The Illusion of Victory (30 page)

With Republicans cheering from the sidelines, Chamberlain rose in the Senate to spend three hours defending his proposals and his record as a supporter of the president. Accusing him of being a traitor to the party was “the unkindest cut,” the senator cried, rehearsing the number of times he had helped rescue Wilson from legislative defeat. Chamberlain did not quite call Wilson a liar in return but he came close. He said the president was so busy, he did not have time to “ascertain the truth” about the collapsing war effort. The senator read into the record heart-wrenching letters from mothers and fathers whose sons had died in the army’s freezing, unsanitary camps, and did his utmost to portray Secretary of War Baker as a national menace.
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Baker demanded the right to appear before Chamberlain’s Military Affairs Committee to refute the senator’s charges. He had already made one appearance, in which he had displayed a flippant, rather dismissive condescension that many people found irritating. This time Baker was more solemn, but no less intransigent. He spent most of his time refuting the more sensational charges against the War Department, insisted most of the others were exaggerated, and blamed some problems on the unexpected freezing temperatures. He demonstrated his skill in political combat by noting that the sites of several army camps with the worst health problems had been chosen by General Leonard Wood.
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As for the number of men in France, Baker declared that the numbers were far from the “trickle” Chamberlain and the Republicans claimed. The U.S. had “five times as many” troops overseas as they had originally planned to send by this time. This was equivocation with a capital E—originally Wilson and Baker did not plan to send any men and then had consented to Pershing’s token division. Only when military defeat stared them in the face did the numbers suddenly change.
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Democratic newspapers, desperate for something good to say about the administration, heaped praise on Baker’s performance. Behind the scenes, Wilson readied a counterattack that revealed his taste for political brinkmanship. He sent the Senate a bill that gave him the power to reorganize the entire government; he wanted to be able to create, merge or abolish agencies and bureaus without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, and generally operate as the autocrat to end all autocrats.

One senator said the bill would make Wilson a king; all he needed to do was claim to rule by divine right and he and the kaiser would be twins. Senator Hitchcock seized on the image and, in a bitter speech, arraigned Wilson for remaining secluded in the White House, surrounded by a band of flatterers and favorites like witless Louis XVI of France.

Although Congress eventually gave the president the power he demanded (which he barely used), the net effect of this barrage of abuse was a distinct slump in Democratic Party morale. Colonel House confided to his diary the fear that both Wilson and Secretary Baker were out of touch with what the country was thinking about the war and the way the United States was fighting it. Philip Dru’s creator expressed regret that the president did not consult him on domestic politics. He had consented to the arrangement, because foreign affairs was his bailiwick of choice. But the Garfield coal order mess had made him decide that it was time to give Wilson a helping domestic hand “whether he asks for it or not.”
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In an astonishing display of his unofficial power, House summoned Secretary of War Newton Baker to his New York City residence for a long conference on Sunday, January 20, 1918. Baker spent several hours with the colonel, discussing the administration’s numerous critics. The meeting did not go well. Baker coolly defended the War Department’s performance, leaving House more than a little nonplused.
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Probably the most important political result of this contretemps was the emergence of Theodore Roosevelt as the untitled but acknowledged leader of the Republican Party. Before leaving the capital for his home in Oyster Bay, TR gave a speech at the National Press Club that heaped scorn on the “college professor” in the White House. Roosevelt’s daughter Alice and congressman husband, Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, gave him a farewell dinner at their Washington home at which the Old Guard mingled with Republican progressives in a not-so-subtle tribute to the party’s new unity.
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The winter of 1917–1918 was as severe in France as it was in the United States—and it found the four American divisions in Lorraine unprepared for the harsh conditions. Still in summer uniforms, the men shivered in unheated barns and attics of farmhouses as the temperature sank to seven below zero. Some soldiers started calling it their Valley Forge winter. They were baffled—and sometimes angry—by the way their country had seemingly abandoned them. Stirred by a letter from his son Archie reporting that his company had worn out its shoes and had no replacements, the former president shipped the doughboys 200 pairs, paid for out of his own pocket.
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One division had only two trucks to distribute supplies in the fifty square miles across which its men were scattered. They tried to buy horses from local farmers; to a man they refused, making the Americans less than enthusiastic about fighting to save them from the kaiser. French disillusion with the war was all too visible. “A strong feeling of ‘Oh what’s the use?’ was spreading . . . throughout France,” wrote one perceptive American officer.
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Even more troubling was the number of Americans who returned from their training forays to the front convinced that no one was ever going to break through the enemy’s fortified trenches. Even General Robert Lee Bullard, the new commander of the First Division, confided to his journal: “We cannot beat Germany. She has beaten Russia . . . she is now beating Italy.” On December 13, 1917, Pershing was forced to issue a strenuous letter denouncing the “deep pessimism” pervading his embryo army. Any officer caught saying the war was already lost would be relieved instantly as unfit for command.
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By this time Pershing had seen quite a lot of the Western Front. He had also watched Americans training under French instructors. He decided the French (and the British) would never break the prevailing deadlock. Their tactics practically ignored the rifle and bayonet. The grenade and the entrenching tool were the weapons of choice. He was appalled by the way the poilus dug foxholes and trenches, almost by reflex, the moment they stopped advancing. Only the Americans could change the situation by restoring the rifle to preeminence and using the “fire and movement” tactics preached by generations of West Point military thinkers, to create “open warfare.”

When Pershing tried to explain these ideas to a group of American reporters, an Associate Press correspondent asked him if he realized it sounded arrogant to announce he had a recipe for victory without having fought a battle. Pershing glared at the man and snapped,“Of course the Western Front can be broken. What are we here for?”

The newsmen took an acute dislike to Pershing, which the general cordially reciprocated. When a brash young United Press correspondent named Westbrook Pegler showed up at the AEF’s Chaumont headquarters, he talked his way into Pershing’s office and breezily announced,“I’m Pegler of the United Press. Can you give me a statement on the general situation?”

“Pegler,” Pershing growled,“get the hell out of my office.”
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Journalist Heywood Broun, who followed Pershing around France for a while, was bewildered by the general’s appetite for details. He climbed into haylofts and discussed onions with cooks to make sure that the men were being billeted in reasonable health and comfort. He also sternly insisted on West Point basics—crisp salutes, shined shoes and fresh uniforms.

Broun mocked Pershing’s assumption that he could “read a man’s soul through his boots or his buttons.” He found a junior officer who thought Pershing’s favorite biblical figure was Joshua “because he made the sun and moon stand at attention.” Like many people, Broun noted Pershing made little attempt to win his men’s affection.“No one will ever call him Papa Pershing,” Broun wrote. Pershing’s staff was outraged and wordily rebutted this latter charge. They also urged Pershing to kick Broun out of France. Pershing canceled the rebuttal, but Broun was soon on a New York–bound ship.
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In a way, Pershing had to believe in his vision of open warfare. Without it he might have lost control of his army. French and British disappointment with America’s failure to join the fighting continued to grow. As 1918 began, Pershing’s four divisions looked more and more pathetic as a serious army. A disgusted British journalist told an AEF intelligence office, “After eight months . . . you haven’t really fired a damned shot!” An exasperated Pershing told his military censor, Major Frederick Palmer, he feared the worst.“Look at what is expected of us and what we have to start with! No army ready and no ships to bring over an army if we had one.”
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With Russia out of the war and the failure of Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s Passchendaele offensive, the desperate British and French decided their only hope of victory was changing Pershing’s mind about amalgamating American troops into their armies. In a few months, the Germans would be able to marshal 250 divisions on the Western Front. To meet them, the Allies would be able to muster only 93 French and 54 British divisions, mostly understrength and composed of war-weary soldiers who had lost all confidence in victory.

David Lloyd George, who was totally disgusted with Field Marshal Haig but did not have the nerve to fire him, because he feared a backlash from Lord Northcliffe and his fellow conservatives, began the new amalgamation campaign with an urgent cable to Colonel House in Washington. The prime minister warned that the situation on the Western Front was about to become “exceedingly serious.” the British cabinet wanted “an immediate decision” on putting regiments or companies of American troops into British units. Otherwise, England might be on the receiving end of the “knockout blow” the prime minister had repeatedly said he was determined to give Germany.
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House, Wilson and Secretary of War Baker wavered toward surrender. They only wondered if the situation was as critical as Lloyd George claimed. Baker cabled Pershing that they would depend on his judgment—though they regarded “loss of identity of our forces” as secondary to meet
ing the emergency that seemed to be developing. Pershing promptly replied:“Do not think emergency exists that would warrant putting companies or battalions into British or French divisions.”
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Thus did John J. Pershing of Laclede, Missouri, pit his judgment against the combined opinions of the commanders of the French and British armies, the prime minister of England, the premier of France, and their cabinets. Further complicating his woes was the appointment of Major General Tasker Bliss as the U.S. military adviser to the newly formed Allied Supreme War Council. Although they were ostensibly friends, Pershing’s opinion of Bliss was low. He had never seen action. His entire career had been in staff and administrative jobs.

Meanwhile, Pershing found himself confronting the former chief of the British imperial staff, General William “Wully” Robertson. As part of Lloyd George’s attempt to get Field Marshal Haig’s appetite for slaughter under control, the prime minister had transferred Robertson to the Supreme War Council in Paris. There he approached Pershing with a proposition that might be called “partial amalgamation.” Robertson wanted to bring 150 American battalions (150,000 men) to France immediately for insertion into depleted British regiments. They would be taken from divisions that had only begun training in the United States and were not slated to arrive overseas until 1919.

Pershing wavered, though he wondered where and how the British had suddenly found the ships to transport these men. In the previous amalgamation go-round, London said if the Americans insisted on transporting full divisions, they would have to find their own shipping—the British merchant marine could not handle the job. In mid-January 1918, Pershing cabled a cautious approval of Robertson’s proposal. But he insisted it should be a “temporary measure” that would not interfere with American plans to ship enough divisions to create an independent army.

Getting tougher by the minute, Pershing demanded that Robertson give him a frank statement of Britain’s current military manpower. Pershing had picked up rumors that Lloyd George was holding large numbers of men in England to restrain Field Marshal Haig from another futile offensive.

Robertson blustered and essentially told Pershing nothing. In fact, there were a staggering 1.5 million Tommies in England at this time, either trained or in training. The British also had another 1.2 million men fighting in other theaters to protect their empire.

Meanwhile, the British worked overtime on General Bliss when he arrived in London. Lloyd George orated on the desperate need for these 150,000 men; he was followed by three other prominent British politicians who said the same thing in less dramatic tones. General Robertson chimed in, soldier to soldier. Obviously, the British saw this concession as a very large foot in the door that would enable them to lay their hands on hundreds of thousands more Americans for Haig’s mincemeat machine.“They all seem to be badly rattled,” Bliss reported to Washington.“They want men and they want them quickly.” Actually, it was Bliss who was rattled.
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Robertson followed Bliss to Paris to cement the deal. There they found a different Pershing. He had been talking to the French, who had no desire to see the British get away with kidnapping the American army. They pooh-poohed the British claim of imminent outnumbering and said the Germans could not muster 250 divisions on the Western Front. A more probable figure was 190. Nor would the new arrivals be first-class troops. The Germans had been skimming the best soldiers from the Eastern Front for years. The shipping shortage was another British mirage. Thanks to the addition of the American navy, the Allies had enough warships to launch a convoy system, which was sharply curtailing losses to the Uboats.