‘It was therefore somewhat of a surprise.’
General John J. Pershing, American Commander-in-Chief
AT HIS CHAUMONT headquarters that morning, General John Pershing received a shock. As far as Black Jack was concerned, all American troops had been withdrawn from the Hamel operation, as per his order of 3 July. ‘It was therefore somewhat of a surprise to learn on the following day,’ Pershing would later say, ‘that four companies of the 33rd Division had taken part in the attack.’190
Who informed the American commander-in-chief of this is not clear, but an enraged Pershing immediately demanded an explanation from General Read of his II Corps. In response, Read stuck to the story given to him by Lawrence of British GHQ – that Field-Marshal Haig could not be reached in time to order the withdrawal of the last four companies. As far as Pershing was concerned, this didn’t cut it. He had given an order to American officers, and he expected those American officers to move heaven and earth to carry out those orders, irrespective of what the British said.
General Pershing would never forgive the British for deceiving him over the Hamel affair. When he later wrote his memoirs he would make scant mention of the Battle of Hamel, and certainly didn’t refer to it by name. Instead, he passed it off as an ‘incident’, and a minor one at that. ‘The incident,’ he wrote, ‘though relatively unimportant in itself, showed clearly the disposition of the British to assume control of our units, the very thing I had made such strong efforts and had imposed so many conditions to prevent. Its immediate effect was to cause me to make instructions so positive that nothing of the kind could occur again.’191
Pershing would also make sure that official AEF accounts only referred to the operation as a ‘local engagement’, not as a battle. To have given any greater importance to it would have required Pershing to admit that the first American offensive action of World War One was under Australian command and as part of a British army. The Hamel affair would strain relations between Pershing and Field-Marshal Haig, and caused Pershing to immediately demand the return to his command of his 33rd Division and four other American divisions currently training with the British Army, to become part of the American First Army he was trying to create. Haig would continue to drag his feet.
Meanwhile, on the morning of 4 July, word passed from General Read to General Bell of the 33rd Division, and from Bell to Brigadier-General Paul A. Wolf, commander of the 66th Brigade, who was the direct superior of Colonel Sanborn and Colonel Davis of the 131st and 132nd Infantry Regiments, that General Pershing wanted blood. Sanborn and Davis were sent orders to withdraw the last four companies from the front at once and march them to 66th Brigade HQ.
But the 131st and 132nd weren’t going anywhere. Still very much involved in the consolidation of the Hamel salient gains, and preparing to fight off an expected German counter attack, their four companies had more fighting, and dying, to do.