461 112

The military experts would then know exactly where they stood and the whole war could be worked out on paper. Victory would be awarded to the theoretically successful side, which would proceed to exact indemnities and do all of the other things in strict accordance with military procedure. Only no lives would be lost.”385 The sentiment expressed by Scientific American was characteristic of the Progressive Era insofar as it expressed a boundless faith in science and rationality. In applying this faith to warfare, the editors were hardly expressing a novel concept. The idea of science, technology, and mass mobilization bringing about an end to war had been expressed before, most famously in 1899 by Ivan Bloch in his highly influential The Future of War: In Its Technical, Economic and Political Relations. The idea goes back even further. While attending a banquet in 1883 for visiting military observers, the American Lt.-Col. William Volkmar recalled his French host proposing a toast: “Addressing the foreign officers as the defenders of their respective countries, he hoped that they would learn to make war so frightful a thing, by improvements in arms, skill in their use, and by general military knowledge, that nations could not wage wars any more”.386 However, not everyone was enamored by the new ethos of the Progressive Era. That perennial fly in the military intellectual’s ointment, James Chester, was one. In 1901, he wrote in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States that: “Prophets and teachers, apparently of the Bobadil breed, are active in every nation. According to them war has almost become an exact science, capable of being cast in mathematical formula. The factors are Men, Machinery, Organization, Training, Strategy and Tactics… The problems are mathematical and not very difficult. Values are assigned to the several factors according to the judgment of some expert, and the problems solve themselves. The idea is worthy of Bobadil. For simplicity and easy application it cannot be surpassed. If true, it ought to abolish war.”387 Chester heaped scorn on war as a science, one that could be learned through study: “The modern Bobadil believes that the military art can be learned from books. He might as well assume that the painter’s and poet’s arts can be learned in the same way.”388 Interestingly, for all the technical virtuosity ascribed to the

385 “The Invisible Man Behind the Gun” in Scientific American (January 9, 1915), pg. 46 386 Lt.-Col. William Volkmar, “Official Report of the Combined Manoeuvers of the Seventh and Eighth Army Corps (French), September, 1883” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 5, No. 18) (June, 1884), pg. 142 387 Maj. James Chester, “The Invisible Factor in the Problems of War” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 28 No. 91 (), pg. 352 (352-364) 388 Ibid., pg. 357 NOTE: Bobadil was military braggart and fencing instructor who claimed to have a foolproof system of teaching swordsmanship. He appears in Ben Jonson’s play Every Man in His Humor (1598). 113

German General Staff by American commentators, Chester’s characterization of war was, in fact, closer to the German view of war as an art.

The Root Reforms: The General Staff and the Army War College Actual experiences in war, which each one can gain only in a limited way, are of inestimable value; but they can produce fruitful effect only if they are thoroughly proven and utilized by the study of military history. And still, how quickly do actual war experiences fade away!389 - Generalleutnant William Balck

Writing in 1899, Harry Pratt Judson, chair of the University of Chicago’s political science department, declared, “The form that modern society is taking more and more is organization.”390 This was echoed by another progressive, John Martin, who wrote, “There is one principle characteristic of modern life, and especially of American life, discernible in most of the readjustment going forward – the principle of organization.”391 Rational, centralized organization, pioneered by business, was the architecture of the American future. Now, in the wake of the Spanish-American War, it was time for the U.S. Army to become a modern, progressive organization. Since the 1870s, reformers in the U.S. Army, and some prominent Civil War veterans in Congress, had pressed for the formation of a general staff. In 1869, General Hancock, a hero of the Civil War, testified before Congress on the need for a Prussian-style general staff.392 A former Civil War general, Senator Ambrose E. Burnside, introduced legislation to create a rudimentary general staff shortly thereafter, but it was defeated. Technocratic centralization was essential to the grand project of reforming American industry and society in the Progressive Era. The eccentric genius, the autodidact, and the artisan were being swept away by systematized and “scientific” approaches to problem solving. It was now to be a world of experts trained in the latest management techniques. Thanks to this new progressive approach, and the very public mistakes of the Spanish-American War, long-suffering military advocates for a General Staff finally found willing civilian allies. In precisely that spirit, Secretary of War ’s re-organization of the military bureaucracy in 1903 effected a managerial revolution. The reform ideas were not Root’s, but he was the man who put them into

389 Balck, Development of Tactics – World War, pg. 3 390 Harry Pratt Judson, The Growth of the American Nation (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1899), pg. 351 391 Martin, pg. 293 392 Col. Harry P. Ball, Of Responsible Command: A History of the U.S. Army War College (Carlisle, PA, Alumni Association of the U.S. Army War College, 1983), pg. 33 114

effect. As one contemporary writer on military affairs stated, “There were also many young officers in whose blood the unsettling microbe of progressiveness had found a lodging, and who urged from time to time the very reforms which are now being undertaken.”393 This writer also applauded Root’s attempt to place different facets of under one agency: “One of his most radical and daring departures is a recommendation that the Quartermaster’s, Commissary and Pay departments shall all be consolidated into one great business organization.”394 In a very real sense, Root, a prominent corporate lawyer from New York, did what he had always done: created for his clients a vertically-integrated and centralized corporation operating under the latest management principles. Root even used a business analogy to sway Congress: “What would become of a railroad, or a steel corporation, or any great business concern if it should divide its business in that way?”395 Of course, Root was careful to cast his proposals within the context of the national discourse, America’s narrative of itself. Speaking in 1903 at a commemoration of McKinley in Canton, Ohio, Root explained that, “The Army of the United States has been and always will be in time of war that greater army, when the whole people of the United States putting forth their strength by militia and volunteer second the effort of the Regular Army.”396 Congressional reform of military planning was necessary to adequately support this great army. Of course, the nation had little to fear from its enemies: “There is no trouble and never will be trouble, in this country about plenty of brave men to fight. All Americans are brave, all Americans are ready to fight for their country.”397 The General Staff would simply serve to facilitate the nation-in-arms. In structuring the General Staff, the War Department was explicit in its rejection of the German and French models.398 Instead, the American General Staff would be “a body of men selected and organized in our own way and in accordance with our own system to do those essential

393 Oswald Garrison Villard, “The New Army of the United States: in The Atlantic Monthly Vol.89 No. 534 (April 1902), pg. 442 (437-51) 394 Ibid., pg. 447 395 Elihu Root in Edward M. Coffman, The Regulars: The American Army, 1898-1941 (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2004), pg. 143. Another proponent of the General Staff also invoked business practice in support, writing, “The general staff is not a suddenly discovered and flippant innovation, but a broadly conceived and wise business proposition worthy of the honest and fair minded support of all military men.” See Vaulx 8 (pseudonym), “The Evolution of a General Staff” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 33 No. 125 (September-October 1903), pg. 206 396 Elihu Root quoted in “Mr. Root at Canton” in Army and Navy Register (Vol. 33, No. 1206) (January 31, 1903), pg. 85 397 Ibid. 398 Five Years of the War Department Following the War with Spain, 1899-1903, pg. 294 115

things.”399 An early proponent of an American General Staff, Capt. T.A. Bingham, argued that the selection and training of General Staff officers required no special emphasis, as the quality (if not outright superiority) of American officers and military educational institutions relative to their German counterparts was a given.400 Accordingly, Bingham felt that war-gaming and the collection of information on foreign militaries would be all that was required.401 There were, of course, opponents to the Root reforms within the army. For example, Gen. Nelson Miles, stated to the Senate Military Affairs Committee that the proposed legislation would “Germanize and Russianize” the U.S. Army.402 The officers of the Washington staff bureaus similarly protested the loss of the exclusive fiefdoms. Traditionally, staff appointments were permanent, which created a vast chasm between the military bureaucracy and the soldiers in the field. Root did away with that system, requiring that officers return to service with their units every few years. Congress, in particular, jealously guarded its prerogatives and stymied any efforts that would transfer any power over the military establishment to the executive branch. Even after the General Staff was formally recognized, it was mistrusted. As late as 1912, the Army and Navy Register could justifiably write of the General Staff that it was “a term frequently heard in an uncomplimentary way these days at the Capitol.”403 However, while strategic planning was made a core function, tactical doctrine was not truly integrated into the planning process. The General Staff duties were thoughtfully presented in the Report for 1902, but, tellingly, tactics and doctrine were not on the list. American strategic planning lacked a holistic relationship with tactical doctrine. The General Staff would plan wars without planning how wars would actually be fought. Doctrine would largely be handled by mean over a thousand miles away from Washington, at Ft. Leavenworth. The net result was a degree of doctrinal complacency, as American tacticians avoid the concrete challenges of potential strategic opponents. A “one size fits all” tactical doctrine was the inevitable result. Another glaring omission in the composition of the General Staff, in contrast to its foreign counterparts, was the exclusion of a historical section. As Carol Reardon has demonstrated,

399 Ibid. 400 Capt. T.A. Bingham, “The Prussian Great General Staff and What It Contains That is Practical From an American Standpoint”, pg. 671 401 Ibid. 402 J.P. Clark, Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815-1917 (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2017), pg. 190 403 “The Army in the Senate” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 51 No. 1678 (February 17, 1912), pg. 6 (6) 116

military history was clearly important insofar as it provided support for arguments made by military thinkers, but its role was ultimately secondary in importance. The editors of the Infantry Journal, for example, were alarmed by the lack of a historical section, still absent even though the General Staff had been in existence for ten years: “There is still no historical section of the general staff, and yet there can never be a general staff prepared to meet in full the obligations resting upon it until such a section is created and at work.”404 They argued that without a thorough understanding of American military history, foreign ideas could not be properly integrated into U.S. Army doctrine.405 In arguing for an army historical section, Captain Arthur L. Conger compared the then-current status of military history to Cinderella: “Occasionally at these meetings she may be dressed magically by some fairy godmother, such as our friend Prof. [Robert M.] Johnson [of Harvard] on this occasion, and taken to the ball for a few dances with the prince, but this does not prevent her from having to return to her place in the ashes on the kitchen hearth as soon as the ball is over.”406 Although the absence of a historical section at first seems like a major oversight, it was, in fact, consistent with the progressive view of history. The positivist worldview of progressivism presumed a linear view of history as the rational process by which the inevitable present came about, and its logical necessity. In this context, military history was not a heuristic device to challenge and analyze current assumptions. It could not have ever fulfilled such a role, as progressive history served only to vindicate the moral and intellectual superiority of the present. At most, military history could provide examples of certain modern principles. Insofar as military history was used to buttress the arguments of military planners, it was only as a means of crafting an alternative historical narrative confirming the logical inevitability of their preferred policy. In addition to the lack of a historical section, intelligence collection and analysis was still conducted outside the bailiwick of the General Staff. The Military Intelligence Division (MID) continued its traditional work in close collaboration with the General Staff, now designated as the Second Division of the Staff, but such an arrangement offended the dominant progressive ethos of

404 “Doctrine, Conception, and the History of War”, pg. 260 405 Ibid., pg. 258 406 Capt. Arthur L. Conger, “Proceedings of a Conference on the Military History of the United States at the Twenty- Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Boston, Massachusetts, December 28, 1912” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 4 (January-February 1913), pg. 548 (545-578) Conger’s talk was unusual. He blamed the low status of military history on the writings of the German general staff’s historical section. Naturally, he assumed that there would be no similar problem with an American counterpart. 117

centralization. Accordingly, on June 24th, 1908, the Military Intelligence Division was eliminated, and its personnel merged into the War College Division of the General Staff. However, this change was ordered by the same Gen. J. Franklin Bell from the unpleasantness in the Philippines who was now Chief of the General Staff, and the new arrangement was his revenge. The MID personnel were simply added indiscriminately to the larger War College staff pool.407 The result that the MID was not so much merged with the War College as it was dissolved into it. Information on foreign military developments, including attaché reports, were no longer circulated to a wider audience, but simply filed away.408 Without a functioning historical division or a dedicated military intelligence staff, the War College was ready to teach, but not to learn. The increasingly restricted flow of information on foreign military developments was further exacerbated by personalities outside of the General Staff, as well. Reports from abroad went first to the Adjutant General’s Office, and then to the Army War College. The Adjutant General generally restricted access to documents under its control. It operated under a philosophy that anything worth knowing was worth letting no one know. These restrictions tightened further with the appointment of the powerful and manipulative Frederick C. Ainsworth as Adjutant General of the U.S. Army (1904-1912). As Carol Reardon notes, “In April 1904, when Ainsworth became the Adjutant General, the doors to the War Department archives slammed shut. His control of the office was nearly absolute. A physician-turned-army-bureaucrat, he acted like a lord of the manor. An opponent of recent modernizing changes in the army such as the creation of the General Staff, Ainsworth looked back fondly on the days when the bureau chiefs truly held power and influence.”409 Ainsworth’s dismissal in 1912 was only a modest improvement. For example, in 1914, the Adjutant General ruled that no military literature or service journals could be sent to units in the field, only to garrisons.410 Consistent with the ethos of progressivism, the Army War College worshipped at the altar of technocratic elitism. The implicit assumption was that the best and brightest would be collected under its roof, and any ideas generated elsewhere in the army could only be of little value. The Army and Navy Register bristled at the inclusion of a War Department pamphlet emblazoned with the sanctimonious legend, “The institutions from which these views were obtained represent the

407 Van Deman, “Memorandum I (April 8, 1949)” in Weber, pg. 16 408 Ibid., pg. 17 409 Reardon, pg. 149 410 “Reading Matter for the Troops” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 55 No. 1766 (May 23, 1914), pg.649 118

most advanced military thought of the country.”411 Not unreasonably, the Army and Navy Register wondered, “At the same time, is it necessary to imply on the title page of an official publication that the officers at certain institutions from which the views were obtained have a monopoly of ‘the most advanced military thought in the country?’ May there not be other officers who are not at the institutions or still others who have never attended the institutions whose views are quite as valuable[?]”412 In progressive America, the answer was ‘no’. Given the importance of educational institutions to the progressive schema, Root also reformed the army educational system through War Department General Order Number 155 in November 1901. The order established a pyramidal educational structure, the ultimate objective of which was to identify and groom future staff officers. The apex of the pyramid was the War College, and its graduates would special consideration in their allotted assignments.413 The first president of the new War College was Tasker H. Bliss. Bliss rejected the rigorously structured methodology of the German Kriegsakademie, and instead structured the War College as a collegial institution.414 Col. Robert Bullard, who was at first very skeptical of the War College, and the appurtenant General Staff concept, came to admire the school as he completed his course there as a member of the class of 1912. Nonetheless, during the class staff ride through Virginia, “He was repelled by his instructors’ unthinking adulation of Lee and Jackson.”415 This is a particularly revealing observation. Lee and Jackson were both talented generals, but arguably over-fond of the tactical offensive. Likewise, Jackson’s Valley Campaign became a thing of beauty on paper. However, it would be foolish for any student of the campaign to imagine that he would face enemy generals as incompetent as Nathaniel Banks or John C. Frémont. The lesson was often lost on the War College that even Cannae needed a Hannibal as well as a Varro. In the same vein, Lee’s flashes of tactical brilliance did not make up for the fact that he achieved little of strategic consequence, all the while bleeding his army white. After all of the Sturm und Drang involved in the birth of the War College died down, attitudes towards the expanded school system varied, but culminated in a general acceptance of

411 “The Most Advanced Military Thought” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 51 No. 1677 (February 10, 1912), pg. 6 (6) 412 Ibid. 413 J.P. Clark, pg. 200 414 Ibid., pg. 203 415 Millett, The General, pg. 231 119

their necessity and desirability. In an editorial from the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, the editors gave a less than enthusiastic endorsement to the new system, “Nothing can stop the tread of progress, and the school fad certainly makes as much, if not more, for advancement than any of the previous fads. We can inform the young men of the service that it will be much better for them to get on the band wagon than to stand on the ground listening to the carpings [sic] of some disgruntled officer while the wagon rolls by.”416

Slaves of the Machine: Military Metaphors in the Industrial Age In late 19th and early 20th century America, the rapid industrialization of the nation introduced concepts of and management theory into the popular culture. The machine itself became associated with American culture in this period, as something uniquely American insofar as it symbolized the nation’s ingenuity and emergence as a world power. Weapons were particularly prominent in the development of American industry, including the arms of Remington, Colt and Dr. Richard Gatling. In the great fairs of the late 19th century, such as the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia or the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, machines always figured prominently. Yale’s Alan Trachtenberg has observed, “These fairs were pedagogies, teaching the prominence of machines as instruments of a distinctly American progress.”417 The mechanization of American life became ever-more apparent, from the adoption of uniform time zones in 1883-84, to the Taylor system’s stop-watch and, finally, the punch-clock. By the start of World War One, the economist Thorstein Veblen could write of “this machine-like process of living as carried on under modern technological conditions[.]”418 The machine was more than just a symbol of American identity, “[I]t also appeared at a deeper level of thought, in less self-conscious processes of mind. Images of machinery filtered into the language, increasingly providing convenient and telling metaphors for society and individuals.”419 This metaphorical machine, spawned early in the grand siècle of American industry, spoke of a frictionless, self-regulating universe of known and calculable quantities. It was a perfect metaphorical device for America in the Progressive Era. In speaking of the machine

416 Editorial, “Fads” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 16 No. 59 (January 1906), pg. 540 (537-41) 417 Trachtenberg, pg. 41 418 Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1914), pg. 317 419 Ibid., pg. 44 120

age, Veblen wrote, “The mechanical processes here engaged are calculable, measurable, and contain no mysterious element of providential ambiguity.”420 Nor was the concept of “mechanical processes” limited to industry and transportation: “Wherever manual dexterity, the rule of thumb, and the fortuitous conjectures of the seasons have been supplanted by reasoned procedure on the basis of a systematic knowledge of the forces employed , there the mechanical industry is to be found, even in the absence of intricate mechanical contrivances.”421 The world of machines imposed systemization and standardization on the whole of human endeavor. As the U.S. Army struggled to absorb the implications of rapidly-evolving military technology, it also turned to mechanical metaphors to express the new intellectual architecture of the age. The Commandant of Cadets and instructor of military tactics at West Point, Lt.-Col. Henry Lazelle, expressed this reality succinctly when he wrote, “The present, as the machine age of industrial arts, reflects more than any other the machine age of warfare; its characteristics being the application of the mechanical arts to the offensive and defensive energies of nations at war.”422 The ubiquitous Arthur L. Wagner, in arguing for the creation of an American war college, stated that, “The army officer of the present day should differ as much from his predecessor as a locomotive differs from a stage-coach, or a magazine-rifle from a flint-lock musket.”423 The U.S. Army was becoming a machine, operated by skilled officers, and consisting of undifferentiated and interchangeable enlisted cogs. In a dreadful mishmash of mixed metaphors, Lt. William Wallace tried to capture the essence of the new army: “A perfect army is a human machine, not inaptly comparable to a single human body; the various parts of the machine being bound pliably together by a mechanical discipline that answers in place of muscles making it a unit, that parts of which are more or less independent.”424 It was not just the U.S. Army as an organization that was a machine-like entity. Rather, the conduct of battle was itself a mechanistic exercise. One of the most influential tactical theorists before World War One, Col. John F. Morrison, wrote, “The tactician, however, is but the skilled

420 Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts, pg. 306 421 Veblen, The Theory of the Business Enterprise, pg. 6 422 Lt.-Col. Henry Lazelle, “Important Improvements in the Art of War During the Past Twenty Years and Their Probable Effect on Future Military Operations” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vo1. 3, No. 3, 1882), pg. 307 423 1st Lt. Arthur L. Wagner, “An American War College” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 10 No. 39 (July 1889), pg. 288 424 Lt. William Wallace, “The Army and the Civil Power” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 17 No. 77 (December 1895), pg. 239 (235-266) 121

mechanic; the tools with which he works are his troops. New recruits are but the lump of ore, of no use until converted into steel and then forged into shape. The making of this tool from the raw material is our principal business during peace.”425 Within this context, the officer is the operator of the military machine, thus placing a premium on his professional competence: “Placing these well trained units in the hands of an incompetent regimental commander is but placing a fine and complicated machine in the hands of an unskilled operator; there is a fair chance that he will ruin the machine.”426 The “army as machine” metaphor also is found in Captain Arthur Conger’s 1916 lecture on tactical problem solving at Ft. Leavenworth, in a cringeworthy description of “our mechanical army way”.427 He again uses the metaphor in stated, “The mode of deployment, conduct of frontal and enveloping attacks to deploying positions as well as in the attack, conduct of the cavalry, of the artillery, and of the auxiliary troops: all of these details are to a certain extent mechanical”.428 Thomas Hutchison, a retired U.S. Army officer serving as a volunteer with Greek forces in the Second Balkan War, declined command of Greek light infantry () on the grounds that he was “trained as a machine soldier and did not understand guerilla or mountain warfare.”429 The War Department report for 1899 used the machine metaphor repeatedly throughout the document. For example, it declared “that the regular establishment is not the whole machine with which a war will ever be fought[.]”430 On the next page, the report referred to the “machinery for the organization of the new army[.]”431 In arguing for the establishment of a General Staff in the Report for 1902, the War Department stated, “But when it comes to the coordination and direction of all these means and agencies of warfare, so that all parts of the machine shall work true together, we are weak.”432 Similarly, Major J.W. McAndrew characterized the role of a staff officer as follows: “433[U]pon him falls the responsibility of seeing that the machine with which the commander determines to work his will is in condition to do the work demanded of it[.]” Robert

425 Col. John F. Morrison, Training Infantry (Ft. Leavenworth, KS, U.S. Cavalry Association, 1914), pg. 3 426 Ibid., pg. 69 427 Capt. Arthur Conger, Preparing Tactical Problems (Ft. Leavenworth, KS, Press of the Army Service Schools, 1916), pg. 1 428 Ibid., pg. 11 429 Hutchison, pg. 116 430 Five Years of the War Department Following the War with Spain, 1899-1903, (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1904), pg. 67 431 Ibid., pg. 68 432 Ibid., pg. 293 433 McAndrew, pg. 182 122

L. Bullard later praised the AEF as a wondrous “machine”: “In the following twelve months of war and movement the machine failed nowhere. Under it no man, no organization, no thing was ever really lost or forgotten: it was a machine that worked in all its parts.”434 Even for critics of the changes in the U.S. Army, the machine was an equally powerful metaphor. It represented the replacement of the skilled artisan who learned by doing by the unthinking, purpose-built machine. James Chester, an outspoken sceptic of many changes in the army, saw the mechanical metaphors a more insidious influence of the army. He regularly mocked the army reformers as bloodless “Kriegsspiellers”. Chester wrote, “There is more sentiment in soldiers than the average engineer will willingly admit. To him they are merely physical machines – centres of force – the value of which can be calculated. He recognizes no psychological problems in his art. Like the Kriegsspieller he plays with soulless men; unthinking things with neither stomachs nor imaginations.”435 Similarly, on a more prosaic level, Lt. Joseph Bachelor noted how machine-like precision often masked deeper flaws in combat units, noting that, “It is not sufficient that the company be drilled, though it move with the proverbial ‘regularity of a machine.’”436 Major George Wilson, in his prize-winning essay in the Infantry Journal, expressed concern that the “army as machine” metaphor would eclipse the human element: “It is not enough that the Army be a perfect piece of physical machinery; it should also be the embodied martial soul of the nation[.]”437 The profound conceptual limitations lurking within the mechanical metaphor were clearly (and inadvertently) expressed by Maj. George Shelton in 1912: “Improvisation of any portion of an army is impossible simply because the whole is a machine of many parts with its efficiency possibly dependent at any critical time upon the strength of the weakest part. It is this principle that requires uniform development throughout if an army is to be efficient[.]”438 It is illuminating to compare the mechanical metaphors so prevalent in American military thought with those from Germany, where war was always held to be more art than science. One example that stands out is Gen. H. Rohne who, in his 1904 treatise on artillery, insisted

434 Maj-Gen. Robert L. Bullard, Personalities and Reminisces of the War (New York, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925), pg. 75 435 Capt. James Chester, “Battle Intrenchments and the Psychology of War” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 7 No. 47) (October 1886), pg. 299 436 Bachelor, pg. 65 437 Maj. George Wilson, “The Army; Its Employment in Times of Peace, and the Necessity for Its Increase” in Infantry Journal Vol. 18 No. 81 (May 1896), pg. 10 (1-30) 438 Maj. George H. Shelton, “The Organization of the Land Forces of the United States” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 1 (July-August 1912), pg. 38 (1-43) 123

emphatically that, “The Army is not a dead machine, it is a living organism”.439 Moreover, German military writers tended to discourage any notion that war could be put on any scientific basis: “The conduct of war operations is not a science, but it is an art.”440 One German officer who spent several months observing the U.S. Army noted that soldiers were “too much educated as an inferior laborer”.441 Instead, he urged American officers to reverse course and “Make the man feel that he is a and educate him as such.”442 The rise of industrial management theory, and its introduction into American culture, also encouraged a narrow view of soldiers as interchangeable parts in a vast military machine. In a 1902 article in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, Robert L. Bullard voiced his concern at this trend: “From professionalism or cause there is a tendency among officers to regard the soldier as an abstract, automatic, impersonal sort of creature who, being intended for control by the leader, is free, uncomplicated by the emotions of his own individuality.”443 Worse still, the atomized soldier, a mere widget of industrialized warfare, was combined with the myth of the American rifleman, it conceptualized the soldier as forming an indivisible unit with his rifle. This fostered the notion that a soldier on the battlefield was closer (in psychological terms) to his weapon than he is to his fellow soldiers, which had a deleterious effect on the cultivation of small unit cohesion.444 This negative influence can clearly be seen in the organization the AEF infantry into the “some assembly required” platoon, which was organized not on the basis of tactical squads, but on weapon types (i.e. all rifle together as a squad, all light machine guns together, etc.).

439 Gen. H. Rohne, The Progress of Modern Field Artillery (translated by Col. M.M. Macomb) (Washington, D.C., Gibson Bros., 1908), pg. 9 440 Col. Freiherr Von Der Goltz, “Science in Military Life” (translated by Lt. John J. O’Connell) in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 5, No. 17) (1884), pg. 58 441 E.B. “Impressions of a Foreign Cavalry Officer” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 38 No. 1359 (December 30, 1905), pg. 5 (5) 442 Ibid. 443 Major Robert L. Bullard, “A Moral Preparation of the Soldier for Service and Battle” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 31 No. 120 (November 1902), pg. 787 444 English & Gudmundsson, pg. 122 124

Chapter 7: Leavenworth Tactics: The American Way of War and the Foreign Military Experience, 1905-1914 Introduction In the decade prior to World War One, a number of conflicts presaged how the ‘War to End All Wars’ would be fought. These conflicts were the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, and the First and Second in 1912-13. These foreign wars were as closely observed by the American military as the belligerents would allow. Although the increasingly restrictive policies of the Adjutant General and War College limited the flow of information, the American press, publishers and the service magazines were still able to provide much of value to their readers. Debates over the tactical implications of the wars raged throughout the army. Nonetheless, the majority of U.S. Army officers continued to interpret the military developments of this time as being in accordance with their own preconceptions.

The Leavenworth Manuals: The 1905, 1910 and 1914 Field Regulations The growing influence of the service schools was manifested in the so-called “Leavenworth Manuals”, the 1905, 1910 and 1914 Field Service Regulations (FSR). These manuals were complemented by branch specific manuals, notably the 1911 Infantry Drill Regulations (IDR). Nonetheless, the tactical approach remained relatively unchanged since Upton, and the manual itself “would have made easy reading for Generals Grant and Sherman.”445 Indeed, Colonel James Regan wrote in praise of the 1905 FSR that, “The principles upon which our present tactics are based are those embraced in the first editions of General Upton's "Tactics," modified to suit the improvements in firearms, and with smokeless powder, and based upon experience in war.”446 These manuals still emphasized the firing line as the key factor in battle. Advancing to contact, American units were to rely on the reinforced skirmish line of Civil War-vintage to achieve fire dominance, primarily via small arms. Once this was accomplished, the infantry was to advance by bounds (usually by platoon) under covering fire from their neighbors. When they had moved close enough to the enemy, a final rush with the bayonet would seal the victory. On the modern battlefield, swept by fire from the repeating rifle (and, increasingly, the

445 Fax, pg. 81 446 Col. James Regan, “Remarks Upon Tactics, With Reference to Our Infantry Drill Regulations” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 36 No. 135 (May-June 1905), pg. 479 125

machine gun) using smokeless ammunition, the U.S. Army remained convinced of the dominance of the highly-trained rifleman. According to this school of thought, as the effective range of small arms increases with technological advances, so the visibility of targets diminishes, especially with the use of camouflaged uniforms and open-order tactics. This put a premium on accuracy. Victory would therefore go to the riflemen who can bring the highest volume of accurate fire against their opponents. The widespread popularity of shooting competitions in the United States during the decades following the Civil War gave military planners some basis for their reliance on superior marksmanship. The Army and Navy Journal noted with much approval that, “In our own country the enthusiasm for rifle shooting is now at a fever heat. Taken at the present time, it may be of immense service to the military strength of the country.”447 During the China Relief Expedition, Captain Joseph Dickman boasted, “What the Europeans respect most in us is our shooting qualities. Our rifles and ammunition are as good as any, and most of our men are better shots.”448 Given this emphasis on marksmanship, the 1905 Field Service Regulations held that, “The volume of fire depends upon the number of rifles or pieces in action and the rapidity with which they are fired. However, increase of rapidity beyond certain limits impairs the accuracy and therefore diminishes the efficacy of fire. Concentration of superior forces at decisive points within effective range is therefore necessary to secure preponderance of fire.”449 Although a seemingly innocuous formulation, and one similar to those found in the regulations of other armies, it nonetheless contained the seeds of disaster for combat in 1914-18. Without fully incorporating the firepower of heavy weapons and artillery, this proved a prescription for packing large numbers of riflemen into the firing line, where they became so much fodder for enemy machine guns and artillery. The concept of “fire and maneuver” is second nature to modern soldiers, but it was adopted only reluctantly by the U.S. Army. The dominance of the rifle was such that maneuver was a secondary concern, if not outright superfluous: Rifle fire would suffice to beat down the defense, and a bayonet charge would then settle the issue. Accordingly, the company remained the basic tactical unit, as any lesser maneuver unit was unnecessary; the company would fire as one, and then charge as one. One American officer went so far as call for the abandonment of the infantry

447 “International Rifle Shooting: in Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 13 No. 3) (August 28, 1875), pg. 40 448 Capt. Joseph Dickman, “Experiences in China”, pg. 34 449 1905 Field Service Regulations of the United States Army (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1905), pg. 102 126

platoon altogether.450 The primacy of the rifle as an offensive weapon led to some impractical solutions to the problem of closing with an entrenched foe. One solution, observed during the Russo-Japanese War (see below), was to advance in short rushes and dig-in, only to repeat the process as soon as possible. For example, during large-scale maneuvers in New Mexico in 1911, the Army and Navy Register described the following mock assault: “The attack consisted of six companies in three lines. The advance was made by the first line on the run for about 50 paces. Upon halting each man with intrenching [sic] tools commenced to dig a lying trench, while the remainder endeavored to keep down the fire of the enemy. Cover having been obtained, the tools were passed to the adjoining men, who began to dig while the others opened fire. All having obtained cover, a sustained hot fire was then opened up against the trenches. The advance to the next halt was made as before. The second line occupied the trenches of the first line upon reaching them and began to dig. The third line did likewise. Seven lines of trenches were dug by the first line.”451 Despite such precaution, the attack was stopped 500 yards short of its objective. How infantry could possibly launch a sustained attack after digging innumerable trench lines while under fire is difficult to envision. Such tactics seem more appropriate to the age of Vauban than to the modern era. Nonetheless, the U.S. Army had an excellent reason for such a laborious means of approaching enemy trenches: the Japanese had sometimes employed this approach at the 1904 siege of Port Arthur. An American officer who visited Port Arthur a few months after its fall, 2nd Lt. Henry J. Reilly, described the Japanese use of parallel and sap trenches to slowly advance against the Russian .452 Interestingly, he also noted the lavish use of hand grenades by both sides.453 The success of the Japanese would serve to buttress the arguments of those American officers who believed that the rifle remained the dominant force on the battlefield. For example, while serving as an observer in the Russo-Japanese War, Kuhn cited with approval the Japanese infantry tactics. He noted that they were “the same general methods as proscribed in the regulations of all modern armies.”454 That is to say, the Japanese infantry advanced in three waves: the firing

450 Capt. James N. Pickering, “The Cumbersome Firing Line” in Infantry Journal Vol. 7 No. 4 (January 1911), pg. 544 (538-47) 451 “Maneuvers in New Mexico” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 50 No. 1661 (October 21, 1911), pg. 1 452 2nd Lt. Henry J, Reilly, “Port Arthur” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 17 No. 63 (January 1907), pg. 421 (399-442) 453 Ibid., pg. 422 454 Joseph Kuhn, “Final Report on the Russo-Japanese War”, pg. 56 127

line, support and reserve lines. However, in order to achieve a sufficient volume of fire to suppress enemy defenses, the Japanese “firing line was rather dense, the skirmishers being posted at intervals of about one pace, so as to secure a heavy volume of fire.”455 Accordingly, American infantry regulations would call for dense skirmish lines of riflemen well into 1918. The final draft of the 1911 IDR was prepared by Maj. John F. Morrison, Capt. Merch B. Stewart, and Capt. Alfred W. Bjornstad.456 Morrison had been a military observer in the Russo- Japanese War, and he returned convinced of the supremacy of the infantry rifle over all other weapons. His beliefs would have a strong influence on American infantry doctrine before, and during, the First World War. The 1911 IDR had the virtues of clarity and coherence, but as J.P. Clark rightly observes, “Unfortunately for the U.S. Army, those qualities reflected the certainty of John F. Morrison[.]”457 Criticism of the new regulations were muted. For example, Gen. questioned the value of an early draft, but only for failing to adequately stress bayonet fencing.458 Accordingly, after a review of the regulations by the Army War College, a separate manual on bayonet fighting was authorized.459 However, like so many products of American civilization in the eyes of its people, the new IDR was simply “beyond criticism.”460 In fact, in 1917, the revised regulations still proscribed very rigid small unit tactics, markedly out of step with the modern battlefield.461 As the new tactical manuals for the Army, the FSR and IDR borrowed heavily from German regulations, but more in word than in spirit. This is particularly evident in the 1914 FSR, which closely mirrored the German 1908 Field Service Regulations (Felddienst Ordnung) in both content and structure. However, whereas the German manual contained a brief introductory chapter with 38 principles for a young officer to command effectively on the modern battlefield, the American version omitted any such guidance. It is a revealing omission on the part of the American military. A freshly-minted German officer could read the first nine pages of his manual, and glean a sufficient amount to keep himself and his command alive long enough to become veterans. His

455 Joseph Kuhn, “Final Report on the Russo-Japanese War”, pp. 56-57 456 “Infantry Drill Regulations” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 49 No. 1626 (February 18, 1911), pg. 10 457 J.P. Clark, pg. 225 458 “Infantry Drill Regulations” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 50 No. 1649 (July 29, 1911), pg. 9 459 “Infantry Drill Regulations” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 50 No. 1651 (August 12, 1911), pg. 7 460 Col. Charles G. Morton, “Progressive Infantry Instruction” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 4 (January-February 1913), pg. 463 (463-472) 461 Douglas V. Johnson II & Rolfe L. Hillman Jr., Soissons, 1918 (College Station, TX, Texas A&M Press, 1999), pg. 28 128

American counterpart, in contrast, could read all 244 pages of the 1914 FSR’s ruthlessly turgid prose and be none the wiser for it. General tactical principles, such as those in the German regulations, were simply too unscientific for a progressive approach to war.462 Many reform-minded American officers argued for a less detail-oriented approach to the new drill manuals. Writing in the Infantry Journal in 1910, Capt. Dana Merrill pleaded, “Rather than have the regulations give one form to be drilled into the soldier as his gospel, it would be better to devote the pace to a clear exposition of tactical principles[.]”463 Merrill’s critique was particularly telling, as the elucidation of general tactical principles remained anathema to the men who wrote the Field Service Regulations. Instead, no detail was too small for the regulations, and U.S. Army drill still sought to exercise complete control over the men. In 1905, a visiting German cavalry officer wrote an article for the Army and Navy Register about his impressions of the American army. He spoke highly of the caliber of men, but he could not help but note the deadening effects of mindless drill and general ennui: “A better material of man than that of the United States Army is not be found in any other army, and when the United States Army does so little, according to European nations, the fault is not with the officer or man, but with the too narrow interpretation of the drill regulations, a monotonous division of the service and an indolent inactivity.”464 The “narrow interpretation of drill regulations” was not a bug, but a feature of the U.S. Army’s mindset. The comparisons between the American and German drill manuals also reveal a markedly different approach to small arms fire. The German manuals reflected much less faith in the power of infantry fire. For example, the 1906 German Drill Regulations, in its chapter “The Combat”, places emphasis on artillery fire to break enemy resistance. The German manual called for, “During the infantry attack the artillery must, while sufficiently engaging the opposing artillery, endeavor to concentrate their fire with destructive effect upon that part of the enemy’s infantry position which is to be stormed.”465According to William Balck, the use of artillery to achieve fire

462 For example, see Lt. Col. John E. McMahon, “The Field Artillery of the United States Army: Its Organization and Tactical Use (A Lecture Delivered at the Army War College)” in Field Artillery Journal Vol. 2 No. 1 (January- March 1912), pp. 95-108, which contains a detailed discussion on the employment of field artillery, without any discussion of its purpose or doctrinal principles. 463 Capt. Dana T. Merrill, “The Infantry Drill Regulations: in Infantry Journal Vol. 7 No. 2 (September 1910), pg. 219 464 E.B. “Impressions of a Foreign Cavalry Officer”, pg. 5 465 Drill Regulations for the Infantry, German Army 1906 (translated by 1st Lt. Francis J. Behr) (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1907), pp. 77-78 129

superiority prior to the infantry attack was emphasized even more strongly in field exercises.466 Artillery was less important in American offensive doctrine, and the rifle continued to exert its talismanic powers. Even in 1914, Col. John F. Morrison, only grudgingly admitted, “It must be borne in mind that in most cases the artillery will play a large part in the gaining and maintaining of fire superiority. But this fact does not alter the work of the infantry; we must still do most of the killing and unnerving of the enemy and this is true whether the enemy consists of infantry alone or infantry in conjunction with artillery.”467 The 1911 Drill Regulations for Field Artillery did state that, “The sole reason for the existence of field artillery Is its ability to assist the other arms, especially the infantry, upon the field of battle.”468 Unfortunately, artillery doctrine on this critical matter was limited to this single sentence in the regulations.469 Beyond the cultural devotion to the rifle, another part of the problem was that the American field artillery was a relative late comer to the indirect-fire revolution. This fact limited the ability of the artillery to directly engage entrenched infantry. A perverse solution was that American infantry was expected to attack an entrenched enemy before the artillery in order to force the enemy to expose himself to flat-trajectory artillery fire. Lt.-Col. John McMahon, a General Staff officer in 1912, wrote that, “It follows, then, that to force the enemy’s infantry to man its trenches and thus furnish a target for the artillery, our own infantry must begin its attack before the question of artillery supremacy has been definitely decided.”470 Capt. John Wisser advocated the same approach to infantry-artillery cooperation based upon his analysis of the Boer War.471 Only in 1913 did the army organize its first heavy field artillery battalion.472 Interestingly, it was the editors of the Infantry Journal who were most conscious of the need for intense cooperation between the infantry and artillery, and who faulted the U.S. Army for not doing more. They lamented that, “[W]hile other countries pursue this [combined arms] policy and still find it necessary to emphasize the importance of cooperation and subordination, we blindly shut ourselves away from any opportunity to follow it, and put our trust in theory thinly

466 Balck, Development of Tactics – World War, pg. 31 467 Morrison, Training Infantry, pg. 42 468 War Department, Drill Regulations for Field Artillery (Horse and Light) United States Army (Provisional) 1911 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1911), pg. 19 469 Fax, pg. 81 470 Lt. Col. John E. McMahon, “Coordination of the Field Artillery with the Other Arms in Battle” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 2 (September-October 1912), pg. 162 471 Capt. John P. Wisser, “The Second Boer War” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 15 No. 2 (March- April, 1901), pg. 169 472 “Heavy Artillery Battalion” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 53 No. 1704 (March 15, 1913), pg. 330 130

dispersed and in luck universally expected.”473 However, when war came, the Americans declined to substantially revise their doctrine according to the circumstances in Europe. Indeed, Pershing remained a committed believer in the 1914 FSR throughout the war. All tactical ‘lessons learned’ disseminated by the AEF G-5 (training) were interpreted through the lens of the 1914 FSR.

Russo-Japanese War: American Observers In early 1904, war erupted between the Russian and Japanese empires over control of Manchuria. For the first time in a generation, two truly modern armies would take the field against each other. The conflict was closely watched by soldiers the world over. A total of eight American officers were sent as official military observers to the conflict; four to each side. The Russians were relatively congenial hosts, but the Japanese, although unfailingly polite, greatly hindered access for their American guests.474 A constellation of future American military stars were observers, including John J. Pershing, Joseph E. Kuhn, and John F. Morrison. Although Pershing is more famous for his subsequent roles as commander of the AEF, it was Kuhn and Morrison who would prove the more influential in terms of military doctrine. Both would hold important positions at the General Staff and War Colleges. Critically, American military observers did not see the future of warfare in the trenches outside Port Arthur, as many later did. Instead, they saw it in the more fluid battles in Manchuria, such as Liaoyang and Mukden. The poor showing of both Russian and Japanese cavalry seemingly affirmed the superiority of the U.S. cavalry. Despite a number of developments that presaged trench warfare in France, the engineer Kuhn rejected the notion that there was much to be learned from the Russo-Japanese War. In his final report, Kuhn wrote, “Considering the magnitude and duration of the war and the fact that it is the first great war between great nations having modern arms and training since 1877, one might reasonably expect some startling and original methods. If there is one fact more than any other which has impressed itself on my mind it is that, in its general features at least, the war was conducted by both sides along strictly orthodox lines. The formation of infantry for the attack, the massing of guns and the concentration of fire, the value and employment of field fortifications, the of permanently fortified localities, and many other features all savor strongly of the textbook. So far as I am able to judge none of the recognized rules and principles for conducting

473 Editorial Board, “The Three Arms in Battle” in Infantry Journal Vol. 8 No. 1 (July-August 1911), pg. 91 474 J.P. Clark, pg. 219 131

warfare underwent any serious modification in their application.”475 So, although Kuhn took note of new developments, “he failed to draw any lessons that might have informed American doctrine as the country entered the era of modern warfare.”476 The influential tactician Maj. John F. Morrison, who was sent as an observer to the Japanese army, interpreted the Russo-Japanese war as a refutation of the so-called ‘Boer tactics’, which called for a wide dispersion of infantry advancing against fire. Morrison lauded the Japanese infantry tactics, “The great extension advocated by many after the Boer War was not seen. Their deployments were sometimes made as close as a man to the metre [sic], more often about double this interval.”477 Morrison was a vigorous proponent of the traditional tactics of closer formations and the primacy of the rifle. His enthusiastic endorsement of the costly, albeit successful, Japanese infantry tactics continued, “This war has proven that a frontal attack against an entrenched position can be successfully made.”478 Like Kuhn, Morrison was convinced that, “The Japanese have shown us little that is new in tactics or organization. It is all in the books.”479 Indeed, echoing the progressive spirit of scientism, and the army’s concept of “safe leadership, Morrison declared of the Japanese, “War with them approaches an exact science. Brilliant and startling movements producing great victories, such as have occasionally made interesting history, are not produced by this style of war, and equally, I do believe, will it prevent the opponent from succeeding in such movements. It is safe and conservative, but not spectacular.”480 It was also very costly.481 Morrison was particularly unimpressed by the impact of artillery on the conduct of the war in Manchuria. He wrote, “As the artillery was practically in action for the whole time and for a large part of the time the Russian infantry was not, the effect does not appear to be great enough to stop an infantry attack or greatly check it. Comparatively little cover seemed enough to protect from shrapnel fire. I saw deployed lines under artillery fire three times when I was close enough

475 Joseph Kuhn, “Final Report on the Russo-Japanese War” Army War College, pg. 210 476 Gene Fax, With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the Battle for Montfaucon (New York, Osprey Publishing, 2017), pg. 72 477 Maj. John F. Morrison, “Some Notes on the Japanese Infantry” from the Journal of the United States Infantry Association in Army and Navy Register Vol. 29 No. 1360 (January 6, 1906), pg. 18 (18) 478 Ibid. 479 Ibid. 480 John F. Morrison, “Report of Capt. John F. Morrison, Twentieth Infantry (now Major Thirteenth Infantry), Observer with the Japanese Army.” in Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria During the Russo-Japanese War (Vol. 1) (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1906), pg. 99 481 NOTE: Over 91,000 Japanese troops were killed or wounded in the siege of Port Arthur. Of these, 14,000 were lost in taking a single hill, Hill 203. See Dennis Warner & Peggy Warner, The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905 (London, Frank Cass Publishers, 1974), pp. 447-8 132

to distinctly witness its effect. In neither case were the casualties significant.”482 Based on his observations, Morrison largely dismissed artillery’s value in war, concluding that, “I do not believe that the improvements in field artillery will have much, if any, effect on changing present infantry tactics[.]”483 Morrison’s counterpart on assigned to the Russian army was Captain Carl Reichmann, a German immigrant who had been promoted from the ranks. He gained notoriety for his ability to translate German military writings. This was a valuable skill as West Point, forever behind the times, taught only French and Spanish.484 He served as a military observer in the Boer War. Reichmann’s observations caused him to conclude, like Morrison, that American infantry tactics were in no need of revision: “As to the technique of the details of the infantry attack we have, I fully believe, nothing to learn from this war for our regular infantry.”485 However, Reichmann believed that the stress of battle, particularly with the power of modern artillery (see below), was now a much greater factor in war. Reichmann wrote, “The physical exertions and the mental strain of the ten days' battle are apt to break down the entire human system—even the stolid nature of the Russian officers and soldiers succumbed under the stress of battle and numbers of them became insane at Liaoyang—and neither patriotism nor enthusiasm will be able to hold up the men; it is discipline alone that will triumph over human nature.”486 This would require more rigorous training, as Reichmann noted, “We shall, of course, always have on our side the irrepressive American spirit of enterprise and a high average of intelligence. But in addition to that our infantry will need strict discipline and great physical endurance[.]”487 It was in the impact of modern artillery that Reichmann parted most sharply from his fellow infantryman, Morrison. Reichmann declared unequivocally that, “The war in the Far East has fully brought out the power of modern artillery.”488 He warned that the current state of American field artillery was completely inadequate to the demands of modern warfare, and called for a thorough reorganization of that branch. Indeed, Reichmann went so far as to argue that the power of modern

482 Morrison, “Report of Capt. John F. Morrison”, pg. 83 483 Ibid., pg. 84 484 J.P. Clark, pg. 219 485 Carl Reichmann, “Report of Capt. Carl Reichmann, Seventeenth Infantry. Observer with the Russian Forces” in Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria During the Russo-Japanese War (Vol. 1), pg. 279 486 Ibid. 487 Ibid. 488 Ibid., pg. 269 133

artillery was such that it had altered the relationship of the service branches: “The war in the Far East, while it has left cavalry its strategic role, has closely cemented the bonds between the infantry and artillery. The cavalry hunts the prey, the artillery and infantry overpower it and drink its life blood. By its perfected armament artillery has more nearly reached the tactical importance of infantry.”489 Another interesting perspective on the implications of the Russo-Japanese War came from Peyton C. March, who would go on to serve as Army Chief of Staff in Washington during the critical period from March 1918 until June 1921. March was attached to the Japanese forces, and observed that the power of the defense was such that, “the infantry is not sent in at all by day unless the enemy's position has been thoroughly shaken by artillery fire.”490 March also noted the prevalence of night attacks during the conflict, which, “lead to the thought that the progress and development in killing capacity of the modern rapid-fire field gun and rifle have forced the attack, if it desires to live at all, to return to the old methods of a century ago when the individual man and his bayonet was the winning factor in the hand-to-hand combats of those days.”491 This stands as one of the more bizarre, albeit understandable, prognostications of the future of war. It is worth noting that March would play a dominant role in training American soldiers prior to their transfer to France in 1918. The Japanese use of the bayonet also reassured traditionalists that little had changed.492 Carl Reichmann concurred, noting that, “As regards infantry the war has shown that the days of the bayonet are not yet numbered.”493 Likewise, Peyton March observed, “One of the most striking lessons of the Japanese war is the return to the use of the bayonet and sword upon the battlefield.”494 At least one American officer, Col. William R. Livermore, pushed back against any such conclusion, writing, “It has been asserted by many who ought to know better, that this war has proved the folly of the conclusions that were drawn in Europe from the war in South Africa and shown that if soldiers are animated by desperate bravery, reckless of death and insensible of

489 Ibid., pg. 271 490 Peyton C. March, “Reports of Capt. Peyton C. March, General Staff. Observer with the Japanese Army” in Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria During the Russo-Japanese War (Vol. 1), pg. 43 491 Ibid. 492 For example, see Lt. F.M. Miller, “System in Bayonet Fencing” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 5 (March-April 1913), pp. 644-45 (644-650) 493 Reichmann in Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria During the Russo-Japanese War (Vol. 1), pg. 278 494 March in Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria During the Russo-Japanese War (Vol. 1), pg. 53 134

pain, they will go forward in spite of appalling slaughter, and by a liberal use of the bayonet transfix their feeble adversaries who have depended upon their firearms for defense. We know very well that such was not the experience of our Civil War[.]”495 Despite differing opinions, the use of the bayonet remained a vital element of the American infantryman’s training. The U.S. Army’s judgement on the use of machine guns in the conflict was more mixed. The Army and Navy Register quoted a Russian appraisal which stated, “The Maxim guns acquired a great importance. Our troops value them more than guns… For the infantry, it is well to have Maxims that can be transported by hand. They are to find their greatest appreciation in attacks where the positions just taken are to be defended against counter-attacks.”496 However, Lt.-Col. Montgomery Macomb of the U.S. Army was more muted, concluding that, “The machine gun played a useful but not great part in the war.”497 However, to his credit, Macomb believed that the machine gun was equally valuable in both the attack and defense, and argued for their distribution throughout combat units.498 Lt. Col. Oliver Wood, the American military attaché in Tokyo, was fulsome in his praise of the Japanese. As an artillery officer, Wood was particularly impressed by the Japanese conduct of the siege of Port Arthur. Nonetheless, like many officers of the period, Wood accepted the immense Japanese infantry losses as the unavoidable price of such an operation. Combining so many weapon systems into a coordinated offensive entailed a degree of inflexibility in pre- arranged assault plans. Wood wrote, “Every step taken by the Japanese was a bloody one, costing many gallant lives (shall we ever know how many?), but the pre-arranged plans were carried out regardless of losses. They knew what they had to do – and did it.”499 This need to stick to a given plan regardless of the situation was to become a mantra of the U.S. Army in 1917-18. Captain John E. McMahon, another artillery officer, argued vociferously that the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war boiled down to a greater need for a combined arms focus. The infantry and artillery, in particular, had to learn to work together as the former could not succeed against

495 Col. William R. Livermore, “Field and Siege operations in the Far East” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 36 No. 135 (May-June 1905), pg. 432 496 “War Experiences (translated from the Russian ‘Russki Invalid’)” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 38 No. 1352 (November 11, 1905), pg. 8 (8) 497 Lt. Col. Montgomery M. Macomb, “Machine Guns in the Russian Army During the Campaign in Manchuria, 1904-1905” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 17 No. 63 (January 1907), pg. 448 (443-452) 498 Ibid., pg. 449 499 Lt. Col. Oliver Wood, “A Week at Port Arthur” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 38 No. 1344 (September 16, 1905), pg. 13 135

entrenchments without the latter. McMahon wrote, “Unless this understanding is arrived at in times of peace, unless the details of the system are incorporated in our text books and practiced on the maneuver grounds until their execution is thoroughly familiar to all, we may rest assured that, when we are hurried into war against a really efficient modern army, we will meet with the disastrous fate which our more than foolish military policy has so long invited, but which we have so far managed to avert, as has been wittingly said, by the intelligent selection of our adversaries.”500 However, like his fellow artilleryman, Oliver Wood, McMahon also believed in the necessity of accepting heavy casualties in any offensive action. Citing a French military writer, McMahon wrote that two things were necessary in battle: “First – to obtain superiority of fire. Second – to pay the price.”501 This sentiment would be echoed a decade later in a 1915 letter from a French officer printed in the Infantry Journal, who preached that, “It is necessary then to acquaint the infantrymen with the colossal hecatombs of dead which await them in modern war. It would be deceiving them to conceal from them the glorious danger which awaits them.”502 Some American military officers were apt to regard the effects of modern weaponry as being overstated. General Tasker Bliss, then head of the Army War College, gave a speech in Philadelphia on the Russo-Japanese War in which he argued that, “The percentage of loss in battle has been constantly decreasing, and that of the previous war has been far less than that of any previous great war.”503 This lowered casualty rate was the product of a change in how battles were fought. Bliss highlighted this: “The principal difference between an ancient and modern battle is that whereas in the ancient one the death grapple extended from end to end of the line, in a modern one large parts of the two armies are simply sparring with each other, endeavoring to hold each other fast, while the whole intensity of the struggle is concentrated at perhaps one point.”504 Bliss was absolutely correct, but his conclusion disguised the fact that the tactician had to think first and foremost of that point at which “the whole intensity of the struggle is concentrated[.]”505 For at that point, battlefield victory was often decided, and the losses were correspondingly extreme.

500 Capt. John E. McMahon, “The Comradeship of Battle” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 38 No. 1349 (October 21, 1905), pg. 3 (2-5) 501 Ibid., pg. 2 502 Col. Baron Félix D’André, “Infantry and the Other Arms” in Infantry Journal Vol. 12 No. 4 (December 1915), pg. 519 503 Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, “General Bliss of Modern Warfare” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 37 No. 1322 (April 15, 1905), pg. 14; see also Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, “The Important Elements in Modern Land Warfare” in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 26 No. 1 (July 1905), pp. 99-120 504 Ibid. 505 Ibid. 136

Interestingly, Bliss was not alone in this view. An Army surgeon, Major W.B. Banister, who accompanied the China Relief Expedition made a similar observation: “It is a very strange fact that the statistics of battle show that the number of wounded, or rather the loss is inversely [related], to the perfection of the weapon. The reason of this [sic] is very probably is that the improvement in tactics to reduce the loss has surpassed proportionately the improvement in the weapon.”506 As with Tasker Bliss, this dangerous assumption failed to account for the impact of artillery. This perspective on weapons technology rendered American tactical doctrine ill-prepared to accept the rapidly-changing dynamics of killing on the modern battlefield. The ratio of casualties inflicted by rifles versus artillery exercised considerable sway over American officers in the years after the conflict. It was estimated that 80% of the losses were inflicted by rifle fire.507 Naturally, this convinced many American officers that their emphasis on rifle-fire was vindicated. They did not realize that the Russo-Japanese War, in fact, represented the apex of the rifle as a battlefield weapon, and that artillery would supplant it. Typical of this view was an editorial in the Infantry Journal in response to reports on the use of artillery in France during 1915: “[I]t is well to recall that the same claims that are being made for artillery fire effect were made at the outset of the Russo-Japanese and Balkan Wars and were subsequently refuted when the official statistics became available.”508 As the Boer War was to American cavalry officers, so the Russo-Japanese War was to American infantry officers. The reality of the First World War would dispel many of these convictions, but the delusions did not die without a fight. The Russo-Japanese War made the future importance of indirect artillery fire apparent to a number of American artillery officers. Capt. John E. McMahon noted that both the Japanese and Russians turned to indirect fire when their pre-war doctrine of direct fire tactics proved impractical under modern battlefield conditions.509Another sharp-eyed American observer of the future of warfare from the perspective of the Russo-Japanese War was Col. John P. Wisser. An artillery officer, Wisser wrote, “In the next war, for example, so far as can be foreseen, the armies will probably enter the field with infantry arms exactly similar to those used in Manchuria, but with an entirely different artillery armament; gun-recoil pieces, protective shields and sights facilitating

506 Banister, pg. 634 507 For example, see Merrill, “Infantry Training” pg. 61 508 Editorial, “The Function of Fire” in Infantry Journal Vol. 12 No. 3 (November 1915), pg. 490 (487-91) 509 Capt. John E. McMahon, “Indirect Fire” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 16 No. 60 (April 1906), pg. 665 (663-668) 137

aiming out of covered positions and if we add to this dirigible balloons and aeroplanes the changes will indeed be great.”510 Captain Tiemann N. Horn was also eerily prescient, describing the need for massive artillery concentrations, ample ammunition, close communication with the front, and the requirement of firing just in front of friendly infantry to support their advance.511 Another Cassandra was Maj. Harry Hawthorne, who prophesized heavy field artillery engaged in prolonged of enemy artillery and entrenchments.512 Hawthorne also noted the renewed importance of an old weapon, the hand grenade: “The Russo-Japanese war – that mine of lurid military suggestion – brought to the surface, among other forgotten things, the ancient and honorable grenade.”513 It is clear from the tenor of the articles written on the Russo-Japanese War that the issue of cavalry was troubling for some in the U.S. Cavalry. Coming off of the self-proclaimed vindication of the Boer War, American cavalry officers were forced to admit that the mounted arm contributed little to the fighting in Manchuria. Most officers blamed the lack of results on the poor quality of both the Russian and Japanese cavalry; the were past their prime and the Japanese were not a people used to fighting on horseback. However, most agreed that the cavalry retained its strategic roles of reconnaissance and raiding. As Reichmann noted of the Russian cavalry raids in his report, “The cavalry made a raid into Korea and it seems has made more extensive raids during the winter. General Rennenkampf, who commanded one of the cavalry divisions, is an ardent admirer of Sheridan, whose campaigns he had closely studied.”514 There were just enough examples of such actions in the conflict to justify the U.S. Army’s Civil War mind-set on the proper use of the mounted arm. Given that the conflict was between an East Asian and a European power, racial stereotypes played some role in evaluating the combatants. Yet, for the most part, the military analysis did not become mired in racial classifications. The previously mentioned Col. William R. Livermore,

510 Col. Joseph P. Wisser, “German Ideas on Tactics” in Infantry Journal Vol. 7 Vo. 3 (November 1910), pg. 388 (377-88) 511 Capt. Tiemann N. Horn, “Present Method and Lessons in Regard to Field Artillery Taught by the Russo-Japanese War (a lecture delivered at the Maneuver Camp in Pine Plains, NY on June 17, 1908)” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 30 No. 3 (November-December 1908), pp. 261-62 (251-262) 512 Maj. Harry L. Hawthorne, “Heavy Caliber Cannon in the Field (cont.)” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 29 No. 3 (May-June 1908), pp. 266-282 (266-282) 513 Maj. Harry L. Hawthorne, “Grenades” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 33 No. 1 (January-February 1910), pg. 26 (24-32) 514 Reichmann in Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria During the Russo-Japanese War (Vol. 1), pg. 272 138

noted of the Japanese that they were “nimble and quick”.515 One presumes that this observation was on the basis of their stature. The Russians, in contrast, were slow. However, Livermore paid them what he likely considered the greatest of compliments by stating, “but with good training perhaps the best material for soldiers, next to the Americans, although in a very different manner.”516 Reichmann had a similar opinion of the Russians, “It goes without saying that the Russian soldier is fine material, but he has one shortcoming—lack of intelligence—that is fatal and prevents his leader from getting the best results from this otherwise good soldier.”517

An Alternate View of the Russo-Japanese War: Foreign Observers It is instructive to compare the conclusions drawn by the American military observers with those from other countries. The British arguably are the most interesting, given the more open flow of information between the two countries due to absence of any language barrier. Moreover, the British army had only recently completed a difficult and sobering conflict against the Boers in South Africa. Accordingly, they were more aware of the challenges of the modern battlefield than most armies of the time. The work of Sir Ian Hamilton, in particular, was much admired in the United States. Hamilton had predicted a Japanese victory early in the conflict, and the Army and Navy Register praised him in glowing terms: “The British empire is fortunate in the possession of so clear sighted and prophetic a leader.”518 As a result of his service as an observer with the Japanese army, Hamilton offered a number of thoughts that pointed the way towards future military developments. As a veteran of two wars against the Boers, Hamilton believed strongly in the importance of marksmanship. He excoriated the Russians on this account, declaring that, “The Russian soldier is the worst shot existing in any great army in Europe.”519 However, the Russians used volley fire, which many officers in the United States and Europe still believed to be the most effective method of infantry fire. Hamilton rejected this view, as he understood that the volume of fire was now more important than ever, and “the volley method is incompatible with the attainment of the maximum rapidity of fire possible

515 Livermore, “Field and Siege operations in the Far East”, pg. 429 516 Ibid. 517 Reichmann in Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria During the Russo-Japanese War (Vol. 1), pg. 245 518 “General Hamilton on the Eastern War” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 39 No. 1372 (March 31, 1906), pg. 26 (26-27) 519 Sir Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap-Book During the Russo-Japanese War (Vol. 1) (London, Edward Arnold, 1905), pg. 112 139

with the modern magazine rifle, for each man has to wait until the slowest soldier is ready before he can come to the present, and even then cannot fire as soon as he has drawn a bead on his object, but must pull the trigger when his commander thinks he has done so, which is a very different matter.”520 Hamilton blamed the slowness and inaccuracy of Russian small arms fire, along with unconcealed artillery positions, for the ease with which the Japanese were able to force a crossing of the Yalu River. Hamilton also stressed the superiority of the Germanic command philosophy adopted by the Japanese army. Mission-orders and fluid, informal command arrangements enabled the Japanese to react quickly to the ebb and flow of battle. Hamilton compared this unfavorably with the more formal command structure of the British army, remarking that no one “can doubt that in these respects we stand far behind the Germans of thirty-four years ago. If any one does doubt it, let him study some of our South African battles carefully, and then read the story of Spicheren and Worth.”521 If the Japanese command system impressed Hamilton, their preference for the bayonet did not. Hamilton felt that a good rifleman need not fear such a primitive weapon. Citing, as always, the Boers, Hamilton wrote, “Neither Russians nor Japanese can hold a candle to a Boer when it comes to the instinctive, deadly, panther-like quickness with which the hunter of the veldt can use a rifle at close range. In such a melee as that which I have just seen, a good Boer would have had an enemy on the ground for each of the ten cartridges in his magazine within some twenty seconds! The bayonet should have no fears for such a man.”522 Hamilton’s view on this matter was in perfect accord with that of the Irish-American soldier, Blake, who served with the Boer forces. The importance of entrenchments was also driven home for the few British officers who had not already learned that lesson from the Boer War. Colonel E.R. Kenyon of the Royal Engineers noted that the American Civil War had made this apparent long before. However, with the Russo-Japanese War, Kenyon believed that, “The lessons have, it seems, at last been learned, but until the experiences of South Africa and Manchuria they were only grasped by the minority of British soldiers.”523 Hamilton, too, regarded trenches as essential in modern war, and chided the Russian infantry for not taking full advantage of them early in the war.

520 Ibid. 521 Ian Hamilton (vol. 2), pg. 97 522 Ibid., pg. 254 523 Col. E.R. Kenyon, “Some Lessons from the American Civil War, 1861-65” in The United Service Magazine Vol. 48 No. 1024 (March 1914), pg. 670 140

For the British, the Russo-Japanese War confirmed the lessons of the Boer War with respect to artillery. The need for more and larger guns, particularly howitzers and their ability to strike trenches with indirect fire, was apparent. Deeds followed words, and on the eve of the First World War, British divisions each had a compliment of eighteen howitzers.524 In his book, Hamilton referred to the lessons of the Boer War in this respect. He also noted that it was likely that the primary offensive task of artillery in the future would, by necessity, be providing indirect fire against the defenders’ positions. The hydro-pneumatic recoil system on the new generation of quick-firing guns effectively meant that they could only be employed in prepared positions, usually in the defense. Otherwise, direct fire against a defender with quick-firing guns already in place would lead to the attackers’ guns being destroyed as they arrived on the field, before they could deploy for action. The French observer with the Japanese army, General Oscar de Négrier, a highly-decorated and experienced soldier, was much less convinced of the future importance of artillery. He declared that, “The advances made during the last few years in the construction of artillery have created an impression that the part it will play in the battles of the future must be absolutely decisive. It will be nothing of the kind.”525 Despite this remark, de Négrier still felt that artillery had a very important role to play, especially heavy artillery (which the French army lacked). He also stressed the importance of machine guns: “Heavy artillery and mortars are now indispensable to armies in the field. It is absolutely necessary that this fact should be recognized. The same remark applies to machine-guns.”526 In marked contrast to the prevailing French doctrine, he also believed that infantry, no matter how motivated or well-trained, could not attack unsupported in the face of modern defensive firepower. As with American cavalry officers, most foreign cavalrymen were loath to accept the war’s judgment on cavalry. An Austrian observer, Count Gustav Wrangel, spoke for many when he admitted, “It almost seems as if the limited and faulty performance of the cavalry in the Russo- Japanese War have had a depressing effect on the pens of those called upon to criticise [sic] and report their doings.”527 Even the special correspondent of The London Times refused to accept it.

524 Dastrup, pg. 148 525 Oscar de Négrier, Lessons of the Russo-Japanese War (trans. By E. Louis Spiers) (London, Hugh Rees, 1906), pg. 42 526 Ibid., pg. 54 527 Count Gustav Wrangel, “The Cavalry in the East Asiatic Campaign: Lessons and Critical Contemplations” (translated by Sergeant Harry Bell) in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 18 No. 67 (January 141

He insisted that the virtual irrelevance of cavalry was caused largely by the fact that the Japanese cavalry were too few in number to have an impact, and that the Russian cavalry had lost its offensive power due to its adoption of the rifle over the lance and saber.528 Wrangel also rejected any suggestion that cavalry had been diminished in value. He blamed structural problems in the Russian army for their poor performance, and exultantly pointed to the fact that the Japanese increased the size of their cavalry arm after the war. However, there were some foreign cavalry officers who saw not the particular shortcomings of the Russian and Japanese cavalry establishments, but the inevitable decline of the branch itself. Arguably one of the most insightful was a British cavalry officer who wisely wrote anonymously for the United Service Magazine in 1911. His article listed each of the traditional missions of cavalry, and then analyzed whether mounted soldiers still accomplished these missions most effectively. His conclusion was a they did not. He wrote: “Thus we see that in every particular cavalry are already being used less and less, and if we may prognosticate on the conclusions of our logic, this branch of the service is bound to be used in ever- decreasing numbers; nations will reduce so expensive an arm as far as possible, and it will within the next century reach almost, if not quite, a ‘quantité negligible’ because they will find that the work that cavalry had hitherto had to perform can be done cheaper and better by other means.”529 Less pessimistic, but still too optimistic, was a German observer who wrote under the nom de plume of ‘Asiaticus’. He wrote that, “Shock action will probably not be employed so often as formerly on European battlefields, but entirely disappear it will not. It will find its chance in the moment of surprise, but such moments want watching for. Against unbroken infantry every attack will be in vain[.]”530 It was the defeated Russians, not surprisingly, who most thoroughly analyzed the conflict. A Col. Neznamov, writing in the Russian military magazine Russki Invalid, drew a number of important lessons. Impressed with the effect of shrapnel shells, he nonetheless advocated supplying more high-explosive (HE) rounds for the guns, as they were more effective against entrenchments. The HE rounds were best employed by howitzers, which were more important than

1908), pg. 451 (451-500) 528 “The Cavalry Lessons of the War” from The London Times reprinted in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 16 No. 59 (January 1906), pg. 487 (484-494) 529 “Cavalryman” (pseudonym), “The Future of Cavalry” in United Service Journal Vol. 43 No. 994 (September 1911), pg. 654 530 Asiaticus (pseudonym), Reconnaissance in the Russo-Japanese War (translated by J. Montgomery) (London, Hugh Rees, 1908), pg. 146 142

ever on the modern battlefield. This lesson was learned late by the belligerents on the western front in World War One. Neznamov was also very impressed with machine guns, writing: “Machine guns have acquired an enormous importance.”531 This conclusion was echoed by another Russian military writer, and veteran of the siege at Port Arthur, Lieutenant-General Nikolai Tretyakov. Tretyakov described the few machine guns under his command as “a tremendous power, practically equaling a whole company[.]”532 Neznamov also saw the value of machine guns in an offensive role: “On the offensive, to secure possession of captured positions, nothing can replace them in resisting counter-attacks on account of their character as insensible machines, and on account of their great moral effect.”533 He also called for the adoption of more field telephones for improved communications. The bitter lessons learned by the Russians did yield some benefits in the world war. William Balck, the German officer and military theorist, wrote that, “It must be said that the Russians had many excellent qualities. Its infantry especially showed the benefit of the experiences gained in the Russo-Japanese War in its use of the hand grenade and field fortifications.”534 One lesson drawn by the German General Staff from the war was the need to further push responsibility down the chain of command, given the vast expanse of the modern battlefield. In its analysis of the war, the General Staff concluded, “On a modern extensive battlefield the Commander-in-Chief must now more than ever depend on the intelligent, cheerful, and self -reliant co-operation of all grades under him. The difficult task of General Headquarters, therefore, is to leave subordinate commanders a free hand, and yet at the same time, by distinctly stating the purpose, to see that the action of every unit is directed upon one single object… But it must never be lost sight of that the chief thing is always to gain a tactical success wherever there is a chance for it. Whether and where this must be the case is a matter for subordinate commanders to decide. They must make up their minds on the point whether they can, in a definite case, accept responsibility for a deviation from the orders issued.”535 It would be difficult to articulate a command philosophy more inimical to that practiced by Gen. Pershing as AEF commander.

531 Col. Neznamov, “Teachings of the Russo-Japanese War” (translated from the French by Capt. William Lassiter) reprinted in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 25 No. 3 (May-June 1906), pg. 301 532 Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tretyakov, My Experiences at Nan Shan and Port Arthur With the Fifth East Siberian Rifles (trans. By A.C. Alford) (London, Hugh Rees, 1911), pg. 47 533 Nexnamov, pg. 301 534 Balck, Development of Tactics – World War, pg. 30 535 German General Staff (Historical Section), The Russo-Japanese War: The (Part I) (translated by Lt. Karl von Donat) (London, Hugh Rees Ltd., 1914), pp. 192-93 143

Another lesson that the Germans took away from the conflict was the need for more heavy artillery. This included not only siege artillery, but heavy pieces that could move with the army to accomplish task that the lighter field artillery could not. The primary weapons of the heavy field artillery were the 210mm mortar, the 150mm howitzer, and the 100mm gun.536 By 1914, German divisions had twelve howitzers at their disposal.537 Some German commentators, such as Lt. William Neuffer, argued that the conflict’s casualty statistics under-stated the influence of artillery. The next war, Neuffer believed, would be dominated by heavy guns firing from concealed positions against enemy positions, while lighter guns would accompany the infantry to maintain the momentum of their advance. Regardless, the consumption of artillery ammunition would be far beyond that envisioned by any major military in 1909.538

“American Ingenuity”: The Machine Gun Enraptured by the myth of the American rifleman, the U.S. Army was correspondingly reluctant to embrace the machine gun. The Americans were, at first, pioneers in the employment of the machine gun. Early examples, such as the Requa battery and the Gatling gun, were employed in limited numbers during the Civil War. However, although tested by the army, these weapons were not officially accepted into service. Their use was most often the result of private purchases by Union commanders impressed by their potential. It was by this means that the power and efficacy of the new weapons in combat was made known. In the battle between American ingenuity and American mythology, the latter enjoyed the advantage; the rifleman would not easily be displaced, even by a product of American industry. Experiments with the Gatling gun were certainly conducted in the years following the Civil War. The fact that most of the world’s machine guns were of American design, notably the Gatling and Maxim guns, conveniently excused the Army from seriously studying their employment in battle. In 1886, Major Edward B. Williston wrote a very thorough and perceptive article on the machine gun, calling for its organization and employment to be like that of the horse artillery.539

536 “Heavy Field Artillery of Germany” (trans. by Maj. H.L. Hawthorne) from Revues Militaires des Armées Etrangères reprinted in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 28 No. 1 (July-August 1907), pg. 13 (11-30) 537 Dastrup, pg. 148 538 Lt. William Neuffer, “What Lessons in the Employment of Field Artillery Should Be Deduced from the Experiences of the Russo-Japanese War?” (translated from the Artilleristische Monatshefts No. 35 November 1909) in The Field Artillery Journal Vol. 1 No. 2 (April-June 1911), pp. 197-219 539 Maj. Edward B. Willison, “Machine Guns and the Supply of Small-Arm Ammunition on the Battle-Field” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States (Vol. 7, No. 26) (June 1886), pp. 121-66 144

Such an approach to the tactics and organization of machine gun units was common at the time, given the great weight of the weapon. Unfortunately, the legacy of this conception only served to retard an acceptance of the machine gun’s true role as a support weapon fully integrated into the infantry. Indeed, the Gillmore Board, convened in 1873 to investigate the Gatling gun, went so far is to conclude, “The committee are decidedly adverse to the deployment of mitrailleurs for advancing with infantry, or indeed for attacking in any form, except when the enemy is provided with an inferior artillery or no artillery at all.”540 The weight of the weapon also limited its utility in the wars against the Plains Indians. For example, Gatling guns were used in action only six times between 1874-78.541 The weapon would not be truly tested in combat until the Spanish- American War. As machine guns became lighter and more maneuverable, the terms of the debate shifted. Increasingly, the weapon itself was conceptualized in terms of the rifleman, and was therefore evaluated as a substitute for massed rifle fire. For example, writing of the use of machine guns in the Russo-Japanese War, Lt.-Col. Montgomery Macomb characterized the machine gun’s power as “equivalent to about fifty riflemen.”542 As a result, American planners failed to appreciate the tactical versatility of the weapon and how it would catalyze the rifleman’s transformation into the infantryman. This contrasts sharply with the British, who were early pioneers in the use of machine guns based on their experience in various colonial wars. The Royal Army had learned through hard experience that, in the words of , “Whatever happens we have got / The , and they have not.”543 More importantly, the British understood that the machine gun was a very different beast than the rifle. Writing in 1898 for the Royal United Service Institution, Lt. G.E. Benson of the Royal Artillery, expressed that critical point succinctly: “[I]n fact, the only point in common appears to be that they both fire bullets of the same pattern[.]”544 In a very real sense, the U.S. Army’s relationship with the machine gun was a love-hate relationship. On one hand, the machine gun was a definitively American invention, and as such its use should come naturally to American soldiers. On the other hand, it was a weapon of mass fire

540 “Ordnance Memorandum No. 17 – The Gatling Gun” in Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 11, No. 45) (June 20, 1874), pg. 706 541 David A. Armstrong, Bullets and Bureaucrats: The Machine Gun and the United States Army, 1861-1916 (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1982), pg. 80 542 Macomb, pg. 448 543 Hilaire Belloc & Basil Temple Blackwood, The Modern Traveller (London, Edward Arnold, 1898), pg. 41 544 Lt. G.E. Benson, “Machine Guns: Their Tactics and Equipment” reprinted in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 22 No. 91 (January 1898), pg. 112 (106-146) 145

that threatened the army’s love affair with the deliberate, aimed rifle-fire of the infantry. In 1908, one army officer argued for the disbandment of the machine gun units precisely because they matched neither the accuracy nor mechanical reliability of the bolt-action rifle.545 It is not surprising, then, that the army consistently thought of the machine gun in the context of rifles. It was not a new weapon with new tactical potential, but merely a device producing fire equivalent to that of multiple rifles. For example, the 1905 proposed cavalry regulations repeatedly referred to machine guns in this context. A typical example is, “Machine guns enable the general to bring into action at certain points all the effectiveness of infantry fire on the smallest space.”546 Or, “The carrying power and effect of the machine gun is that of the infantry rifle.”547 The machine gun’s contribution was therefore conceived as linear and additive, and in no way a catalyst to new tactical possibilities. The 1911 IDR contained only two pages on the employment of machine guns.548 This was, in part, due to the fact that its primary author, Col. John F. Morrison, believed the machine gun to be an “impractical” weapon.549 Interestingly, some of the more forward-thinking and perspicacious articles papers on machine guns came from the cavalry. For these officers, the machine gun promised to restore some of the battlefield power of the mounted arm, and, more importantly, the more fluid nature of cavalry action caused them to think less in terms of linear fire tactics. For example, in 1908 Lt. Harry Hodges noted that, “It is fully recognized that, with the infantry, the role of the machine gun is to supplement the fire of the rifle; but with the cavalry, the machine gun should be a substitute for rifle fire rather than a supplement to it[.]”550 This additional firepower would restore cavalry’s mobility, as, “Cavalry with machines guns is more than ever cavalry pure and simple, for it is given greater resisting power with less loss of mobility.”551 The British use of the Maxim gun against the “Mad Mahdi” in the Sudan gave an example of the new battlefield possibilities.552 It probably did not help the cause of machine gun advocates in the U.S. Army that their

545 Col. James Parker, “The Machine Gun Platoon: Should It Be Retained as Part of the Regimental Organization?” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 19 No. 69 (July 1908), pp. 48-53 (48-53) 546 2nd Lt. George E. Price, “Proposed Drill Regulations for Colt’s Automatic Machine Gun, Cal. 30” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 16 No. 60 (April 1906), pg. 650 (631-656) 547 Ibid. 548 “Infantry Fire Control” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 50 No. 1648 (July 22, 1911), pg. 7 (7) 549 J.P. Clark, pg. 227 550 Lt. Harry Hodges, “The Use of Machine Guns with the Cavalry” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 19 No. 69 (July 1908), pg. 30 (30-47) 551 Ibid., pg. 36 552 Ibid., pg. 37 146

most visible and vocal member, Capt. John H. “Machine Gun” Parker, was an insufferable self- promoter. In an article on machine guns for the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, Parker referring to his actions at the battle for San Juan Hill, announced to the world that, “This eight and one-half minutes marked an epoch in the tactics of the battlefield, and created a new arm of the service.”553 (italics original) It is perhaps no wonder that the Chief of the General Staff, J. Franklin Bell, referred to Parker as “a pestiferous, immodest ass,” a description to which few would have taken exception.554 Parker campaigned tirelessly for a separate machine gun branch (no doubt headed by himself).555 The extraordinary degree to which the American army had failed to truly appreciate the role of the machine gun is starkly visible in the 1917 edition of the 1914 Field Service Regulations. In it, machine guns are curiously labeled “emergency weapons”.556 This is in sharp contrast to the practice in France, where machine guns and automatic rifles were the fulcrum of infantry tactics. The 1914 FSR continued in this “emergency” vein, noting that machine guns “are best used when their fire is in the nature of a surprise to the enemy at the crises of combat. Their effective use will be for short periods of time—at most but a few minutes—until silenced by the enemy.”557 As emergency weapons, their use in combat was by definition limited. For example, “On the offensive they find their use in assisting the attack to obtain fire superiority temporarily lost, and against lines of trenches which are to be assaulted. in the defensive they are used against large targets visible for a short time only, and on advancing lines of the enemy's infantry within the close and effective ranges.”558 Later in 1917, the received a tactical upgrade from an “emergency weapon” to a “weapon of opportunity”.559 It was still a far cry from the European consensus.

553 1st Lt. John H. Parker, “Uses of Machine Guns” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 24 No. 97 (January 1899), pg. 7 (1-14) 554 Coffman, The Regulars, pg. 161 555 Armstrong, pg. 109 556 War Department, Field Service Regulations United States Army 1914 (Corrected to April 15, 1917), (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1917), pg. 79 557 Field Service Regulations United States Army 1914 (Corrected to April 15, 1917), pg. 79 558 Field Service Regulations United States Army 1914 (Corrected to April 15, 1917), pg. 79 559 War Department, Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action (1917) (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1917), pg. 10 147

Controlling Chaos: “Safe Leadership” Perhaps the most pernicious development in American military thought during this period was the concept of “safe leadership”. As the U.S. Army adopted the ethos of business administration in its approach to war, a corresponding preference for risk-aversion and operational predictability grew. “Safe leadership” was the American response to the increasing complexity and disaggregation of the modern battlefield, and it called for American officers to adhere closely to written orders in order to facilitate proper co-ordination in combat. The net effect of this doctrine was to make paramount the imposed synchronization of a battle over its natural tempo. American officers frequently used the metaphor of a machine or football team to convey the idea. “Safe leadership” was a rational attempt to coordinate different arms on the battlefield, but it was strongly influenced by the risk-averse culture of corporate management and the Progressive Era preference for centralized control. Typical was the injunction of Col. John F. Morrison, one of the key architects of U.S. Army doctrine: “Everything possible must be done to maintain organization and control.”560 Carol Reardon, in describing the concept of “safe leadership”, wrote, “One particularly apt illustration during this time of rapid industrial growth compared safe leadership to an intricate mechanical apparatus that, like any finely-tuned mechanism, works most effectively only if all the cogs meshed perfectly. In this model of high command, the “natural” leader, the individualist, or the unpredictable and spectacularly lucky “military genius” were just so much sand to foul the cogs.”561 Colonel Robert Bullard, a member of the Army War College class of 1912, anticipated Reardon’s description. He wrote despairingly of the command method taught at the college: “It is not claimed that method develops genius or brilliancy. It may even be discouraging to an officer who imagines that the daring and unerring combinations of a Napoleon are now possible as ever. The object is to develop a school of safe leadership and not to encourage unusual and extraordinary methods.”562 Typical of this attitude was Capt. Arthur Conger who, in a 1916 lecture at Ft. Leavenworth, emphasized that, “The safe, conservative play, economical of loss, has its place and must not give way without reason to a more spectacular offensive.”563 The need for control trickled down the ranks, even to the point of attempting to control

560 Morrison, Training Infantry, pg. 46 561 Reardon, pp. 21-22 562 Bullard in Millet, The General, pg. 225 563 Conger, Preparing Tactical Problems, pg. 7 148

rifle fire in battle. Morrison argued that such control was necessary to gain fire superiority, “To sum up: fire superiority is necessary to success, to attain fire superiority we must properly distribute our fire, to do this we must be able to control and hence direct it, and this can only be done if our men are disciplined.”564 In 1911, Capt. James Pickering criticized the cumbersome army system of fire control by citing an example from a field exercise, “[T]he captain would see a skirmish line start to move. He would give command for bringing a certain amount of fire, say of one platoon, to bear upon this objective. The lieutenant would repeat the same order, and each of the sergeants in command of sections would repeat the same order. After each one had clearly designated the objective and given the order, the firing line adjusted the elevation and fire was opened. The trouble was that the objective usually disappeared before all this could be done.”565 Captain Dana T. Merrill, in an otherwise very thoughtful article on infantry training, still insisted that infantry fire could be controlled and directed by officers in the maelstrom of the modern battlefield.566 In a similar vein, the use of open order tactics came under scrutiny in America (as it did overseas, notably in Germany) in the years after the Russo-Japanese War.567 Many officers in both Europe and the United States feared that the loss of control, concentrated firepower, and cohesion was not worth the reduced casualties. One British officer who argued against so-called “Boer tactics” was Col. F.N. Maude. In reviewing Maude’s treatise, Notes on the Evolution of Infantry Tactics, Maj. D.H. Boughton (U.S.A.) approvingly noted, “Col. Maude’s contention is that an undue extension of the attacking line lessens the intensity of fire, delays the advance, and ultimately leads to greater loss than would be sustained by a denser line having a greater intensity of fire. This contention is sound, to say nothing of the loss of control when the men are greatly scattered, for, other things being equal, a fire superiority must be the deciding factor.”568 Communications technology, inevitably, came to be seen not as a means of merely conducting battle, but of controlling it. “It must be evident then that the only way to attain that

564 Morrison, Training Infantry, pg. 35 565 Pickering, “The Cumbersome Firing Line”, pg. 539 566 Merrill, “Infantry Training” pg. 62 567 One American observer of German maneuvers in the autumn of 1906 noted the dense attack formations adopted by the German infantry, presciently remarking that “the use of dense masses of infantry in close range during the attack would doubtless be speedily remedied in war.” 1st Lt. Gordon Johnston, “The German Maneuvers” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 17 No. 63 (January 1907), pg. 460 (455-460) 568 Maj. D.H. Boughton “Book Review: Notes on the Evolution of Infantry Tactics” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 17 No. 61 (July 1906), pg. 180 (179-83) 149

perfection of control of the different units of an army which success demands, is through electrical lines of information which follow all the movements of the elements of an army and enable the commander-in-chief to operate his entire force at all times, with the same precision with the same precision he would attain were he directing the movements upon a map before him.”569 This belief in the ability of communications technology to banish Clausewitzian friction still bedevils the U.S. Army to this day. The benefits of improved communication are often sacrificed to the ever-present human drive to control the uncontrollable. This need for control inevitably had a dampening effect on the exercise of individual initiative by subordinate commanders. The command culture was one in which “safety” became synonymous with inflexibility. Writing in 1912 for the Infantry Journal, Captain Hugh D. Wise made clear, “Remember that when you depart from your orders you shoulder the burden of proof and you may have to show that you were right in so doing[.]”570 This is a truly remarkable admission, as it means that junior officers were assumed to be in the wrong when deviating from their orders. Lacking the benefit of the doubt, junior officers exercised their discretion at their own risk, and could expect to be called to account. Even training maneuvers were often tightly scripted to teach specific lessons, rather than serve as general problem-solving opportunities. Robert L. Bullard wrote of the 1912 Connecticut maneuvers with the Regular Army and National Guard, “These were of a kind called ‘controlled maneuvers,’ by which was meant that every operation was absolutely guided up to a certain lesson and not allowed to be varied from its especial purpose.”571 The institutional bias against individual initiative, lip-service aside, became increasingly apparent over time, especially after 1917. An anonymous officer, writing in the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, blamed the lack on initiative among junior officers on an approach to tactical problems that was strictly by the book. He wrote of developing a novel solution to a tactical problem called ‘Grippenkurl,’ and receiving very negative remarks from his instructor: “I was not informed that I had violated any principal [sic] but that a could not improve a solution of Grippenkurl therefore a departure was necessarily wrong. Thereafter, knowing what my instructor wanted, which was quite a game at these [service] schools, I

569 Squier, pg. 9 570 Capt. Hugh D. Wise, “Tactical Situations and Field Orders” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 2 (September-October, 1912), pg. 172 (169-180) 571 Bullard, Personalities and Reminisces of the War, pg. 22 150 memorized the solutions and gave them verbatim being marked crazy and mentally lazy at the time. Immediately I received excellent marks and saved myself the labor of original thought[.]”572 Another officer listed several institutional reasons for the smothering of initiative, including “A long existent deep rooted strangle hold grip of bureaucratic administration” and “Centralization of control, command, and instruction.”573 There were, of course, American officers who argued against such a restrictive command philosophy. They also enjoyed a rhetorical advantage, insofar as initiative was considered a national trait (albeit one more honored than practiced in the army). Maj. J.W. McAndrew, later to become one of Pershing’s inner circle, argued in 1913 that, “Initiative on the part of subordinates must be cultivated to the highest extent, as no other single element is more essential to success in war.”574 However, perhaps the most insightful critique was that of James Chester. Although often characterized as a “conservative” in the army debates of the time, Chester was not against change on principle. Rather, he feared that the new trends in centralization, theoretical instruction and mechanical execution were adopted at the expense of warfighting as praxis. Chester felt the progressive winds blowing towards more centralized control, and presciently warned in 1899: “The horrors which have so shocked the country and disheartened the troops flow principally from two foundations, namely, inexperience and centralization. Inexperience operates mainly in volunteer organizations; but centralization effects the whole army, Regular and volunteer. Commanding officers are not permitted to command. They are not permitted to take the initiative even in matters where they must bear the responsibility. Their hands are tied. To be sure centralization is no new thing. It existed during the early years of the Rebellion. And so did mismanagement and disaster. Grant and Sherman had good reason to be glad when the wire that bound them to Washington was cut. But we had in the army in those days, a class of officers, who had spent most of their lives on the plains where they were ‘monarchs of all they surveyed’ and more too. In the presence of necessity such men would not be bound by law or Regulations. It was war time, and they were in command. But that type has almost disappeared from the muster roles. A new generation has grown up, who have become accustomed to control by the War Department. If they can wire to Washington they will never take the initiative in anything. Such officers can never command. The first step in reformation, therefore, should be new Regulations. Regulations which permit officers to

572 One of Them (pseudonym), “Why Is It? Another Answer” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 28 No. 118 (April 1918), pp. 556-57 573 H.R.H., “Why Is It? An Answer” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 28 No. 117 (January 1918), pg. 423

574 Maj. J.W. McAndrew, “Infantry Training” in Infantry Journal Vol. 10 No. 3 (November-December 1913), pg. 325 (318-335) 151

command.”575

The N.C.O. With the gradual dispersion of soldiers in new tactical formations, the role of the non- commissioned officer became a more pressing subject. Traditionally, the NCO was not a true tactical leader in the U.S. Amy. Instead, they operated more as mere command conduits for the officers. As such, they were creatures of the company commander, and not a true tactical decision- maker within the larger military establishment. commanded Uptonian squads only in the sense of making sure that they stayed in formation and followed the officer’s command to fire. Sergeants, in turn, acted more as administrative assistants for the captains and lieutenants, making sure that the quotidian operations of the platoons and company went smoothly. In a 1912 article on managing an infantry company, Marine Lt. William E. Parker used exactly that language, referring to NCOs as “the company officers’ assistants”.576 In 1904, a perceptive young officer, 1st Lt. Louis Hamilton, unabashedly stated the problem, “Unfortunately, comparatively little attention is paid in our service to the training of non-commissioned officers, and this little, instead of being an adjunct of the military establishment at large, as in some other services, is left solely to the company commander, to the exclusion of all uniformity.”577 However, with the growing use of open order tactics, the military hierarchy was faced with the possibility of surrendering tactical control to the NCO This was not always easy. For example, immediately after the Boer War, the British army created a school for NCOs at Salisbury Plain. However, despite excellent reviews, the program was shut down in 1906: granting command responsibility to the lower orders was evidently too much for the British officer corps.578 The more socially-acceptable subaltern was the preferred alternative.579 The American NCO had the advantage of being unburdened by the same rigid class system that restrained his British counterpart. Nonetheless, the bonds of language, culture, and history

575 Major James Chester, “Some of the Defects in Our Military Machine” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 24 No. 98 (March 1899), pp. 203-204 (196-206) 576 Lt. William E. Parker, “The Company Officer” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 1 (July-August 1912), pg. 73 (71- 76) 577 1st. Lt. Louis Hamilton, “The Training of the Non-Commissioned Officer” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 35 No. 131 (September-October 1904), pg. 260 578 Spencer Jones, From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform of the British Army, 1902-1914 (Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), pg. 48 579 For example, see Beedos, “Side-Lights on the Boer War: The Subaltern – An Appreciation” in The United Service Magazine Vol. 26 No. 889 (December 1902), pp.291-295 152

meant that many British military practices were adopted by the Americans. Indeed, one might justly conclude that the more pernicious the British practice, the more enthusiastically the Americans embraced it. This included an unseemly social distance between commissioned and non-commissioned officers. A non-commissioned officer, writing to the editors of the Army and Navy Journal, complained of the enforced social distance, writing, “Our uniform constitutes a bar to the society of those whose moral and intellectual equals we are, and whose social equals we should be.”580 The editors naturally rejected the writer’s premise, stating emphatically, “[I]t is very apparent to us that a proper system of discipline in matters of duty can never admit the least approach to equality in social matters between the officer and the soldier.”581 Examples from the British army were then cited as proof of this conclusion. There were American officers willing to champion the devolution of command functions to the NCOs. One such advocate was the Civil War hero, Gen. Wesley Merritt. In 1889, Merritt wrote, “During my service in the field in Oklahoma I had frequent knowledge of non- commissioned officers performing the duties of their offices, and often those of the commissioned grade, in a manner which impressed me with their intelligence, dignity, and strength of character…These soldiers deserve the respect of their superiors in rank and increased encouragement from the Government[.]”582 Col. L.H. Carpenter of the 7th Cavalry argued in the Journal of the Military Institution of the United States for pay increases for NCOs on account of their importance to the service.583 For other officers, the educational requirements of a new, progressive America meant that the NCO had to be educated to fulfill his role. For example, 1st Lt. C.W. Farber argued for an increase in pay and the establishment of a special school for NCOs.584 Retired Brigadier-General Anson Mills appealed to the broader American discourse to better the position of the NCO, “Nothing, however, in our Republic, is so un-American as the great gulf that is maintained by laws, written and un-written, between the commissioned and non- commissioned[.]”585

580 “A Social Question” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 22 No. 26 (January 24, 1885), pg. 512 (512) 581 Ibid. 582 Gen. Wesley Merritt in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 27 No. 16 (December 14, 1889), pg. 315 583 Col. L.H. Carpenter, “Discipline” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States Vol. 18 No. 80 (March 1896), pg. 451 (450-51) 584 1st Lt. C.W. Farber, “To Promote the Efficiency of Non-Commissioned Officers” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 22 No. 91 (January 1898), pp.98-105 (98-105) 585 Brig. Gen. Anson Mills, “The Organization and Administration of the United States Army” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 24 No. 99 (May 1899), pg. 403 (398-417) 153

The devolution of command responsibility was not simply a debate between reformers and conservatives, it also exposed differing interpretations of progressivism. For many, the Progressive Era’s infatuation with technocratic expertise was decidedly prejudicial to the relatively uneducated NCO exercising command responsibilities. Indeed, the Progressive Era was less of a reform movement than the imposition of a new form of social control predicated on dubious claims of technical knowledge. Much of the management theory of the era involved cataloging, systematizing, and thereby appropriating the traditional knowledge of the working class for use by the managerial class.586 The most famous example of this were the previously mentioned time and motion studies done by Frederick W. Taylor, which began in the 1880s. Taylor’s work, like so much of the theory behind the reforms of the Progressive Era, ultimately proved “as scientific as the average séance.”587 Nonetheless, the Progressive Era marks a significant shift in the “social distribution of knowledge” as a technocratic elite appropriated for itself the practical knowledge of the working classes under the guise of “science.”588 The era’s pseudo-scientific vogue for reducing the working class to mere peasants on the technocrat’s demesne naturally spread to the U.S. Army. For an officer corps desperately in need of professional recognition and an improved social status, the stop-watch readily replaced the lash for keeping the rank and file in their place. Accordingly, for many officers, the NCO would be allowed to rise no further. For example, in 1911, Lt. Col. C.R. Noyes called for the issue of infantry company organization to be resolved. “by a scientific inquiry based on the conditions of modern warfare[.]”589 Insofar as the command responsibilities of the platoon sergeants were concerned, Noyes wrote, “In the opinion of the writer there should be no subdivision known as a section, commanded by a sergeant, in tactical maneuvering of a platoon or company.”590 Noyes similarly stressed the importance of unit command by the officers alone: “The squad commanders should look to the officer as their next superior in the fighting line, and the two platoon sergeants should act as his assistants, exercising such control as he might require.”591 During the progressive Wilson administration, a bill was even introduced in Congress to prevent African-American soldiers from being appointed commissioned or non-commissioned officers on the basis of the supposed

586 Trachtenberg, pg. 69 587 Matthew Stewart, “The Business-School Boondoggle” in The Wall Street Journal (April 21, 2017) 588 Trachtenberg, pg. 69 589 Lt. Col. C.R. Noyes, “An Infantry Company” in Infantry Journal Vol. 8 No. 1 (July-August 1911), pg. 73 (73-76) 590 Ibid., pg. 74 591 Ibid. 154

intellectual inferiority.592 Hamilton, in his plea for training NCOs, pushed back against the denigration of the average soldier: “A soldier is a man with a full share of intelligence and penetration, whatever may be the opinion of some people to the contrary[.]”593 In 1905, Robert L. Bullard, then a major, argued that many of the deficiencies of the American NCO were a function of the fact that native-born Americans lacked the necessary qualities of self-discipline and respect for authority. If one were to list the best NCOs of the Regular Army, Bullard observed: “It is loaded out of proportion with un-Anglicised German and Irish names. This means that in the long test of soldierly qualities made to determine fitness for these positions, in sub-ordination, obedience, discipline, respect of authority, faithful and efficient service, the Weinbergers and the Wunderlichs, the Dolans and the O'Briens have been found superior to the Williamses and the Johnsons.”594

Worries Confidence within the U.S. Army as to its ability to meet the test of modern warfare was by no means unequivocal. In 1911, the Infantry Journal editorial board issued a harsh condemnation of the state of the army: “We know that war is a serious business and that preparations for war therefore should be earnest; and we know so far as any real preparation is concerned now,we have been as the child playing with his blocks.”595 Yet, for all of the talk of preparing for war, the army did almost nothing about it. Since the Civil War, the army had been acutely aware that it must serve as the nucleus of a greatly expanded force in the event of war. It pushed Congress for greater control over the National Guard in a protracted and futile battle against local political interests. Other legislative efforts were made with future mobilization in mind, but the army did almost nothing internally to prepare for such an eventuality. Lt. Hugh Johnson, writing in the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, was incredulous at this failure: “It would appear that, on a small scale, if the army as it exists is rigid in construction, not designed for the assimilation of great masses of raw troops that will swell it to two or three or four or five hundred thousand men with which modern battles must be fought, or to the million men that must decide the wars of

592 “Negroes in the Army and Navy” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 56 No. 1774 (July 19, 1914), pg. 75 593 Louis Hamilton, pg. 262 594 Maj. Robert L. Bullard, “Cardinal Vices of the American Soldier” in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States Vol. 36 No. 133 (January-February 1905), pg. 105 595 Editorial Board, “Truth – Where Does the Army Stand?” in Infantry Journal Vol. 8 No. 1 (July-August 1911), pg. 91 155

this latter day, if it is not sufficiently officered for peace time demands, and not at all prepared to furnish men of technical education to train and fight new men in time of war; if there is not on hand equipment for those unnumbered new men, or even the skeletal machinery of that great army, if – but the ifs represent all the criticisms of the present system that are frankly admitted in the army to-day – if the ifs can be affirmed, then, since nearly all those things mentioned are matters of strictly internal administration, with which even the most obstreperous law giver rarely concerns himself, it is hard to see why the remedies were not applied years ago. Those things could have at least been considered and improved within the army itself, and without an active campaign before Congress.”596

For Johnson, the army was mired in apathy and very much responsible for its own sorry condition. Part of the problem seems to have been the army’s own schizophrenic view of its wartime duties. On one hand, it had to serve as the nucleus for a greatly expanded wartime army. On the other, it had to provide an immediate reaction force against foreign invasion.597 Its small size prevented it from performing both tasks easily. Rather than develop contingency planning based on this scenario, it simply punted. Forming a cadre for a new army would potentially leave too few men for a mobile reaction force. Accordingly, the army would revert to its traditional Plan B: cross its fingers, hope for the best, and somehow muddle through. It was not just mobilization that was a source of concern. A few lonely voices expressed dissatisfaction with the army’s tactical doctrine. In 1911, the Infantry Journal lamented, “Armies are proverbially conservative. Changes come slowly and are frequently unwelcome. This has been especially marked in our own service as was natural under the conditions of its existence, and there is little doubt that in consequence we have fallen behind most armies in the acceptance of modern principles in tactical training.”598 It is worth noting that a senior editor of the Infantry Journal at this time was Hunter Liggett, who was later to prove one of the most flexible, capable, and open- minded senior officers of the AEF. The U.S. Army’s cult of the rifle also began to feel unease at the new, urbanized and industrialized American citizenry. Some officers worried that the changed circumstances of life meant a decline in civilian proficiency with the weapon; and a corresponding decline in the military. General William H. Carter put it dispassionately, “The passing of the Indian warrior and

596 Johnson, “The Mission of the Service Magazines,” pg. 304 597 See Facts of Interest Concerning the Military Resources and Policy of the United States, pp. 8-9 598 Editorial Board, “The New Infantry Drill Regulations” in Infantry Journal Vol. 8 No. 2 (September-October 1911), pg. 247 (246-249) 156

his vast hunting grounds and the increased density of population have had the effect of diminishing the military characteristics of Americans.”599 Others were more descriptive. Writing in the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association in 1906, 1st Lt. C.A. sounded the alarm: “Our safety has been our undoing. The average American of to-day has so little familiarity and skill with the rifle as to make our high sounding phrase ‘the Americans are a nation of riflemen,’ no more than a bitter sarcasm.”600 Bach advocated an army-wide effort to improve rifle-training, including increased pay for the best marksmen. Echoing Bach, Lt.-Col. John Barrows, a National Guard officer, wrote, “[T]o-day we are more a nation of shopkeepers, manufacturers, and business hustlers rather than riflemen, as the scenes at the various rifle ranges all over the country unfortunately demonstrate.”601

Modern Man and Modern Warfare Urbanization and the rise of the white-collar worker in America also coincided with the emergence of nervous disorders as a recognizable social problem. Dr. George Beard, a leading nerve specialist based in New York City, identified a number of maladies of the nerves that he collectively referred to as “neurasthenia”, or nervous exhaustion. Beard wrote, “The sufferers of these maladies are counted in this country by thousands and hundreds of thousands; in all the Northern and Eastern States they are found in nearly every brain-working household”.602 Naturally, this disease was peculiarly American in character, and had not been hitherto diagnosed on account of the pernicious influence of European medical texts. Caught up in the rush to establish a uniquely American medical profession, Beard thundered, “and yet, so blind is our deference to Europe, so fearful are we of making our own independent, original observations of the maladies peculiar to this land” that any attempt to study these diseases are met with “inappreciation [sic] or positive opposition.”603 A popular 1916 treatise on neurasthenia proclaimed that the cause of the disease was “not overwork, but overcivilization”.604

599 Carter, pg. 140 600 1st Lt. C.A. Bach, “Better Marksmanship” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. Vol. 17 No. 61 (July 1906), pg. 19 (18-26) 601 Lt. Col. John S. Barrows, “A Plea for the Bull’s-Eye” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 2 (September-October 1912), pg. 222 (222-26) 602 George Beard, A Practical Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia) Its Symptoms, Nature, Sequence, Treatment 2nd Edition (New York, William Wood & Co., 1880), pg. 1 603 Ibid., pg. 3 604 J.H. Kellogg, Neurasthenia or Nervous Exhaustion with Chapters on Christian Science and Hypnotism, Habits and the “Blues” (Battle Creek, MI, Good Health Publishing Co., 1916), pg. 17 157

As the psychiatric disorders were increasingly recognized by the medical profession, a few brave souls drew attention to their prevalence among military veterans. Dr. Horace Porter, himself a Civil War veteran, gave a speech to the Northern Kansas Medical Society in which he pleaded that the nervous disorders of Civil War veterans be treated as disabilities as real as any combat wound. Porter noted that “General Sheridan was honest enough to say that he was ‘d----d afraid’ in battle; that it was all a question of the mind over the body.”605 However, controlling that fear put a damaging strain on the soldier’s nervous system. Porter argued, “When the brain of man functions as courage in the presence of great and imminent danger, it does so at great sacrifice of energy; and there can be no great sacrifice of energy without injury to the physical substructure that has functioned as energy.”606 Inevitably, many officers feared that the natural superiority of the American rifleman would be negated by the enervating effect of modern life. The fear was that modern life had created a man who was not only unfamiliar with firearms (which was bad enough for the rifle-obsessed military), but was too high-strung for the battlefield. Oliver Wendell Holmes (a Civil War veteran himself), writing in 1875, believed that, “It is pretty generally agreed that our people have more of the nervous and less of the sanguine temperament than their English ancestors. The tendency of our social conditions is to stimulate the nervous system[.]”607 Captain William Wallace further elaborated on this fear: “Moreover, the excitements of modern business and social life combining, as they do, over or under indulgence in work or play, in appetite or sleep, have keyed up our nerves to a point where in battle, if they do not snap, they are likely to tingle so as to destroy that calmness and deliberation under fire which is undoubtedly the main ingredient of the white man’s battle courage.”608Robert L. Bullard agreed: “The straining life of highly organized society has undoubtedly made men more nervous, more hysterical and less able to face danger, suffering and death. The growth of peace and civilization with their relief from hardships and the frequent necessity of defense of self and rights, have made them more than ever loth [sic] to risk their lives in war and battle.”609 This sentiment was echoed in a 1918 U.S. Army manual on the Psychology

605 Dr. Horace P. Porter, M.D. “The Common Nervous Trouble of Old Soldiers (speech given November 6, 1888)” printed in The United Service Vol. 1 No. 2 (February 1889), pg. 212 (211-14) 606 Ibid. 607 Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Americanized European” in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 35 (January 1875), pp. 83- 84 (75-86) 608 Wallace, “Our Military Decline”, pg. 633 609 Bullard, “A Moral Preparation of the Soldier for Service and Battle,” pg. 785. See also Millet, The General, pg. 209 158

of War. The book was a collection of lectures by LeRoy Eltinge, Pershing’s Deputy Chief of Staff. In it, Eltinge warned of the negative impact of peace and prosperity on a people: “Then, freed from menace from the outside, commercial pursuits become the sole enthusiasm of the individuals composing the state; luxury increases till men, voicing the cry, "I want what I want when I want it," lapse into effeminacy and selfishness and forget that the protection that the nation will be able to furnish them in their commercial pursuits is wholly dependent on a spirit among them of self sacrifice for the mutual good.”610 However, there were those who were not so pessimistic about the impact of modern civilization on the martial qualities of the population. As previously noted, many progressives embraced the extraordinary productive possibilities of industrialization, finding in it a liberating force. Accordingly, homo industrialis would have more leisure time in which to fully realize himself. One proponent of this view was the Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. During the war, Hocking served as an inspector of courses designed for soldiers on issues related to the war. In 1918, Hocking published a book on military morale entitled, Morale and Its Enemies. In the book, Hocking argued that: Occupation still leaves its heavy mental mark; but the disappearance of hereditary trades, the liberal mingling and cross-classing of men on all lines of interest outside of their work, and the immense growth of new arts of recreation go far to erase it, until seemingly only enough is left of the visible trade-mark of carpenter, teacher, grocer, lawyer, teamster, artist, parson, for the caricaturist—and Sherlock Holmes—to work upon. In free modern States, every man is in essentials a complete man: the soldierly qualities are in him, and can be turned to account when occasion demands. So, from the ranks of labor and trade, from students, clerks, and professional men, we recruit an army that we are ready to set against the most pretentious military machine the world has yet seen assembled.611

However, the U.S. Army was less sanguine as to the martial qualities of the modern man. So, to

610 Maj. LeRoy Eltinge, Psychology of War: Lectures Delivered by LeRoy Eltinge (Ft. Leavenworth, KS, Army Service Schools Press, 1918), pg. 38 611 Hocking, pg. 96 NOTE: One cannot help but notice the similarity of Hocking’s sentiment to that of Karl Marx: “For as soon as the division of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; whereas in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The German Ideology” in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Collected Works (Vol. 5), 1845-1847 (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1989), pg. 47 159

counter-balance the pacific nature of modern man on the eve of World War One, the army actively encouraged its soldiers to embrace a more savage and bloodthirsty mindset. Presumably, only a rediscovery of a soldier’s primal instincts could counteract the effects of civilization. Hocking put it a more dispassionate and clinical way, “The most complete antidote for fear is pugnacity.”612 For example, the 1917 Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action actively encouraged young officers to be “bloodthirsty, and forever thinking how to kill the enemy and helping his men to do so.”613 Robert L. Bullard also felt it important to encourage his men to hate the enemy: “Hate, a determination to kill and resist men who had introduced this system of frightfulness, was one of the forces of resistance. Accordingly, I had published to the troops during a long period of preparation and training every recent instance of German frightfulness and cruelty that came to my knowledge.”614 These efforts to encourage a primal hatred are an interesting contrast with, for example, the German approach, which emphasized appeals to a soldier’s honor. The German 1908 Felddienst Ordnung wrote of the common soldier: “His self-reliance and sense of honour will then induce him to do his duty even when he is no longer under the eye of his commanding officer.”615 Honor is a concept based on one’s reputation within a group. The German soldier was defined primarily in the context of his relationship to the other men in his unit. The American soldier, in contrast, was an undifferentiated industrial widget produced by an atomized society. He was defined primarily by his relationship to his weapon, and not by his relationship to the men in his unit. A social construct like honor did not apply to him, and so only the more bestial aspects on the solitary man could be counted upon to motivate him. Fortunately, in practice, the doughboy proved a better man than his officers gave him credit for. It was not just the enervating effects of civilization that made the military qualities of modern man suspect; it was also the impact of mass immigration. America on the eve of World War One was no longer a truly Anglo-Saxon country. As LeRoy Eltinge concluded: The organization, the methods, the leaders that suit one part will be unsuitable to the others. In the Civil War the population of each of the contending parties was fairly homogeneous in race and character. Though neither side well understood the mental characteristics of the other, each well understood itself. Each had its

612 Ibid., pg. 161 613 Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action, pg. 19 614 Bullard, Personalities and Reminisces of the War, pg. 118 NOTE: Bullard later found this practice to be of no real value, and discontinued it. 615 Field Service Regulations of the German Army 1908 (translated by the General Staff, War Office) (London, Harrison and Sons, 1909), pg. 6 160

physical strength pushed into action by a strong fixed idea. Today it is impossible to think of an idea which would make a strong mental and psychological impression on the Whole mass of the population. It is therefore improbable that the Civil War can furnish any reliable information as to what we may expect our people to accomplish today.616

If immigration had diluted the ethnic bonds that once bound American soldiers together, the U.S. Army still insisted on a demeaning racial segregation between white and black troops. The U.S. Army began to apply academic psychology to military matters in the early 20th century. For example, military medical officers with some training in the field, known as “alienists”, conducted a study of military discipline using inmates of the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth.617 However, for most officers, it was still close-order drill and the feeling of mass that fostered psychological fortitude in battle. The proponents of closer tactical formations saw them as an effective means of motivating men through the psychological comfort of mass and unthinking discipline. One officer went even so far as to claim in 1914 that such formations were emblematic of a higher civilizational ideal. For, if armies give in to the urge to disperse in clouds of skirmishers, they would do so at the “loss of all the nobler qualities, moral and intellectual, that redeem the savagery of war[.]”618 Certainly, close-order drill remained the cornerstone of training for the AEF during the war. In his 1918 work, Psychology of War, Major Elitinge praised the psychological effect of mass by comparing the British in South Africa with the Japanese in Manchuria: “In South Africa the British used thin firing lines and failed. The Japanese used them as a maneuver formation to reach a position from which effective fire could be opened and then promptly thickened the firing line by sending successive thin lines to join it.”619

616 Eltinge, Psychology of War, pg. 46 617 “Psychology of Army Discipline” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 56 No. 1793 (November 28, 1914), pg. 682 618 Field, “No Footsteps But Some Glances Backwards”, pg. 243 619 Eltinge, Psychology of War, pg. 84 161

Chapter 8: “Very Special Conditions”: The American View of Modern Warfare, 1912-17

Introduction The five years prior to America’s entry into World War One represented an extraordinary opportunity to learn the lessons of modern war at no cost to the U.S. Army. From the preliminaries in the Balkans, to the epic battles in France, a wealth of information flowed into the United States. More importantly, there was now a fully-functioning general staff and War College, in addition to Leavenworth, ready to process that information and identify the relevant lessons. Yet, this priceless opportunity was squandered. The War College and general staff proved a bottleneck, as reports on the fighting were left to gather dust in their offices. What information that did flow through was mostly interpreted as justifications of the U.S. Army’s doctrinal preconceptions. What could not be so interpreted was simply explained away as an aberration specific to the conditions that had produced it. The American rifleman remained all-conquering, and his officers infallible.

The Balkan Wars The paranoia of the Balkan states limited the number of military observers in the (October 1912 – May 1913). For whatever reason, there seem to be very few reports from military observers from the brief Second Balkan War (June-August 1913). Formal military observation was greatly restricted by the various belligerents, as fear of espionage was pervasive. The American attaché in Constantinople, Major J.R.M. Taylor was able to observe only some of the fighting in ; Sherman Miles, son of the Civil War hero Nelson Miles, served as the military attaché in Sofia, but he seems to have been largely restricted to the army headquarters by his hosts. One American officer who was able to evade many of the restrictions during the First Balkan War was Major Clyde Sinclair Ford, a U.S. Army doctor. Ford was on leave from the army, visiting his friend Major Taylor, the U.S. military attaché to the Sublime Porte, when the war broke out. Ford soon volunteered his services to the local Red Cross, and was therefore able to observe the fighting somewhat more closely than most military men. He subsequently gave a series of lectures at Ft. Leavenworth, which were then printed and made available to the army as a whole through the Service School Press in 1915. Ford’s status as a Red Cross officer gave him an unusual degree of access, and he was a

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guest of the Ottoman commander at the pivotal 1913 siege of Adrianople (modern ). The Turkish medical service was overwhelmed by the heavy casualties and a cholera outbreak, so Ford’s expertise made him a welcome addition. His detailed descriptions of the Bulgarian attack certainly should have alerted more American officers to the nature of modern war. Adrianople was the key to the forward defense of Thrace, and the Bulgarian Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Mihail Savov, declared to journalists that “he was prepared to sacrifice 100,000 men, ‘like the Japanese’ in order to take the fortress.”620 The Bulgarian artillery preparation during the siege, as described by Ford, was extensive. Light and medium guns began firing for sixteen hours before the main assault. They concentrated their fire on the remaining Turkish guns and secondary targets, in part to mislead the Turks as to the location of the main assault. Under cover of darkness, Bulgarian infantry moved to their final jump-off positions. At 5:00 a.m. on March 24th, the Bulgarian heavy guns opened a devastating barrage to open the way for the main assault. Within two hours, the Bulgarians had seized their objectives, having cracked-open the outer Turkish defense. The Bulgarian artillery continued firing, providing a protective curtain of shrapnel and high-explosives for the Bulgarian infantry while they prepared to renew the attack. On the afternoon of the next day, the Bulgarian infantry, supported by pioneers attached to the assault units, again attacked and shattered the Turkish defense.621 The city formally surrendered on March 26th, 1913. Perceptively, the French military attaché in Sofia informed his superiors, “The taking of Adrianople is all to the glory of the artillery, as a weapon.”622 Similar artillery tactics were soon to be very common as the First World War engulfed Europe. Yet, few leaders of the U.S. Army could bring themselves to accept the emerging dominance of artillery. If the U.S. Army ignored these lessons of Adrianople, it was probably for the same reason that they ignored those of Port Arthur: it was to them a siege, not a true battle, and they could not accept that the lines between the two types of combat had blurred beyond recognition. Moreover, the cult of the American rifleman found some support in Ford’s observation that about 80% of the wounds he saw were caused by small arms, not artillery.623 Ford also gave hope to the proponents of cold steel. Although he saw very few bayonet wounds, he

620 Richard C. Hall, The Balkan Wars 1912-1913: Prelude to the First World War (New York, Routledge, 2000), pg. 24 621 Maj. Clyde Sinclair Ford, The Balkan Wars: Being a Series of Lectures Delivered at the Army Service Schools, , Kansas (Ft. Leavenworth, KS, Press of the Army Service Schools, 1915), pp. 43-44 622 Maj. Martharel in Hall, pg. 89 623 Ford, pg. 144 163 concluded that this was only because bayonet wounds were almost invariably fatal.624 Oddly enough, he did not apply similar logic to the relative paucity of shrapnel wounds to bullet wounds. Nonetheless, Ford’s observation on the bayonet had some support among other eye-witnesses (see below). Despite the restrictions placed on foreign observers, information on the fighting also came to America through press reports and via Americans involved directly in the fighting. A sizable contingent of American volunteers served under the Greek flag. One such American volunteer was Thomas Hutchison, a West Point graduate and high-ranking officer in the Tennessee National Guard. Hutchison served as a volunteer artillery officer with the Greek army, and published his account of the fighting in 1913. He became a passionate advocate of the Greek cause, declaring that the Turks were “of no value to civilization.”625 He also noted the extreme caution with which the Greeks treated foreign military observers.626 The infantry tactics that Hutchison witnessed were similar to those advocated by the U.S. Army and other major powers of the time. He describes watching Greek evzones in the attack: “[T]he Efzones [sic]or highlanders were advancing by rushes, taking advantage of every rock, bush or depression of the ground. These Efzones would run for a hundred yards and then lie down; and as soon as they fired several rounds the enemy would retreat.”627 The attack was successful, and the evzones drove the Turkish defenders from the outer works. However, the fire from the Turkish guns proved too much, and the Greeks were forced to relinquish their gains. The Greek attack cost approximately 1,200 casualties for minor gains.628 Hutchison also noted the need for guns capable of indirect fire against enemy positions. The Greeks had very such weapons, but Hutchison described a talented Greek artillery officer who placed his direct fire guns along a reverse slope to achieve the necessary angle of fire: “He was doing an almost impossible thing in firing the shells over a hill at the forts and making hits with his shots. The guns were of the style that are ordinarily required to be in view of the enemy, but he was a genius, and struck a clever plan of being able to fire the shells over the mountain out of view of the enemy without exposing

624 Ibid., pg. 145 625 Thomas Hutchison, An American Soldier Under the Greek Flag at Bezanie: A Thrilling Story of the Siege of Bezanie by the Greek Army, in Epirus, During the War in the Balkans (Nashville, Greek-American Publishing Co., 1913), pg. 26 626 Ibid., pg. 224 627 Ibid., pg. 168 628 Hall, pg. 84 164

the battery.”629 Information about combat in the Balkans also reached the U.S. Army through press reports. Philip Gibbs, a British journalist whose experiences with the Bulgarian army in the First Balkan War (1912-13), published his account of the war in the United States in 1913. He wrote of the Bulgarians’ dangerously aggressive tactics in the face of defensive firepower: “The history of this war would have been very different if the Bulgarians had set out to fight a nation less utterly demoralized than the Turks, for their bayonet charges when the peasant soldiers flung off their sheepskin coats and rushed forward in the full fire of the guns would have been checked by walls of dead.”630 Gibbs noted the use of bayonet charges by the Bulgarian and Serbian armies on multiple occasions: “[T]he Turks became paralyzed, as it were, by the fear of Servian [sic] and Bulgarian bayonets; the very name of ‘La nosche,’ or the knife, as they call these weapons, was like a dreadful spell which scattered a Turkish force even before a man had died.”631 Despite their not infrequent success, the Bulgarians’ use of the bayonet charge was costly. One Bulgarian officer, describing an assault on a Turkish position on the approach to Adrianople, boasted of his men: “They were utterly indifferent to the storm of bullets, and advanced over hundreds of their dead comrades as though their corpses were but paving stones to victory.”632 Historian Richard C. Hall has written that, “The Bulgarian emphasis on psychological factors for troop motivation and their stress on close combat impressed many foreign observers.”633 A French observer, embracing the spirit of Ardant Du Picq, proudly recalled being told by high-ranking Bulgarian officers, “This victory where we have fought front to front, under conditions which forced us to forego the tactical envelopment to dear to the Germans, has been obtained by the success of an attack executed in the full center of the enemy, such as is advocated by your Ecole superior de guerre [sic]. It is the idea truly French, of delivering the deciding blow where one is strongest… that we owe the success of our arms.”634 Sadly for France, shortly thereafter the Germans would prove more redoubtable in the face of a bayonet charge than did the Turks. Like Hutchison, Gibbs also noted the Bulgarians’ refusal to allow military attachés near

629 Hutchison, pg. 149 630 Philip Gibbs & Bernard Grant, The Balkan War: Adventures of War with Cross and Crescent (Boston, Small Maynard & Co., 1913), pg. 49 631 Ibid., pg. 61 632 Ibid., pg. 65 633 Hall, pg. 32 634 Alain de Pennenrun, “The Battle of Loule Bourgas or Karagatch, Viza, November 7, 1912” reprinted from L’Illustration (November 30, 192) in Infantry Journal Vol. No. 4 (January-February 1913), pg. 590 (586-590) 165

the front lines. Finally, an exasperated Romanian attaché demanded to know why they were being held back. The Bulgarians responded: “’Do you think,’ said one of the Bulgarian officers, ‘that we are going to show you our way of making war, when your people may be the next we have to fight?”635 One response to the problem of overcoming entrenched positions was the use of the night attack with cold steel; a tactic that was also used in the Russo-Japanese War. The Infantry Journal took note of this development: “It is evident that the bayonet and frontal attack have played no unimportant part in this last war, and that a night attack, properly planned and carried out, may, in these days of aerial scouts, be the deciding factor which counts for success.”636 The Bulgarian infantry, for example, “often attacked in poor light, at dawn, or even at night.”637 Powerful, mobile searchlights were deployed with the Bulgarian troops to support night attacks.638 Artillery played a critical role in the fighting. Bernard Grant, an English journalist with the Turkish army in Thrace, repeatedly referred to the decisive impact of Bulgarian artillery, and the vast expenditure of ammunition. He wrote, “The Turkish artillery was overmastered from the first. The Bulgarian guns were in greater numbers and better served, and they had an inexhaustible supply of ammunition.”639 The Turkish guns were Krupp, but the Turkish logistical system collapsed under the weight of the conflict, and so artillery ammunition was in chronic short supply.640 Ford’s estimation of the Turkish artillery was similar to Grant’s, when he stated, “The Turkish artillery, of Krupp material and about one-half modern, was poorly handled and rendered inefficient service.”641 The Bulgarians, in turn, used a mix of French and Krupp guns, included among the latter were heavy 120 mm howitzers, and 120 mm and 140 mm siege guns.642 An important development in artillery tactics was the decline of the traditional artillery duel in favor of directly targeting enemy infantry, as noted by German officer serving as a war correspondent for the Reichspost.643

635 Gibbs & Grant, pg. 53 636 Editorial, “The Turco-Balkan War” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 4 (January-February 1913), pg. 539 (538-541) 637 Hall, pg. 26 638 Ibid., pg.30 639 Gibbs & Grant, pg. 173 640 George von Skal, “The Balkan War” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 4 (January-February 1913), pg. 520 (519- 523); see also Gibbs & Grant 641 Ford, pg. 99 642 Von Skal, pg. 521 643 Hermenegild Wagner, With the Victorious Bulgarians (Boston, Hughton Mifflin Co., 1913), pg. 163 166

The World War: American Military Attachés and Observers. Vast rivers of information about the world war in Europe flowed into the United States from military attachés in the belligerent capitals, military observers in the field, books and press reports. Indeed, the War Department had started attaching American officers for special duties with the French and German armies in the years before the war.644 Even then, the U.S. Army did not take full advantage of the opportunities to observe and learn. Capt. Ernest Scott, observing German maneuvers in 1911 recalled, “Many German officers mentioned the fact that officers from every country but the United States attend, and asked why it was.”645 Scott did not record his answer. Rather, American military attachés tended to focus on official documents, such as training manuals, or technical information on new military equipment. The observers, in contrast, filed reports about battles witnessed first-hand. However, this great reservoir of knowledge was never fully leveraged to the army’s advantage. Instead, the reports were often lost in the nascent, but no less Byzantine, army bureaucracy. The Department of War’s historical obsession with secrecy was the subject of criticism by some in the military press even before the war. For example, in 1906, an editorial in the Army and Navy Register criticized the department’s policy as, “a system which sought to enlarge the importance of things by establishing dense mystery[.]”646 It was no more transparent ten years later. Even with the retirement of the controlling and secretive Ainsworth, the policy of greatly restricting access to foreign military information continued. In the spring of 1918, the perspicacious Francis V. Greene (now a retired Major-General) wrote, “Our soldiers knew the drill-books of squad, company, and battalion drill, which are really forms of mental and physical exercise and discipline; but of all the rest they knew nothing except for what they had read in unprofessional newspapers, reports from which all really important matters had been carefully deleted by the censors; the reports of our military attachés abroad had been securely locked up in the offices of the War College and General Staff at Washington, and all publication and discussion of them by those who had read them had been positively forbidden by the highest authority; any officer who violated this injunction had been summarily and severely reprimanded.”647 Robert L.

644 “Army Officers Abroad” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 55 No. 1750 (January 31, 1914), pg. 138 645 Capt. Ernest D. Scott, “Notes on the German Maneuvers” in The Field Artillery Journal Vol. 2 No. 2 (April-June 1912), pg. 190 646 “Secrecy Versus Publicity” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 39 No. 1379 (May 19, 1906), pg. 6 647 Francis V. Greene, Our First Year in the Great War (New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1918), pp.98-99 167

Bullard echoed Greene after the war, “The teachings of previous wars could not cover all the subjects of this great conflict, whose lessons our government had not allowed us to study.”648 American military observers and attachés, when not silenced by their own government, were often restricted by foreign governments. The belligerents were naturally cautious about neutral observers. The numbers of such observers were small (for example, Britain allowed only three American observers, and Austria-Hungary allowed four).649 Given the growing trade between the United States and the Allied powers, it is not surprising that relations between the German military and the American observers soured most quickly. The American ambassador to Germany, Herbert B. Swope, complained: ”At the last visit our military observers made to the front, now more than a year ago, they were shown no courtesies whatever. In the summer of 1916 the general staff passed an order that no American observers are to be permitted to go with the armies, although this privilege is accorded other neutrals.”650 A number of American military observers in Germany were expelled by the Germans as early as 1915.651 Of course, the War Department bureaucracy also worked to make life harder for American military observers, usually by denying them the necessary funds to travel.652 Nonetheless, a considerable amount of information on the fighting did get through. As Allan Millett noted, “Civilian newspapers and professional military journals were flooded with war news, and the Journal of the Military Service Institutions, the Infantry Journal, and the Army and Navy Journal printed not only American analyses of the fighting but reprinted European assessments as well.”653 By 1915, information from American officers in Europe flowed steadily into the general staff. For example, one unnamed American cavalry officer with the Allied armies in 1915 made three important observations about the war, two of which were correct: “Among the things which stand out in my mind to a very marked degree, the first three are: First, the importance of artillery; second, the value of our cavalry; and third, the importance of aeroplanes.”654 Despite realizing the tremendous importance of artillery, this officer was still reluctant to accept the degree to which it

648 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of the War, pg. 60 649 “Military Observers in Europe” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 56 No. 1780 (August 29, 1914), pg. 266 650 Herbert B. Swope, Inside the in the Third Year of the War (London, Constable & Co., 1917), pg. 168 651 “The Recall from Germany” in in Army and Navy Register Vol. 57 No. 1812 (April 10, 1915), pg. 457 652 “Officer’s European Expenses” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 56 No. 1791 (November 14, 1914), pg. 617 653 Millett, The General, pg. 292 654 An Officer Abroad, “Notes on the European War” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 26 No. 107 (July 1915), pp. 53-61 168

now dominated the battlefield. He spoke to numerous British and French officers who estimated that 50%-75% of their losses were caused by artillery. The author concluded, “These figures are undoubtedly absurd but it goes to show how our minds are impressed by what may be called primitive reasoning.”655 In fact, approximately 70% of the AEF’s battle casualties would be caused by shellfire.656 However, the power of artillery was not fully appreciated by the U.S. Army. In 1914, Col. John Morrison was still arguing that, “While familiarity with the artillery will be far from breeding contempt, it will enable the infantry to escape much unnecessary loss and, by correcting the false conception so many have of its power, it will improve the morale of our men.”657 Alas, it was Morrison who had the “false conception” of artillery’s power, and familiarity with the German artillery improved the morale of precious few doughboys. For many American military officers, the stalemate in France was the product of neither outdated tactics nor modern technology, but was merely the result of too many soldiers packed into too limited a space. The German, French, and British armies were immense, while France was approximately the size of Texas. Accordingly, the strategic situation on the Western front was an aberration unlikely to be repeated anywhere else in the world. For the US Army, this meant that the applicable lessons were limited in number. The future AEF head of training, Harold Fiske, espoused this view: “It is difficult to imagine a duplication elsewhere of the present state of affairs in France. Both sides rest both flanks on impassable obstacles: the sea on one side, on the other. Such practically stationary trench warfare can hardly take place in the United States, because similar enormous numbers will not be here engaged, and the theatre of operations will be relatively so large that flanks can usually be reached. Great care must therefore be exercised in making deductions from the experiences on the western front that we do not take as of general application formations that are simply expedient under these very special conditions.”658 Fiske believed that the Russian front had more lessons for American soldiers looking abroad.659 For many Americans, the often served as a disingenuous ploy to avoid acknowledging the new tactical reality. The Army and Navy Register took refuge in this logic when

655 Ibid. 656 Richard , Pershing’s Crusaders: The American Soldier in World War I (Lawrence, KS, University Press of Kansas, 2017), pg. 569 657 Morrison, Training Infantry, pg. 70 658 H.B. Fiske, “Notes on Infantry: Lecture Delivered January 29, 1917 at Ft. Leavenworth. Kansas” (Ft. Leavenworth, KS, Army Service Schools Press, 1917), pp.31-32 659 Ibid., pg. 28 169

it explained away the need for change in the field artillery: “So far as can be learned, the operations in the eastern of the war, where the conditions are more nearly like those that would be found in case of hostilities in the United States, have not shown the necessity of placing the same emphasis on the quantity or increased power of field artillery as in the western theater of the war. It is for this reason that our ordnance officers have concluded that there is no necessity of the United States having such huge field pieces as are used by the belligerents in northern France and in [.]”660 Although the trench lines on the Eastern front were not nearly as dense and complex as those in France, heavy artillery remained key to any offensive action, as Mackensen demonstrated in 1915, and Brusilov did again in 1916. Indeed, the famed German artillerist Georg Bruchmüller developed his techniques in the east, bringing them to the west only later in the conflict.661 The idea of the trench stalemate as an aberration was, not surprisingly, enthusiastically endorsed by American cavalry officers. In a 1915 editorial in the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, the author dismissed the idea that the time of cavalry had passed. He sniffed, “Hence, some people – not military experts – had jumped at the conclusion that the cavalry had been relegated to the rear in this and all future wars. This absurd idea has taken root, more or less, in the minds of some people, after the backward drive of the German Army from in front of Paris, the contending forces settled down to a protracted term of trench warfare.”662 Naturally, the editors made a Progressive Era appeal to “military experts,” thus negating the opinion of any layman who doubted that cavalry’s best days lay ahead. In a similar vein, another American cavalry officer confidently declared in 1915, “So far the European war has been shattering completely the fads and foolish notions of those who have gone about declaring certain methods, customs and equipment obsolete.”663 Perhaps the best face that a cavalryman could realistically put on the war was offered by Capt. Henry Reilly, who was an observer on the western front. Reilly held fast to his belief that cavalry was not obsolete, but had been unable to fulfill its true role in pursuit of a broken enemy due to the failure of both sides to achieve a decisive breakthrough.664

660 “Ordnance Lessons of the War” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 57 No. 1813 (April 17, 1915), pg. 490 661 Bruce Gudmunsson, On Artillery (Westport, CT, Praeger Publishing, 1993), pp. 87-88 662 Editorial, “Cavalry Has ‘Come Back’: French Won by Use of Mounted Troops in Champagne” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 26 No. 109 (January 1916), pg. 328 (328-330) 663 Lt. Col. John Stuart Barrows, “The Uhlans and Other Cavalry in the European War” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 26 No. 108 (October 1915), pg. 397 (390-398) 664 Capt. Henry J. Reilly, “Cavalry in the Great War” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 27 No. 114 (April 1917), pp. 477-482 (477-482) 170

If there was one thing that U.S. Army officers did generally agree upon about the war in Europe, it was the importance of the machine gun. For example, many cavalry officers saw it as a means of achieving parity in firepower with the infantry. However, there was frustration within the army that the lessons about the machine gun in Europe were not being incorporated more rapidly. The editors of the Infantry Journal fumed, “It is reported that there are now more than 50,000 machine guns in use in the German army, and their use is quite as general in the armies of the Allies. Why do we still adhere to our archaic machine gun platoon organization, which minimizes the inducements for the personnel to perfect itself in its very important duties? Are we waiting for a war of our own so that we may acquire the experience needed for the solution of this question? The experience is apt to be costly[.]”665 In 1916, Capt. William A. Castle visited the Royal Machine Corps training center at Grantham. He wrote a detailed and valuable report, but it arrived too late to impact War Department policy.666 Tragically, as David A. Armstrong has noted, “The development of American doctrine and organization for using machine guns in trench warfare would occur only after Americans had begun to fight in France in 1917.”667 Indeed, Armstrong’s conclusion could be justly applied to most of the tools of modern warfare. The situation was marginally better with respect to artillery doctrine. Early in the war, American artillery officers were reluctant to accept the importance of heavy field artillery in Europe, despite having been quicker to do so after the Russo-Japanese War. Visions of mobile warfare in the continental United States still filled their heads. What commentary there was early in the war pertained to the use of , notably in the . Unburdened by dogma, Scientific American seems to have been quicker to grasp the situation, concluding in early 1915 that, “Without underestimating the value of rifle-fire and the bayonet, it may be said, with fair approach to the truth, that the field gun and the howitzer completely dominate the situation.”668 Nonetheless, by 1916 articles were appearing which demonstrated that American artillery officers were coming to appreciate the role of the big guns on the field. The War College even published a brief study which compared the evolving structure of the belligerents’ artillery arms, noting the Germans and Austrians were ahead in big guns, and that the French were furiously

665 Editorial, “Our Machine Gun Organization” in Infantry Journal Vol. 12 No. 1 (July-August 1915), pg. 151 (151- 152) 666 Armstrong, pg. 200 667 Ibid., pg. 204 668 “Notes on the War” in Scientific American (February 13, 1915), pg. 153 171

playing catch-up.669 Indeed, the French effort to rebalance their artillery arm was truly monumental. In 1914, France had 990 batteries of 75 mm guns and only 50 heavy batteries (i.e. >75 mm). By 1918, France had 966 75 mm batteries, and 1,014 heavy batteries.670 A particularly astute military observer in Europe, Maj. M.E. Locke, was so bold as to state the obvious: “what a controlling influence on the offensive that the artillery exercises in this war.”671 Locke noted the extraordinary complexity of offensive fire plans, and the current lack of higher artillery staff officers in the U.S. Army. Naturally, not everyone in the U.S. Army appreciated the importance of heavy field artillery. The infantry branch regarded it as inimical to the conduct of mobile warfare. In a 1915 editorial on the war in Europe and its lessons for the United States, the Infantry Journal took the stance that trench warfare and mobile warfare were two entirely different strategic options, and not a result of modern battlefield conditions. Therefore, to adopt European methods (i.e. trench warfare) was to invite defeat in mobile warfare: “To devote a large part of our energies to the development of the enormous amounts of material required for trench warfare before our field armies are organized and trained, is equivalent to an acceptance of defeat in that period of the war which is most decisive of the final result.”672 On this basis, the Infantry Journal argued against the acquisition of heavy field artillery, as it was assumed to be of use only against an entrenched enemy.673 Given the pivotal importance of any port cities on the eastern sea-board for a European invader, it is odd that the writer could not imagine a scenario in which such weapons would be essential. Perhaps the most remarkable testimony as to the U.S. Army’s attitude towards military developments in Europe during this period came from Robert L. Bullard, who wrote: “The great war in Europe is hardly affecting us in the army. We read the brief in the morning and the afternoon news and dismiss the subject from our minds.”674 (emphasis mine) This profound disinterest in the war in Europe is all the more surprising given that the United States clearly still considered a land war with major European powers as a distinct possibility. For example, Bullard’s first large-scale

669 War College Division, “Study on the Development of Large Caliber, Mobile Artillery, and Machine Guns in the Present European War” in Journal of the United States Artillery Vol. 45 No. 3 (May-June 1916), pp. 352-360. 670 Dastrup, pg. 161 671 Maj. M.E. Locke, “Artillery in Europe” in The Field Artillery Journal Vol. 7 No. 3 (July-September 1917), pg. 295 672 Editorial “The Lesson of Trench Warfare” in Infantry Journal Vol. 12 No. 4 (December 1915), pg. 507 673 Ibid. 674 Millett, The General, pg. 292 172 wargames at the Army War College in the fall of 1911 involved a war with Mexico, and an invasion of the United States by Great Britain via Canada.675 Similarly, Tasker Bliss and Bullard took part in large-scale maneuvers in Connecticut in 1912 against a simulated amphibious landing on the north shore of the Long Island Sound.676 Unless such a landing consisted of Mexican revolutionaries, it was presumably against a hypothetical (if unnamed) European foe. The threat was real, as Capt. Hugh D. Wise warned that both Germany and the had enough shipping to move 150,000 troops to the United States in a single sea-lift.677 In fact, the General Staff had done some limited planning for war with Germany, but it did so under an official cloud in the 1914-17 period. Gen. Tasker Bliss, in a private memorandum, recorded the following: “It was early in the autumn of 1915. I was Acting Chief of Staff. Mr. Breckinridge was, for a day or two, Acting Secretary of War. He came into my office early one morning and said that the President had summoned him a few minutes before. He found him holding a copy of the Baltimore Sun in his hand, ‘trembling and white with passion.’ The President pointed to a little paragraph of two lines in an out-of- the-way part of the sheet, evidently just put in to fill space. It read something like this: ‘It is understood that the General Staff is preparing a plan in case of war with Germany.’

The President asked Mr. Breckinridge if he supposed that was true. Mr. Breckinridge said that he did not know. The President directed him to make an immediate investigation and, if it proved true, to relieve at once every officer of the General Staff and order him out of Washington. Mr. Breckinridge put the investigation up to me.

I told him that the law making the General Staff made its duty “To prepare plans for the national defense’; that I was President of the War College when the General Staff was organized in 1903; that from that time till then the College had studied over and over again plans for war with Germany, England, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, etc. I said that if the President took the action threatened, it would only make patent to everybody which everybody already knew and would create a great political row, and, finally, it would be absurd.

I think the President realized this in a cooler moment. Nothing further was said to him about the matter, nor did he again mention it. But Mr. Breckinridge cautioned me to warn the War College to ‘camouflage’ its work. This resulted in practically

675 Millett, The General, pg. 225 676 Brig. Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, “The Lessons of the Joint Maneuvers in Connecticut” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 4 (January-February 1913), pg. 448 677 Capt. Hugh D. Wise, “Our Unpreparedness for War” in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 5 (March-April 1913), pg. 680 (677-686) 173

no further official studies.”678

American Exceptionalism Versus European Decadence It was not simply denial that caused many U.S. Army officers to ignore the war in Europe, but a traditional antipathy to the achievements of the Old World long shared by the American public. André Tardieu, a French intellectual who served as Commissioner for Franco-American War Cooperation and (ultimately) prime minister, visited American in 1908 and wrote, “The American has the feeling that his country is a world and that this world is enough for him. What is happening in the distance on the narrow field of old Europe scarcely interests him.”679 This observation was amply supported by America’s actions both before and after it was made. American critiques of European performance are tinged with a degree of nationalistic contempt. Many American officers believe that the best Europeans immigrated to America, and all that remained were the genetic dregs. It was these lesser Europeans who had reverted to a troglodytic style of warfare. Americans, in contrast, were envisioned to be natural rifleman who possessed courage and initiative far beyond that of the European counterparts. A typical comment is to be found in an article on the U.S. Army for The Atlantic Monthly, which referred to, “The inborn initiative and adaptability of the American soldier, traits so lacking in European armies and so important in modern warfare[.]”680 However, perhaps the most important example of this attitude come from the AEF commander, John Pershing himself: “[W]ave after wave of Europeans, dissatisfied with conditions in Europe, came to this country to seek liberty; … those who came had the willpower and spirit to seek opportunity in the new world rather than put up with unbearable conditions in the old; that those who came for that reason were superior in initiative to those, their relatives, who remained and submitted to the conditions… we had developed a type of manhood superior in initiative to that existing abroad, which given approximately equal training and discipline, developed a superior soldier to that existing abroad.”681 Another American officer was less charitable to European immigrants, writing, “The demand for agricultural labor [in America]

678 Gen. Tasker Bliss personal memorandum in Frederick Palmer, Bliss, Peacemaker: The Life and Letters of General Tasker Howard Bliss (New York, Dodd Meade & Co., 1934), pp. 106-107 679 André Tardieu, Notes sur les États-Unis : la société, la politique, la diplomatie (Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1908), pg. 267 “L’Américain a le sentiment que son pays est [must be “est”] un monde et que ce monde peut se suffire à lui seul. Ce que se passe au loin sur le champ rétréci de la vielle Europe ne l’intéresse guère.” 680 Villard, pg. 439 681 Pershing to Col. Dennis Nolan (September 13th, 1918) in Donald Smythe, Pershing: General of the Armies (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986) (Vol. II), pg. 187 174

is largely supplied by the immigration of the peasant class from Europe, which is totally unfit material for American soldiers.”682 The natural superiority of Americans was taken for granted by many. Whether it was handling the rifle, riding horses, or operating machinery, the Americans were incontestably superior to the Europeans. During the Spanish-American War, Harper’s Weekly felt that the American soldier had proven his superiority over his European rivals: “[Europe’s] cynics and its false prophets are learning the truth now – learning that the patriotism of America is such that, when the direful occasion comes, the citizen becomes an energetic, courageous, and intelligent soldier, the like of whose associated qualities cannot be found in European armies.”683 Presumably, American readers knew exactly why such qualities were lacking in the Old World. In a more picayune example, in the Army and Navy Journal, Lt.-Col. Albert G. Brackett opined that, “The claim that the English are, as a nation, as good riders as the Americans, is simply absurd[.]”684 Because of this inferior horsemanship, the English “cavalry was almost universally whipped whenever it went into battle.”685 However, Brackett did get some pushback. A letter written to the Army and Navy Journal allowed that, “National pride is a pardonable vanity[.]”686 The writer could only believe that, “Colonel Brackett makes such rash and sweeping assertions as to convince me that his experience has been confined solely to this side of the Atlantic.”687 If English horsemanship was not inferior to that of the Americans, they at least remained unlikable. As the Army and Navy Journal noted, “The Englishman, in his dealings with other nations, is grasping, selfish, egotistical, irritating[.]”688 In progressive America, Europe’s very antiquity also counted against it. Whereas the blessings of modernity were virtually synonymous with American itself. In trying to express the express the cutting-edge approach of the German General Staff to modern warfare, Capt. T.A. Bingham could think of no more complimentary adjective than ‘American’: “While the general national character of Germany may, it is true, be said to be more medieval to-day than that of any

682 Capt. Moses Harris, “Discipline and Tactics” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States (Vol. 13, No. 55) (January 1892), pg. 111 683 “American Patriotism in War” in Harper’s Weekly Vol. 42 No. 2168 (July 9, 1898), pg. 659 684 Lt.-Col. Albert G. Brackett, “English and American Cavalry” in Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 11, No. 26) (February 7, 1874), pg. 410 685 Ibid. 686 Fair Play (pseudonym), “English and American Cavalry” in Army and Navy Journal (Vol. 11, No. 30) (March 7, 1874), pg. 410 687 Ibid. 688 “England and Russia” in Army and Navy Journal Vol. 22 No. 44 (May 30, 1885), pg. 890 175

other European nation, her military business is conducted on the most modern and, in fact, American methods imaginable.”689 The U.S. Army’s machine gun pioneer, John H. Parker, held that European theories of warfare were inapplicable, as they were incompatible with American culture by their very nature. In 1898, Parker dismissed foreign military theorists, declaring “that the American Regular makes tactics as he needs them… and that deductions based on the drill- made automatons of European armies are not applicable to an army composed of American Volunteer Regulars, led by our trained officers.”690 However, by the 1890s American attitudes towards the Old World did start to soften, at least towards the British. The massive influx of immigrants, largely from southern Europe, coming to feed the demand for cheap labor induced many native-born Americans to consciously embrace a broadly-defined Anglo-Saxon identity. This trend inevitably made its way into the military discourse, especially after the Spanish-American War. For example, the otherwise temperate and thoughtful Arthur L. Wagner wrote of America’s military victories in the Mexican-American War, “much of this success was, doubtless, due to the innate superiority of the Anglo-Saxon-American over his mongrel opponent[.]”691 A young Lt. J.G. Harbord, who would go on to be a star performer in World War One, similarly (and immodestly) wrote in a prize-winning essay, “The United States is rich in brains, mechanical industries and inventive genius and her citizens are unexcelled in earnestness, enthusiasm, energy, courage, intelligence, and patriotism. There is inbred in them that quality of the Anglo-Saxon transmitted through generations of free-governing ancestry, which has made that race always a conqueror.”692 However, this new-found amity went only so far. Captain Joseph Dickman, wrote of his experiences in the China Relief Expedition, which immediately followed the Spanish-American War “American generosity and straightforwardness, coupled with lack of experience in international matters, European cupidity and duplicity.”693 Not surprisingly, the long-standing friendship between the Americans and French also proved brittle when tested by the war with Spain. The editors of Harper’s Weekly took particular exception to French protestations of support

689 Capt. T.A. Bingham, “The Prussian Great General Staff and What It Contains That is Practical From an American Standpoint”, pg. 669 690 Parker, pp. 12-13 691 Wagner, “The Military and Naval Policy of the United States”, pp. 387-88 692 Harbord, “The Necessity of a Well-Organized and Trained Infantry at the Outbreak of War, and the Best Means to Be Adopted by the United States for Obtaining Such a Force”, pp. 3-4 693 Capt. Joseph Dickman, “Experiences in China”, pg. 32 176

for Spain, dismissing the French as a nation of “dressmakers and jewelers.”694 An American visitor to France during the conflict declared, “There can be no true friendship between a decadent and a rising and triumphant race. That the French, notwithstanding their delightful qualities, are decadent is a truth that anyone with eyes in his head and the capacity for observation may see for himself.”695 Franco-American amity would prove similarly flimsy, at least at the higher levels of the AEF command, during the world war. Naturally, such negative stereotypes inhabited a two-way street. If Europe was old and decrepit, America was boorish and brash. The Italian historian and politician, Guglielmo Ferrero, wrote, “The detractors of America—and there are many of them in Europe — affirm without hesitation that the Americans are laden with gold; that they think only of making money, and that, in consequence of their riches, they lower the level of our ancient civilization and destroy its beautiful traditions by a crass materialism.”696 The commercial mindedness of the Americans indicated a lack of aptitude in other pursuits. For example, the British poet Matthew Arnold sniffed that, "An American of reputation as a man of science tells me that he lives in a town of 150,000 people, of whom there are not fifty who do not imagine the first chapters of Genesis to be exact history."697 The Americans were, at best, naïve amateurs. Indeed, this reputation among the British would persist well into the Second World War.

The Punitive Expedition Mexico had long preoccupied U.S. Army planners in the decades since the Civil War. The outbreak of the 1910 raised the possibility of an armed intervention in Mexico. However, army planners realized that such an operation would be difficult; they estimated that 150,000 troops would be necessary to move from the Rio Grande to Mexico City.698 The Taft administration worked diligently to remain aloof from the conflict. This was reciprocated by the warring factions within Mexico, as they needed access to American markets to acquire critical supplies. Woodrow Wilson was more erratic, periodically imposing and then removing an arms embargo. Intervention followed in 1914 after a U.S. Navy landing party was inadvertently arrested

694 Editorial, Harper’s Weekly Vol. 42 No. 2164 (June 11, 1898), pg. 558 695 “London” in Harper’s Weekly Vol. 42 No. 2168 (July 9, 1898), pg. 666 696 Guglielmo Ferrero, “The Riddle of America” in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 112 No. 5 (November 1913), pg. 704 697 Matthew Arnold in Samuel W. McCall, “English Views of America” in International Review Vol. 13 (November 1882), pg. 428 698 “The Mexican Situation” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 49 No. 1630 (March 18, 1911), pg. 14 (14-15) 177

by a Mexican officer in the city of Tampico, a critical center of oil production and home to many Americans. The situation quickly escalated, and Wilson responded by ordering the occupation of Veracruz, Mexico’s most important port city, in the spring of 1914. The Americans withdrew later that year, but tensions on the border remained very high. In 1916, Wilson ordered a large-scale mobilization of the U.S. Army and National Guard to protect the southern border. Robert L. Bullard, himself a graduate of the Army War College, was shocked at the disorganized and ramshackle nature of the deployment to the Mexican border. He knew full well that this was a movement long planned for by the General Staff, and for this “There is but one conceivable conclusion; it is that the General Staff had been in this matter ignored or disregarded, and that we had obstinately returned to the rotten, inefficient system and methods of the days of the Spanish-American War.”699 It was one thing to have a General Staff, but it was another to use it effectively. The tense situation on the Mexican border finally exploded in the early morning hours of March 9, 1916, when , commander of one of the revolutionary armies, led some 400 of his men on a desperate raid against the small town of Columbus, New Mexico. Villa had vowed revenge against the Americans for allowing Mexican government troops to use American railroads to reinforce their garrison at Agua Prieta. Villa had attacked the reinforced government garrison in the town on November 1, 1915 and had been repulsed with great loss. His once grand División del Norte was shattered. The American public was outraged by the raid on Columbus, and so Wilson authorized the U.S. Army, in consultation with the Mexican government, to pursue Villa into Mexico. In truth, there was no meeting of the minds between Wilson and the Mexican president Carranza (“conversations between the deaf and the dumb” in the words of historian John S.D. Eisenhower), and clashes between Mexican federal troops and American regulars would plague the expedition.700 The American commander on the border was General Frederick Funston. In a cable to the War Department, he proposed immediately sending four cavalry regiments, organized into two brigades (plus supporting troops, including one battery of artillery and an aero squadron), after Villa. A third heavy brigade, comprised of three infantry regiments and an artillery battalion, was

699 Bullard, Personalities and Reminisces of the War, pg. 7 700 John S.D. Eisenhower, Intervention!: The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917 (New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1993), pg. 231 178 to follow in order to secure the lines of communication.701 The War Department authorized Funston’s proposal, and appointed Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing as its commander. Pershing’s tenure as a commander in the Philippines, and his successful campaign against the Moros, caused both Maj. Gen. Hugh L. Scott (the Army Chief of Staff) and Maj. Gen. Tasker H. Bliss to recommend him. The War Department ordered Pershing to enter Mexico no later than March 15th. Villa’s remaining forces were estimated to be between 500 to 1,000 men.702

Map 5: Area of Mexican Punitive Expedition

As Pershing pursued the wily Pancho Villa into the mountains, problems with communications and supplies became acute, but Pershing did his best. The unreliability of the local telegraph lines caused him to request some of the newest pieces of U.S. Army gear: wireless radio sets. Likewise, in an effort to keep his command properly supplied, Pershing turned to trucks, hoping that they could succeed where wagon transport had failed. Pershing also experimented with machine guns, making sure that the cavalry had enough of the weapons to provide fire support. As

701 Robert S. Thomas and Inez V. Allen, The Mexican Punitive Expedition Under Brigadier General John J. Pershing, United States Army, 1916-1917 (Washington, DC, War Histories Division (U.S. Army), 1954), pg. II-2 702 Ibid., pg. II-15 179

Allan Millett observed, whatever his faults, Pershing “was a real field general. As a brigade commander he had recognized the importance of artillery and machine gun fire to the success of infantry assaults. He appreciated the importance of new technology, motorizing his troops and supplies and employing the army’s primitive airplanes. He paid close attention to wire and radio communications, and he demanded thorough staff planning. He used his officers impersonally, encouraging the most able and discarding those who made mistakes. He commanded as much by fear as he did by rapport with his subordinates.”703 Combat during the Punitive Expedition was generally limited to minor skirmishes against isolated units of Villa’s supporters, and the American emphasis on marksmanship was amply vindicated by the results of these combats. For example, at the town of Parral, approximately 100 U.S. cavalrymen, under Major Frank Tompkins, were attacked by 600 Mexican government troops and an unknown number of armed civilians. Given the odds, Tompkins wisely decided to withdraw, and a running battle commenced. At the cost of only two killed and six wounded, Tompkins’ men killed 42 Mexican combatants.704 American riflemen performed exactly as their commanders had intended. In his memoirs, Colonel Harry A. Toulmin, then a junior officer, described the textbook application of carefully-controlled fire by the eight-man rear-guard: Right here was a fine example of American army discipline. This small detachment, under command of Lieutenant Clarence Lininger, showed the finest sort of fire control. The rear guard fired coolly and deliberately, correcting their sights upon field glass observations by a noncommissioned officer. This outfit killed twenty of the enemy at this point, and wounded many others, according to the later reports of the Mexican authorities themselves.705

While not all of the skirmishes were so lopsided in terms of relative losses, the Americans clearly dominated the firefight in almost every case. The battle of Carrizal (June 21, 1916) was decidedly unfavorable to the Americans, but the American commander, Captain Charles T. Boyd, rashly chose to attack a Mexican government force head-on, likely in the belief that they would not risk a direct confrontation (Boyd was killed, so one can only speculate on his reasoning). Boyd’s force was only 82 men strong, and it was significantly outnumbered. Over half of Boyd’s

703 Millett, The General, pg. 304 704 Col. Frank Tompkins, Chasing Villa: The Story Behind the Story of Pershing’s Expedition into Mexico (Harrisburg, PA, The Military Service Publishing Co., 1934), pg. 142 705 Col. H.A. Toulmin, With Pershing in Mexico (Harrisburg. PA. The Military Service Publishing Co., 1935), pp. 63-64 180

unit was killed, wounded or captured (48 out of 82). Between 39 and 45 Mexicans were killed, including their commander.706 Toulmin wrote scathingly of the attack, “Boyd gave the Mexicans every military advantage of time and notice so that they could deploy into a strong military position. He even moved his own troops into a position of great military disadvantage where they must attack across a barren plain in a direct frontal attack. To accomplish his objective they would have to move across a flat plain devoid of cover, against superior forces, under cover and well intrenched.”707 Toulmin also noted that the Mexican defenders possessed machine guns, one of which enfiladed Boyd’s attack.708 It was a lesson that might have been put to good use. The Punitive Expedition made John J. Pershing the most experienced American commander in terms of handling large bodies of men. At its height, the Punitive Expedition included approximately 15,000 men. His only rival in this regard was Frederick Funston, who died of a heart attack in February of 1917. Pershing’s experience as commander of the expedition certainly had an impact on the view of modern warfare that he brought with him to Europe. For example, in his post-war memoirs, Pershing wrote, “While my command in Mexico was taught the technique of trench fighting, it was more particularly trained in the war of movement. Without the application of open warfare methods, there could have been only a stalemate on the Western Front.”709 As with most of Pershing’s writing, this statement is meant to gloss over, and not engage, his failings as a commander. For example, Pershing intimates that the trench warfare techniques of the pre-war American army were somehow comparable to those used in Europe, which they were most clearly not. It also implies an equivalency between Villa’s banditos and the Imperial German army, insofar as the same tactical methods could be used with equal success against both opponents. This is a dubious claim, to say the least. Finally, it suggests that Pershing’s stubborn application of “open warfare” tactics was visionary, the veritable key to ultimate victory on the Western Front, rather than the sad excuse for hurling American infantry at German machine guns that it proved to be. Ironically, the Mexicans seem to have done a better job of absorbing the lessons of World War One than their neighbors to the north. Most notable was Álvaro Obregón’s victory over Villa’s División del Norte at Celaya in April of 1915.710 In that battle, the skillful use

706 Thomas and Allen, pg. IV-28 707 Toulmin, pg. 75 708 Ibid., pg. 76 709 Pershing, pg. 11 710 Eileen Welsome, The General and the Jaguar: Pershing’s Hunt for Pancho Villa (Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2006), pp. 51-54 181

of trenches, machine guns, and field artillery enabled Obregón to defeat Villa’s powerful and battle-tested force. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Cavalry chose to interpret the Punitive Expedition as proof of its exceptional capabilities and glorious future. The editors of the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association wrote, “The Pershing Expedition into Mexico proved the cavalry arm the only arm which could successfully operate south of the Rio Grande, aggressively. Without reflection [sic] adversely on our brothers of the infantry and field artillery, they were simply armed guards of camps and communications in Mexico; the engineers provided good road builders only; and the aviation corps failed to render only notable service. It was the cavalry alone which secured results; and had armed resistance to our forces continued, the brilliant handling of our cavalry would undoubtedly still have been more in evidence.”711 Conveniently left out of this description was the 10th Cavalry’s defeat at the hands of Mexican regulars in a skirmish at Carrizal. Frank Tompkins, a major in the 9th Cavalry during the Expedition, naturally extolled American marksmanship, and compared it unfavorably to that of their opponents. In his account of the campaign, he sniffed, “The Mexicans are very poor rifle shots. They are not so bad with the pistol, but with the modern military rifle they are hopeless.”712 Undoubtedly, the American rifleman was a better shot, on average, than his Mexican counterpart. The hunt for Pancho Villa brought little glory to the U.S. Army, but for the field artillery, “the Punitive Expedition was a veritable disaster[.]”713 The field artillery had barely functioned in the late 19th century, with almost all of its units functioning as infantry. What artillery did exist was almost monopolist by the Coastal Artillery units. In order to provide enough men and equipment for Pershing’s expedition, the army had to close the field artillery school at Ft. Sill in order to provide enough trained men and guns. During the campaign in Mexico, ammunition usage was severely restricted.714 Indeed, references to its use in the campaign are few and far between. Evidence for the successful employment of machine guns is similarly sparse in the historical record. One notable exception was an action on April 1st, 1916 at Agua Caliente where the Americans attacked and dispersed a force of 150 Villistas. The American machine gunners at

711 Editorial, “The Cavalry” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 28 No. 117 (January 1918), pg. 429 (429-30) 712 Tompkins, pg. 141 713 Mark Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Fire: American Artillery Employment in World War I (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 2001), pg. 4 714 Ibid. 182

the battle employed some of the latest tactics: “This action is noted for the fact that Captain Phillips employed for the first time by the United States Army overhead machine gun fire to advance the attacking troops.”715 More typical was the action at Ojos Azules. On May 4th, 1916, an advance guard of U.S. cavalry and Apache Scouts surprised a Villista force at the Ojos Azules ranch. A battle ensued, after which the Villistas fled, leaving behind 44 dead (versus no losses for the Americans). A machine gun troop was attached to the American advance guard, but its horses were too exhausted by the weight of their equipment to allow the troops to join the battle in earnest. The machine guns did open fire, but only at extreme range.716 One cannot help but wonder if the relative ineffectiveness of artillery and machine guns in this campaign influenced Pershing’s views in 1917-18.

Field Artillery The experience of the Spanish-American War, and the lessons learned in the Boer and Russo-Japanese Wars, also initiated an important period of reform for the United States field artillery. After the Civil War, the wars against the Plains Indians had reduced the field artillery considerably. Most field commanders regarded the artillery as being too slow to be of use in the pursuit of swift-moving Indian bands. What field artillery remained there was largely confined to the forts, while most of the artillerymen served as ersatz infantry or even cavalry on campaign.717 Funding was scarce and Civil War ordnance was plentiful, leaving little appetite for new acquisitions, so the U.S. field artillery lagged far behind its European counterparts in terms of technology and technique.718 This sorry state of affairs became painfully obvious during the fighting in Cuba, as the field artillery made only a very modest contribution to victory on the battlefield. The rapid advances in artillery technology made in Europe came slowly to the United States, but come they did. The army finally adopted breech-loading guns with the M1885 and M1890 3.2-inch field pieces. The more advanced pieces encouraged the War Department to open a service school for the field artillery (and cavalry), separate from the artillery school at Ft. Monroe. The new school was established at Ft. Riley, Kansas, in 1892. Despite the new guns and

715 Toulmin, pg. 107 716 Ibid., pg. 84 717 Dastrup, pg. 133 718 Ibid., pp. 129-30 183 the new service school, American field artillery tactics remained mired in the Civil War experience. Accordingly, the American gunners often pushed their guns too far forward, only to have their crews decimated by Spanish Mausers and counter-battery fire.719 In the decade following the war, the American field artillery played an aggressive game of catch-up. Modern artillery was added to the inventory, including the M1902 3-inch gun, M1904 4.7-inch gun, the M1905 3.8-inch howitzer, the M1906 6-inch howitzer, and the M1907 4.7-inch howitzer.720 A new service school, dedicated solely to the field artillery, was opened at Ft. Sill in 1911. Equally important was the founding of the Field Artillery Journal that same year. Although Congressional funding remained a problem, and overall army doctrine did not fully appreciate the importance of field artillery, the branch itself was at least starting to recover from decades of neglect. Progress was slow, as training standards were so poor that Ft. Sill spent much of its effort teaching basic skills. The result was that advanced firing methods were neglected, so that America entered the World War with inadequately trained artillerymen721. Unfortunately, the Punitive Expedition of 1916 left little doubt that much work still had to be done.

719 Ibid., pg. 141 720 Ibid., pg. 147 721 Ibid., pg. 155 184

Chapter 9: A Baptism of Fire, April 1917 – September 1918 “If the Americans do not permit the French to teach them, the Germans will do so at great cost of life…”722 - Introduction With the declaration of war in April of 1917, America and her army were transformed from spectators into combatants. It was a task for which the nation was unmistakably ill-prepared. Little serious thought had been given to mobilization, although the army had long been aware of the need to train and organize vast numbers of men in the event of a major war with a first-rate European power. The U.S. Army’s standard Tables of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) had to be scrapped, as the army scrambled to incorporate the plethora of new and unfamiliar infantry weapons. Concurrently, the small peacetime infantry company ballooned to a wartime strength of two hundred and fifty men. Yet, despite these radical outward changes, official combat doctrine barely budged, as the 1911 Infantry Drill Regulations effectively remained the basis for infantry tactics. New weapons were simply grafted on to old ideas about the battlefield, and the Americans prepared to enter the lists in Europe.

Pershing the General Any appreciation of General John Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces requires understanding that fact that Pershing was a man of colossal will and boundless ambition, and that the AEF existed as an expression of the former and a realization of the latter. Allan Millett perfectly captured Pershing the soldier: “In an officer corps rich with ambition, Pershing was a star performer.”723 His personality was often cold and distant, but it did elicit admiration from most who served under him. Robert L. Bullard, who served under Pershing in both Mexico and France, described him thus: “Pershing inspired confidence but not affection. Personal magnetism seemed lacking. He won followers and admirers, but not personal worshippers.”724 Again, quoting Millett: “He was not a man one could serve with comfortably. There was always the ambition, the air of moral superiority, the cold-bloodedness, the feeling that he would expend men like

722 Charles Seymour (editor), The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (Vol. III): Into the World War, April 1917 – June 1918 (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1926), pp. 268-69 723 Millett, The General, pg. 304 724 Bullard, “Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 42 185

cartridges, the knowledge that he demanded an uncomfortable degree of personal loyalty and that he considered his own judgement nearly infallible.”725 Arguably, no American general has ever come so close to playing the role of proconsul as did Pershing in France. Pershing’s military career began when he matriculated at the United States Military Academy in 1882. He graduated four years later, ranked thirtieth out of the thirty-seven cadets in his class. Nonetheless, Pershing was selected as the captain of cadets, and the president of his class. His career was relatively uneventful prior to the Spanish-American War. It did include a stint as an instructor in tactics at West Point during 1887-98. At West Point, Pershing developed an unenviable reputation for being a martinet. It was during this time that he acquired the nickname “Black Jack” from his unadoring students.726 However, once war with Spain broke out, Pershing was sent to the Philippines. He acquitted himself well in the campaign against the fierce Moro tribesmen of Mindanao. Shortly after his return to the United States, he married the daughter of Senator Francis E. Warren of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Pershing’s career began to advance rapidly after this fortuitous union, including command of the Punitive Expedition in Mexico, and culminating in the supreme command of the American Expeditionary Forces in France. As the vehicle for Pershing’s imagined rendezvous with destiny, the AEF would be shaped according to his will: “To a large degree, Pershing himself created the AEF as a distinct society impressing his wishes on his army in a way unknown to Americans since Robert E. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia. That Pershing exercised such influence on an organization which came to number over two million men is powerful testimony to his force of character and driving will.”727 Loyalty was every bit as important as competence in Pershing’s choice of staff. They brought with them the Progressive Era philosophy of a centralized command and control system, “and they got it because Pershing replaced any officer who would not accept that system.”728 The negative effects of this overly-centralized command system were exacerbated by a chronic failure on the part of Pershing’s General Headquarters (GHQ) to allow sufficient time for subordinate units to issue commands in a timely fashion. One American officer found that the problem continued into the post-war army, in the command exercises performed at the General

725 Millett, The General, pg. 305 726 Smythe, pg. 2 727 Millett, The General, pg. 312 728 Millett, The General, pg. 315 186

Service Schools.729 Clausewitzian friction remained an unacknowledged fact; ignored rather than actively engaged. In addition to organizational failures, Pershing possessed a number of personal shortcomings that were to bedevil his tenure as commander of the AEF. In terms of the grand alliance, Pershing had the necessary resolve to resist persistent attempts by the French and British to control American manpower, but lacked the delicacy and charm required to make his stance palatable. His inflexibility manifested itself within the AEF through a frequently stubborn approach to unanticipated difficulties in offensive operations. Pershing relentlessly urged his commanders forward, regardless of losses, and ruthlessly dismissed those who failed to demonstrate the necessary will to continue the attack. He instinctively distrusted many of his subordinates, outside of his sycophantic inner circle, which made Pershing “one of the U.S. Army’s most devoted micromanagers.”730 Pershing’s rigidity, and desire to shape the AEF in his own image, are reflected in The General Principles Governing the Training of Units of the American Expeditionary Forces: The standards of the American army will be those of West Point. The rigid attention, upright bearing, attention to detail, uncomplaining obedience to instructions required of the cadet will be required of every officer and soldier of our armies in France. Failure to attain such discipline will be treated as lack of capacity on the part of a commander to create in the subordinate that intensity of purpose and willing acceptance of hardships which are necessary to success in battle.731

The notion that an army of recent draftees from the civilian population might engender, if not require, a different culture than that of West Point seems not to have occurred to him. Rather, those millions of men would be made to bend to the indomitable will of their supreme commander, guided as he was by his infallible judgement. It stands in stark contrast to the spirit of the army that fought and won the Civil War.

The Allied Military Missions As soon as the Americans declared war, the French and British sent military teams to the United States to evaluate their army, modernize doctrine, and to assist in training. The French were

729 Mills, pg.282 730 Robert H. Ferrell, Collapse at Meuse-Argonne: The Failure of the Missouri-Kansas Division (Columbia, MO, University of Missouri Press, 2004), pg. 7 731 General Headquarters, AEF, “The General Principles Governing the Training of Units of the American Expeditionary Forces (April 9, 1918)” in A.E.F. Policy Documents (vol. 2), pg. 95 187

perhaps the most willing to work within the confines of American national pride. The historical relationship between France and the United States fostered a modest degree of mutual respect. Nonetheless, relatively little came of the Allied effort. American pride, and its contempt for Europe, did not allow for the humility that is prerequisite to true learning. Quite simply, the Americans were superior in all respects to the Europeans, and this article of national faith became a political imperative for a nation about to make its first appearance on the stage of Europe’s great drama. Worse still, the advice proffered by the Allied military missions was the product of experience, a mode of learning that was held inferior by an American ruling class enthralled by the technocratic cult of progressivism. In truth, neither French nor British students of the American character were overly sentimental or optimistic about mutual cooperation. In 1908, the Frenchman André Tardieu wrote of the Americans after his sojourn in the country, “American patriotism is perennial and proud, therefore egoistical. Americans wherever they are, are working for themselves. The worship of the homeland is too absorbing for them to lend themselves to international fads and diplomatic sentiment. They are convinced of their superiority. They do not serve others, they use them.”732 Elsewhere, he spoke of the Americans’ “naïve and brutal confidence”.733 Decades earlier, Oscar Wilde noticed the ham-fisted nature of American self-confidence during his visit to the United States. Noting the “inordinate size of everything,” Wilde wrote that, “The country seems to try to bully one into a belief in its power by its impressive bigness.”734 Likewise, H.G. Wells observed that Americans never tired of telling him what a great country theirs was. He confessed, “I do regard that much as so obvious and true that it seems to me a little undignified, as well as a little overbearing, for Americans to insist upon it so[.]”735 Tardieu’s characterization of American over- confidence was recognized even by some Americans. In 1912, Maj. George Shelton wrote, “Military preparedness is a thing unknown to the United States. There is no national assurance of success in any trial of arms. There is, indeed, a kind of national arrogance which seeks to take its place, but this is the antithesis of the knowledge implied by our definition. It is ignorance entrenched in the pride of lusty youth.”736

732 Tardieu, pg. 371 733 Ibid., pg. 373 734 Wilde, pg. 25 735 H.G. Wells, The Future in America: A Search After Realities (London, Chapman & Hall, 1906), pg. 30 736 Shelton, pg. 1 188

Opinion within the U.S. Army was divided as to the proposals made by the foreign military missions. Tasker Bliss was in favor of following their advice. Bliss wrote, “Personally, my view has always been that if we want to get into this war ‘with both feet’ at the earliest possible day, the only way to do it is to follow the recommendations of the two Missions.”737 Attempting to train soldiers without such advice, Bliss presciently argued, “might complicate matters by teaching men things in America that they will have to unlearn in Europe.”738 The French General Philippe Pétain pressed hard for an opportunity to train the Americans, writing to Wilson’s cabinet: “Practice can rapidly be attained at good advantage if the American army would, for a very short time, waive their feeling of national pride and depend completely upon the experience of the French army. Such practice would be the fruit of slower and costly efforts if, desirous of flying too soon with its own wings, the American army gains the apprenticeship by receiving the lessons which the enemy will not fail to give it.”739 Yet, deep-rooted prejudices against the Old World remained. America was, for many, simply not subject to theories formulated by the European experience of war. In his 1899 novel, L'Anneau d'améthyste, Anatole France presents a conversation between several members of French society concerning the Spanish American-War. An old general opines about the military prospects of the Americans, “’Their success is problematic,’ said the general. ‘I would even say that it would be paradoxical and would inflict an insolent rebuke of the entire system used by the essentially military nations. Indeed, the victory of the United States would be a criticism by deeds of the principles adopted by all of Europe’s most competent military authorities. Such a result is neither foreseeable, nor wished.’”740 Harper’s Weekly, for one, cited this with great approval, as if the French themselves realized that America had shattered the military paradigm of the Old World.741 However, given that Anatole France (who later won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921) was both a socialist and Dreyfusard742, the general’s words were almost certainly meant as

737 Bliss to U.S. Army Chief of Staff Hugh Scott (May 4, 1917) in Palmer, pg. 147 738 Ibid. 739 Memorandum from Pétain to House in Seymour, pg. 293 740 Anatole France, L'Anneau d'améthyste (Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1899), pg. 227. “‘Leur succès est problématique’, répondit le général. ‘Je dirais même qu'il serait paradoxal et qu'il infligerait un insolent démenti à tout le système en usage dans les nations essentiellement militaires. En effet, la victoire des États-Unis serait la critique en action des principes adoptés dans toute l'Europe par les autorités militaires les plus compétentes. Un tel résultat n'est ni à prévoir, ni à souhaiter.’” 741 “The Peace Settlement in Europe” in Harper’s Weekly Vol. 43 No. 2214 (May 27, 1899), pg. 516 742 A supporter of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer falsely accused of espionage by the conservative, Catholic French military hierarchy. 189

a slight against the narrow intellectual horizons of the French officer corps, rather than an informed opinion on American military prowess. America’s immodest self-regard prevented Harper’s from understanding that fact. Nonetheless, with America’s entry into the war, the War Department did begin to translate and circulate foreign military manuals. That said, even the hard-won lessons of these manuals could not overcome some of the U.S. Army’s tactical shibboleths. An example of this can be seen in the 1916 French infantry manual entitled Instructions on the Offensive Conduct of Small Units. In the opening of the manual, the French authors list a number of critical points, including: “Infantry of itself has no offensive power against obstacles defended by fire and provided with accessory defenses.— When a line is stopped, by organized defenses which are intact and occupied by the enemy the reinforcement of riflemen by the troops in reserve has no chance of accomplishing the capture of the position; it will simply increase the losses. An attack must, therefore, never be launched without having it preceded and accompanied by the efficacious action of artillery. You can not fight with men against material.”743 Such advice was not well-received by the Americans. To them, it was a slur against the American rifleman, and an admission of failure by the spent civilization of the Old World.

John J. Pershing & “Open Warfare” Pershing personified those American officers who rejected the lessons learned by the European armies on the Western Front. It was not that Pershing was unwilling to innovate, but that something much larger was at stake. For him, the AEF was America’s debut as a world power, and its tactical doctrine would reflect America’s unique status among nations. This policy manifested itself in the adoption of “open warfare” tactics by the AEF in preference to the British or French approaches to trench warfare. As Allan Millett wrote, “Pershing was obsessed with the fact that the AEF’s infantry must be trained for attacks in unfortified terrain. (Just how they would puncture German lines is still unclear.) ‘Open warfare’ became not just a tactical concept, but an ‘American’ way of fighting and a symbol of the AEF’s psychological fervor for battlefield victory.”744 In common parlance, “open warfare” was simply that tactical doctrine used under conditions of more fluid and mobile warfare appropriate to open country and was predicated on

743 Instructions on the Offensive Conduct of Small Units (translated from the French and edited by the U.S. Army War College) (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1917), pg. 9 744 Millett, The General, pg. 315 190 the primacy of the individual rifleman. The Germans would be driven from their trenches by the men of the AEF and engaged in open battle. In practice, however, “open warfare” often meant that American troops would break the trench deadlock by simply pretending that it did not exist. To be fair to Pershing, it was true that the era of trench-to-trench warfare was passing. During 1917-18, the Germans, followed later by the French and British, switched to a defense-in- depth system. This approach used mutually-supporting fortified strong points, outposts and machine gun nests in an irregular pattern to dissipate the effects of artillery. The system was cemented by firepower and local counter-attacks, rather than by contiguous trench lines. However, the fact remains that Pershing’s system of “open warfare” was not based on a careful analysis of the German defense system. Instead, it was based simply on long-held myths about the efficacy of the American rifleman. Artillery remained the key to breaking the German defenses, but few senior American commanders realized just how important it was, preferring to view it as a “crutch” used by the degenerate Europeans. In contrast, Pershing stated that for the Americans: “Close adherence is urged to the central idea that the essential principles of war have not changed; that the rifle and the bayonet remain the supreme weapons of the infantry soldier and that the ultimate success of the Army depends upon their proper use in open warfare.”745 The closest that Pershing came to a formal definition of “open warfare” was in a memo circulated in the fall of 1918. It read as follows: “The essential difference between open and trench warfare, so far as effect upon formations is concerned, is characterized by the presence or absence of the rolling barrage ahead of the infantry. From a tactical point of view, the method of combat in trench warfare presents a marked contrast to that employed in open warfare, and the attempt by assaulting infantry to use trench warfare methods in an open warfare combat will be successful only at great cost. Trench warfare is marked by uniform formations, the regulation of space and time by higher command down to the smallest details, absence of scouts preceding the first wave, fixed distances and intervals between units and individuals, voluminous orders, careful rehearsal, little initiative upon the part of the individual soldier. Open warfare is marked by scouts who precede the first wave, irregularity of formation, comparatively little regulation of space and time by the higher command, the greatest possible use of the infantry's own fire power to enable it to get forward, variable distances and intervals between units and individuals, use of every form of cover and accident of the ground during the advance, brief orders, and the greatest possible use of

745 John J. Pershing, “Cable P-178-S to AGWAR” (October 20, 1917) reprinted in United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Reports of the Commander-in-Chief, the Staff Sections and Services (vol. 14) (Washington, D.C., Center for Military History - U.S. Army, 1988), pg. 306 191

individual initiative by all troops engaged in the action.”746

Here, Pershing uses a strawman version of trench warfare in attempt to create a distinctly separate identity for his amorphous concept of “open warfare”. Inadequate communications between the infantry and artillery meant that rigid timetables were often inevitable, especially for the relatively green American army. Moreover, the American high command had not embraced the use of irregular formations in a meaningful tactical sense. Pershing’s rhetoric merely disguised these unpleasant facts behind a thinly-veiled paean to the American rifleman and his independent (i.e. non-European) spirit. Never one to second-guess himself, Pershing’s memoirs are literally filled with references to the alleged superiority of “open warfare” tactics. He even goes so far as to claim that the German Stosstruppen tactics were merely a foreign imitation of Pershing’s favored doctrine: “The fact that neither the British nor French had trained their armies for open warfare, either offensive or defensive, was at least in part one cause of the tremendous success of the German drive with divisions expressly trained for that kind of warfare.”747 Nothing could be farther from the truth. The German tactics were based on a very realistic appraisal of what was required for infantry to conduct fire and maneuver tactics on the modern battlefield. First and foremost, this required maximizing the infantry’s firepower with light machine guns (the MG08/15), submachine guns (the MP18), flamethrowers, and grenade-launchers. The rifle, however skillfully-wielded, simply could not provide enough firepower on a fluid battlefield, and so served as little more than a personal defense weapon. It also required that junior officers and NCOs be given maximum discretion in organizing and commanding their units – events on the battlefield moved too swiftly to do otherwise. Light artillery was pushed aggressively forward to support the momentum of the infantry attack. Finally, Pershing’s claim about the Allies is a gratuitous insult (so characteristic of Pershing), given the great advances made by the British and French armies in the final months of the war. Nonetheless, the nationalistic appeal of “open warfare” as an American style of fighting was powerful. Robert L. Bullard, writing of the 1st Division’s final weeks in training, boasted, “All

746 Gen. John J. Pershing, “Memorandum (September 5, 1918)” in A.E.F. Policy Documents (vol. 1), pg. 491 (491- 95) 747 Pershing, My Experiences (Vol. II), pp. 35-36 192 thoughts were on one subject: to meet the enemy in the open in the traditional American way.”748 Closely associated with that most American of weapons, the rifle, was the bayonet. Despite the advent of industrialized warfare, and the complete dominance of firepower on the battlefield, the bayonet remained near and dear to Pershing and other American military planners. For example, the 1917 Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action warmly advocated aggressive bayonet training as a key component of building unit morale. The manual declared that, “Bayonet fighting produces lust for blood,” and therefore was to be encouraged.749

Europe in the Trenches Trench warfare was, for many American officers, emblematic of Europe’s moral and physical degeneracy. As such, it fit seamlessly into the traditional American narrative of the Old World’s corruption and effeminacy. Indeed, although the Americans themselves had been pioneers of modern field fortification during the Civil War, and once knew how formidable they truly were, the fear of assaulting fieldworks was still interpreted by senior American officers as a sign of moral failure. Captain Edward Field, writing a full generation before World War One (in 1885), warned that the fear of firepower “may breed a caution which will confine future armies so closely to earthworks as to suggest that most degenerate period of the Roman Empire, when the legionaries, who had hewn their way to the sovereignty of the world, took refuge behind huge shields of wicker- work.”750 The Europeans were now as degraded as their Roman ancestors, concealing themselves like frightened children within the bosom of a protective Mother Earth. Pershing and his staff were always eager to find confirmation of their views of trench warfare. The enormous success of the first of the 1918 German offensives, Operation Michael, was interpreted as proof of the negative effects of trench warfare on the soldiers of the B.E.F. Rather than attributing the German success to innovative tactics and operational surprise, the AEF high command instead looked to the enervating effects of trench warfare on British soldiers. An American staff officer, Lt. Col. G.S. Simonds, reported: Criticisms from numerous British infantry officers as to the effect this trench warfare has had on their men: They get out into the open and act as though they

748 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 179 749 War Department, Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action, (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1917), pg. 16 750 Capt. Edward Field, “No Footsteps But Some Glances Backwards” in Journal of the Military Institution of the United States (Vol. 6, No. 23) (September, 1885), pg. 243 193

were suddenly thrust naked into the public view and didn't know what to do with themselves, as if something were radically wrong and that there ought to be another trench somewhere for them to get into. My impression was not that there was any doubt about their willingness and ability to fight but that too much trench warfare had had its effect.751

Pershing’s Staff: Harold B. Fiske Assisted by his able G-5 (training), Fiske, Pershing fought a bureaucratic war to defend their “open warfare” doctrine against both Allied trainers in France, as well as their own General Staff in Washington D.C. under Peyton March. March and the Anglo-French trainers all insisted on preparing the doughboys for the formidable challenges of trench warfare; Pershing emphatically did not. Interestingly, Fiske was an admirer of German military methods, but not to the point of challenging Pershing’s views on tactical doctrine. Bullard recalled overhearing a conversation between Fiske and Capt. Arthur Conger (Pershing’s resident expert on the German army) on board the ship that took them to France. He recalled with disgust that they were “so impressed with the efficiency of the Germans as soldiers that they have plainly weakened their own courage in the face of the Germans. The impression that the average man derives from hearing them talk and from being with them is the hopelessness, the utter folly of our resisting the Germans at all.”752 Despite Bullard’s impression, Fiske remained a standard-bearer for Pershing’s concept of “open warfare”. It was, after all, rooted in the mythos of the American rifleman, and validated by the newly technocratic military elite. In a lecture to students at Ft. Leavenworth delivered in January of 1917, Fiske declared, “Will our drill regulations require radical modification to conform to the experience of the Great War? It seems to me the answer is, No. The formations contemplated, and the principles taught in our drill regulations have been proven to be in the main correct.”753 His study of tactics had convinced him that only one alteration was required: American infantry companies should be made larger to better support their own firing lines.754 Fiske allowed that artillery, machine guns, and hand grenades gained in importance proportional to the use of entrenchments. However, in the American style of mobile warfare, “the rifle continues to be the

751 Lt. Col. G.S. Simonds, “AG, GHQ, 15111-1: Bulletin (March 28, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Training and Use of American Units With the British and French (Vol. 3) (Washington, DC, Center for Military History, 1989), pg. 121 (119-122) 752 Millett, The General, pg. 311 753 Fiske, Notes on Infantry, pg. 28 754 Ibid. 194

main factor in obtaining [fire] superiority.”755 At that point in the European conflict, Fiske’s views almost beggar belief, and are a profound statement of the cultural cocoon that American officers of the period inhabited. Nor was it enough for Pershing’s inner circle to extoll the traditional virtues of the American rifleman. It was, apparently, also necessary to denigrate the martial qualities of America’s allies. Fiske opined that: “In many respects. the tactics and technique of our Allies are not suited to American characteristics or the American mission in this war. The French do not like the rifle, do not know how to use it, and their infantry is consequently too entirely dependent upon a powerful artillery support. Their infantry lacks aggressiveness and discipline. The British infantry lacks initiative and resource. The junior officers of both allied services, with whom our junior officers are most closely associated, are not professional soldiers, know little of the general characteristics of war, and their experience is almost entirely limited to the special phases of war in the trenches.”756 In the same document, Fiske continued: “Berlin cannot be taken by the French or the British armies or by both of them. It can only be taken by a thoroughly trained, entirely homogeneous American army, in which the sense of initiative and self-reliance upon the part of all officers and men has been developed to the very highest degree. An American army can not be made by Frenchmen or Englishmen.”757 He further warned of a nefarious plot on the part of the French, in very suggestive terms, to “impregnate the American units with French methods and doctrine.”758 Certainly, this attitude may have served a political purpose in limiting allied control over the AEF, but it also had deep roots in American culture and military discourse. Fiske’s doctrinal rigidity, mechanistic approach to training, and his slavish devotion to Pershing ultimately made him “the most hated man” in the entire AEF.759

AEF Organization One of the most controversial decisions made by Pershing and the AEF staff concerned the

755 Ibid., pg. 29 756 Col. Harold B. Fiske, “General Headquarters, American Expeditionary Forces, Memorandum to the Chief of Staff, Subject: Training” (July 4, 1918)), United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Reports of the Commander-in-Chief, the Staff Sections and Services (vol. 14) (Washington, D.C., Center for Military History, 1988), pg. 303 757 Ibid., pg. 304 758 Ibid., pg. 303 759 James J. Cooke, Pershing and His Generals: Command and Staff in the AEF (Westport, CT, Praeger, 1997), pg. 140 195

size of American infantry divisions. The wartime trend in Europe had been towards smaller divisions that could be easily moved in and out of the front lines as circumstances required. For example, German infantry divisions went from approximately 11,500 riflemen in 1914 to just over 6,500 by 1917. French divisions were reduced from four to three infantry regiments (infantry companies were similarly reduced from 250 to 194 men).760 Even the Russians on the eastern front, the lessons from which were supposed to be more relevant to the Americans, re-organized their divisions into smaller establishments over the course of 1916.761 AEF divisions, in contrast, fielded almost 18,000 riflemen in 1918 (total divisional strength was approximately 28,000 men, the size of a European corps). The justification for this was two-fold. First, it was claimed that the larger division had more “staying power”. This reason ignored combat fatigue and the tendency towards entropy; it was typical of the AEF commander’s unwillingness to face the reality of the modern battlefield. The second, and officially unacknowledged reason, was that Pershing doubted the ability of the AEF to provide enough staff officers to manage more numerous smaller divisions.762 The experience of recent wars, particularly that of the victorious Japanese in Manchuria, also seemed to argue for larger combat units capable of absorbing the terrible losses that were inevitable in modern offensive warfare. Given the evidence, it is impossible not to conclude that the AEF was configured, at least in part, to fight a war of attrition based on the profligate expenditure of manpower. However, it was not just military considerations that dictated the incredible size of the U.S. Army divisions. As numerous foreign visitors noted, and as Michael Tavel Clarke has documented in his insightful These Days of Large Things: The Culture of Size in America, 1865-1930, excessive size was (and remains) a profoundly American cultural obsession.763 From scientific studies to document the greater physical stature of Americans, to the urban skylines punctuated by skyscrapers, to be American was to be large. The large divisions were also consistent with American management theory. An industrial America naturally produced an industrial army. This can be seen in the statement of Secretary of War Newton Baker, after visiting American troops in France in 1918, who declared, “As the American industrial spirit had turned out great construction

760 Elizabeth Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), pg. 252 761 Pritt Buttar, The Splintered Empires: The Eastern Front, 1917-21 (Oxford, Osprey Publishing, 2017), pg. 63 762 Millett, The General, pg. 336 763 Michael Tavel Clarke, These Days of Large Things: The Culture of Size in America, 1865-1930 (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 2007) 196

work, so the American political spirit had turned out a great army[.]”764 One of the keys to the country’s industrial success was a dramatic increase in factory throughput (i.e. processing more finished goods as a function of fixed costs such as labor, plant, and energy costs).765 Henry Ford’s plant in Highland Park, Illinois, being one of the most outstanding examples of this trend. By the spring of 1914, it was turning out the hitherto unimaginable number of 1,000 Model T cars per day.766 The large American divisions would achieve the same effect, with a small staff able to process large numbers of fungible (and expendable) riflemen. In effect, the AEF planned on expending the lives of its citizens with the same prodigality as the Europeans did with machine gun and heavy artillery rounds. As always, the rifleman remained the conceptual building-block of the American division. In the years before the war, Maj. George Shelton contemplated the future structure of U.S. Army divisions in an article in the Infantry Journal. Shelton wrote, “The division is a fighting unit and the infantry rifle is the fighting arm. The fundamental thing to be determined in the creation of the division is the number of infantry rifles that through it as a tactical unit we can put on the firing line.”767 Here, one can see laid bare the primary conceptual short-coming inherent in U.S. Army doctrine: the rifle was the tactical fulcrum and everything else an afterthought. Arguably, the divisional structure was not primarily an organic, combined-arms force, but was more of an administrative vehicle designed simply to feed riflemen into the firing line. The divisional organization also reflected the American preference for bureaucratic centralization. For example, heavy machine guns were controlled at the brigade level, insofar as they were grouped in a machine gun battalion controlled by the brigade commander. This reflected a belief that “they could be best used like artillery to put a great concentration of fire on a designated spot when called for or could be attached to the regiments for further attachment to assaulting battalions if desirable.”768 However, the reality was that machine guns needed to be more closely integrated with the infantry to be truly effective. This was recognized by the French when they re-organized their battalions to include three infantry companies and one machine gun company. The U.S. Army adopted the French approach only after the war.769

764 Newton Baker in Ralph A. Hayes, Secretary Baker at the Front (New York, The Century Co., 1918), pg. xiii 765 Chandler, pg. 244 766 Ibid., pg. 280 767 Shelton, pg. 28 768 Miles, pg. 260 769 Ibid. NOTE: The habit of over-centralization persisted into World War Two, with higher formations controlling 197

The large American infantry division would demonstrate a number of shortcomings during the conflict, all of which should have been foreseeable. The first of these was their unwieldy nature. The belligerents had long since decreased the size of their divisions, in part, to facilitate their rapid rotation in and out of the front lines. The large American divisions proved difficult to move, and interminable traffic jams marked their progress. Tasker Bliss, among others, pointed out the danger to Hugh Scott, the Army Chief of Staff, in a memorandum: “I believe that our division is too large and unwieldy.”770 The other serious problem of the oversized division was combat fatigue. Americans planners envisioned the larger division having more staying power via its large pool of manpower. After the war, Robert L. Bullard defended the bloated American divisional structure: “It was so made because, on account of unsuitable recruiting and replacement plans, it could not be hoped that a command once depleted or reduced below a proper fighting strength could be promptly filled up again. It was necessary to fill it very full in the start, that it might go long without the need of refilling.”771 However, regardless of casualties, all soldiers on the front lines suffer from combat fatigue, which erodes the fighting power of a division as much as physical losses. A curious oversight on the part of the AEF high command was a system to ensure an adequate flow of replacements. By the early summer of 1918, it was obvious to all that more had to be done. Provisional replacement battalions were set up for each corps, but even this would not prove enough.772 By the time of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, large numbers of scarcely trained replacements were being dumped into front-line units for an immediate, and too-often fatal, baptism of fire. Divisions were occasionally broken-up to provide needed replacements to units in the front-lines. Indeed, of the fifty-eight divisions shipped to France, sixteen were either converted to replacement depot units or stripped of nearly all personnel for use as immediate replacements.773 More often, partially-trained soldiers were taken from units still in training and fed into units then in combat. By July of 1918, the manpower crisis was so great that recruits were shipped from the United States to France after only two weeks of training.774 This practice had predictable results

the numerous non-divisional units (such as battalions, artillery battalions, and engineer battalions) required by combat divisions to function effectively. See Peter R. Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945 (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press, 1999), pg. 37 770 Tasker Bliss to Hugh Scott (May 4, 1917) in Palmer, pg. 149 771 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pp. 75-76 772 Col. James Logan, “Organization of Replacement Battalions, 1st Section General Staff, AEF HQ (June 26, 1918)” in A.E.F. Policy Documents (vol. 1) (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1949), pg. 484 773 Edward J. Drea, Unit Reconstitution – A Historical Perspective (Ft. Leavenworth, KS, Combat Studies Institute of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1983), pg. 7 774 Ibid., pg. 8 198

for small unit cohesion and contributed mightily to the AEF’s persistent problems with straggling. Although the mobilization effort succeeded by most measures, training remained problematic. There were simply too few soldiers with the requisite skills, and not enough equipment to go around. Much of the stateside training regimen consisted of close-order drill, as it was thought to at least habituate men to taking orders and working as a unit. Suffice it to say that it was of no practical value, and often counter-productive. Elton Mackin, a Marine veteran, wrote: “The fallacy of the American method of close-order drill was evident. Danger caused them to bunch up close instinctively when subject to command.”775 As a result, Mackin described the advance against the German-held village of Torcy as “a close packed line of frightened men.”776 Such masses were mere grist for German machine guns and artillery. Officer training was no better than it was for enlisted men. The sudden demand for the 200,000 junior officers required to meet America’s mobilization plans was well beyond the ability of the Regular Army and National Guard to provide. Officer Training Camps (OTC) were hastily organized, and the first “Ninety-Day Wonders” entered U.S. Army lore under less than auspicious circumstances. The training regimen, although physically demanding, left much to be desired. This was in no small part because the tactical training revolved around pre-war assumptions. As Richard Faulkner has noted in his superb study of American officer training, The School of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces: The problem was that these tactics and assumptions had long been proven invalid on the battlefields of France. The building up of skirmish lines and attempts to gain infantry fire superiority before assaulting had been shown only to stall attacks short of their objectives and thus subject the attacker to higher casualties as units remained for longer durations in areas swept by artillery, machine gun, and rifle fire. This point was not lost on officers who later commanded in combat. Looking back on his officer training, one combat veteran noted, “Our army had learned no lessons of modern warfare as developed in Europe in the two years that the war had been going on. This was again in evidence in the 1st Training Camp for officers… Much time [was] wasted in learning methods… which were useless in Europe.” The lack of realism at the Camp Root OTC led F.L. Miller to dismiss his training as “three months spent… learning wig-wag and semaphore signaling and reenacting Civil War combat problems through the mosquita [sic] filled swamps of Arkansas.”777

775 Elton E. Mackin, Suddenly We Didn’t Want to Die: Memoirs of a World War I Marine (Novato, CA, Presidio Press, 1993), pg. 77 776 Ibid. 777 Richard S. Faulkner, The School of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces (College Station, TX, Texas A&M University Press, 2012), pp. 43-45 199

Training in France Pershing and his staff were fully aware that the American army would need training in the latest weapons and tactics employed by their French and British allies. All branches, but particularly the infantry, had evolved rapidly in the merciless environment of the western front. New weapons and tactics had transformed the rifleman into an infantryman. Robert L. Bullard spoke of this need: “We had trained infantrymen with the rifle, and now we found that not only was the infantryman and rifleman but a rifle-grenade man, a hand-grenade man, a light-machine gunner, a heavy machine gunner, a Stokes-mortar man, a gas specialist, sometimes a signal man and sometimes half artilleryman for the accompanying gun.”778 The training plan devised by Pershing envisioned a three-month training schedule. The first month would include specialist and small unit training under French and British instructors (at least until qualified Americans were able to replace them). The second month would be spent acclimating to the trenches, in quiet sectors, under allied supervision. Finally, the American divisions would return to the rear areas for a final month of training in Pershing’s beloved “open warfare” tactics. Presumably, this final month would counteract the negative effects of the allied trainers and their emphasis on trench warfare. As the decidedly uncritical 1944 U.S. Army study of the 1st Division noted: “The plan of training adopted for American divisions made full use of the experiences of the French and British in trench fighting but, since it was the conviction of the American Commander-in-Chief that victory could only be won by breaking through the enemy’s lines and forcing him to battle in the open, the principal emphasis was placed on the use of the rifle and the tactics of open warfare.”779 As previously stated, most senior American officers interpreted the Anglo-French emphasis on tackling the German trenches as a manifestation of defeatism. The idea that the trenches had to be engaged on their own terms before a breakthrough of any kind could be made seems to have received scant consideration. Robert L. Bullard was typical in his observation of the French and British that, “They never seemed to think that it was possible to pass from trench to open warfare; they emphasized nothing but living and fighting in the trenches. From the first the

778 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 59 779 American Battle Monuments Commission, 1st Division Summary of Operations in the World War (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1944), pg. 4 200

directors of American training, mostly graduates of our Leavenworth schools, approved and supported by General Pershing, vigorously combatted this attitude.”780 Bullard’s characterization of the French and British position as one of “attitude” is most revealing. He simply never questions the correctness of the untested Leavenworth officers in their disagreement with the battle-hardened allies about the nature of warfare in France. In contrast to the suspicion and barely-disguised contempt of senior American officers towards French and British methods, most American soldiers seemed to have appreciated them. The post-war history of the 1st Division, published in 1922 by its veterans’ association, demonstrated no bias against the allied training. The history praised their French instructors, drawn from the elite chasseurs, remarking that “Eager as were the Frenchmen to teach, the Americans seemed even more eager to learn.”781 As a result of this training, “Thus, men early acquired confidence in their skill and in their weapons, and a sense of superiority over the enemy that made them anxious to meet and destroy him.”782 The average American soldier was not wedded to pre- war doctrinal concepts, and better understood that he needed tutelage from those who had experienced the conflict. Nonetheless, national pride vis-à-vis the French and British troops is still very much in evidence in American memoirs of the period, even if it never rises to the level of willful ignorance displayed by the AEF high command. For most American soldiers, as the 1st Division’s history admitted, “Lessons were to be learned by sterner teachings than those of the drill field and maneuver ground.”783 Against this positive view of the 1st Division’s training held by its veterans association was that of its commander, Robert L. Bullard, who indignantly recalled the chasseurs, “asserting in substance that there was little use in warfare for the individual rifle or pistol; that the artillery would do all the shooting for the infantry; the infantryman would advance with his gun slung over his shoulder and use grenades against machine gun nests. Without gainsaying our very agreeable and tactful instructors, we adhered to our individual rifle shooting and learned all their grenade- throwing and gas work also.”784 Yet, even if Bullard lamented the chasseurs’ failure to accept the primacy of that quintessentially American weapon, the rifle, he confessed that, “In many cases,

780 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 101 781 The Society of the First Division, History of the First Division During the World War, 1917-1919 (Philadelphia, The John C. Winston Co., 1922), pg. 20 782 Ibid., pg. 22 783 History of the First Division During the World War, 1917-1919, pg. 98 784 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pp. 102-103 201

also, in the beginning, trained French staff officers rendered military assistance of inestimable value to us.”785 Ideally, the first month in the trenches for most American units would be in relatively quiet sectors. For the Americans, this usually meant the hilly country of Alsace-Lorraine, where the terrain discouraged large-scale offensives, and both sides sent units for rest and recuperation. Sergeant William Triplet, of the ill-fated 35th Division, wrote of this time: “The enemy were Bavarian Gebirgstruppen and they were too easy on us. They generally behaved like amused adults indulgently watching the antics of mischievous children until the little monsters stepped too far out of line. When we would really annoy them we’d get a stinging slap on the wrist that actually didn’t hurt much but was clearly recognizable as ‘no, no’.”786

“Open Warfare” in Action: Early Examples Although inexperienced and hastily trained units are apt to suffer disproportionate casualties their first time in action, poor American doctrine greatly exacerbated the situation. However, exposure to foreign combat techniques (particularly those of the French), and their own dearly-bought combat experience, helped AEF units to adapt to the realities of the Western front over time. Nonetheless, Pershing and his staff continued to wage war against any officers seen as too enamored of European tactics. Equally unhelpful was an American media climate that left most doughboys ignorant of the foe that they would face. One American veteran recorded bitterly in his diary, “The Jerries are sharp soldiers, not the cowardly hulks that newspaper would have us believe.”787 Officers who embraced the advice and training of their allies did so at great professional risk. One early victim was Maj. Gen. William L. Sibert, the first commander of the 1st Division. In early October of 1917, Pershing came to witness a tactical exercise involving an attack against entrenchments by a battalion of the 26th Infantry Regiment. The division was, at that time, working closely with French trainers to prepare for combat. Although the exercise went well, Sibert incurred Pershing’s wrath during the subsequent critique for excessive reliance on French tactics, and he was excoriated by Pershing in front of the division staff. Shortly thereafter, “the AEF

785 Ibid., pg. 122 786 Triplet, pg. 95 787 Triplet, pg. 115 202

training section sent the division an order which gave the division no latitude in its training schedule and stressed the use of American “open warfare” tactics and discipline.”788 Sibert subsequently compounded his misfortune by arguing that his division needed more help from the French.789 He was later sacked by Pershing and replaced by the more pugnacious Robert L. Bullard. Interestingly, the 1920 General Staff study of AEF tactics noted that the 1st Division acquired (and maintained) some French habits very early on, such as the attachment of machine gun companies to infantry battalions, rather them keeping them under centralized control per official AEF doctrine.790 The tensions over doctrine and training between the Americans and their European allies lessened somewhat as the exigencies of war required the immediate commitment of the U.S. Army to battle. In March of 1918, the Germans launched the first of a series of major offensives on the western front in hopes of winning the war before the full weight of American power could be brought to bear. The architect of the German offensives, Erich von Ludendorff, wrote that he “felt obliged to count on the new American formations beginning to arrive in the spring of 1918. In what numbers they would appear could not be foreseen; but it might be taken as certain that they would not balance the loss of Russia; further, the relative strengths would be more in our favor in the spring than in the late summer and autumn, unless, indeed, we had by then gained a great victory.”791 The successive German offensives, beginning with Operation Michael in late March, placed the Anglo-French forces under enormous pressure. American troops had to be rushed into combat to help stabilize the military situation. Pershing’s moment had at last arrived.

AEF at War: Cantigny “Cantigny town we took it – Cantigny town it fell To a hundred tons o’Yankee steel – but say, that place was hell! They left us an’ forgot us, where the night sky blazed an’ shook, An’ sleep was a forgotten thing – we earnt the ground we took!”792

788 Millett, The General, pg. 322 789 Millett, The General, pg. 322 790 Historical Division, War Plans Division of the General Staff, A Study in Battle Formation (Monograph No. 6) (Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1920), pg. 9 791 Erich von Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story, August 1914-November 1918 (vol. II) (New York, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1919), pp. 160-61 792 Stanley Donovan, “Cantigny” in Voyagers, and Other Verses and Ballads (Santa Barbara, CA, Evening News, 1921), pg. 15 203

With the Allies still reeling from the recent hammer blows of the German spring offensives, Pershing felt that the military and political moment had arrived for American forces to be committed in a meaningful way. In this sense, “The capture of Cantigny was a prestige operation… It was up to the 1st Division to demonstrate that American troops could fight, that the outsized American division was a self-contained and irresistible force, and that what the Americans took from the enemy they could hold against any odds.”793 The operation was initially conceived as part of a larger French counter-offensive, but a German attack from the Chemin des Dames on May 27th forced the French to divert their resources to countering it. Only the small Cantigny operation would go ahead. Pershing turned to the 1st Division for this prestige operation. The 1st Division had recently completed its final training in France on April 17th and was therefore best suited for the task assigned to it. The division moved into former French positions opposite the village of Cantigny on the night of April 24th-25th. Divisional orders contained the characteristically bombastic and inflexible demand, “Without definite or direct orders from higher command each element will fight on the spot without retiring. Machine guns will be fought until put out of action. All groups will fight to a finish.”794 However, the operation actually started with a painful setback, as the first American troops in the line suffered heavily from a German gas attack on the night of May 3rd-4th. The 18th Infantry Regt., one of two in the American front lines, suffered particularly heavy losses. The divisional chief-of-staff, Lt.-Col. Campbell King, noted, “For the same number of troops engaged on our corps front, American losses are from two to four times as great as those of the French. There is but one conclusion; it is that our men, either from ignorance or carelessness, are not taking cover.”795

793 Rexmond C. Cochrane, “The 1st Division at Cantigny, May 1918” in Gas Warfare in World War 1 (Study Number 11) U.S. Army Chemical Corps Historical Studies (Army Chemical Center, MD, U.S. Army Chemical Corps Historical Office, 1958), pg. 1 794 G-3, “Instruction No. 17 (April 27, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4) (Washington, D.C., United States Army Center for Military History, 1989), pp. 264-65 795 G-3, “Memorandum 201-32.15 (May 8, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 266 204

Map 6: Cantigny, April 27-July 18, 1918

Given the inexperience of the Americans and the need for a propaganda success, the attack on Cantigny was limited in scope and meticulously planned. Despite Pershing’s chest-thumping about “open warfare”, the attack was conducted as a classic piece of the much-maligned “trench warfare”. A powerful French artillery group was formed to support the attack. The mortar and 37mm gun sections were stripped from the other regiments and added to the assault force for extra punch.796 The assault had originally been planned for May 25th, but the 18th Infantry had to be replaced by the 28th Infantry on account of the heavy losses suffered on the night of May 3rd-4th.

796 American Battle Monuments Commission, 1st Division Summary of Operations in the World War, pg. 12 205

The new H-hour was set for 0545 on May 28th. The American and French artillery opened fire at H-hour, smothering the German positions with gas and high-explosive shells. At 0645, the artillery shifted to a creeping barrage, which advanced at a rate of 50 yards per minute.797 A machine gun barrage by sixty-four machine guns was maintained 300 yards ahead of the creeping barrage.798 Accompanied by French tanks and a section of flame-throwers, the American infantry advanced in their customary three lines behind the curtain of shells towards the ruined village. The attack quickly overwhelmed the small German garrison, with five officers and 225 enlisted men taken prisoner by the advancing Americans.799 The artillery then switched to a box barrage to protect the newly-won position. The men of the first wave moved forward and took up forward positions in numerous shell holes outside of the town. They screened the men of the second wave who busied themselves digging a trench line on the edge of the village. Meanwhile, the third attack wave manned and fortified three strong points: a chateau east of the village, and at the woods and village cemetery to the north.800. It was not long before the Germans responded to the American attack. The Americans’ inexperience soon made itself painfully apparent, as the 28th Infantry had not properly secured their flanks.801 Deprived of their attached French artillery, which alone had the range for effective counter-battery fire, the Americans found themselves on a receiving end of a punishing German bombardment. German counter-attacks were launched on the evening of May 28th, and again in the early hours of May 29th. Increasingly frantic calls for help went from the Twenty-Eighth’s commander, Col. Ely, to Bullard. Although the Americans were pushed out of their forward positions, the main line of resistance in Cantigny itself held, thanks to reinforcements from the 18th Infantry and 1st Engineers. On the night of May 31st, the bloodied and depleted 28th Infantry was replaced by the relatively fresh 16th Infantry. Total losses over the four days of combat (May 28th- 31st) were 1,025 Americans and 1,667 Germans.802 The 1st Division’s attack on Cantigny was an important milestone for the newly-arrived

797 Ibid., pg. 83 798 Col. H.E. Ely, “201-33.6 Operations Report of 28th Infantry Regiment, June 2, 1918” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 328 799 Cochrane, pg. 41 800 Ibid. 801 Millett, The General, pg. 365 802 Ibid., pg. 53 American reports noted that the German prisoners “are 80% boys and 70% hollow-cheeked, wan and underfed looking.” G-3, “GHQ:354: Report (May 29, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917- 1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 321 206

AEF. Although the operation was limited in scope and amply-supported by the French, not to mention launched against a weakened foe in an untenable position, it clearly demonstrated that the Americans could fight. Admittedly the Germans were not quite as impressed, with the commanding general of the XXVI Reserve Corps, Oskar von Watter, noting in his after-action report, “The local battalion commander has reported personally to me his impression to the effect that the power of resistance of the Americans was slight, and that the success of our would have been certain had it been taken in close cooperation with the artillery and carried forward simultaneously along the entire front.”803 The French were more impressed by their new comrades-in-arms, with a French liaison officer reporting, “American infantry which attacked for the first time proved itself as dashing in the attack as obstinate in the defense. The officers of the French tanks, who saw the work of the American infantry, praised it very highly.”804 Nonetheless, it did not matter. The Americans held Cantigny, and morale soared. Pershing had his first victory, which was no less sweet for being small. However, if Pershing had his first victory, it was not won in a manner to his liking. This first American battlefield success was one fought not with Pershing’s beloved “open warfare” tactics, but the dreaded “trench warfare” approach of the French. In practical terms, it was French staff work and the massive application of artillery fire that made the operation a success. Tragically, the lesson was lost on Pershing and his fanatically loyal staff. Pershing triumphantly cabled the Chief of Staff and Secretary of War: “This action illustrates the facility with which our officers and men learn, and emphasizes the importance of organizing our own divisions and higher units as soon as circumstances permit. It is my firm conviction that our troops are the best in Europe and our staffs are the equals of any.”805 The victory encouraged Pershing to press Secretary of War Baker to support the effort to organize the AEF into progressively larger commands, such as corps and armies. This would prevent them from being integrated into larger European commands. He bluntly told Baker that this was necessary as, “The fact is that our officers and men are far superior

803 Oskar Freiherr von Watter, “Operations Section, XXVI Reserve Corps No. 2137 (June 2, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 342 804 “Report of the Liaison Officer with the 1st Division (May 29th, 1918)” in Historical Section, Army War College, The Aisne and Montdidier-Noyon Operations (Monograph No. 13) (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1922), pg. 6 805 Gen. John J. Pershing, “P-Conf. Cables: 1001-1400, No. 1223-S (, 1918)” in A.E.F. Policy Documents (vol. 1), pg. 434 207 to the tired Europeans.”806

AEF at War: Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood They didn’t ‘ave no tactics but the bloody manuel They ‘adn’t learned no horders but “Ooray!” and “Give ‘em ‘ell!”807

The beginning of June 1918 witnessed the high-tide of the great German offensives in the west. By June 1st, elements of the 3rd Division had already been rushed to the front to defend the line of the Marne, earning the division its nickname, “The Rock of the Marne.” While the lead German units were still exhausted and at the end of their logistical tether, the French high command sought to exploit the situation by launching an immediate counter-offensive. It was the American 2nd Division that would be called upon to play a central role in the coming attack. Like the 3rd Division, the 2nd Division had been rushed forward to stall the German offensive, and so it occupied an important blocking position along the road from Chateau-Thierry to Paris.808 The division was then moved into jump-off positions for the planned attack. On June 4th, the 2nd Division completed its relief of the French forward units, and now directly faced the Germans for a battle that was, for the Americans, to become legend. It was named for a forest just west of Chateau-Thierry called the Bois de Belleau, better known to history as Belleau Wood. Possession of the wood would enable the Americans to enfilade the German defensive positions and so facilitate the offensive, just as German positions in the wood threatened the flanks of any future American advance in the area.

806 Smythe, pg. 142 807 Emeron Hough, “The Yankees on the Marne” in Army Frowns and Smiles (edited by Dolphus Edward Compere) (Dallas, TX, Hargreaves Printing Co., 1920), pg. 113 808 The Aisne and Montdidier-Noyon Operations (Monograph No. 13), pg. 18 208

Map 7: 2nd Division Operations, June 4-July 10, 1918

The orders for the attack on Belleau Wood were issued on Jun 6th, 1918, with H-Hour designated as 5:00 p.m. The attack was to be conducted by the 2nd Division’s 4th (Marine) Brigade, which included the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments, commanded by James G. Harbord. The artillery preparation was insufficient, with just some harassment and interdiction fire on the woods prior to the assault.809 Mark Grotelueschen, in his analysis of the 2nd Division’s operations, has concluded, “While this weak fire-support plan might have been the result of the brief time allowed to coordinate the artillery effort, it nevertheless appears that General Harbord intended for his Marines to make the attack with a minimal amount of artillery support."810 Accounts differ as to what information, if any, Harbord had as to the German strength in the wood. A patrol from the 6th Marines reported to divisional headquarters the presence of Germans at the edge of the forest,

809 Lt.-Col. W.C. Potter, “Field Order No. 3 (June 6, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917- 1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 363 810 Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Trial, pg. 37 209

but it was unable to determine their strength.811 French reconnaissance also spotted Germans in the wood, but they gave no indication of German numbers.812 Regardless, the tactics of “open warfare” would soon be put to the test in the dense, boulder-strewn woods. The attack began at 5 p.m., and almost immediately things began to go wrong. Advancing in neatly aligned waves across the wheat fields, as proscribed by the Infantry Drill Regulations, the Marines were lashed by German machine guns hidden in the wood. By nightfall, a toehold had been established at the southern extremity of the wood, and the small village of Bouresches had been captured. The price for these meagre gains was 1,087 Marines killed or wounded. Gen. , the 2nd Division’s commander, declined to inform Pershing of the near-disaster. Instead, his report to the AEF high command simply reported that, “In the afternoon at 5 p.m., the entire Marine brigade attacked in the direction of BOURESCHES-TOURCY, driving the enemy back, capturing many prisoners and inflicting heavy losses.”813 A German counter-attack on Bouresches was repulsed the following day, but efforts by the Marines to push further into the woods met with little success. At this time, the 2nd Division was under the operational control of the French XXI Corps, commanded by General Joseph Degoutte. Concerned by the excessive American losses, Degoutte intervened to encourage them to adopt a more sensible plan of attack.814 Paeans to the superiority of “open warfare” notwithstanding, unsupported infantry simply could not take such a strong German position with just their small arms. Degoutte’s order for the 2nd Division on June 8th read: “In view of the strength of the hostile points of support in that area, this advance will be conducted methodically, by means of successive minor operations, making the utmost use of artillery and reducing the employment of infantry to the minimum necessary.”815 A renewed assault, featuring an extensive preliminary bombardment, supported by French XXI Corps artillery, was scheduled for June 10th. Old habits die hard, and the Marines still tried to press forward on June 8th despite the lack

811 Col. Preston Brown, “202-33.1: Operations Report (June 5, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 146 812 “202-32.16: Field Message (June 5, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 147 813 Gen. Omar Bundy, “G-3. GHQ: C-in-C Rept. File: Fldr. 112-C2: Operations Report (June 6, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 153 (151-54) 814 Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Trial, pg. 39 815 Gen. Joseph Degoutte, “3rd Section, General Staff No. 97/P.C. (June 8, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 403 210

of artillery support. The results were predictable. At 6:10 a.m., the 6th Marines reported, “[Maj. Berton W.] Sibley's advance has been checked at points and they are finding many more M. G.'s than expected and may be necessary to employ part or all of one of the support companies.”816 Four and a half hours later, a follow-up message from Sibley read: "They are too strong for us. Soon as we take one M. G., [sic] the losses are so heavy that I am reforming on the ground held by the 82d Co. last night. All of the officers of the 82d Co. wounded or missing and it is necessary to reform before we can advance. Unable to do much with trench mortars because of being in the woods. These machine guns are too strong for our infantry.” Gamely, if fatalistically, Sibley added, “We can attack again if it is desired.”817 Losses were so heavy that one veteran recalled that his platoon sergeant had achieved that rank after only two weeks at the front.818 H-hour for the June 10th attack was at 3:30 a.m., when the guns of the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade and supporting French units hurled the first of 40,000 shells (including 12,000 155 mm shells) at the German positions in Belleau Wood. An hour later, the lighter 75 mm guns switched to a rolling barrage, with the Marines advancing behind the curtain of shells at a rate of fifty meters per minute.819 By that afternoon, the Marine Brigade commander, Harbord, was able to report, “The attack started at 4:30 a. m., after a thorough artillery preparation. The objective was reached by 5: 10 a. m., and since that hour is being consolidated. So far as known, no prisoners were taken, but two large minenwerfer were captured. Our losses slight.”820 The attack was renewed the following day, again employing powerful artillery support. This assault was also successful, but Marine casualties were much higher than those of the previous day. The 5th Marines reported, “Casualties quite heavy, as the barrage did not clean things up. We have the situation in hand, but the 6th [Marines] has not come up on right. The barrage is badly needed and artillery officer could be used as we have spotted a nest of enemy artillery.”821 The discrepancy between the two attacks was largely due to the nature of the forest, insofar as the

816 “2d Div.: 6th Marines: 202-32.16: Field Message (June 8, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 405 817 “2d Div.: 6th Marines: 202-32.16: Field Message (June 8, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 406 818 Mackin, pg. 61 819 Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Trial, pg. 40 820 Gen. James Harbord, “2d Div.: 4th Brig.: 202-32.16: Field Message (June 10, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 428 821 Lt. Col. Frederick M. Wise, “2d Div.: 5th Marines: 202-32.16: Field Message (June 10, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pp. 438-39 (438-39) 211

northern portion was marked by numerous large boulders. A report from the Marine Brigade stated, “The artillery preparation was very complete. but the topography of the Bois de BELLEAU- --small, dense-wooded hillocks with tremendous boulders---offers considerable shelter from artillery fire.”822 Despite the problems, the wood was largely clear of any significant German combat units. However, fighting continued for several more weeks as small German units infiltrated almost nightly between the depleted Marine rifle units. A secure front-line simply could not be maintained with so few men. It is impossible not to compare the success of the June 10th-11th attacks with the bloody disappointments of the attacks on June 6th-7th. Moreover, it is remarkable that a French general, Degoutte, had to intervene to prevent the Marines from dashing themselves to pieces against the German defenses in Belleau Wood. Yet, incredibly, on the 21st of June, Harbord was telling one of his new battalion commanders that German positions could be reduced by sniper fire and the machine gun nests taken by infantry alone.823 Harbord may have eventually learned some lessons, albeit reluctantly. On July 1st, the division launched an attack on the village of Vaux, just east of the Belleau Wood, in which the plentiful and skillful artillery support was employed. The operation was a resounding success. Still, the valiant but clumsy attacks by the Marine Brigade dominated American headlines and German military opinion. Looking back on the battle, the Erich von Ludendorff wrote, “At Chateau-Thierry, Americans who had been a long time in France had bravely attacked our thinly held fronts, but they were unskillfully led, attacked in dense masses, and failed.”824 Even if the American commanders did not learn all of the lessons that they should have, the Americans and the Germans had taken their measure of each other, and neither had been found wanting. As at Cantigny, the physical condition of the German prisoners shocked many of the Americans. Corporal Joseph E. Rendinell, a Marine, wrote home to his sister in Pennsylvania, “Gee, sister, we sure did give Fritz a good licking. You ought to seen [sic] the prisoners we took. Why, they were scared to death. Most of them were only kids and I don't believe they ever took a bath. I seen [sic] some of the hard black bread they eat. Why, I would be ashamed to feed it to the

822 Gen. James Harbord, “2d Div.: 4th Brig.: 202-33.1: Operations Report (June 10, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 4), pg. 438 (437-38) 823 Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Trial, pg. 43 824 Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story, pg. 269 NOTE: Presumably Ludendorff is referring to the “failure” of the 2nd Division to advance much beyond the wood itself. 212

hogs.”825 Despite their deplorable condition, the Germans had fought hard and given the Leatherneck’s a brutal baptism of fire. A Marine veteran of the battle later wrote of the German soldier that, “[H]e was human and killable and much to be respected either way; a good soldier anywhere you met him. But the myth of his being unbeatable had blown away with the fumes of smokeless powder on the hill.”826

AEF at War: Soissons The end of the German offensives in 1918 left a large salient stretching towards Paris. In July, the French planned an operation to cut-off that salient. One of the major objectives would be the town of Soissons, near the base of the salient, as it contained several strategic rail and road connections. Even if the Allies did not cut-off the salient and surround the German forces within, the capture of Soissons would cripple the German logistical system and force an evacuation of the entire position.827 The man selected to lead the offensive was General Charles M.E. Mangin, commander of the French Tenth Army. Mangin was an officer of the old school, whose aggressiveness and indifference to losses had earned him the nickname “the Butcher.”828 Perhaps the most critical element of Mangin’s command would be the French XX Corps, which included the two over-size American divisions (the 1st and 2nd), and the elite 1st Moroccan Division. Much to Pershing’s delight, Mangin’s plan for the offensive was about as close to “open warfare” as the AEF commander could have hoped. Mangin planned to achieve operational and tactical surprise. This included the absence of any preliminary bombardment, only a rolling barrage at H-hour, with no registration rounds fired beforehand.829 The terrain of the salient was also helpful insofar as neither side had constructed extensive trench systems in the area. To compensate for the abbreviated artillery preparation, Mangin assigned 156 tanks to the XX Corps.

825 Joseph E. Rendinell and George Pattullo, One Man’s War: The Diary of a Leatherneck (New York, J.H. Sears & Co., 1928), pg. 110 826 Mackin, pg. 55 827 Capt. Adolf von Schell, “The Battle of Villers-Cotterets” in The Cavalry Journal Vol. 44 No. 187 (January- February 1935), pg. 49 828 Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 11 829 Ibid., pg. 17 213

Map 8: French-American Attack South of Soissons, July 18-22, 1918

On July 17th, when the U.S. 1st Division received its final orders for the attack on the next day, it was ten miles behind the front line in the Forêt de Retz. The movement into its jump-off positions was hurried and haphazard, hampered by darkness and the need for operational security. Further complicating matters was the fact that the 1st Division’s commander, Major-General Charles P. Summerall, had only assumed his position three days before. Nonetheless, Summerall was at least familiar with the division itself, having previously served as the commander of its artillery brigade. Summerall was a man of contradictions. On one hand, he was a highly-competent and aggressive officer who fully understood the importance of artillery on the Western Front. On the other hand, he was a thin-skinned and insecure commander who frequently insulted and belittled his subordinates, always threatening to relieve them of command if they so much as questioned his orders. He also had an embarrassing habit of using ridiculously bombastic language (much like the later George S. Patton), as one of his subordinates described it, “He liked to talk

214

seriously in preposterously heroic phrases.”830 Robert L. Bullard, the former 1st Division commander, would exercise administrative command of both his old division and the 2nd Division as the new commander of the III U.S. Army Corps. However, tactical command of the two American divisions would be maintained by the French XX Corps, commanded by General Berdoulat. The confusion of re-shuffled and over-lapping command arrangements was even worse at the lower levels of command. For example, the 28th Infantry Regiment’s new commander, Col. Conrad S. Babcock, only assumed command sixteen hours before H-Hour.831 Like the 1st Division, the 2nd Division had just received a new commander as of July 15th, Major-General James G. Harbord. A favorite of Pershing’s, Harbord had been promoted to divisional command after the costly but much-celebrated success of his Marine Brigade in the battle for Belleau Wood in June. The 2nd Division’s advance to the front was even more confused than that of the 1st Division. Many of the lead infantry units had to double-time it through the dark on the night of July 17th-18th to reach their jump-off positions in time. In order to alleviate the situation, the staff of the neighboring 1st Moroccan Division, an elite combat division made up of Moroccan and Foreign Legion regiments, offered to assist Harbord’s staff in preparing the attack orders. After all, they knew both the terrain and the enemy well. However, Harbord’s pride was offended, and he rejected the offer in a fit of pique. This refusal would have grave consequences for the operation ahead.832 The plan of attack for the XX Corps called for its three divisions to attack eastward in a line abreast: the 1st U.S. Division in the north, the 1st Moroccan Division in the center, and the 2nd U.S. Division in the south.833 The terrain presented a number of formidable obstacles, notably broad ravines that exposed the attackers to fire from the opposite bluffs. However, the defending German units were in poor shape.834 As noted earlier, a novel aspect of the operation was the absence of a preparatory barrage. However, a rolling barrage would support the infantry advance, with each division’s artillery being supplemented by additional artillery units.835 Offensive punch

830 Conrad S. Babcock (edited by Robert H. Ferrell), Reminiscences of Conrad S. Babcock: The Old U.S. Army and the New, 1898-1918 (Columbia, MO, University of Missouri Press, 2002), pg. 92 831 Conrad S. Babcock, pg. 73 832 Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 59 833 3rd Bureau, XX Army Corps (French), “Operations Order No. 227 (July 16, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 5), pg. 290 834 Edward G. Lengel, Thunder and Flames: Americans in the Crucible of Combat, 1917-1918 (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press, 2015), pg. 247 835 Ibid., pg. 291 215

would be further provided by French tank units attached to all of the divisions. However, the men of the 2nd Division had no previous experience or training in working with tanks.836 H-Hour was set for 4:35 a.m. on July 18th, 1918. The confusion of getting into position for the attack had relatively little impact on the opening phase of the assault. Mangin’s plan of deception, including the lack of a preparatory bombardment, worked perfectly and the Germans were largely taken by surprise. The XX Corps advanced rapidly, overwhelming many of the German machine gun positions with the speed of their attack and the plentiful armored support. Moreover, much of the German divisional artillery had been stripped from the defending units for use elsewhere, and so defensive artillery fire was unexpectedly light.837 The French were impressed by the gains that the American infantry had made on the first day, especially in light of the hurried manner in which they reached their jump- off positions only hours before H-Hour.838 The Germans, in turn, were struck by the artless aggression of the American advance. Not a few Germans wondered if the doughboys were drunk to attack as they did.839 Despite the impressive gains, the baleful influence of the German machine guns over the battlefield soon began to tell. For example, the Second Battalion of the 28th Infantry Regiment (2/28th) was raked by machine gun fire while traversing the Missy Ravine, and by the end of the day could muster only five small platoons commanded by sergeants (all of the company officers were killed or wounded).840 A measure of the psychological power of the German machine guns comes from Bullard, who declared, “But artillery fire is not what kills men: it is the machine guns, and these were in operation.”841 This assertion flies in the face of casualty statistics from the war, which demonstrate that artillery was (overall) the real killer. Yet, Bullard ascribes that death- dealing power to the machine guns. The truth was that German machine guns, albeit deadly in their own right, served primarily to pin down the Allied infantry so that German artillery could then do the real killing. However, Bullard could not help but notice that the French were much more deliberate and practiced in the reduction of German machine gun nests. He wrote, “In this they

836 Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 59 837 3rd Bureau, XX Army Corps (French), “Operations Report 201-32.7 (July 19, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 5), pg. 297. See also Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 42 838 Ibid., pg. 298 839 Lengel, Thunder and Flames, pg. 254 840 Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 47 841 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 218 216

were most skillful. Long experience had taught them how to save themselves. American troops, doing the same thing beside them, lost twice as many men.”842 One cannot help but detect the aspersion against the French, whose skill in the attack is attributed to “a desire to save themselves,” thus implying cowardice relative to the manly and brave Americans. Where Bullard saw Old World cowardice, American infantrymen on the frontlines saw tactical acumen. All too often, the unprepared American infantry adopted one of two tactics: charging the German machine gun nests from the front or attempting to outflank them. Both approaches proved costly, as the German machine gun positions were often arranged irregularly in inter-locking fields of fire. For example, a captured German document called for the “Irregular distribution of machine guns in the zone of depth. Reciprocal flanking.”843 A frontal assault provided the German gunners with easy targets, while attempts to outflank the guns simply meant that the Americans stumbled into the zone of fire of a neighboring machine gun. Hard experience had taught the French that a more sophisticated approach was required. A high volume of covering fire from (French automatic rifles) and rifle grenades was required to suppress the targeted German gun position, while infantry squads attempted to outflank the position, but within a narrow zone, so as not to wander into an overlapping zone of fire from a nearby German machine gun. Once in position, the infantry squads would launch a volley of hand grenades before rushing in to finish off the survivors in close combat. An American officer of the 1st Division, watching men of the 1st Moroccan Division in action, noted, “It was by observation of the Moroccans in this action that the regiment learned the method of advance ordinarily used by European veterans, whereby the assault line, having lost the barrage, progressed steadily forward, individuals, under the eye of their squad leaders, moving at a run from shell-hole to shell-hole. When stopped by resistance, - usually a machine gun, - the squad, section, or platoon engaged it by fire from the front, while flankers immediately worked around with rifles and grenades to take it from the flank.”844 The commander of the 28th Infantry Regiment, Col. Babcock, was harshly critical of the tactical formation used by the American infantry in their advance and believed that it contributed

842 Ibid., pg. 245 843 “Plan of Defense of a Divisional Sector (August 30, 1918)” in The Field Artillery Journal Vol. 8 No. 4 (October- December 1918), pg. 566 844 Edward S. Johnston in Mark Grotelueschen, The AEF Way of War: The American Army and Combat in World War 1 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 101-102 217

greatly to their heavy losses. In brief, an American infantry battalion had four companies of 250 men each. Battalions advanced in a “square” formation of two companies in the lead, and the other two in support directly behind the lead units. Each company, in turn, advanced in a similar “square” formation of two platoons in the lead and two behind. The platoons were divided into two sections, one of which lead in a skirmish line of 25 men spread across 125 yards of front. The remaining section followed behind in three squad columns of eight men each. Attached supporting units, such as machine gun or engineer companies, would be placed between the lead and support companies. A second support battalion would typically follow the lead battalion at a distance of 500 yards. The net effect was to put approximately 2,000 men advancing in a rectangle 500 yards wide and 1,700 yards deep. Yet, of these 2,000 men, only the 100 men of the lead sections were able to fire their weapons directly. The other 1,900 men served only, in Babcock’s words, “as backstops for the enemy’s bullets.”845 Interestingly, Babcock laid some blame on the French for this tactical formation, which was more suited to the conditions earlier in the war when the trench lines were closer together. Under such conditions, the lead elements would have already have taken cover in the captured enemy trenches as the support elements advanced to secure and hold the objective.846 This was no longer the case with the revised German defensive tactics, which called for a distributed defense in depth. As the first day of the offensive came to a close, problems with the American advance were starting to become apparent. A number of units in both divisions had wandered off-course, particularly at the edges of the advance, thus exposing flanks and hobbling liaison with neighboring French units. Disorganization was most prevalent in the 2nd Division. At this time, French practice was to attack in a series of phased assaults, with frequent halts to reorganize, resupply, and to re-establish communications with supporting artillery. Although these halts gave some respite to the defenders, as well, experience had taught the French that the attackers still had a net gain from such an approach. The XX Corps orders emphasized that commanders should see to it that, “The necessary steps are taken in each first line division to reorganize its units, reconstitute reserves, supply the troops and prepare to continue the prescribed offensive.”847 Unfortunately, Harbord and the staff of the 2nd Division spurned this advice, preferring to plan on

845 Conrad Babcock, pg. 74 846 Ibid., pg. 76 847 “Operations Report 201-32.7 (July 19, 1918)”, pg. 298 218

a steady rate of uninterrupted advance throughout the day without accounting for enemy resistance or terrain.848 Confusion and disorganization among the lead units were the predictable results of this mechanistic staff planning. Having out-run their artillery support and communications, these lead units often had only their personal weapons, and Harbord’s hysterical demands that they attack regardless of the cost, to support the advance. The second day of the attack witnessed the seeds of confusion sown the day before bear their bitter fruit. The French staff of XX Corps was slow in getting the attack orders to the U.S. 1st Division. The orders, received at 3 a.m., called for an attack to begin at 4 a.m. Worse still, many of the American infantry units had not yet reached their jump-off positions. Rather than adjust their time table, the 1st Division stuck rigidly to the plan, regardless of the facts on the ground. The divisional artillery simply fired based on the assumption that the jump-off positions had been reached. Accordingly, the barrage, already understrength, fired with little effect far in advance of the infantry who so desperately needed its support. As one historian and a military analyst jointly wrote, “This unfortunate error, repeated all too often, demonstrates a systemic rigidity in American thinking.”849 However, the 2nd Division did attempt to adjust its attack schedule, pushing H-Hour back to 7:00 a.m. Sadly, it made no difference. The lead assault unit, the 6th Marine Regiment, did not reach its jump-off point until 8:15 a.m., and so the barrage was done before the attack even began.850 The Marines made remarkable progress given the situation, but their attack ultimately failed with heavy losses of approximately 1,300 men of the 2,450 that had set-off that morning.851 The inflexibility of American commanders also manifested itself in relation to unit boundaries. For example, the U.S. 28th Infantry Regiment had advanced beyond the neighboring French division on its left (or northern) flank. German machine guns in that sector poured a devastating flanking fire into the advancing Americans. Yet, as these guns were in a French sector, no effort was made to remove the threat. The 28th Regiment’s commander (Babcock) made several calls for artillery to deal with it but was rebuffed. Instead, he was ordered by Summerall to attack regardless, and that the French would eventually come up on his left to clear out the Germans.852 Wisely, Babcock waited until the French arrived before pushing forward. This incident was the

848 Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 59 849 Ibid., pg. 93 850 Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Trial, pp. 67-68 851 Ibid., pg. 68 852 Conrad Babcock, pg. 94 219

beginning of a breach with Summerall, who was outraged at Babcock’s decision to use his own judgement. This feud would eventually lead to Babcock being relieved of his command. The attack pushed forward over a mile, and reached the outskirts of its objective, the town of Berzy-le-Sec, but the lead American elements were exhausted and disorganized, and a well-timed German counter-attack pushed them back approximately 1,200 yards. By the afternoon of July 19th, it was clear that the 2nd Division was no longer capable of offensive action. Even Harbord had to swallow his pride and ask for his division to be relieved. Unbeknownst to Harbord, Berdoulat, commander of the XX Corps, had already come to the same conclusion earlier that day and had prepared the appropriate orders: “This relief will be made progressively beginning on the evening of July 19, bearing in mind the degree of fatigue of the units of the American division.”853 Between the combats at Chateau-Thierry and Soissons, the 2nd Division had suffered losses greater than its entire infantry strength.854 The advance on the first day was remarkable, but with the element of surprise gone, only artillery could have restored momentum to the attack. Yet, Harbord repeatedly pushed his infantry forward without adequate fire support, and the cost was great. The experience of the 2nd Division is also a testament to the profound hold that Pershing’s “open warfare” concept held on his acolytes. Harbord was one of Pershing’s favorites, and he repaid his mentor with his “decision to return to the infantry-focused attacks, after the previous failures with that method and the successes of the artillery-centered approach, that most convincingly demonstrated that he was steeped in the doctrine and style of warfare that Pershing advocated.”855 The experience of the 2nd Division also hinted at a weakness in the American divisional structure. Contrary to American expectations, the massive infantry divisions were proving no more durable in combat, and often less so, than their much smaller European counterparts. In part, American planners failed to consider that combat induces entropy throughout the command and control system. Size is no barrier to this process. Indeed, the larger the system, the more external energy is required to reduce entropy. Smaller European divisions were more easily withdrawn and restored to , in contrast to the lumbering American behemoths. Moreover, there was also the issue of combat fatigue, which impacted the division’s soldiers regardless of the

853 3rd Bureau, XX Army Corps (French), “Special Orders No. 235 (July 19, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 5), pg. 299 854 Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Trial, pg. 33 855 Ibid., pg. 71 220

physical casualty rate, and steadily reduced combat effectiveness across the board. Rather than functioning as powerful, inexhaustible battering-rams on the battlefield, the American divisions were more often beached whales. By July 20th, it was clear that the German defenses were hardening with the arrival of reinforcements. The element of surprise was long gone, and the great armada of French tanks had been drastically reduced by casualties and mechanical breakdowns. With the 2nd Division out of action, the onus of the day’s action would fall on the 1st, and their target was Berzy-le-Sec. The village stood atop a hill overlooking the main highway connecting the German logistical hub at Soissons with their forward positions around Chateau-Thierry. The brigade commander in charge of the attack was Beaumont Buck, a dogmatic Regular officer of limited ability. After issuing the attack order in the morning, Buck announced that he was headed to the front to reconnoiter, and promptly disappeared for most of the day. He later claimed to have become lost. Hillman and Johnson, in their superb history of the battle, are probably correct in writing of Buck’s actions that day: “The smell of cowardice is faintly present. If not that, then of considerable mental confusion.”856 An attack against Berzy-le-Sec faced two significant hurdles: strong German defenses in the town and flanking fire against the attacking troops. Incredibly, the attack order called for only a light artillery barrage. Berdoulat bears much of the blame for this, as his orders make it clear that the Americans were to be denied the support of the heavy 155 mm gun batteries; those guns were assigned only to the French divisions that day.857 And yet again, Babcock protested that his men would face punishing losses if the German machine guns on their flanks were not suppressed by a heavy barrage. Babcock stated that, “To attack Berzy-le-Sec over a flat plain 1,200 yards wide under clear observation by the enemy with their guns sweeping it from three sides, was sure to cause further heavy casualties unless we were given strong artillery support.”858 He was refused, and the attack was ordered to proceed. This protest likely sealed Babcock’s fate in Summerall’s mind.859

856 Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 118 857 3rd Bureau, XX Army Corps (French), “Field Order No. 237 (July 20, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 5), pg. 302 858 Conrad Babcock, pg. 96 859 Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 118. NOTE: The commander of the nearby French 153rd Division, which was to launch a supporting attack, refused the attack order unless a three-hour bombardment was made on the German positions. His request was granted. 221

In order to minimize losses, Babcock chose a loose interpretation of his attack orders. Instead of a direct assault, Babcock organized three 16-man “infiltration groups” under an enterprising young officer, Lt. Soren C. Sorenson. Sorenson’s command managed to reach the outskirts of the village, but he reported back that the machine gun fire was such as to rule-out a daylight assault. Babcock, in turn, proposed a night attack to Buck, supported by Sorenson’s infiltrators. Buck rejected the idea, and informed Babcock that a heavy barrage would take place the next morning, to be followed by a direct assault. When the time came for the preparatory barrage, only a smattering of shells fell on the German positions. Nonetheless, Babcock ordered his men forward on the morning of July 21st and took the town. Mercifully for Babcock’s men, German records suggest that they had already begun to withdraw from the town the night before. Nonetheless, the 28th still suffered 20% casualties in the attack. With the fall of Berzy-le-Sec, Allied artillery observers now had a good view of the road connecting Soissons with Chateau-Thierry. This was one of the main logistical arteries of the German army in the Marne salient. Soon it would be subject to regular bombardment, and the Germans would be unable to easily resupply their forward positions. Quite simply, the Marne salient had become untenable for the German army. Unfortunately, the men of the 1st Division could not rest on their laurels. The 2nd Division had been relieved on the 19th, and the 1st Moroccan Division was relieved the next day, but the division scheduled to relieve the 1st Division, the 15th (Scottish) Division, was having difficulties moving forward from the army reserve. The tattered battalions of the 1st Division would have to remain in the line for the time being. Bullard’s old regiment, the 26th Infantry, finally returned from the battle with only 200 survivors led by a captain, the highest-ranking officer remaining.860 Although successful, the offensive did not produce the ever-elusive breakthrough. Should such an unlikely event have occurred, Mangin had a French cavalry corps in reserve to exploit it. Bullard watched the French troopers move forward with an excess of caution he blamed on the French high command. Veering into fantasy, Bullard remarked, “I would have risked all upon a dash by every cavalryman in my command. I longed for one single American cavalry division, led by an American cavalryman that I knew: he would have gone through or lost all.”861 He felt that

860 Millett, The General, pg. 383 861Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 220 222

such an action would have yielded 200,000 German prisoners.862 Naturally, Pershing also remained wedded to the same idea that American cavalry was intrinsically superior. After the war, in an open letter to the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, Pershing opined, “The American theory for the employment of cavalry is correct, and Allied cavalry would have been of even greater use in the early months of the war if it had been trained as American cavalry is trained.”863

AEF at War: St. Mihiel Your infantry may be O.K. But when you prepare for a charge If big guns ain’t clearin’ the way You’re gonta be smashed, by an’ large. It’s guns that rip proofs to bits An’ barb wire entanglements, too; It’s guns gives the enemy fits So infantrymen kin break through!864

The attack on St. Mihiel (September 11th-13th) was to be the grand entrance of the AEF as it would be the first army-level operation by Pershing’s command. In practice it was more of a live-fire exercise than a true battle. Few veterans regarded the operation as comparable to other battles of the war. It was clear to them that the Germans had always planned to retreat, and they gave up no more ground than intended. One veteran referred to St. Mihiel as “an imitation scrap.”865 Nearly 550,000 Americans and 110,000 French, supported by 1,481 aircraft, 400 tanks (144 manned by Americans), and 3,000 pieces of artillery attacked the St. Mihiel salient on the night of September 11th-12th.866 The 23,000 German and Austrian defenders could do little against such odds but retire to previously prepared defensive lines at the base of the salient as best they could.867 Nonetheless, the operation did give the AEF to practice operating as an independent

862 Ibid. 863 Gen. John J. Pershing, “A Message to the Cavalry” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 29 No. 119 (April 1920), pg. 6 864 Berton Braley, “Artillery” in In Camp and Trench: Songs of the Fighting Forces (New York, George H. Doran Co., 1918), pg. 63 865 Mackin, pg. 169 866 American Battle Monuments Commission, American Armies and Battlefields in Europe (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1938), pg. 110 867 Donald F. Trask, The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917-1918 (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press, 1993), pg. 106 223

army. Some old habits remained in evidence, such as the American fetish for extremely detailed planning. For example, the attack orders for the 5th Infantry Division ran for thirty-seven pages.868 Nonetheless, the St. Mihiel offensive also witnessed the implementation of some hard-won lessons, particularly for the artillery. The Americans amassed a vast concentration of artillery to open the attack. Elmer Sherwood, an artilleryman in the battle-tested 42nd “Rainbow” Division, wrote in his diary, “There is a great artillery concentration here. Guns of every caliber are here, from the great railway guns manned by the navy, to the 75s of our Illinois and Minnesota regiments. Our own 155 mm howitzers, many 155 mm rifles, 120 mm howitzers and 120 mm long rifles are numerous.”869 More important was the fact that the Americans had learned a lesson from the Germans, and they were now endeavoring to push light artillery (the 75 mm guns) forward with the infantry. Implementing this lesson was difficult in practice, as it often degenerated into an administrative battle for control of the guns between the infantry and artillery officers: The appearance of the accompanying gun represented more than just a need for close, continuous field artillery support. It was also a fight over the control of the artillery. With the development of indirect fire, the infantry commander had lost the influence over the artillery that he had had during the age of direct fire. Indirect fire gave field artillerymen more freedom to control their pieces than they had ever had. Equally important, indirect fire made the artillery less responsive than it had been with direct fire because it could no longer see the infantry's movements and had to depend on forward observers and effective communications to attack targets. Yet, field artillery officers advocated indirect fire because it meant greater safety for them and their guns, while the infantry wanted direct fire because it furnished immediate, decisive action. As such, the accompanying gun arose as a compromise between indirect and direct fire. It furnished the infantry with a few guns for close support, permitted the field artillery to employ indirect fire, and reflected the difficulties of moving from the old method of fire to the new.870

Nonetheless, problems with combined-arms coordination continued to plague the American army. In the absence of timely communications, artillery barrages moved forward at a uniform pace according to rigid timetables. Infantry that failed to keep pace found themselves facing German machine guns whose gunners had simply waited out the barrage in bomb-proof dugouts, and then re-emerged with plenty of time to prepare for the exposed infantry. Once the infantry advanced beyond the range of the guns, broken ground, mud, and poor traffic management

868 Records of the World War: Field Orders, 1918 5th Division (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1921), pp. 66-103 869 Elmer Sherwood, Diary of a Rainbow Veteran (Terre Haute, IN, Moore-Langen Co., 1929), pg. 119 870 Dastrup, pg. 171 224

meant that the artillery support seldom kept pace with the advance. And so, like the German offensives earlier in the year, the Americans would attempt to keep the offensive going by paying a steep price in infantry casualties. The rapidity of the German at St. Mihiel masked this problem to some degree, but it would become painfully apparent in the AEF’s next and greatest battle, the Meuse-Argonne offensive

“Open Warfare” and the Western Front Despite the apparent success of the early AEF operations, it was clear to many soldiers on the frontlines that serious flaws in American combat doctrine had been exposed. The greatest of these was the reluctance of many American commanders to accept the necessity of artillery to create offensive momentum. Instead, the fantasy of the self-reliant American rifleman, generating the necessary firepower with his skill with the rifle, and maneuvering according to the dictates of “open warfare”, continued to dominate the higher echelons of command. This only resulted in needless sacrifice. This dogmatic belief in the power of the rifle relative to that of heavy artillery was further exacerbated by an inflexible approach to orders. In the conceptual framework of early 20th century America the U.S. Army was a machine, and as the individual parts of a machine did not stop to consider the circumstances under which they operated, and nor should a subordinate American officer. In addition, the progressivist impulse towards technocratic centralization encouraged a top-down American command philosophy. The superior technical knowledge of the commander was presumed to be greater than that of his subordinates. The time-value of information, the very cornerstone of German auftragstaktik, did not outweigh the presumption of superior technical competency. Of course, it would have been unrealistic for any army in World War One to rely solely on artillery to sustain the attack. Poor communications and difficulties in timely artillery observation limited the ability of the guns to support a rapid advance. The French and Germans both developed their own ways of dealing with this problem. As previously stated, the French relied on regular pauses to re-establish communications and allow the artillery to keep pace with the advance. The German artillery support doctrine, in contrast, called for pushing light artillery forward with the infantry assault, often to the point of recklessness.871 In his memoirs, Ludendorff stated, “some

871 See Erich von Ludendorff, Chief of the General Staff of the --th [complete?] General Headquarters, Army in the Field, “Regulations for the Instruction of Batteries of Infantry Guns (July 1918)” in The Field Artillery Journal 225

artillery must be already in action in more forward positions, from which to support the further advance. In spite of all auxiliary arms and its ‘infantry guns,’ the infantry could not do without it.”872 During the March 1918 offensive, there were cases of the forward German guns engaging in direct-fire duels with the Royal Artillery.873 Superior aerial spotting also contributed to the German ability to sustain artillery support for their advancing infantry. The British turned to advanced communications as a means of enabling the artillery to continue in support of the infantry advance.874 The AEF did try to push its light artillery forward with the infantry, but it did so with little official enthusiasm. The American emphasis on self-reliant infantry was all the more misplaced given the paucity of organic firepower at the tactical level in the AEF. In 1917, a French infantry company had only 68 dedicated riflemen; whereas an American infantry company of 250 men had 200 riflemen.875 In terms of tactical organization, a French company was divided into 4 sections. By mid-1918, each section contained three groupes de combat, which were small combined arms teams built around a machine gun squad and a squad. Each groupe de combat was designed to fight as an indivisible unit, serving as the fire or maneuver element of the platoon in action.876 As Elizabeth Greenhalgh noted in her recent study of the French army, by late 1916, “The much wider range of weaponry meant that, instead of a line of infantrymen placed a regulation distance apart and controlled from on high, the troops became more specialized and forced to work more independently as a team[.]”877 Dispersed, semi-independent combat teams, operating in mutual support of each other, were ideally-suited to the fluid reality of the battlefield. The German infantry, like the French, had a great deal of organic firepower, making them equal to many tactical exigencies. The German infantry relied heavily on their numerous and formidable MG08/15 light machine guns, as well as the Granatenwerfer 16 grenade launchers, for organic firepower. As Bruce Gudmunsson has noted of the German army “By the end of 1917, all pretense that any infantry unit was uniformly armed with rifle and bayonet had been dropped.

Vol.8 No. 4 (October-December 1918), pp. 579-85 872 Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story, pg. 208 873 David T. Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (New York, Routledge, 2006), pg. 140 874 See Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916-18 (New haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 159-75 875 Allan Millett, Well Planned, Splendidly Executed: The Battle of Cantigny, May 28-31, 1918 (Chicago, Cantigny First Division Foundation, 2010), pg. 16 876 English & Gudmundsson, pg. 28 877 Greenhalgh, pg. 252 226

Every infantry unit down to the platoon was a combined arms force, capable of supporting its maneuver with its own fire.”878 Father Francis Duffy, the celebrated chaplain of the American 165th Regiment (formerly the 69th New York, a National Guard unit), described a German infantry attack employing these different weapon systems in concert: “The enemy were appearing around the corners of the approach trenches. Rifle and machine gun fire crackled all along the front. The Germans, finding that this was the real line of resistance, went at their job of breaking it in their usual thorough fashion. Their light machine guns sprayed the top of every trench. Minenwerfer shells and rifle grenades dropped everywhere, many of them being directed with devilish accuracy on our machine gun positions. Many of ours were wounded.”879 However, much like the Americans, the Germans tended to push their lead infantry units too hard in order to maintain offensive momentum, which often led to crippling losses in their best units.880 The American Expeditionary Forces combined the worst of all worlds in their tactical matrix. In truth, “open warfare” was a later stage of tactical operations, applicable once the enemy’s main line of resistance had been broken. As Erich von Ludendorff wrote of the 1918 German offensives, “The farther the attack advanced, the more clearly its character approximated to that of open warfare.”881 Only artillery was capable of generating the offensive momentum necessary to breaking through the frontlines and creating the conditions for “open warfare”. Yet, Pershing and his acolytes refused to fully accept the pivotal role of artillery in the offensive, preferring to view “open warfare” as a superior tactical idiom, rather than a mere phase of operations. Of course, as was true of all armies on the western front, the Americans had severe problems maintaining artillery support in the offensive. The American artillerymen understood the need for constant liaison, observation and communications to provide effective fire support. However, the reality was that: “Generally, the field artillery did not have the capabilities to provide such support. Even though commanders established observation posts manned by forward observers, attached field artillery liaison officers to the infantry, and used telephones, radios, and other means of communications, the unreliable technology and inadequately trained officers and

878 Bruce Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918 (Westport, CT, Praeger, 1989), pg. 101 879 Francis P. Duffy, Father Duffy’s Story: A Tale of Humor and Heroism, of Life and Death with the Fighting Sixty-Ninth (New York, George H. Doran Co., 1919), pp. 132-33 880 Zabecki, pg. 70 881 Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story, pg. 208 227

men hampered artillery and infantry coordination.”882 Rigid timetables, further complicated by overly-centralized control, were often the sorry compromise. In the absence of adequate and continuous artillery support, the American infantry had to rely on its own means. Unfortunately, the cult of the rifleman meant that the American infantry had little organic firepower relative to both their allies and enemies. Worse still, the AEF eschewed the integrated and more flexible small tactical units of the German and French armies. The Americans preferred a structure in which soldiers were segregated by function, as opposed to being integrated by purpose. For example, the fifteen automatic riflemen formed a separate section organized into three four-man teams, with three attached NCOs. The automatic riflemen were equipped with the execrable , a French weapon that compared poorly to its English and German counterparts. Col. Conrad Babcock observed of the Chauchat in action that, “this easily jammed and complicated piece of mechanism was soon discarded by the automatic riflemen[.]”883 Likewise, Sergeant William S. Triplet’s unit exchanged their Chauchats for Lewis guns, which he characterized as “a damned good trade.”884 The twelve “hand-” were organized into a section of three four-man teams. The nine rifle-grenadiers formed a single squad of six men with rifle-grenade launchers and three ammunition carriers. Finally, the seventeen riflemen formed two eight-man squads plus a leader. This modular structure was supposed to provide the platoon leader with a “tool box” from which he could structure mission-specific groups.885 As a case in point, the aforementioned Sergeant Triplet (who would have a long career in the U.S. Army, retiring as a colonel in 1954) recalled having to break-up his squads to defend a French village as follows, “Each house contained an auto-rifle team, a half-squad of rifles, and a team of three men – eleven or twelve men apiece.”886 Naturally, this segregated structure was clumsy in battle and forfeited the fire-and- maneuver abilities of the combined-arms squads preferred by the French and Germans. The 1917 manual Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action presented diagrams of offensive formations with the squads still grouped by weapon-type, not as combined-arms units

882 Dastrup, pg. 168 883 Conrad Babcock, pg. 75 884 William S. Triplet, A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne: A Memoir, 1917-1918 (edited by Robert H. Ferrell) (Columbia, MO, University of Missouri Press, 2000), pg. 75 885 English & Gudmundsson, pg. 122 886 Triplet, pg. 135 228

capable of independent action.887 As mere widgets in the industrial machine, American soldiers were perversely defined more by their relationship to their weapons than to each other, and small- unit cohesion suffered accordingly.888 To be fair, it must be admitted that this system of organization was adopted, in part, from the British. The British model recommended itself to the Americans in so small degree because the British were still smitten by the rifle to a greater degree than the French and Germans. However, the British were already shedding this organizational structure in early 1917, and all reference to it had been eliminated from their manuals by mid- 1918.889 Instead, the British Expeditionary Forces eventually adopted flexible, combined-arms infantry teams employing formations variously known as ‘blobs’ or ‘worms’. The AEF did not follow suit. Micromanagement was also a persistent problem for the AEF. As previously noted, the Progressive Era’s faith in technocratic expertise undermined the ability of junior officers to make command decisions insofar as it implicitly questioned their competence relative to that of their more educated seniors. An example of this is told by Father Duffy of the 165th Regiment during the fighting in July along the Ourcq river. On the night of July 27th-28th, the 42nd “Rainbow” Division (the parent of the 165th Regt.) received orders from the U.S. command to conduct a bayonet attack, without artillery support, against the strong German rear-guard positions to open the way for a cavalry charge. Duffy attended a conference of incredulous senior officers who spoke out against such an operation: Captain Hurley of Company K had felt out the enemy resistance during the night and had found machine gun nests just across the river, the enemy artillery also being very active. The assumption of a retreating enemy against whom infantry bayonets and charging cavalry could be effective was not justified by what the front line could detect. It was a case for artillery preparation and careful advance. Colonel McCoy was already of the same opinion, which he expressed with proper vigor. They were three good soldiers, Lenihan, McCoy and McKenna, and they all felt the same way about it. But it was a Corps Order, an Army order, in fact, commanding a general advance. Whatever might be the cost, it could not be that this regiment should not do its share to keep the advancing line in even contact with the enemy”890

Despite the unanimity among those present that the order was an invitation to disaster, they felt

887 Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action (1917), pg. 20 & 23 888 English & Gudmundsson, pg. 122 889 Griffith, pg. 95 890 Duffy, pp. 163-64 229

that they lacked to authority to do otherwise. Given that the I Corps was commanded by the otherwise sensible Hunter Liggett, the influence of Pershing and his staff is palpable. Duffy joined his battalion for the attack, recalling: “But the old regiment had a motto to live up to, ‘Never disobeyed an order, never lost a flag.’ McKenna had given his orders to his Captains who all knew just what it meant — and the men under them knew it. Many of them, most of them, as it turned out, would be dead or wounded up that pleasant little valley and along its eastern slopes before the sun rode at mid-heavens. But no man was daunted by the thought.”891 Despite heavy losses, the attack succeeded in driving the Germans back. After the fight, Duffy had the chance to speak with several of the German prisoners taken that day. He noted with bittersweet pride, “They spoke of the sweep of the Battalion across the Ourcq and said they thought Americans were crazy.”892 Adequate replacements remained a problem for the American infantry, but at least steps were taken to provide cadres for rebuilding units. Unexpectedly heavy infantry losses forced the AEF to adopt a policy of leaving ten percent of a company out of a fight to serve as a cadre. That July, Marine veteran Elton Mackin recalled: “At Longpont we picked up our 10 percent, eager for news, looking for missing faces. They were our first ‘ten per’ – that portion of any combat company left behind by army order, before any scrap. I don’t remember the exact language, but it dealt with a new policy, whereby no outfit would ever quite be annihilated again.”893 The wisdom of this policy was somewhat diminished by the supposed “staying power” of the massive American divisions. The AEF command kept them in the line too long, which gave the cadres little opportunity to acclimate and integrate the replacements before again being committed to battle. As a result of the battles in the summer of 1918, the AEF high command at least started to pay lip-service to realities of combat on the western front. On August 7th, 1918, Pershing requested that his staff conduct a review of assault tactics, writing, “It seems to me that perhaps we are losing too many men by enemy machine guns.”894 A working group was formed and published a pamphlet entitled Combat Instructions, dated September 5th, 1918. For the most part, the document avoided any admission of error on the part of the U.S. Army, and reaffirmed much pre-war

891 Ibid., pg. 164 892 Ibid., pg. 166 893 Mackin, pg. 124 894 Pershing in James W. Rainey, “Ambivalent Warfare: The Tactical Doctrine of the AEF in World War I” in Parameters (Vol. XII, No. 3) (September 1983), pg. 41 230

doctrine. The document often simply urged more of the same, declaring: “The principles enunciated in Bulletin No. 30, May 23, 1918; memorandum for corps and division commanders, August 5, 1918, and notes on recent operations, No. 1, August 7, 1918, are not yet receiving due application. Attack formations of platoons, companies, and battalions are everywhere too dense and follow too rigidly the illustrations contained in the offensive combat of small units. Waves are too close together; individuals therein have too little interval. Lines are frequently seen with the men almost elbow to elbow, and seldom with intervals greater than two or three paces. Columns, when used, are too long; in first line companies they should rarely have a greater depth than ten files. All formations are habitually lacking in elasticity; there is almost never any attempt to maneuver, that is, to throw supports and reserves to the flanks for envelopment.”895 In truth, these clarifications amount to little more than an attempt to push the blame for poor tactical doctrine on the junior officers foolish enough to implement the training that they were given. Somewhat more useful were the new guidelines for eliminating machine gun nests: “As soon as the scouts have located the machine gun, the rifle grenadiers assist the advance of everyone by heavy fire from suitable positions behind the first line. The ability of the platoon leader is displayed by prompt reconnaissance of the ground, by a rapid estimate of what it offers toward facilitating the advance of his men, and by immediate decision upon a simple plan for the use of his combined weapons and of the ground to enable him to close with the enemy. His plan should habitually include pinning the enemy to the ground by frontal and flanking fire, under cover of which some portions of the platoon, usually those sent against the hostile flanks, can close by short rushes with the enemy. The training and discipline of the platoon are shown by the skill with which the men carry out the plan of the leader.”896 The advice was practical, but September of 1918 was inexcusably late for such a lesson to finally be accepted. The role of artillery in American doctrine remained problematic. The battles in the summer of 1918 had convinced the AEF command that artillery support was necessary. Yet, they still could not bring themselves to fully embrace its necessity, and thereby acknowledge artillery’s dominance over the rifle, as the Combat Instructions make clear. In terms of artillery, the Combat Instructions acknowledged that, “The assignment of artillery to infantry units binds such artillery closely to the

895 Gen. John J. Pershing, “Memorandum (September 5, 1918)” in A.E.F. Policy Documents (vol. 1), pg. 491 (491- 95) 896 Ibid., pg. 492 231

infantry it is supporting, and gives the infantry commander a powerful combination of arms with which to handle local situations without loss of time.” Such dependence on artillery compromised Pershing’s vision of the highly-mobile, self-reliant rifleman. Worse still, the assignment of artillery to infantry units violated one of the shibboleths of U.S. Army command philosophy: centralization. Accordingly, the very next sentence of the Combat Instructions reads, “On the other hand, it tends to lessen the power of artillery concentration of the division as a whole, and may render the infantry unit clumsy and immobile.” Giving subordinate commanders control over artillery assets was also contrary to the technocratic assumption that only the higher levels of command had the ability to use such assets in a timely and effective manner. The Combat Instructions provided a further caveat based on this philosophical tenet, “Moreover, it demands a high degree of decision and initiative on the part of both the infantry and artillery commanders immediately involved.”897 Junior officers could not be assumed to be capable of the requisite degrees of “decision and initiative”. Nonetheless, progressively larger quantities of artillery were employed by the AEF, albeit with some reservations at the highest levels of command. Most AEF officers simply had to figure out how to use the big guns on their own, without adequate guidance from above. Typical was Father Duffy description of Lt. Col. William Donovan (later of OSS fame) at St. Mihiel who, when assigned an accompanying battery for the first time, simply responded, “Well, we have not done it before but we'll give it a whirl this time."898 Indeed, the extent to which the AEF command was actually incorporating battlefield lessons into official doctrine appears to have been more limited than one might expect. For example, just after the battle for Soissons, the Adjutant General of the AEF’s II Corps issued the following orders for the training regimen of the its replacement battalion: “In compliance with previous instructions you will train all available men in your command in close order drill. physical exercise, gas, rifles, and bayonet instruction. Precision in drill, neatness in appearance, cleanliness in the camp, and strict discipline are of particular importance.”899 It is difficult to believe that these were the priorities of soldiers about to enter battle in late 1918. There would be no fundamental re-evaluation of doctrine, as an admission of error on the part of experts ran counter to national

897 Ibid., pg. 493 898 Donovan in Duffy, pg. 241 899 James J. Love, “230-50.5: Letter: Training of II Corps Replacement Battalion (August 8, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Training and Use of American Units with the British and French (vol. 3), pg. 170 (170-171) 232 pride and the ethos of progressive technocracy.

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Chapter 10: The Test of Battle: The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, September to November 1918

Introduction After the relatively easy victory at St. Mihiel, the AEF was considered ready to take a major role in Ferdinand Foch’s plan to put unceasing offensive pressure on the rapidly deteriorating German armies. Foch was a French general who had been appointed the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in May of 1918. The German 1918 offensives had ultimately failed, leaving their armies exhausted. More importantly, the Germans had left their strong defensive positions behind them in their advance and were end the very end of their logistical tether. A crippling outbreak of influenza only made a bad situation worse. Foch sensed the German weakness, and he prepared to take advantage of the situation. Originally, Foch had planned on 1919 being the decisive year, but he now initiated plans for a series of immediate offensives to push the weary German armies past their breaking point. The AEF now found itself playing a major role in operations much earlier than anyone had anticipated. The battles of that summer had taught the AEF high command a little, but they had taught the lower ranks a great deal more. As in the AI model of culture, the exigencies of combat made it much easier for the men on the ground to second-guess the conclusions demanded by the pre- war Regular army culture and replace them with their own. Unfortunately, the dichotomy between the upper and lower ranks meant that lessons learned by the latter were rarely embraced by the former, as so they were not passed on to new American combat units arriving in France. These green divisions would have to learn those bloody lessons for themselves, as would be especially evident in the opening days of the Meuse-Argonne battle.

The Allies Up Close Combat experience was not the only thing that transcended cultural strictures and enabled American soldiers to learn the lessons that their own high command would not teach them. The fighting in the spring and summer of 1918 had brought many Americans in close contact with their European allies. The doughboys came to admire their comrades-in-arms in a way that only the battlefield could. This propitious familiarity with America’s allies lessened the negative impact of a chauvinistic nationalism and created among the doughboys a willingness to learn. As the men of the AEF fought alongside their French and, to a lesser extent, British allies, attitudes visibly

234

changed. Prior to the war, Europe was generally not conceived of as a place to be admired. The discourse of American nationalism contrasted the oppressive history and cultural degeneracy of Europe to that of America. As previously noted, many senior AEF officers, mired in the American military discourse, held on to such notions throughout the war. Colonel Fox Conner, Pershing’s assistant chief-of-staff, gave a typical example of this attitude (with a revealing caveat) when he wrote a memorandum asserting, “We are also face to face with another fact - many of our officers, and, it is believed, soldiers are distinctly disgusted with French tutelage.”900 The AEF high command even went so far as to reject tactical lessons learned at such great cost by their allies, if only because they failed to conform to the U.S. Army’s self-image. The use of heavy artillery, for example, was seen as a reflection of European weakness rather than common sense. Freed from cultural preconceptions by the experience of war, many lower-ranking American soldiers were unabashedly impressed by their allies. Elmer Sherwood, a veteran of the 42nd “Rainbow” Division, wrote of the French that, “They fight as peppery as if they were in the first days of the war.”901 A young officer, Joseph Patch, recalled meeting a French officer of the Foreign Legion, “A big, fierce looking French officer with a big black moustache[.]” It was the night before a major attack, and the Frenchman told Patch that he was hoping for sunny weather, “as it was much better weather for killing Germans, and that he was looking forward to it. He looked as if he meant it, too.”902 Naturally, American soldiers in combat very much appreciated the lessons learned from their battle-hardened European counterparts. Edward S. Johnston, an officer in the 1st Division, wrote after the fighting alongside the 1st Moroccan Division at Soissons, “It is a common saying in the 1st Division that the Moroccans taught them how to fight.”903 French tactics for taking out German machine gun nests were quickly adopted by those Americans who witnessed them. One marine paid tribute by simply stating, “Them Frogs, they eat machine guns up. Fightin’ sons o’guns, they are.”904 Sergeant William Triplet’s platoon relieved a French unit and was very impressed by the innovative alarm system built by the previous occupants, “Damned clever these

900 Col. Fox Conner, “G-3, GHQ, AEF: Fldr. 657: Memorandum: Recommendations Regarding American Units (June 22, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Training and Use of American Units with the French and British (vol. 3), pg. 324 901 Sherwood, pg. 28 902 Lengel, Thunder and Flames, pg. 246 903 Grotelueschen, The AEF Way of War, pg. 102 904 John W. Thomason, Fix Bayonets! (Mt. Pleasant, SC, Nautical & Aviation Publishing, 2007) (original, 1925), pg. 110 235

Frenchmen.”905 It was not just the European allies who impressed American soldiers. The colonial troops, notably those in French service, also earned the Americans’ respect. One young marine lieutenant (writing in the third-person) recalled fighting adjacent to a Senegalese unit. He wrote: These wild black Mohammedans from West Africa were enjoying themselves. Killing, which is at best an acquired taste with the civilized races, was only too palpably their mission in life. Their eyes rolled, and their splendid white teeth flashed in their heads, but here all resemblance to a happy Southern darky stopped. They were deadly. Each platoon swept its front like a hunting-pack, moving swiftly and surely together. The lieutenant felt a thrill of professional admiration as he went with them.

The hidden guns that fired on them were located with uncanny skill; they worked their automatic rifles forward on each flank until the doomed emplacement was under a scissors fire; then they took up the matter with the bayonet, and slew with lion-like leaps and lunges and a shrill barbaric yapping. They took no prisoners. It was plain that they did not rely on rifle-fire or understand the powers of that arm – to them a rifle was something merely to stick a bayonet on – but with the bayonet they were terrible, and the skill of their rifle grenadiers and automatic-rifle men always carried them to close-quarters without too great loss.906

Unfortunately, few of the American divisions that had fought alongside the French and British would be available for the opening phase of the largest AEF operation of the war: the Meuse- Argonne offensive.

AEF at War: Meuse-Argonne: Part One The area chosen for the American offensive was the Meuse-Argonne, a tangle of forests, swampy lowlands, and hills nestled in-between the Meuse and Aisne rivers. It was good defensive terrain, and so had been quiet for some time as the French had no desire to lose any more of their soldiers there. As Sergeant William L. Langer (a future chairman of the Harvard history department) described it, “The forest itself is a stretch of wild country some seventy kilometers long and about fifteen wide, consisting of thickly wooded steep hills and deep ravines or gullies, the whole being wonderfully adapted to ambuscades and machine-gun work.”907 The battlefield was situated between two rivers running (roughly) along a north-south axis. Accordingly, an

905 Triplet, pg. 93 906 Thomason, pg. 77 907 William L. Langer & Robert B. MacMullin, With “E” of the First Gas (Brooklyn, NY, Holton Printing Co., 1919), pg. 53 236

attacker’s options for maneuver were limited by deep moats of brown, muddy water on either side. The German army, commanded by Max von Gallwitz, had built three successive lines of defense, named for characters in Wagner’s operas. The first line facing the Americans was the Etzel- Giselher Stellung, which included the fortified heights of Montfaucon. Four miles behind this was the second, and main line of resistance, the Kriemhilde Stellung. The final, and weakest, line of defense, five miles beyond the second line, was the Freya Stellung. Although the German forces in the area were weak, they were ensconced in formidable fortified zones, and had the entire ground covered by machine guns and pre-registered artillery. The AEF had a most difficult task ahead of it. If the task ahead was daunting, Pershing did not acknowledge it as such. The plan of attack was notably ambitious, evincing Pershing’s great faith in the dash and daring of the American rifleman. Pershing’s plan divided the attack into three stages. The first stage called for the destruction of the Etzel-Giselher Stellung, and the seizure of critical high ground in the Kriemhilde Stellung. It was expected that this phase of the operation, an advance of ten miles into fortified positions throughout difficult terrain, would take only thirty-six hours. The second phase called for another advance of ten miles, which would clear away the last of the German defenses and open the way to Sedan. The final phase would be an attack across the Meuse river on the Americans’ right flank to clear the heights of German guns on the opposite bank and so secure the AEF’s new supply lines from artillery bombardment from the east. The way would then be open for the capture of Sedan. As historian Edward Lengel rightly stated of Pershing’s attack plan, “Confident that American soldiers were capable of deeds well beyond the reach of Europeans, he devised an attack timetable fit for an army of supermen.”908 Not only did Pershing and his staff overestimate the combat power of the AEF and underestimate that of the Germans, they also failed to appreciate the logistical reality on the ground. There were few roads in the thinly-populated Meuse-Argonne region, and all of them were in drastic need of repair after years of war and neglect. Neither men, nor guns, nor supplies could advance at the rate Pershing expected under such conditions. If only supermen could have achieved Pershing’s timetable, then Pershing squandered the opportunity by choosing less-than-super formations for the task. The most experienced divisions of the AEF were still recovering from a summer of intense combat. Accordingly, of the nine

908 Edward G. Lengel, To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 2008), pg. 61 237

divisions slated for the initial assault, only three (the 4th, 28th, and 77th) had any real combat experience. Four of the attack divisions had never even served with their divisional artillery brigades.909 To further compound these problems, Pershing’s G-5 (head of training), Brig. Gen. Harold E. Fiske ordered a large number of staff officers from the assault divisions to attend the AEF staff college at Langres on the eve of battle.910 Of the 233 staff officers in the next course at Langres, sixty-seven were from the divisions in the first wave of the attack.911 Again, as mere interchangeable parts, officers were removed for training without any thought for the effect on the combat efficiency of their units. So notoriously mechanistic was the training system that Conrad Babcock actually received orders to send a number of his officers to the training schools during the earlier Soissons operation. Incredulous, Babcock wrote, “Imagine a training system that contemplated training officers who had just completed five days of most exacting and practical combat fighting, at a corps school where the instructors were totally ignorant of real fighting. In my half-starved exhausted condition, I think I tore that order to pieces.”912 The idea that practical experience was superior to theoretical training was anathema to the progressive, institutional mindset of the AEF. Despite the shortcomings, the AEF staff had every right to be proud of its planning for the movement of the First American Army from St. Mihiel to the Meuse-Argonne. In two weeks, some 600,000 men, tens of thousands of horses and thousands of guns were moved into position for the offensive. The movement was done mostly at night, to conceal it from prying German eyes. A further 220,000 French troops were moved out to make way for the Americans, although a small number remained in the forward areas until the last minute to deceive the Germans. In addition, 900,000 tons of ammunition and supplies were also moved into the area. One of the principal architects of the operation was a young Colonel George C. Marshall. Marshall had been forced to develop the plan on relatively short notice, but his success in doing so marked him for future advancement. By September 25th, 1918, everything was in place.

909 American Battle Monuments Commission, American Armies and Battlefields in Europe, pg. 173 910 Steven Rabalais, General Fox Connor: Pershing’s Chief of Operations and Eisenhower’s Mentor (Philadelphia, Casemate, 2017), pg. 126 911 Cooke, pg. 124 912 Conrad Babcock, pg. 103 238

Map 9: Plan of Attack of First Army, September 26, 1918

At 2:30 a.m. the following morning, nearly 3,980 artillery pieces opened fire on the German positions.913 The bombardment lasted for three hours, before the infantry began its advance into the dense fog at 5:30 a.m. behind a rolling barrage. As Allan Millett commented, “The AEF had not surrendered its faith in the deadeye American infantryman, but it had recognized that he needed help.”914 The size of the opening barrage masked some deeper and persistent structural problems. “The barrage ran away from the infantry at times because the foot soldiers had difficulties moving. Commenting on this, Major General William S. McNair, First Army, AEF, Artillery Chief, exclaimed in December 1918 that the rate of four minutes per one hundred meters was too rapid for crossing the broken terrain. This forced the field artillery to shell points that had already been fired on by the rolling barrage. Although the field artillery had observers and liaison officers attached to the infantry, it usually received no information from the front line or obtained it too late because of poor communications. As a result, gun crews depended upon rigid

913 Dastrup, pg. 171 914 Millett, The General, pg. 399 239

map firing. This reduced the field artillery's ability to adjust to changing conditions and limited its usefulness.”915

Despite the inexperience of the American divisions surprise, massive numerical superiority, and the powerful artillery support enabled them to drive deep into the German forward positions. Only in front of the fortified heights of Montfaucon was the advance held-up. The struggle for Montfaucon is one of the more revealing incidents of the battle and, indeed, the war. The division assigned to capture the position was the 79th, a National Army division made up of draftees with a small cadre of Regular Army officers and NCOs. The division’s commander was General Joseph E. Kuhn, one of the rising stars of the pre-war army. Kuhn had graduated first in his class at West Point (Class of 1885) and had held a string of important posts in his thirty-three years of service. He had served as the head of the engineering department at West Point. Later, he commanded an engineer battalion during the Philippine Insurrection. During the Russo-Japanese War, he was attached to the Japanese army as a military observer, and he authored an influential report on the conflict. Shortly after his return, he was posted as an instructor at the Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth. Most recently, he had been the military attaché in Berlin, and had been able to observe German operations on both the eastern and western fronts.916 Now, Kuhn had a division as his first major step towards the highest echelons of command. Why Pershing picked a green division for such a critical task is unclear, but it likely reflected his unbounded faith in the American soldier, veteran or not. On September 26th, Kuhn’s green soldiers advanced with the effervescent confidence of the uninitiated. Problems began to mount almost immediately. Exuberance caused many first-line units to rush past hidden German machine gun nests, which soon opened fire on them from the rear, and on the supporting units that followed. The confusion was compounded by units failing to maintain proper distances, with the result that they became jumbled in the maelstrom of combat, greatly complicating command and control. In planning for the assault, Kuhn had unwisely placed his two infantry brigades one behind the other, each with two regiments abreast. The heights of Montfaucon knifed perpendicularly into the American advance, with the village of Malancourt directly in front of it, and so the terrain worked to divide the advancing regiments. The result was that the lead brigade commander fought two separate battles on either side of the objective, and he

915 Dastrup, pg. 172 916 Fax, pg. 70 240 could not bring up substantial support for either regiment without intermingling different the brigade commands. It was a recipe for chaos. By noon of the first day, Major Paul Allegrini, a French liaison officer with Kuhn’s staff, wrote that “the division was not a body of troops but a mob.”917 If the 79th Division was held-up, the divisions on either side had more success. On the 79th’s right was the battle-tested 4th (“Ivy”) Division, a Regular army unit which advanced deep into the German lines, well past Montfaucon. On the 79th’s left was the 37th (“Buckeye”) Division, an Ohio National Guard division that also made good progress. By nightfall, an obvious military solution to the 79th’s predicament presented itself. The deep American penetrations to either side of Montfaucon invited a pincer movement by the flanking divisions to surround the German defenders and force their surrender. However, a German counter-attack had bloodied the Buckeyes, so only the 4th Division was in a position to assist in the capture of Montfaucon. Its commander, John L. Hines, was one of the most talented senior officers in the AEF, and he quickly prepared orders for one of his brigades to attack to the west and cut-off the Germans. However, there was one problem: the attack order involved crossing corps boundaries (the 4th was in the III Corps and the 79th in the ). It appears that such a move had been contemplated by the First Army’s command.918 Yet, when Hines communicated his plan to III Corps headquarters, it was denied. Hines had attempted to directly the corps commander, Robert L. Bullard, in order to gain approval for the flanking movement. He was unable to reach Bullard, and he instead had to deal with Bullard’s controversial chief of staff, Alfred W. Bjornstad. Like Kuhn, Bjornstad had been one of the brightest intellectual stars of the pre-war army. Winner of the Distinguished Service Cross in the Philippines, Bjornstad had been one of the authors of the Field Service Regulations and an instructor at the General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth. He had written a tactical manual in 1916, Small Problems for Infantry, as well as a primer on the German army. Early in the war, Bjornstad had been appointed director of the AEF General Staff School at Langres. Sadly, Bjornstad proved a poor chief-of-staff, autocratic and abusive towards his subordinates, disloyal and self-serving towards his superiors. Worse still, when it came to seizing opportunities on the

917 Maj. Paul Allegrini in Fax, pg. 213 918 American Battle Monuments Commission, American Armies and Battlefields in Europe, pg. 172 241

battlefield, Bjornstad put the “safe” in “safe leadership”.919 For Bjornstad, Hines’ request to cross sacred corps boundaries was beyond the pale. Instead of striking the exposed German flank on his left, Hines was ordered to plunge straight ahead into the rapidly-solidifying German positions in his front. Despite this order, harassing fire from the Germans on his left prompted Hines to again press his case, and a vaguely-worded response from III Corps seemed to approve. However, before the 4th Division’s flank attack gained momentum, it was again canceled. Bullard and Bjornstad later claimed that they had cancelled the attack after receiving a false report that the 79th had taken Montfaucon.920 Hines and his staff believed the more likely culprit was a timorous Bjornstad.921 A great opportunity to surround and capture the Germans in Montfaucon was lost. Luckily for the American commanders, the Germans had given them too much credit, and assumed that an envelopment of their position was imminent. At 10:00 a.m. on the morning of September 27th, von Gallwitz ordered that his forces withdraw from Montfaucon. Tragically, the 79th’s trials were far from over. The American advance was starting to fall behind Pershing’s timetable, and the inevitable exhortations to further sacrifice poured forth from the AEF high command. Hugh Drum, the First Army’s chief-of-staff, forwarded a favorite admonition of Pershing’s: “[T]here should be no delay or hesitation in going forward… All officers will push their units forward with all possible energy. Corps and division commanders will not hesitate to relieve on the spot any officer of whatever rank who fails to show in this emergency those qualities of leadership required to accomplish the task that confronts us.”922 So inspired, Kuhn relentlessly pushed his men forward for the next several days until the 79th could do no more. On October 1st, it was relieved. The division had suffered nearly 5,000 casualties, and it was so disorganized and demoralized upon its relief that it was rumored that it would simply be dissolved rather than rebuilt.923 It did not help that, in the opinion of a French observer, Capt.

919 William Walker has made an intriguing, but ultimately unconvincing, argument that Bullard deliberately refused to authorize the in order to sabotage the V Corps commander, Cameron. See William Walker, Betrayal at Little Gibraltar: A German Fortress, a Treasonous American General, and the Battle to End World War I (New York, Scribner, 2016) 920 Millett, The General, pg. 405 921 Fax, pg., 246 922 Col. Hugh A. Drum, “191-32.13: Letter (September 27, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 9), (Washington, D.C., Center for Military History, 1990), pp. 138-40 923 Fax, pg. 331 242

Antoine Brondelle, the American officers showed so little concern for the welfare of their men.924 Such was the fate of mere cogs in the mighty AEF machine. While the 79th Division was being ground to pieces around Montfaucon, another green American division, the 35th, was fighting a battle that would have far-reaching consequences for subsequent civil-military relations. The 35th Division was part of I Corps operating to the west of Montfaucon. The 35th was composed largely of National Guardsmen from Missouri and Kansas. The 14,827 men from Missouri included two cousins, Ralph and Harry S. Truman, the latter being an artillery captain. Despite its roots in the National Guard, many of the original officers had been replaced by Regulars. With few exceptions, the Regular officers proved singularly inept during the fighting, and it is difficult to believe that the replaced Guardsmen could have been worse. The divisional commander was Major General Peter E. Traub. As was too often the case in the AEF, Traub replaced most of the division’s senior commanders in the days just before the offensive was to begin. As the attack commenced on the morning of September 26th, the 35th Division seemed to have luck on its side insofar as its objectives were concerned. It did not have to fight through the thick, forested hills that blighted the advance of other American units. Instead, it was expected to advance through a rolling grassland, with small knots of forest, along the east bank of the Aire river. In contrast to Kuhn and the 79th Division, Traub had enough sense to attack in a column of brigades, so that each brigade commander would be better able to manage his own battle. Unfortunately, the attack formations used by the infantry were dangerously outdated by this time in the war. One veteran of the division wrote, “The formation of the battalion in attack bore a strong resemblance to the Macedonian phalanx or Roman legion, a block of men in rigid formation eight deep… Like our ancient predecessors our objective was to punch holes in our adversaries with our points. Our only concession to the power of modern weapons was dispersion[.]”925 Unlike the veteran divisions that had learned to deviate from the regulations, the 35th Division did things by the book, and paid the price. The first two miles of the advance went relatively smoothly, with only minor German defenses encountered. However, when the division reached the village of Cheppy, its luck started to run out. The approach to Cheppy was guarded by a series of German machine gun positions

924 Ibid. 925 Triplet, pg. 194 243

emplaced on a high bluff south of the village, which ran along a creek (the Buanthe) some eight feet deep. The Germans had an excellent view of the approaching American infantry, and they soon had an entire American regiment, the 138th, pinned and unable to move. Efforts at outflanking the position failed, and it was not until the arrival of the First Provisional Tank Regiment, under Col. George S. Patton, that the defense was overcome. Nightfall brought the advance to a halt. The 35th’s other brigade had similar problems from German machine gun positions just north of their objective, Varennes. The lead regiment (the 137th) was paralyzed by the fire, confined to shell-holes in front of the German guns. Efforts to contact the brigade commander failed, as he was nowhere to be found. Accordingly, Carl L. Ristine, the commander of the supporting 139th Regiment, unilaterally made the decision to move his regiment through and outflank the German position. The move was successful, but instead of being commended for his actions, Ristine was condemned. Ristine had violated two unwritten rules of the AEF. The first was that he had exercised individual initiative in a manner that deviated from both the plan and army practice. The second sin was that Ristine, a National Guard officer, had made a Regular officer (Kirby Walker, the brigade commander) look bad by virtue of the latter’s inaction. It is true that Ristine’s move did add to the disorganization of the brigade’s lead regiment when the 139th passed through, but that was more a reflection on the poor leadership of the 137th.926 The 35th received an order from Pershing’s headquarters to continue the attack at 5:30 a.m. on the morning of September 27th. However, the divisional chief-of-staff, Hamilton S. Hawkins, knew that the artillery brigade was still moving into its firing positions, and so he issued a delayed attack order for 10:00 a.m. Traub was mortified at the thought of failing to meet Pershing’s expectations, whatever the reality on the ground may have been. Accordingly, he over-ruled Hawkins and re-instated the 5:30 a.m. order.927 The artillery support was predictably pitiful, and the infantry attacks quickly ground to a halt. The failure of these attacks led to unwelcome attention from both I Corps and First Army command. Pershing let Traub know that he was disappointed with the 35th Division, which was being held up merely “by machine gun nests here and there.”928 The I Corps chief of staff, Brig. Gen. , sent one of his own officers, Jens Bugge, to replace Hawkins and get the division moving. That afternoon, the artillery was finally in place, so

926 Ferrell, Collapse at Meuse-Argonne, pg. 44 927 Ibid., pg. 49 928 Pershing to Traub in Ferrell, Collapse at Meuse-Argonne, pg. 52 244

Traub ordered the attack renewed in the early evening. Adequately supported, the infantry of the 35th advanced another couple of kilometers. With the advance of the American First Army falling behind schedule, Pershing predictably ordered the attacks to continue regardless of circumstances. In the absence of a clear plan reflecting the situation on the ground, Pershing simply declared, “I am counting on the splendid spirit, dash and courage of our army to overcome all opposition.”929 Traub dutifully pushed his disorganized and exhausted troops forward. By now almost every infantry battalion was committed in a desperate attempt to maintain forward momentum. By afternoon, the division was spent and bereft of reserves. It was at that moment that Pershing chose to make a personal visit to Traub’s headquarters, demanding yet another attack that evening. Traub lacked the spine to explain the real situation to Pershing, so his new chief of staff, Bugge, accepted that burden. Pershing listened and relented only somewhat, stating, “Well, make it at tomorrow morning regardless of cost.”930 Pershing’s callous order could not have come at a worse time. His own G-2 (Intelligence) Section had informed Pershing that, “In the Argonne, our troops met with firm resistance from machine guns and trench mortars. The volume of artillery fire in this region was considerably increased, especially in the valley of the Aire.”931 The 35th Division was operating in precisely this area. Nonetheless, the battered and exhausted American infantry moved forward at 5:30 a.m. behind a desultory barrage, in miserable weather (cold and rainy), against a skilled and determined foe. Poor communications compounded the problems, such that many infantry units did not receive their orders until after the barrage had begun. This gave the Germans ample time to wait out the barrage in comparative safety, and then man their machine guns once it was over. Predictably, the attack was a disaster. A participant described how, under the persistent fire of the German Maxims, “the attack just slowed, sickened, and died.”932 Traub had to send in his engineer regiment (the 110th) to act as infantry to stiffen the line against possible German counter-attacks. Meanwhile, I Corps rushed heavy artillery to the scene to smash any such attempt by the Germans. On the following day, the remnants of the division were relieved by the battle-hardened 1st Division. Among those retiring with the 35th Division was a deeply-embittered Harry S. Truman,

929 Gen. John J. Pershing, “191-32.1: General Orders No. 20 (September 28, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 9), pg. 144 930 Ferrell, Collapse at Meuse-Argonne, pg. 83 931 Gol. Willey Howell, “191-20.1: Intelligence Report (September 28, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 9), pg. 146 932 Triplet, pg. 218 245

who would harbor a grudge against West Point and a deep suspicion of Regular Army officers for the rest of his life.933 Sergeant Triplet’s company suffered 80% casualties, “It was a damned shame. It had been a fine outfit, completely ruined in five days.”934 The experience of the Missouri-Kansas Division would generate considerable controversy after the war, as lawmakers from those states demanded to know how Pershing and his staff could have allowed such a debacle to occur.

AEF at War: Meuse-Argonne: Part Two By the end of September, it was clear to all that the initial effort by the AEF to break the German lines in the Meuse-Argonne had failed. After four days of fighting, few units had even reached the first day’s planned objectives. After the initial surprise, the Germans rushed seven additional divisions to stiffen the defenses. However, it is arguable that the AEF was its own worst enemy. Inexperienced officers and poorly trained enlisted men stood little chance against the thick belts of German machine guns that covered the front. The massive, lumbering American divisions created nightmarish traffic jams in their wake, which often prevented critical artillery units and supplies from reaching the front. Finally, the rigid command and control philosophy of the AEF denied field commanders the flexibility they needed to take advantage of tactical opportunities on the battlefield. There was no way it could be done without the careful and constant application of overwhelming firepower to support the advance. Machine guns were the defining characteristic of the German defenses. Robert L. Bullard lamented that, “Wherever his machine guns were encountered – and they were encountered after the passage of his first line – the progress was exceedingly difficult. Indeed, his first defense seemed to be wholly machine guns.”935 Nor was it just a question of the number of machine guns, as the Germans imaginatively exploited the weapon’s full potential. The quotable Sergeant Triplet remembered of the Germans, “They were artists with machine guns, used them at two thousand yards or more, placing them well back where the trajectory of the bullets would follow down the curve of our reverse slopes… It was a good substitute for the field artillery they seemed to be short of.”936 Too many senior American officers tended to downplay the machine gun threat. For

933 Ferrell, Collapse at Meuse-Argonne, pg. 130 NOTE: It has been suggested that Truman’s affinity for George Marshall was due, in part, to the fact that Marshall had graduated from VMI. 934 Triplet, pg. 249 935 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 269 936 Triplet, pg. 187 246

example, an impatient Pershing scolded Traub of the 35th Division for “being stopped by machine gun nests here and there.”937 Triplet remembered his regimental commander, Lt. Col. Channing E. “Dogface” Delaplane swearing, “By God, my regiment will never be held up by a few machine gunners and to hell with the artillery. We attack at 1730.”938 On the other side of the lines, as Allan Millett wrote, “Assessing the character of the American attacks, the Germans admired the courage of the First Army’s infantrymen, but ridiculed their bunched formations and their dependence on rifle fire and the bayonet”939 Increasingly, American soldiers came to appreciate the vital role of artillery in any assault. However, many of their senior officers still regarded this reliance on firepower as a symptom of the dreaded “European disease.”940 Bullard was certainly unhappy with this development, and he blamed it on the soldiers’ inexperience, when in fact it was very often the opposite. He complained, “The infantry of the whole army, I heard, was thus calling for an unusual amount of artillery fire for their protection. The consumption of artillery ammunition was considered to be enormous. In all new troops that had come under my observation this has been a difficulty. It spelled lack of training and experience.”941 Artillery was the real killer on the battlefield, but few officers of the pre-war Regular Army were willing to accept that fact. The high command’s love affair with the rifle, and their unwavering belief in the innate superiority of the American soldier, were not abandoned so easily. The advance was further hindered by the sheer size of the American divisions. The unwieldy American units were plagued by massive traffic jams, as trucks and horses were forced to use roads ravaged by years of neglect and pulverized by artillery. Historian Edward Drea described the scene in the 4th Division’s rear area: Chaos ensued as everyone tried to use the few trafficable routes between the front and rear. Battlefield evacuation of wounded was a special problem. Each division had a sanitary train with a field hospital section and ambulance section consisting of 12 mule drawn ambulances and 36 motor vehicles. These not only proved wholly insufficient for offensive operations, but also clogged resupply routes as they competed for the same routes as the trucks carrying supplies forward to the advancing troops.942

937 Ferrell, Collapse at Meuse-Argonne, pg. 52 938 Triplet, pg. 193 939 Millett, The General, pg. 405 940 Lengel, To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918, pg. 286 941 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 275 942 Drea, pg. 10 247

Rivers of cold mud sapped the strength of men, beasts, and machines as they struggled forward. Bullard recalled that, “It took, nearly as I can now remember, all my spare military police, a battalion of infantry, and some fifty officers to regulate traffic and prevent .”943 Even in the relatively benign September weather, First Army chief of staff Malin Craig noted in his report, “Supply of 155's short, and of 105’s, at the guns, is low due to transportation difficulties. Forward dumps of 75 ammunition are sufficient, and other supplies are normal. Transportation difficulty due to lack of enough good roads.”944 The problem reached all the way to the top, as French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau spent several hours trapped in an American traffic jam during an attempt to visit the American front on September 29th. Clemenceau’s doubts about Pershing’s ability, already considerable, were not helped by this incident. Upon his return, Clemenceau wanted to secure Pershing’s removal from command. Another persistent problem for the AEF was the issue of keeping pace with units on the flank, but a rigid command philosophy often discouraged cooperation between neighboring units. The issue was complex and not susceptible to easy solutions. In contrast to the armored units of later wars, AEF infantry divisions could not simply forge ahead without regard for their flanks. A unit that raced ahead of its neighbors was invariably threatened by enfilade fire against its flanks. The operational inflexibility of the AEF meant that units could not easily launch flank attacks to assist their slower neighbors. Very often, this problem led to overly cautious advances, with any blame for the slow progress invariably resting with units on the flank. Bullard, for one, claimed to have no patience for such caution. He impressed upon his subordinates that they must use their reserves to protect their flanks, rather than halt.945 Bullard was so distressed by the problem during the Meuse-Argonne offensive that he went directly to Pershing: “I finally felt so strongly about it that I went to see General Pershing and expressed my opinion, but I saw no result… I had tried in vain to induce the General commanding the Vth Corps to take concerted action with me to unite our flanks.”946 While Bullard pleaded with a hidebound Pershing, another American general, Hunter Liggett, decided to take matters into his

943 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 272 944 Brig. Gen. Malin Craig, “G-3 Report File 107.03: Operations Report (September 28, 1918)” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 9), pp. 172- 173 945 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 270 946 Ibid., pg. 273 248 own hands. As commander of the I Corps, Liggett simply ordered his divisional commanders to ignore the hitherto inviolable divisional boundaries and to assist their neighbors whenever possible. Liggett’s willingness to challenge the imperious Pershing, in no small part, made him arguably the best American field commander of the war. It comes as no surprise that the AEF’s many apparent problems were not addressed by the unreflective Pershing in any meaningful way before he ordered the next round of assaults to begin on October 4th. The French and British armies had won a series of victories over the Germans in late September, and so Pershing felt the heat from his failure in the Meuse-Argonne. He had only one prescription to save his military reputation and salvage his presidential ambitions: more of the same. To ensure success, Pershing collected a powerful strike force, with some estimates giving the Americans as much as a nine to one superiority over the Germans.947 Mass and brute force would have to substitute for finesse and skill. For the next twelve days, the AEF hurled itself at the German defenses. Bullard wrote of these attacks: “Daily I heard reports of attacks by corps and divisions, but the gains were small and irregular and the losses too great for the results. In most of these attacks, both general and local, our infantry, on account of difficult ground, trenches, wire, and enemy machine gun nests, were unable to or did not follow closely our rolling barrage. These barrages did not annihilate the enemy. The enemy had learned to bury himself and, our barrage having passed over him, to rise from his pits and, with the skill of the old trained soldier, stop or slaughter our advancing infantry, coming too far behind the barrage. This is how in almost every instance our advances had come to a halt.”948 The heavy losses among the infantry were filled in haste with poorly trained recruits. Elton Mackin, a marine in the 2nd Division, wrote in October of 1918: “We kept on getting men – more and more, greener and greener, so pitifully untrained, so unready for death. They averaged maybe four months in uniform.”949 Yet, the Americans had made some important gains, albeit at great cost, breaching the main German defense line at several points and consuming the depleted German reserves. For Pershing, these gains were too little, too late, and he characteristically blamed his subordinates. However, as Pershing’s biographer Donald Smythe observed, “Pershing’s

947 Trask, pg. 140 948 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 275 949 Mackin, pg. 213 249

dissatisfaction with some of his generals was matched, if not exceeded, by Allied dissatisfaction with him.”950 The French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau “was ready to ask President Wilson to relieve Pershing. And Pershing knew what Clemenceau had in mind.”951 Despite fielding two million men in France, the AEF had embarrassingly little to show for it. Someone had to take the blame, and Pershing was the obvious target given his office and the fact that he was so thoroughly disliked by his foreign peers. Yet, if Pershing proved a mediocre army commander, he remained a skilled bureaucratic in-fighter. And for an incompetent government bureaucrat, there was only one possible solution: a promotion. Promotion, in such circumstances, allows bureaucracies to avoid admitting error, while at the same time removing the troublesome bureaucrat from proximity to the problem. Accordingly, Pershing kicked himself upstairs and became army group commander by dividing the AEF into separate two army commands. Yet, at this lowest point of his career, Pershing made his most inspired appointments. Hunter Liggett, the I Corps commander, was made commander of the First Army. The smaller Second Army was assigned to Robert L. Bullard. A flurry of changes down the chain of command followed, with some of the best divisional commanders, such as Hines and Summerall, receiving corps commands. The appointment of Liggett was perhaps the most significant. A man of considerable girth and intellect, Liggett had been prominent among the most forward-thinking theorists on infantry tactics in the pre-war era. He served as the editor of the Infantry Journal, and he was later appointed president of the Army War College. Thoughtful, methodical, yet willing to take risks, Liggett also had the rare talent of being able to say “no” to Pershing without being sacked for his impertinence. This tact also extended to his excellent relations with the French. On October 16th, Liggett formally assumed command. After three weeks of bloody frontal attacks in the Meuse-Argonne, the First Army was an exhausted and bloodied mess, and Liggett knew it. Col. Thomas De W. Milling did not words in declaring First Army “a disorganized and wrecked army”.952 An obsessive micromanager, Pershing was reluctant to leave First Army headquarters in Souilly for his new Army Group headquarters in Ligny-en-Barrois, even well after Liggett’s appointment. He kept pressing for action, but Liggett knew that the army needed a rest, and so refused Pershing’s

950 Smythe, pg. 216 951 Millett, The General, pg. 409 952 Smythe, pg. 217 250

entreaties. Finally, Liggett confronted Pershing, and “told him that since the First Army was too chewed up to undertake a major operation in the near future, he should ‘go away and forget it.’”953 Liggett had much work to do in order to return the First Army to fighting trim, and Pershing finally left him to it. Liggett possessed two traits that were tragically rare in the AEF high command: he was devoid of illusions and willing to learn from mistakes. The fantasy of the deadeye American rifleman, towering over his troglodytic European counterparts, held no sway with him. In his memoirs, Liggett wrote, “I am under no patriotic illusion that one good American can whip any ten foreigners. I know, on the contrary, that one well-trained, well-led foreigner is much more likely to whip ten good but untrained Americans.”954 He was also acutely aware of the AEF’s good fortune in fighting a German army that had been bled white, ravaged by disease and hunger. After the war, Liggett admitted, “As one who was proud of what the American Army did, I wondered what we might have done against the German Army of 1914? Not so well.”955 During the lull in the fighting, Liggett visited the various divisions under his command, trying to understand their needs and incorporate the bloody lessons learned into army doctrine: “My staff and I traveled constantly among the troops, making every effort to profit by past mistakes[.]”956 In First Army, at least, gone were the days of threats of dismissal and exhortations to squander more American lives. Imperious experts and military managers no longer pontificated haut en bas to their subordinates in the mud. Solutions would now be found by those closest to the problems. Another challenge for Liggett in rebuilding his command was the issue of stragglers. Poorly-trained soldiers, under poorly-trained officers, sloughed-off from their units at an alarming rate in the misty forests of the Meuse-Argonne. Treated like interchangeable parts by the U.S. Army, many doughboys never had time to psychologically bond with their fellow-soldiers before being hurled at the German machine guns. Not surprisingly, many took the opportunity to slip away in search of safety. Liggett estimated that as many as 100,000 men were A.W.O.L. from their units.957 Desertion had long been a problem in the pre-war army, and it was a positive curse during the Civil War, so Liggett was not unduly alarmed. He put the military police to work, and soon

953 Ibid., pg. 218 954 Hunter Liggett, A.E.F.: Ten Years Ago in France (New York, Dodd Meade & Co., 1928), pg. 211 955 Ibid., pg. 137 956 Ibid., pg. 207 957 Ibid. 251

stragglers were returning to their units by the thousands. They would be needed for the push ahead. The logistical difficulties that had hampered the opening phases of the Meuse-Argonne battle were also tackled. Liggett moved as much supplies as possible towards the front, so that it could be deployed as soon as it was needed to sustain the advance. Service troops worked feverishly to repair the roads to this same end.958 Liggett also authorized the use of gas. The AEF had been sparing in using this most insidious weapon of World War One. However, Liggett felt that its use would, at the very least, improve the morale of the attacking infantry by showing them that their commanders would do everything to support their attack. Over forty tons of gas shells would be used in the opening bombardment, mostly falling on the heavy German batteries in the rear.959 Bullard also worked feverishly to prepare his new Second Army for the task ahead. He estimated that it would take a month to fully prepare for renewed offensive.960 It was the weakness of the army’s logistical system that worried him most. The experience of the previous few weeks in the Meuse-Argonne made Bullard acutely aware of the inadequate logistical infrastructure in the region. To rectify this, Bullard’s engineers worked tirelessly to improve the roads and supply depots necessary to support an all-out attack. More pugnacious than Liggett, Bullard also had his men raid German trenches aggressively, launching some 300 raids and patrols in the two weeks before the offensive.961 The work of the new American commanders was seconded by their subordinates, particularly at the divisional level. The survivors of the previous bloody fighting had little desire to repeat the experience, and so incorporated dearly-bought lessons into their tactical repertoire. Mark Grotelueschen documents this process admirably in his book The AEF Way of War, which examines the experiences of four American divisions (the 1st, 2nd, 26th and 77th). Even in cases where the senior commanders failed to understand the need for change, such as in the 77th “Statue of Liberty” Division, junior commanders did the work themselves.962 One example was the deployment of assault troops in shell holes throughout No Man’s Land, just ahead of their usual positions. This way, German counter-bombardments, pre-registered on the basis of where the

958 Edward M. Coffman, The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (Lexington, KY, The University Press of , 1998), pg. 344 959 Ibid., pg. 345 960 Millett, The General, pg. 419 961 Ibid., pg. 423 962 Grotelueschen, The AEF Way of War, pg. 341 252

American lines had been, fell on empty trenches.963 Another interesting example of tactical innovation comes from the 89th Division. Colonel Conrad S. Babcock, who had been dismissed earlier from the 1st Division by the thin-skinned Summerall, was given a regimental command in the new 89th. His experiences at Soissons convinced him that American tactics, as written, were useless, so he developed his own. In rejecting the traditional mix of line and column, Babcock wrote, “I decided that the best formation for attacking troops to adopt was one that battle experience and extreme danger had shown to be the one that they would be ‘shot into’ action: that was the formation of small combat groups.”964 Babcock organized each platoon into three combat groups of four squads each. The regulation squad by weapon-type was abolished. Instead, the four squads would advance in a diamond formation, with a preponderance of automatic rifles and grenade launchers in the foremost and rearmost squads. When a German machine gun position was encountered, the lead squad would attempt to suppress it with fire, as the rearmost squad advanced to assist in this task. Meanwhile, the rifle squads on either flank would attempt to carefully outflank the German position aided by the suppressive fire of the other two squads. Once in position, the rifle squads would lob grenades and then charge the machine gun to finish off any survivors. Babcock also altered the attack formations at the company and battalion levels, as well. His goal, he wrote, was “to give the company commanders, the lieutenants and the noncommissioned officers a chance to use their initiative and room in which to exercise it.”965 In addition to revising infantry tactics, the latest crop of AEF commanders had a much better appreciation of the need for artillery. For example, Liggett assigned over six hundred guns to Summerall’s V Corps alone to support its advance.966 Even Bullard, whose public pronouncements loyally served to vindicate the outdated tactics of Pershing, prepared an elaborate artillery preparation for the resumption of the offensive. A key element of the new preparatory bombardment plan was the use of heavy guns in support of the infantry advance, similar to the Germans in their 1918 offensives. The big guns would concentrate on the usual targets (i.e. ammo dumps, enemy artillery positions, crossroads, etc.) during the two hours of the initial bombardment. However, once the advance began, the lighter guns would provide a creeping

963 Coffman, The War to End All Wars, pg. 345 964 Conrad Babcock, pg. 111 965 Ibid., pg. 113 966 Coffman, The War to End All Wars, pg. 344 253

barrage, while the heavier guns would plaster the zone in front of that barrage. An after-action report noted: An innovation in the employment of the heavy artillery was introduced: Prior to the commencement of the attack, all sensitive points, known batteries, dumps, crossroads, etc., were systematically bombarded as usual. However, as the attack started, the mass of the army and corps artillery was employed in successive concentration fires which preceded the barrage fire of the divisions of the V and III Corps. The combination of these fires resulted in a danger zone of the front of these corps of 1,000 meters in depth. This fire was intense and extremely effective.967

As previously noted, gas shells were also used in greater proportion than ever before to smother German gun positions. As Mark Grotelueschen observed, “While previous attacks counted on the infantry to fight their way forward, this attack, more than any other AEF or 2nd Division attack of the war, put its faith in massive amounts of well-coordinated firepower.”968 Even infantry support weapons were pushed to do more. The 5th Division’s orders also stress the importance of pushing the 37mm guns as far forward as possible, and not to leave them in reserve.969 These weapons were the most effective infantry weapon against the numerous fortified German machine gun positions. In order to maintain the speed of the attack, Summerall ordered the men of the 2nd Division to take no prisoners, and not to bandage the wounded.970

967Army War College, “Report of First Army: The Second Operation, November 1-11, 1918 [Extract]” in The United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919: Military Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces (vol. 9), pg. 367 968 Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Trial, pg. 117 969 Records of the World War: Field Orders, 1918 5th Division, pp. 124 970 Mackin, pg. 227 254

Map 10: Operations of First Army, November 1-11, 1918

When the final push began on the morning of November 1st, its success was almost a foregone conclusion. The previous five weeks of bloody combat had enabled the Americans to slowly drive the Germans from their strongest defensive positions, albeit at great cost. Moreover, the hammer blows landed by the Allied armies, under the guidance of Ferdinand Foch, had bled the German army white. Disease further ravaged the remnants of the German forces. Now, a refreshed and reinvigorated AEF, under more capable leadership and with more veterans in its

255 ranks, was fully prepared to do its part to end the war. As Hunter Liggett wrote, with more than a hint of self-satisfaction, and truth, “And for the first time the army functioned surely and smoothly as a unit.”971 Although the I Corps struggled, advancing only a half-mile on the first day, the V Corps penetrated six miles into the crumbling German defenses. Without adequate reserves, the skeletal German divisions could only delay the inevitable. By November 4th, they were in full retreat. The Americans pursued the retreating Germans, and by November 7th they had advanced to the heights outside of Sedan. Sedan was a city laden with political and emotional significance for the French, as it was the site of their humiliating defeat and capitulation to the Germans in 1870. The stage was now set for one of the most disgraceful episodes in Pershing’s career. The political significance of Sedan was such that Foch had assigned the city to a French army to capture. However, Pershing could not resist the urge to have American troops take the prize. Not only would it be a publicity coup, but it would be a calculated insult designed to punish the French for having had the temerity to question Pershing’s abilities as a general. Accordingly, Pershing ordered the American I and V Corps to advance on the city, without consulting Liggett. Instead of coordinating the advance, Summerall wanted the glory for himself and so ordered his V Corps to race pell-mell for Sedan, despite the fact that the I Corps was much closer to the objective. The result was chaos, as Summerall’s divisions advanced across the fronts of their neighbors in the I Corps. Friendly-fire incidents erupted all along the line, with the 1st Division alone suffering 500 casualties.972 Douglas MacArthur, a brigadier in the 42nd Division, was himself nearly killed by an American patrol from another division. Liggett was furious when he found out, and he brought the whole embarrassing episode to a screeching halt. MacArthur later wrote that the affair “narrowly missed being one of the great tragedies of American history.”973 The Armistice was only a few days away.

The Will to Win More than outmoded tactics contributed to the AEF’s heavy losses. Pershing selected his commanders, in part, on their willingness to drive men into battle without regard for the cost: “He wanted leaders who were willing to push men forward, knowing that war was a matter of will

971 Liggett, pg. 224 972 Rabalais, pg. 140 973 Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964), pg. 68 256

above all, and that victory, in all its appalling carnage, goes to the side with the last push[.]”974 Pershing began his officer purges on the grounds of age as an inhibitor to aggression. In a cable to the Army Chief of Staff and Secretary of War in June 1918 he declared, “Practically every Allied disaster has been due in large part to lack of aggressiveness on the part of old commanders who have failed to appreciate that eternal personal supervision has been necessary to success. The experience of the Civil War fully confirms this view.”975 This is a wonderfully revealing statement on Pershing’s part. First, it beggars belief to characterize Allied military failures as the result of a lack of aggression, especially the French 1914 offensives. Second, it demonstrates the U.S. Army’s lack of trust in subordinates, who are apparently in need of “eternal personal supervision.” Finally, Pershing plays the trump card of every American military debate, the Civil War. American will and vigor was also to be demonstrated through constant action against the enemy via sniping, bombardments and raids. Ralph Hayes, assistant to the Secretary of War, visited the front lines and boasted, “Even at the actual front one does not find the satisfaction of inertia; for so aggressive has been the patrol by the Americans of the area in front of their wire that more than once we found that territory had lost its classic name of No Man’s Land and was now simply named Yankeeland.”976 One veteran regimental commander was less sanguine than Hayes, noting of rookie American officers, “They took the stand that the enemy should be given no rest, with so much patrol activity, increased sniping and artillery harassing fire, they transformed many a theretofore quiet sector into a disquieted if not an active one. With the American fresh troops and the comparatively small sector held by them, they could afford to expend the manpower for these small affairs, which as a matter of fact had little bearing on the outcome of the war. The French, however, could not, after four years of losses and such a frontage to hold in some manner, afford to make the whole of their long front a disquieted one. They had to conserve their manpower for important, decisive operations. I agree with their point of view completely.”977 Perversely, as the AEF’s tactical shortcomings frustrated its efforts to make significant headway against German positions, particularly in the Meuse-Argonne, its commanders become ever-more frantic in their attempts to breakthrough. Failure to demonstrate adequate drive could

974 Johnson & Hillman Jr., pg. 138 975 Gen. John J. Pershing, “Cable P-1380-S: Views of General Pershing on Age and Fitness of Officers (June 27, 1918)” in A.E.F. Policy Documents (vol. 1) (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1949), pg. 486 (486- 87) 976 Hayes, pp. 147-48 977 Miles, pg. 271 257

lead to dismissal and the dreaded officer reclassification center at Blois (“blooyed” in army parlance).978 In order to save their commanders’ careers, densely-packed waves of American infantry were hurled against German machine guns with predictable results. Pershing, during the Meuse-Argonne, urged his commanders onward without heed to losses, repeatedly declaring that, “he would not tolerate any commander who could not find the will or skill to take machine gun nests by storm.”979 Allan Millett correctly observed, “Seldom did the First Army allow sufficient time, means, and maneuvering room for a corps commander to show much tactical skill. In such an environment, it did little good to argue with Pershing that a particular mission could not be accomplished.”980 Bullard, for example, relates a story of imposing his will to attack on the commander of the 80th Division. The unit had suffered terrible losses attempting to capture the Bois des Ogons, and the 80th’s commander, Maj. Gen. Cronkhite was reluctant to again hurl his skeletal battalions into the bloody wood. Bullard growled at him, “Give it up and you are a goner; you’ll lose your command in twenty-four hours.”981 This final attack was a success, and Bullard boasted that Cronkhite was promoted to corps commander as a result. It was left unsaid what reward the officers and men who actually stormed the Bois des Ogons received, if any. The will to win was also impressed upon soldiers by their officers, sometimes brutally so. Many officers were unwilling to accept the reality of combat fatigue and the psychological trauma of combat. As Edward Lengel observed of these psychologically debilitated doughboys, “Less understanding officers called them cowards and drove them back to the front, or – like [George S.] Patton, who claimed to have killed a frightened Doughboy with his shovel – physically abused or even killed them.”982 Preston Brown, commander of the 3rd Division, authorized throwing grenades into dugouts when frightened doughboys refused to come out and fight.983 Demonstrations of American will found their final expression in a series of pointless and bloody attacks launched in the hours just prior to the Armistice coming into effect. These senseless attacks led to a congressional investigation in 1920, as lawmakers demanded to know why Pershing had not ordered a halt to any attacks on that day. Fox Conner, Pershing’s chief of

978 Cooke, pp. 66-67 979 Millett, The General, pg. 410 980 Millett, The General, pg. 411 981 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 276 982 Lengel, To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918, pg. 192 983 Smythe, pg. 218 258

operations, calculated that 3,912 Americans were killed or wounded on November 11, 1918.984 A number of senior officers testified to the effect that the fighting continued because of the pressures placed on them directly from the micromanagers in Pershing’s headquarters at Chaumont. It was neither Liggett nor Bullard who urged such needless slaughter. Why did the field commanders not resist such immoral orders? General John Sherbourne of the 92nd Division, in his congressional testimony, put it bluntly: “Our army was run so that division and brigade and even corps commanders were piteous in their terror and fear of this all-pervading command by the General Staff which sat in Chaumont.”985 He further testified to the detached, technocratic culture of Pershing’s staff who were “so wrapped up in their professional studies that they entirely forgot the human side” of the war.986 Col. Conrad Babcock also testified, rhetorically demanding of the staff, “What did these useless killings and injuries mean to officers who had never commanded men in battle, whose entire war experience was a war on paper, where the expenditure in human life was necessary but with which they had no experience, no responsibility, and apparently little sympathy?”987 However eloquent, such appeals could not move a U.S. Army command culture predicated on the irrefutable logic of scientific progress.

The Perils of Constructive Criticism As the tragedies of the morning of the Armistice make clear, Pershing’s overweening command culture, a belief in the infallibility of America’s management culture, and a juvenile sense of nationalism, made any criticism of the AEF a perilous undertaking for any officer. For example, at Cantigny, the 1st Division suffered heavy casualties from gas, despite having completed a thorough training course in dealing with gas. The divisional commander, Robert L. Bullard, expressed concern about the utility of the British-supplied SBR gas masks, especially in comparison to the superior French ARS mask. He forwarded a letter, written by the commander of his 18th Infantry Regiment, Col. Frank Parker, calling for an official re-evaluation of gas masks. Before the letter even reached Pershing, the Gas Service wrote a scathing reply, which noted (falsely) that, “The British and American Respirators represent the best type of individual

984 Rabalais, pg. 140 985 Sherbourne in Rabalais, pg. 159 986 Ibid., pp. 159-60 987 Babcock in Rabalais, pg. 160 259

protective appliance that has been developed.”988 The Gas Service closed its hysterical defense by claiming that, “Any man who is responsible for statements which could be construed as a reflection on our gas defense measures or equipment now in use, and which could thus tend to destroy confidence or create dissatisfaction, is thus doing incalculable harm to the defense service and is rendering substantial aid to the enemy.”989 Given the scientific certainty of American management, questioning its decisions was tantamount to rendering aid to the enemy. It is difficult to imagine an organizational culture more resistant to critical self-analysis. Thankfully, the lower ranks of the AEF were insufficiently indoctrinated to succumb to such a stultifying culture. The reluctance to subject plans to constructive criticism manifested itself as inflexibility on the battlefield. Robert L. Bullard, in comparing the French and American approach to planning, noted that, “The French seemed entirely willing, at any time, to change an order or a plan for any little improvement. The Americans prefer, after once adopting a plan or giving an order, to follow it out even if it not be absolutely the best or the most convenient. This difference of habit and view seemed to me to continue to the very end of military operations in the war.”990 Changing plans according to changing circumstances implied a lack of omniscience on the part of the credentialed technocrats of the general staff. Such a notion simply ran counter to the positivism of the Progressive Era. The inability of the officer corps to accept criticism was hardly a wartime phenomenon. So great was the danger of retribution against an officer who spoke his mind that in 1913, the Army and Navy Register had to publicly reaffirm its commitment to keeping the identities of its contributors hidden, if they so requested. The paper wrote, “It is not difficult to imagine what would happen under the present administration of the War Department to an officer who undertook to say something which was regarded as in opposition to the departmental policy and yet there is no reason why such expressions of opinion, coming from officers of repute, should not be printed for what they are worth.”991 This was all the more remarkable given that the General Staff had been established for some time. Not only did the General Staff lack a historical section and a military information section, it did not even want to hear contrary opinions from its own. It is difficult to imagine a more depressing contrast to its German counterpart.

988 “Gas Service Weekly Summary of Information, May 8th, 1918”, from Cochrane, pg. 21 989 Ibid., pg. 21-22 990 Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of War, pg. 128 991 “The Virtues of Anonymity” in Army and Navy Register Vol. 53 No. 1698 (February 1, 1913), pg. 135 (134-35) 260

Of course, this attitude towards criticism was not just a matter of professional insecurity, but it was also a function of progressivism. The technocratic bias of progressive thought assumed a superior knowledge of a given subject by the expert technocrats. Accordingly, in the U.S. Army, the idea that a junior officer would have some knowledge that was superior to that of a commanding officer was, by definition, impossible. An example comes from Charles Summerall during his time as a corps commander near the end of the war. He instructed subordinate commanders to never ask for relief, as their superiors knew the situation of those units better than did the subordinates, and relief would be arranged accordingly. His message to his divisional commanders read, “Don’t ask for relief. Those in higher command are constantly considering the matter of relief. It is expected that the full measure of the organization’s strength will be demanded of it before it is pulled out. It must be so if we win. When you have reached the stage when the gains you are making do not justify the losses you are sustaining, you will be taken out.” 992 The command philosophy was that of a top-down culture, and woe to the subordinate who imagined that he knew something that his superiors did not. Worse still, Summerall’s statement meant that there would be no relief until after excessive and unnecessary losses were sustained. The subordinate commanders who were best able to judge the situation and prevent such losses before they were incurred had no power to do so. Relief would only come after the butcher’s bill was deemed excessive.

992 Summerall in Johnson & Hillman, pg. 122 261

Chapter 11: Conclusion

Introduction In February 1913, an art exhibit opened at the 69th Regiment Armory on New York City’s Lexington Avenue. The Armory Show, as it would be known, was organized by an upstart group of American artists and critics, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. It included over 1,300 works by three hundred artists, including , Gauguin, Kandinsky, and Seurat. Although a majority of the artists were European, the show did include a number of Americans, notably Edward , John Sloan and Robert Chanler. The Armory Show featured radical new forms of expression, such as Cubism and Fauvism, which shook the American art scene to its foundations. Indeed, the show sent shockwaves throughout American culture. Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase no.2 (1912) caused an exceptional furor, with its bold attempt to capture the complexity and fluidity of motion in a single image. Critics decried the works as the products of diseased and immoral minds; degenerate works from a degenerate culture. Even Theodore Roosevelt denounced the exhibition. Traditional American art, staid in its idealistic realism and simplistic love of nature, was irretrievably shattered. As David Noble observed, “Americans had a preview of the awful vision which would confront them in 1919, when so many were forced to doubt that history was indeed a progressive purge of the complex designed to bring man into harmony with the simple.”993 Europe, the backwards and decaying Old World, had unexpectedly shown the New World the future, and the discourse of America was ill-equipped to confront this complex and disturbing new reality. The following year, in August1914, Europe would again administer a massive epistemic shock to America. In this case, it would not be American artists who were afflicted, but American soldiers. In war-torn Europe, armies were radically redefining war at breakneck speed, recombining and reinventing men and machines in ways that were simply alien to the American military discourse. Machine guns, mortars and grenades rendered the once almighty rifle a mere personal defense weapon. Heavy field artillery, the ill-favored stepchild of the Gilded Age U.S. Army, was now the undisputed monarch of the battlefield. Cavalry, formerly the symbol of American military prowess, became a superfluous luxury from a by-gone era. Like the American art establishment, most of the U.S. Army’s leadership could only respond to this new reality with

993 Noble, pg. 130 262 frantic denial. As with the art of the Armory Show, if it could not be explained away as an aberration, it was often simply ignored. John J. Pershing and his staff would maintain the pretense of denial throughout the war, even if the AEF itself slowly adjusted to the undeniable reality of the battlefield. Here, too, the Old World had ushered the New World into a future that it could not fully accept. It is tempting to for a historian of the AEF to put much of the blame on Pershing himself. In his excellent study, The AEF & Coalition Warmaking, 1917-1918, David Trask describes Pershing’s tenure as AEF commander as follows, “Pershing’s stubborn self-righteousness, his unwillingness to correct initial misconceptions such as those that marred the doctrine and training of the AEF, and his stormy relationship with Allied military and civilian leaders hurt the AEF.”994 It is a indictment that cannot be easily dismissed. However, the shortcomings of the AEF were more than just a reflection of Pershing’s own inadequacy. They had more to do with the legacy of an American military discourse that had failure embedded within its own intellectual genome. The battlefield success of the AEF can be attributed largely to the fact that the pre-war military discourse was ultimately overwhelmed by the reality of the western front. Pershing’s greatest failing was that he fought so hard to maintain the delusions of the past in the face of an uncompromising present.

Overall Observations In the decades prior to the American entry into World War, the United States Army did a respectable job of building a military-intellectual complex capable of supporting the nation’s rise as a major military power. Despite its small size and meager budgets, the army developed a culture of lively debate through the service journals and the evolving system of service schools. However, the structure of the army’s internal discourse, shaped in no small part by the wider national culture, influenced the debate in such a way as to prevent the emergence of a truly effective response to military developments abroad. Visions of national superiority predicated on the rifle, progressive models of technocratic centralization, corporate management techniques, and mechanistic conceptions of warfare combined to form an intellectual straight-jacket on the U.S. Army. No matter how much information flowed in from abroad, change was limited as only fragments of that evidence were compatible with the American military discourse.

994 Trask, pg. 176 263

On the battlefield, the American military discourse found its primary mode of expression in doctrine. One might think of doctrine as the spirit that gives life to the body of military regulations and procedures. It is both a collection of ideas and an expression of institutional culture. In truth, doctrine is a concept honored more in theory than in fact.995 It seldom rises to the level of a true philosophy of battle. This is especially true of the pre-World War One period. It would be more accurate to say that 19th century military institutions issued rote procedures for engaging in battle, rather than providing theoretical and analytical tools (i.e. doctrine) for fighting and winning battles. This was very much the case with the U.S. Army in the decades prior to World War One. As the editors of the Infantry Journal noted in 1912, concerning the use of the term “doctrine” in a recent War Department document, “This is likely its first official appearance with us. It is almost a new term even within the military establishment itself.”996 The tactical doctrine employed by the untested American Expeditionary Forces was more a series of battlefield procedures than a coherent philosophy of how a battle should be conducted. It must be admitted that, to a certain degree, holding pre-World War One American military planners at fault for inadequate doctrine is a modern prejudice.997 Tactical doctrine is, by necessity, conditioned by a nation’s grand strategy, insofar as it represents the practical application of military resources on foreseeable battlefields. In this context, it is essential to acknowledge the fundamentally schizophrenic nature of grand strategy, particularly as it applies to the United States. Military planners, when considering grand strategy, must often consider two profoundly different types of potential enemies: those opponents who are the most dangerous, and those who are the most likely to be encountered. Reconciling these military antipodes is not easy, and Murphy’s Law never fails to punish even the most thoughtful of military planners. While the U.S. Army considered the major European powers as potential enemies in the pre-World War One period, their actual opponents tended to be a mixed bag. Fighting Native American raiders, Filipino guerillas and Mexican revolutionaries certainly honed individual fighting skills, but it did little to prepare the U.S. Army for the very painful experience of encountering the battle-hardened Deutsches Heer. In March of 1916 Scientific American

995 Rainey, pg. 91 996 Editorial Board, “Doctrine, Conception, and the History of War: in Infantry Journal Vol. 9 No. 2 (September- October 1912), pg. 257 (255-261) 997 “It would be unreasonable to expect the post-Civil War army to have arrived at what twentieth-century officers would have considered a body of tactical doctrine.” See Jamieson, pg. 20 264

confessed that. “The criticism directed of late years against our army has been that it has had no training or instruction to fit it to meet a disciplined army of a first-class power; that its only experience since the Civil War has been in the Indian fighting in the West and in the of the Philippines.”998 Yet, American military planners never fully accepted that they needed to prepare for a war with a first-class opponent. Delusions of national grandeur and positivistic infallibility protected them from admitting this failure. This failure on the part of the U.S. Army can be mitigated to a small degree by recalibrating our understanding of the tactical stalemate on the Western Front. To many informed observers of the time, the strategic impasse in France and Belgium was an aberration unique in military history, one which was unlikely ever to be repeated. According to this school of thought, the deadlock of the trenches was simply a product of massive armies, with entirely inadequate logistics, crammed into a very limited physical space. It was not immediately conceived as the inevitable outcome of modern weapons and outmoded tactics. Prior to World War One, large armies equipped with machine guns, repeating rifles and modern artillery maintained their operational fluidity and freedom of movement. American military planners were well aware of this fact, and they made it an article of doctrinal faith. Indeed, it cannot be denied that mobility eventually returned to the Western front in 1918, when the profusion of machine guns and artillery vastly exceeded that when stalemate first gripped the front in 1914-15. Nonetheless, enough information did make it through to U.S. Army planners to have prompted a serious re-evaluation of tactical doctrine. Yet, no such thing occurred. The products of the Root reforms, such as a general staff and War College, proved of little value. The lingering stranglehold of progressive thought has induced many scholars, such as Huntington and (more recently) J.P. Clark, to regard the Root reforms as a Promethean moment in American military history. Yet, rarely do such institutions rise above the temper of their times, and an institutionalized mediocrity has just as often been the result. Indeed, despite the establishment of a War College and General Staff, the U.S. Army’s ability to assimilate information and evolve arguably declined in the period 1903-1918. The dissolution of the Military Information Division, and the absence of a historical section, crippled the army’s analytical ability and left it hostage to the petty vanities of its internal discourse. These failures were not the result of “generational conflict” as Clark alleges,

998 “On the Trail of Villa: Our 2,000 Mile Mexican Border and Its Protection” in Scientific American (March 25, 1916), pg. 327 265

but were integral to the fabric of progressive thought and the American military discourse.999 In the context of the time, history served only to validate the present, and information on foreign armies was of little import given their perceived intrinsic inferiority to the American fighting man. Once the war began, many senior commanders, notably those in Pershing’s inner circle, went to great lengths to avoid re-appraising pre-war doctrine. The AEF high command arrived in France determined to resist Allied efforts to teach them how to fight in the new . Instead, the nationalistic imperative of creating an American way of war continued to blind many in the U.S. Army of the true import of the foreign military experience. Acknowledging the lessons learned by foreigners implied a failure on the part of Americans to have learned those lessons on their own. Accordingly, the vital lessons on firepower were interpreted and dismissed as manifestations of foreign inferiority. The degeneracy of the Old World was an assumption deeply embedded in the American cultural psyche, and precious few in the AEF military hierarchy could transcend it. American exceptionalism meant that the new rules of war simply did not apply. Even when doctrinal re-appraisals manifested themselves as de facto changes in doctrine, the military hierarchy continued to deny that the changes were anything but mere clarifications of pre-war assumptions. One of the most hilarious examples of this comes from The Field Artillery Journal. The field artillery had much to learn when it arrived in Europe, and it did so with considerable success. The lessons learned were written-up in new publications for distribution. However, when it became apparent to the men in the field that the new methods bore little resemblance to pre-war doctrine, The Department of Gunnery at the School for Field Artillery issued a strained denial: “A reading of publication No. 990 of the A. E. F., entitled ‘Artillery Firing,’ may give the reader the impression that the methods prescribed therein differ materially from those of our present drill regulations. A careful study of this book, however, and a thoughtful comparison of its provisions with those of the drill regulations will bring home the fact that there has been no change in the fundamental principles, and furthermore that such changes in details as the present war has brought about are only those which are logically indicated by the more deliberate nature of position warfare.”1000 The message was clear: The recent substantial changes in artillery doctrine demonstrate that American artillery doctrine required no changes. Whether

999 J.P. Clark, pg. 196 1000 The Department of Gunnery at the School for Field Artillery, “American Regulations and ‘Artillery Firing’” in The Field Artillery Journal Vol. 8 No. 3 (July-September 1918), pg. 364 266

such an attitude was conducive to organizational learning is questionable. The hard lessons of battle taught the men of the AEF the lessons that their generals would often not. As Mark Grotelueschen has so convincingly demonstrated, the lower ranks of the AEF were swift learners. The battlefield certainly left them little choice. However, learning those lessons so swiftly and brutally was not without negative side-effects. In contrast to the psychological exhaustion and war-weariness of the French, British, and Germans, the Americans became what one veteran termed “brittle.” Elton Mackin, a much-decorated Marine, later wrote: “Ours was not a real hardness. We were too young to be truly hard so soon. We did age fast, and functioned more or less well, depending on the individual and leadership of the moment. We became brittle, which differs from hardness by many degrees. We were not tempered, as good lasting material is tempered, by slow fire and learned hands. We were brittle with a brittleness that was to mark all the days of our remaining lives. We were too damned young and under fire too soon.”1001 In the years immediately following the war, the U.S. Army conducted an extensive review of its tactical doctrine. Hard-won battlefield experience was incorporated into the subsequent regulations, the Field Service Regulations of 1923. However, the committee (and others like it) nonetheless sought to vindicate Pershing’s emphasis on ‘open warfare’ tactics. The result accorded Pershing and his staff a degree of infallibility that would make any Roman pontiff green with envy. The real tactical lessons on tactical fluidity, the decisive application of firepower, and the innovative weapons and tactics of the German stosstruppen, were often sacrificed on the altar of the American way of war. As Kenneth Finlayson observed in his excellent history of inter-war U.S. doctrine, “The AEF’s brief, intense period of combat did not generate the wholesale changes in doctrine or organization that occurred in the European armies but, instead, served to reinforce the concept of the “American Way of War” brought to Europe by the AEF. The U.S. suffered from a case of “victor’s syndrome” that tended to ignore many of the difficulties that the AEF encountered and dwelt on the triumph of American arms. This attitude adversely affected the Army when it began to evaluate the combat experiences from the war.”1002 Likewise, as William Odom observed in his book, After the Trenches: “American battlefield victories and Germany’s relatively

1001 Mackin, pg. 39 1002 Kenneth Finlayson, An Uncertain Trumpet: The Evolution of U.S. Army Infantry Doctrine, 1919-1941 (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 2001), pg. 51 267

quick capitulation after the reintroduction of open warfare methods seemed to confirm the superiority of the so-called ‘American doctrine.’”1003 German machine guns, having been thoroughly smothered in American flesh, could no longer beg to differ. However, not all branches of the army were so self-satisfied. The cavalry, for example, found itself in a difficult situation after the war, despite having insisted upon its continuing relevance. An intellectual rear-guard action was fought by figures such as Major Guy Henry, long an influential figure in the formulation of doctrine, who declared emphatically, “The war has demonstrated that the American theories for the training and use of cavalry are thoroughly sound.”1004 Any shortcomings, he weakly suggested, were simply due to inadequate firepower, poor horsemanship, and indifferent shoeing. More extraordinary claims for cavalry were made by 1st Lt. A.J. Tittinger, who claimed that aerial reconnaissance and radio were only adjuncts that enhanced the power of cavalry, while tanks would only be useful in “the kind of warfare that the present war brought about, but which will hardly ever occur again.”1005 Few were so purblind. Col. George Cameron, Commandant of the Cavalry School at Ft. Riley, admitted, “The deficiencies of our military educational system, quite fully appreciated five years ago, were emphasized during the recent war.”1006 Cameron meant that although few cavalry units were deployed to France, many cavalry officers served in staff positions, where the narrow breadth of their military training proved a liability. Another cavalry officer simply confessed, “We have no doctrine of tactics.”1007

Lessons War is, in its essence, an aesthetic exercise as it is an expression of the cultures engaged therein.1008 It follows that the analytical framework employed by military historians must look beyond the institutional forms on the surface for the cultural substance that animates them. No

1003 William O. Odom, After the Trenches: The Transformation of U.S. Army Doctrine, 1918-1939 (College Station, TX, Texas A&M University Press, 1999), pg. 25 1004 Maj. Guy V. Henry, “Mobility” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 29 No. 119 (April 1920), pg. 23 1005 1st Lt. A.J. Tittinger, “The Future of Cavalry” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 29 No. 119 (April 1920), pg. 68 1006 Col. George H. Cameron, “The Cavalry School and Its New Functions” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 29 No. 119 (April 1920), pg. 10 1007 Maj. LeRoy Eltinge, “Review of Our Cavalry Situation” in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association Vol. 29 No. 119 (April 1920), pg. 14 1008 Victor Davis Hanson deserves great credit for reintroducing this fact to military historians, even if it required the eradication of all Germanic, Roman, and Judeo-Christian contributions to western civilization. 268

organizational schema is a pure product of “rational efficiency”, but rather it is primarily a cultural artifact that can plausibly law claim to such adjectives. However, as the AI model of culture reminds us, culture is not determinative, especially in the crucible of combat. It modifies human understanding, but also can itself be modified insofar as it represents a collective wisdom based on historical pattern-recognition. The supposed “mistakes” of belligerents over time are not so much failures of logic as they are a type of cultural cul-de-sac. They represent a complex blend of real-world efficacy and cultural preference. Germany’s historic habit of adopting tactical and operational solutions to strategic problems is a perfect example. The real-world efficacy of German tactical and operational acumen cannot be denied, but the German military discourse over- estimated their potential and so discounted more appropriate strategic and political options for ending the interminable conflict. Another lesson from this study is the value of observing conflicts from the perspective of third-parties. The meta-narrative of the Western front is that of Liddell Hart’s observation that the opposing armies were trapped in the grip of Hiram Maxim. This is demonstrably false, and it has led to many flawed interpretations of the war. The American experience prior to the war provides historians with a new set of eyes through which to evaluate the conflict. The armies of 1914 were not nearly as dominated by firepower as they would be in 1918. Comparatively few machine guns were deployed in 1914 (rarely more than a dozen per regiment), and heavy artillery had not yet come to dominate the battlefield. Rather, as the American observers correctly noted, it was the sheer size of the armies fighting in such a restricted place (and with over-burdened logistical systems) that was primarily responsible for the stalemate. In other words, it was a strategic oddity rather than a tactical inevitability. Many German, French and British commanders came to the same conclusion; hence, their reluctance to re-evaluate tactical doctrine during the first two years of the war. These men plausibly believed that the more fluid operations of would soon resume. Ultimately, they realized that only by seeking new solutions to the tactical deadlock could they achieve a strategic decision. The Germans and French realized their mistakes before anyone else, and they modified their tactics accordingly. The British quickly followed suit, but the Americans were inexcusably slow to adjust. For the U.S. Army, the military discourse, particularly the narrative of the American rifleman, was too ingrained to evaluate the situation in France objectively. The disdain for the Old World that was so integral to America’s sense of self made it all but impossible.

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American strategic thought was no less constrained by pre-war habits. As previously stated, there is great danger in failing to recognize the schizophrenic nature of grand strategy. A nation’s military must prepare for two entirely different types of conflict: wars against one’s most powerful potential opponents and wars against one’s most likely opponents. The training, weapons and tactics required for these different opponents correspondingly differ. The U.S. Army failed in this regard because it judged the success of its doctrine in victories against second- and third-rate opponents. It is not that U.S. Army planners failed to consider the possibility of war against major European powers, rather they failed to objectively evaluate their own capabilities in the event of such a conflict. In other words, the U.S. Army talked about fighting European powers in the event of an invasion, but it judged its own combat effectiveness based on its performance against Mexican revolutionaries and Filipino guerillas. Failures in strategic and tactical analysis were compounded by cultural change in the army. Since the late 19th century, business theory has exerted no small influence on the United States military. However, the limits of such influence have not always been recognized, and the analogical perils have been ignored. Business provides many valuable lessons on the mobilization of human and material resources for specific ends. That said, it must be acknowledged that the managerial ethos is not that of the warrior. For example, the abuse of manpower as undifferentiated cogs in the war machine led to poor small unit cohesion and unconscionably high psychological casualties during World War Two. Vietnam sounded the tocsin, but it is unclear that the lesson has been fully learned. Officers still glide from post to post, and school to school, gathering the necessary credentials like managers climbing the corporate ladder. The pursuit of academic credentials leaves little room for true intellectualism. Instead, only the worst fads from higher education take root, metastasizing in the military hierarchy like the cancers that they are. The politicized corporate culture of the military usually imposes a glass ceiling on promotion over the true war-fighters. Of course, modern war takes both managers and warriors, like a Scharnhorst and Blucher, and a happy medium is not easy to find. Nonetheless, the U.S. Army needs to take a serious look at its managerial culture and consider the degree to which it suffers as a warfighting organization. It is worth noting here that, despite adopting a technocratic management philosophy, one of the biggest failures of the U.S. Army prior to World War One was its understanding of technological change. The primacy of the rifle was assumed to be more permanent than it proved

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to be. As a rule of thumb, it is always wisest to gamble on those technologies with the most cost- effective marginal utility curve going forward. For example, in the late 20th century, the United States military profited handsomely from gambling on the rapidly-falling price of microprocessors. In the late 19th century, it should have been apparent that the marginal utility of artillery and machine guns would increase much faster than that of the rifle. Given the size and weight restrictions, advances in chemistry and metallurgy could be more easily realized in artillery and, to a lesser extent, in machine guns than in the rifle, with its severe weight restrictions. Instead, influenced by the myth of the American rifleman, and the linear vision of progress integral to progressivism, the U.S. Army failed to anticipate disruptive changes in relative lethality. No military institution fails without the connivance of the political establishment. It is certainly true that the United States Congress failed the army in denying it the resources it needed to stay in the forefront of military technology. However, it is equally clear that the U.S. Army returned the favor by failing to marshal its intellectual resources to rise above itself. Samuel Huntington claimed of congressional inaction during the Gilded Age, “The dark ages of military political influence were the golden ages of military professionalism.”1009 It is difficult to accept such a characterization based on the evidence. Certainly, the political establishment of this period was overwhelmingly inhabited by veterans of the Civil War. Additionally, during this period, the American professional soldier became far more interested in acquiring the trappings of a professional rather than the skills of the soldier. Service schools were duly organized to create a veneer of professional respectability. Their diplomas provided the barest of fig leaves to cover a frequently stultifying intellectual mediocrity. Victory has a thousand fathers, and World War One was no different. Success resulted in an orgy of self-congratulation by the U.S. Army that precluded any serious self-examination. The final issue for the U.S. Army, and the entire military establishment, going forward is the organizational philosophy itself. The modern U.S. Army was created in the Progressive Era, itself a reaction to the breakdown of the ancien régime in the transformational decades after the Civil War. Progressivism evolved into the organizational philosophy of a new ruling class. It called into being a new class of mandarins, educated in the same universities, to manage the affairs of both government and business. A technocratic trinity was born, comprising bureaucrats and managers, all trained by the same academicians. Their common intellectual culture facilitated co-

1009 Huntington, pg. 229 271

operating in the indistinct boundaries between government and business, as the growth of the regulatory state made government a part-owner of large corporations (and vice-versa). If the idea of human progress subsequently died in the trenches, the ruling philosophy lived on. After a century, it is starting to falter. The current ossification of the technocracy into an aristocracy, and the telecommunications revolution’s destruction of the old hierarchies of knowledge, are a potent recipe for radical change. Yet, the U.S. military still clings to the cargo cult of a managerial class bearing the imprimatur of advanced degrees as their tickets to professional success. The decrepit organizational philosophy of the U.S. Army is being further exposed by changes in information technology. The rapidly declining cost of communications and data storage is already changing the distribution of knowledge to the detriment of the technocrat. Naturally, the military has embraced these technologies, not for their intrinsic qualities, but as a means to prop- up the lie of the omniscient technocrat. Finally, it is generally acknowledged that artificial intelligence is likely to be the next technology with the most cost-effective marginal utility curve. The combination of new hierarchies of knowledge and the ability to enhance data processing through artificial intelligence argues for a return of that most intangible quality, the warrior spirit. Machines can do the work of bureaucratic managers, assisting the planning of logistics, and soldiers can return to the praxis of warfighting. Sometimes, the only way forward is to double- back and find a new path. Returning to the tragedy of the First World War, it is impossible not to bestow the laurels of victory upon the individual doughboy. Pershing and his senior commanders imagined the triumph to be their own. George C. Marshall and his fellow managers certainly took possession of the U.S. Army’s future on the basis of their expertise in planning and organization. The extent to which the doughboys triumphed on account of, or in spite of, the Regular officer corps was a question that would remain beyond the pale. It was one of Marshall’s anointed ones, Douglas MacArthur, who would use lethal force to drive the impoverished veterans of the Bonus Army from Washington, punishing the former doughboys for their presumption that they had somehow contributed to victory. Yet, it was truly their victory. Poorly trained and indifferently led, the doughboys of the AEF taught themselves the art of war, with the help of their marginalized allies and their unforgiving German tutors. What enabled them to do it was the extraordinarily high morale, born of naivete, and tempered by combat into a grim determination to succeed. Colonel Walter Whitman, commander of the 325th Regiment,

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asked his officers for some observations on the war shortly after it ended. One company commander wrote, “The military government of the United States has nothing to be proud of because of victories won on the Meuse-Argonne Front[.]” Rather, victory was “because of the courageous and unskilled heroic efforts displayed by her soldiers, and that her numerical strength was greater than the effective bullets of the enemy.”1010 Their courage reminded both their enemies and allies of the martial fervor of 1914. Ernst Jünger, a German infantry officer and winner of the Pour le Mérite, recorded in his diary a conversation he had with a fellow officer in July 1918: “Today as I stood in front of my hut and B. ended a long talk with these words – ‘The show is up. You can be sure of that. Now it is the Americans’ turn and they will go for it as we did in 1914’ – I had a peculiar feeling. I can say that without hesitation for the first time in the war the thought came to me without disguise, ‘Suppose then we lose the war…’”1011 Yet, the professional officers of the AEF never seemed to appreciate how fortunate they were to have such enthusiastic amateurs under their command. They did not hesitate to take credit for the doughboys’ successes. Nor did they neglect the opportunity to blame the men for their commanders’ failures. Marine veteran Elton Mackin provides a suitable epitaph in recalling the case of a battalion runner who was unable to make his way through an intense German artillery barrage to deliver a message. Innocently, the young man returned to his commander to report his failure. Mackin described what happened next: The professional soldier glowered in anger, analyzing, seeming ready to burst in hot denunciation. He damned the runner silently, with eyes full of hot contempt, listening. He didn’t see an honest, eager, guilty lad who spoke in full confession. He didn’t hear the boy make explanation, plaintively, about the shells that barred the way with death.

The boy, frightened now, was talking against a form of hostile flesh that measured judgement, talking against cold, beastly eyes that wouldn’t understand.

The officer’s pistol came out with smooth sweep of hand and arm that bespoke a lifetime of practice; easily, like an uncoiling snake, to center for an instant on a lad too young for war.

Little crosses stand above the dead. They do not tell of how men died, they hide the bitter human stories of the war.1012

1010 Capt. Bozier Castle in Lengel, To Conquer Hell, pg. 373 1011 Jünger, pp. 171-72 1012 Mackin, pp. 99-100 273

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