America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (21 page)

The United States had but 237 flyers killed in combat (one of the dead was Quentin Roosevelt, youngest son of Theodore Roosevelt). The number is relatively small, reflecting the limited time the AEF spent at the front. Nonetheless, America’s Army Air Service performed extremely well. Its pursuit pilots accounted for the destruction of 781 enemy aircraft, losing 289. As the United States produced no combat planes of its own, American pilots flew machines designed and built in Britain and France. The latter included both the Nieuport 17 and the SPAD XIII, two aircraft the Americans used to good advantage.

Frank Luke was one of these pilots. He flew the SPAD XIII, a fine machine that by war’s end equipped most U.S. Air Service units. SPAD was the acronym for the French company that produced the airplane:
Societe Pour L’Aviation et ses Derives
. From Arizona, Luke destroyed eighteen enemy machines. In September 1918 he was shot down by ground fire. His SPAD crashed in enemy territory. Wounded, but still very much alive, Frank Luke drew his pistol and fired at the Germans. They fired back and killed him. Today, Luke Air Force Base in Arizona honors his fighting spirit.

Several of the enemy machines Frank Luke destroyed were observation balloons. Tethered to the ground, these reached heights of up to five thousand feet. With a crew, usually two men, balloons were employed by both sides to monitor the enemy’s whereabouts. Filled with gas, often hydrogen, balloons were frequent targets of pursuit planes. But they were not easy to bring down. At their base were numerous antiaircraft guns just waiting for enemy aircraft to appear. This made attacking observation balloons a hazardous venture. Manning them also was dangerous. When struck by incendiary bullets, the balloons burst into flames, creating a spectacular fireball. However, unlike pursuit pilots, balloon crews were issued parachutes. The crew’s challenge was to jump neither too soon nor too late.

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Observation balloons were in full use when British, French, and American armies began the great offensive that, at last, would bring about the end of the war. Many in leadership positions in both France and Britain thought the war would continue well into 1919. Not Foch. He believed that a massive attack across the entire Western Front in September would crush the German army. After all, he reasoned, the Allies outmatched their enemy in soldiers, supplies, tanks, and aircraft. Accordingly, the Supreme Commander drew up a plan of battle that was complex in detail yet simple in concept: the British (and the Belgians) would strike in the north, and the French would advance in the middle, while the Americans would attack in the south, in the area known as the Meuse-Argonne. With characteristic energy, Ferdinand Foch proclaimed,
“Tout le monde a la bataille.”

The Meuse is a major river, 575 miles long, that flows from northeastern France through Verdun into Belgium and Holland, eventually draining into the North Sea. The Argonne is a region of France, much of it heavily wooded, east of Paris, through which the Meuse flows. In 1918, the area was well fortified by the German army.

The assault by Pershing’s army began on September 26 with an artillery barrage purposefully kept brief in order to maintain surprise (one of the artillery batteries was captained by a young officer from Missouri by the name of Harry S. Truman). Nineteen divisions took part, six of them French. That meant that Black Jack commanded more than 1.2 million soldiers. The campaign lasted forty-seven days and was hard fought. One German officer wrote, “The Americans are here. We can kill them but not stop them.” Throughout the battle the AEF’s inexperience showed. At times supplies ran short and tactics were flawed. Transportation was chaotic. Yet Pershing drove his men forward, relieving commanders he considered insufficiently aggressive. Many Americans fought tenaciously. A few did not. Among the former were the Black Rattlers of the 369th Infantry Regiment, an African-American unit previously mentioned. When the American attack stalled, Foch proposed to insert additional French troops into the sector and turn overall command over to a French general. Pershing refused and simply continued the assault. By early November, his troops had thrown the Germans back. In the process the AEF had inflicted some one hundred thousand casualties on the enemy and taken twenty-six thousand prisoners. American historian Edward G. Lengel says that the French army could not have done what the Americans accomplished.

Lengel also says that the British army could have and would have done so with fewer casualties, for the losses of the American army at the Meuse-Argonne were high. The American dead numbered 26,277. The number of American wounded totaled 95,923. Writes Lengel in his 2008 book on the Meuse-Argonne campaign, “Many doughboys died unnecessarily because of foolishly brave officers who led their men head-on against enemy machine guns.” Casualties aside, the Americans clearly had gained a victory. Pershing’s men had battled a German army and won.

However, one noted British military historian calls the Meuse-Argonne campaign unnecessary. In his book on World War I, H. P. Willmott writes that the battle should not have been fought at all. Why? Because to the north, British armies had breached the Hindenburg Line.

As did Foch, Sir Douglas believed the war need not continue into 1919. He thought a strong Allied push in September and October would bring the war to a successful conclusion. By then Haig commanded five field armies. Together they represented the most capable military force in the world.

On September 27 the British attacked. The assault began with a huge artillery barrage, with one gun for every three yards of territory to be attacked. Thirty-three divisions took part, two of them American. The British forces smashed into their German opponents, delivering a blow from which their enemy could not recover.

For Ludendorff and Hindenburg, September brought additional bad news. As American, French, and British troops gained success on the Western Front, an Allied army composed of British, French, and Serbian soldiers, all under the command of French general Franchet d’Esperey, advanced from Salonika in Greece into Serbia and Bulgaria. The latter was an important ally of Germany. It was a land bridge to the Ottomans and gave Germany a position of strength in the Balkans. The Allied army met with such success that Bulgaria withdrew from the war.

The Ottoman Empire too was in trouble. In Palestine, British forces were defeating the Turks, while along the southern Alps, the Italians at long last were gaining ground against the Austrians.

Everywhere Ludendorff and Hindenburg looked they saw defeat. Inside Germany the news was equally grim. In cities across the country shortages of coal, soap, and food caused ordinary Germans to be cold, dirty, and hungry. In Berlin, such shortages and the lack of military success brought about rioting in the streets. In fact, the German Imperial State was disintegrating. Both political moderates and right-wingers feared a Bolshevik-style revolution. In Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, German admirals ordered the High Seas Fleet to sortie for one last glorious battle, but its sailors said they’d rather not and mutinied. The navy thus imploded, while the army high command concluded that the war could not be won. On October 1 Ludendorff told the German foreign minister to seek an immediate armistice. Days later Hindenburg conveyed a note to the new chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, that called the situation acute. Earlier, on September 29, the two generals, the most senior in the army, had told the kaiser the fighting had to stop.

There followed an attempt by the German government to seek an armistice through the good offices of America’s president. Prince Max and others assumed that Germany could secure a better deal were the terms first worked out with the Americans. After all, in January 1918, in a speech to Congress, Wilson—a true idealist—had outlined fourteen points that he thought should serve as the basis for constructing the postwar world. However, Wilson’s response surprised the Germans. Angered by the harm he believed German militarism had inflicted on the world and by Germany’s continuation of unrestricted submarine warfare, Wilson held firm. His terms were tough. Among them was the requirement that the kaiser had to go. Regarding an end to the fighting, President Wilson told the Germans to speak with Foch.

In early November, with the concurrence of the kaiser’s army, Prince Max sent emissaries to the Allied Supreme Commander. They were to discuss terms for an armistice.

An armistice is an agreement between opposing military forces to stop shooting at each other. Initiated by field commanders, it is not a treaty, nor does it officially bring an end to hostilities. In the case of the First World War, the conflict would conclude only in 1919 at Versailles, when the governments involved negotiated formal treaties of peace.

After seeing 1.4 million of his countrymen die in battle, a battle for which he believed Germany was responsible, Ferdinand Foch was in no mood to negotiate. Meeting in a railroad car in the woods near Compiègne, the Supreme Commander dictated the terms of the armistice to the German representatives. Not surprisingly, they were severe. In effect, they amounted to a surrender on the part of Germany.

The terms Foch set forth at Compiègne mandated:

• the withdrawal of all German troops from France and Belgium
  
• the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France
  
• the transfer to the Allies of large amounts of military equipment
  
• the internment of the German navy in British ports
  
• the absence of German forces in German lands west of the Rhine
  
• the repudiation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
  
• the payment of reparations to make good on Allied losses
  

The emissaries had no choice but to accept. Early in the morning of November 11, having first checked with Prince Max and Hindenburg, Germany’s representatives signed the document. The armistice was to take effect later that morning. The day before, the kaiser had left for the Netherlands.

And so, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent. The killing stopped and the bloody battles of the Great War were consigned to history.

Around the world, but especially in Europe, more than a few people prayed that never again would such a conflict take place.

What caused the First World War?

Clearly, the assassination of the Austrian archduke in June 1914 did not cause the war. It simply set in motion a sequence of events that, given the failure of diplomacy, resulted in European nations declaring war on one another.

The actual causes of the Great War are complex, multiple, and interrelated. They include economic competition and African colonialism, naval ambitions and military alliances, plus extreme national pride and historical animosities. Add to this explosive mix ignorance and fear and the consequences become deadly.

Yet despite this volatility, it is worth noting that Great Britain did not strike the first blow. Nor did France, however anxious the latter was to recover Alsace and Lorraine. Moreover, the Austrian-Hungarian decision to invade Serbia need not have produced a wider conflict, since most European leaders accepted the Hapsburg’s need to respond to Franz Ferdinand’s murder. There had been localized Balkan wars before, and one more need not have caused Europe to erupt. That leaves Russia and Germany, two nations with little love for each other. Historians see Russia’s decision to mobilize its military as a decisive step. Once the tsar called up his army, Germany went to war.

In 1914, Germany was a rising industrial power, eager to gain a larger and more respected role in the world. It also was a nation in which the army wielded considerable political influence. The Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II was a nation comfortable with the idea of war, which it viewed as an appropriate means by which to conduct foreign policy. To most Germans, Russia constituted a threat to German culture and the country’s economic prosperity. So when the tsar called up his troops, Germany took action. Germany did not cause the First World War, but its troops were the first to strike.

How many men died in battle during the First World War?

World War I was an
extremely bloody affair
. Battle deaths, by nation (excluding the United States), are shown below. The list is taken from one of the better books on the conflict, entitled
World War I
and written by H. P. Willmott. Other authors cite similar though not identical numbers.

Russia—
1,800,000

France—
1,390,000

British Empire—
900,000

Italy—
460,000

Germany—
1,040,000

Austria-Hungary—
1,020,000

Turkey—
240,000

Bulgaria—
80,000

These numbers total 6,930,000. Add to this total the number of deaths sustained by Belgium, Serbia, and Romania and the number exceeds eight million. Even this figure may be low. Civilian deaths also were high. At least seven million nonmilitary men and women lost their lives as a result of the war.

Casualty figures for the United States reflect its army’s late arrival in France and its limited combat role. American battle deaths number 50,280. Fifty thousand dead soldiers is not an insignificant loss. Today, eight U.S. military cemeteries in Europe attest to the sacrifices made by the American Expeditionary Force. Yet, relative to the losses sustained by other nations, the number is quite small.

Pershing’s army also had some 205,000 men wounded. This number too is small in comparison to what Britain, Germany, and the others sustained. France, for example, saw 4.3 million of its soldiers in need of medical attention.

Perhaps surprisingly, the First World War was not the most deadly event of the early twentieth century. That dubious distinction belongs to the flu pandemic that struck in 1918 and 1919. Worldwide, the flu took the lives of twenty-one million people and possibly more.

Why did so many men die in the First World War?

The war was a bloodbath because two weapons widely employed were particularly lethal. The machine gun and the cannon were extremely effective at killing soldiers. Machine guns cut down waves of advancing men, while artillery fire, delivered in vast quantities, became highly accurate. It was the latter that caused the greatest loss of life. In his memoirs, written in Sweden shortly after the war, Hindenburg wrote that his army’s most dangerous opponent was French artillery.