Over there, over there
Send the word, send the word over there
That the Yanks are coming
The Yanks are coming
—“Over There” by George M. Cohan, 1917
In March 1917, the German army in northern France retreated a short distance to newly prepared fortifications known as the Hindenburg Line. This was designed to shore up its defenses in preparation for the American entry into the war. Germany planned a defensive strategy on the Western Front while its U-boats sank British vessels and its army knocked Russia out of the war. As the United States marshaled its forces, the Allies teetered on collapse.
The German resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare that winter was brutal. In its first three months, U-boats sunk 470 oceangoing vessels. By fall 1917, they had sunk 4.25 million tons of Allied shipping, most of it British. One in four British ships was being sent to the bottom of the sea. The Germans were sinking shipping faster than the Allies could build it, though American shipyards were now churning out vessels. Compounding this was the fact that most of the Allies were near bankruptcy, propped up only by American financing.1
It was the crisis of spring 1917 that compelled President Wilson to dispatch a small force with General John Pershing to France to shore up Allied morale. Few in France had heard of Pershing. That would not matter for long once he arrived on the continent in June 1917. The French were thrilled, and huge crowds gathered for the general. Chicago Tribune journalist Floyd Gibbons quipped, “Paris took Pershing by storm.” The American presence had greatly boosted French morale, even if American doughboys would not be ready for combat for another year.2
James Harbord, a marine officer who accompanied Pershing, recorded the general’s impression on the French in his diary: “General Pershing certainly looks his part since he came here. He is a fine figure of a man; carries himself well, holds himself on every occasion with proper dignity; is easy in manner, knows how to enter a crowded room, and is fast developing into a world figure. He has captured the fickle Paris crowd at any rate, and could be elected King of France to-morrow if it depended on Paris.”3
Shortly after arriving in France, Pershing prescribed the Sam Browne belt for officers, a leather belt that passed over the right shoulder and attached to a waist belt. It was a way to distinguish officers from enlisted men without being ostentatious.
Never before had the U.S. sent an army overseas. Pershing knew that the American army would not be ready for combat until spring 1918 at the earliest. The Allies would have to wait a year before the American presence began to be felt on the battlefield. He realized that the American Expeditionary Forces he was to command was merely a “theoretical army,” as he called it. The country still faced the massive task of creating a modern army, training and equipping it, transporting it overseas—and only then could Pershing lead it into battle. At the same time, he would also play coalition partner and diplomat to keep the Allies from co-opting the American army and amalgamating it into their own forces. The British and French were eager to enlist Americans directly into their decimated armies, but Pershing declined to be a “recruiting agency” for the Allies, as he called it. He fought hard to preserve an autonomous American army that would be responsible for a sector of the front—a battle he would fight for much of the war.4
Likewise, President Wilson wanted the AEF to remain independent. An independent American command, if it could sway the cause to victory, would earn Wilson a prominent place at the peace table. Edward House seconded Pershing’s policy of not intermixing American forces with Allied units. “If once we merge with them we will probably never emerge,” he reported to the president.5
Pershing had his orders from Secretary of War Newton Baker: “The underlying idea must be kept in view that the forces of the United States are a separate and distinct component of the combined forces, the identity of which must be preserved.” Pershing had latitude in an emergency to reinforce the Allies with American troops, but he was to do everything possible to keep the American army independent.6
At Christmas 1917, Secretary of War Baker relayed to Pershing the president’s belief that, should Allied forces be in desperate straits, American forces could be dispatched to various points on the front to support them. “We do not desire loss of identity of our forces but regard that as secondary to the meeting of any critical situation by the most helpful use possible of the troops at your command,” Baker wrote. Pershing would retain command of the troops and would coordinate their deployment with the Allies. The secretary reminded him that he was authorized “to act with entire freedom to accomplish the main purposes in mind.”7
President Wilson would never allow the U.S. to become one of the Allies—it simply declared war against Germany without signing an alliance treaty with England and France—and he always referred to American’s allies during the war as “associates.” It was a legalistic term. Wilson pushed back against Herbert Hoover, showing how he sensitive he was toward the question. “I have noticed on one or two of the posters of the Food Administration the words ‘Our Allies.’ I would be very much obliged if you would issue instructions that ‘Our Associates in the War’ is to be substituted,” Wilson wrote. Wilson was taking a principled stance that the U.S. was not part of any formal alliance. Although conceptually true, the Allies were de facto America’s allies, and the British and French would have been insulted if they were only considered associates.8
Pershing had capable staff organizing the mostly raw recruits of the 1st Division, including thirty-seven-year old Captain George Marshall. Marshall, who had graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1901, was assigned as operations officer to the new division. The 1st Division mustered at Hoboken to embark on former German merchant vessels, which would take them to Europe. Marshall watched the thousands of men board the ships in the middle of the night, the men saying nothing and there being little noise but their footsteps. Marshall finally remarked to the embarkation port commander, “The men seem very solemn.” The commander responded, “Of course they are. We are watching the harvest of death.”9
The initial fourteen-thousand-man division was sent to Europe with little training—most of the soldiers were enthusiastic recruits who would get much of their experience in France. This would be a notable characteristic of the U.S. Army: it would learn how to fight in the trenches in a trial by fire.
The 1st Division landed in France in late June 1917, and Pershing was thoroughly unimpressed with their appearance and bearing. These soldiers were not ready for war, and they would not be deployed to the front until that autumn. But knowing the importance of boosting French morale, Pershing allowed an infantry battalion to parade through Paris on July 4. Most of the men still behaved like recruits. Pershing was concerned about their conduct, but he need not have worried: the French were so excited that they showered the doughboys with affection. “On the march to Lafayette’s tomb at Picpus Cemetery the battalion was joined by a great crowd, many women forcing their way into the ranks and swinging along arm in arm with the men,” the general recalled. “With wreaths about their necks and bouquets in their hats and rifles, the column looked like a moving flower garden.” Arriving at the Marquis de Lafayette’s tomb, the officers gave impromptu speeches. It was Pershing’s aide, Colonel Charles Stanton (not Pershing himself), who uttered the famous line, “Nous voilà, Lafayette!” (“Lafayette, we are here!”). In the American Revolution, French forces had helped turn the tide against the British and win the war. Now American forces were coming to France’s aid.10
Seeing only desperation and low morale in France, Pershing cabled Washington, asking for a million American doughboys to be sent to Europe by the next May. This stunned the War Department, but Baker accepted his general’s verdict. The first soldiers would soon be drafted. This would require massive amounts of shipping, supplies, and upgrades to ports and railroads. The War Department would send not just one million, but two million soldiers to fight in France.11
The War at Sea
“The one all-absorbing necessity now is soldiers with which to beat the enemy in the field, and ships to carry them,” noted General Tasker Bliss in December 1917, the former army chief of staff who now represented the Americans on the Allies’ Supreme War Council.12 Though devastating to British shipping, the German renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare proved unable to force England to the peace table. Germany underestimated the amount of assistance the U.S. could provide in making up the shipping and supply shortfall. But how to get the promised million doughboys over to Europe, given that the Germans were sinking Allied shipping faster than replacement vessels could be built? The U-boats might cause huge manpower losses.
The British refused to convoy their ships, and as a result the North Atlantic had become a shooting gallery for U-boats. Britain may well have been knocked out of the war in 1917 had the U.S. not intervened and insisted that all American supplies and soldiers be transported in convoys. This helped keep the U-boats at bay and reduced shipping losses. A merchant marine convoy would assemble in an American port, then steam for Europe with a flotilla of destroyer escorts. They proved so effective that the U.S. only lost ninety-four ships to U-boats during the nineteen months of hostilities.13
The Royal Navy ruled the waves—and the merchant marine—and it would initially fall to British steamers to bring the U.S. Army to Europe and to supply it, at least until sufficient tonnage could be built at American shipyards. Even as American ships were launched in greater numbers, half of the American Expeditionary Forces were transported to Europe in British vessels.
Transporting the million doughboys across the Atlantic Ocean through U-boat infested waters was a huge and risky undertaking, and it is a marvel that so few transports were sunk. On October 17, 1917, the Antilles became the first troop transport to be torpedoed, claiming sixty-seven lives. Convoys reduced but did not eliminate the risk. The SS Tuscania went down in February 1918 with the loss of two hundred soldiers. Most of the troop ships sunk, however, were sailing home with empty holds.
In addition to the open seas, the American coastline proved largely defenseless. Most of the U-boat attacks were in waters off Great Britain, leading many to believe incorrectly that the submarines had a short range. The Germans disproved that with a succession of brazen U-boat attacks in American waters in 1918. In late May, the U-151 laid mines off the Virginia coast and cut two undersea cables, then attacked and sank three schooners on May 25. On just one day, June 2, it sank six ships off New Jersey, including the small liner SS Carolina. Over the next several days the submarine continued to attack and sink ships, engaging twenty-three ships altogether and sinking 58,028 tons of shipping on its cruise. The U-boat was never caught and it cruised back to Germany. The brazen attacks caused a sensation in the United States. It was a major embarrassment to the navy and to Secretary Daniels.14
On July 19, the cruiser USS San Diego struck a submerged mine off Fire Island, New York, and went down, the only major American warship lost during the war. The mine signaled a new threat on the American coast from the German U-boat U-156. Two days later, the submarine attacked the tugboat Perth Amboy, which was pulling four coal barges along the Cape Cod shoreline near Orleans, Massachusetts. The Germans fired three torpedoes, but all missed their target, so the submarine surfaced and fired its deck gun at the American vessels. It sank three barges and set the tug on fire. A large crowd of summer vacationers gathered on the shore to watch the one-sided battle as shells exploded dangerously close. Some shells landed in a nearby marsh. Members of the local United States Life-Saving Service, which normally rescued floundering ships, rowed through the shellfire to rescue the tugboat crew. Meanwhile, two navy airplanes attempted to sink the U-boat by dropping dynamite. The submarine submerged and got away. It was a reminder how vulnerable the U.S. shoreline was to attack—and how unprepared American civil defenses were. It was also the only time during the Great War that American soil came directly under attack.15 President Wilson ordered the Cape Cod Canal nationalized four days after the attack to ensure that coal supplies continued and that vessels stayed out of the shipping lanes where German submarines could attack them.16
The Allies were never able to eliminate the threat from U-boats, but they found ways to mitigate it. Despite sinking more than a half-million tons of shipping per month, Germany was unable to knock England out of the war. Escorted convoys had significantly reduced shipping losses. In addition, the Allies began deploying countermeasures, such as mining the Strait of Dover in 1917. Late in the war, the Royal Navy and U.S. Navy erected a submarine “barrage” across the North Sea, a heavy zone of mines and underwater nets that largely curtailed U-boats from reaching the open Atlantic and the shipping lanes. The American intervention had kept England supplied and in the war.
Training the American Army
By 1917, the Germans occupied most of Belgium and a large portion of northern France. They held a large salient that bulged toward Paris, but curved back north near the English Channel, as the Belgian and British armies protected the vital ports along the Channel. The bulk of the French army defended Paris. The Western Front continued through Lorraine to the Swiss border, but that front was fairly quiet during the war, as the Vosges Mountains protected France’s eastern flank. Somewhere along this long front, Pershing intended to carve out a zone for independent operations. Lorraine would be a good place to start, as the American army could train there in safety while also threatening vital German industries. He organized a General Headquarters (GHQ) at Chaumont, modeled on the British and French armies.
Supporting the American Expeditionary Forces in Lorraine posed a logistical problem not just for the United States, but also for France. Supplies and troops came through the ports of Bassens, Brest, La Pallice, Saint-Nazaire, and others on the French west coast. Many of these harbors needed significant upgrades to support the volumes that Pershing projected would be needed from America. From these ports, the Americans required a lengthy railway network to transport supplies to northeastern France, more than four hundred miles away. These lines had to be upgraded, and the Americans were reliant on French locomotives and railway cars until they could bring sufficient carriages from American factories.17
Often there were no barracks where the Americans were to be stationed, so soldiers were billeted in towns across the countryside, in farmhouses and haylofts—wherever there was room. Most of the troops arrived in France with their training only partly complete. This would not do against the most powerful army in Europe. It took months to train the American recruits into fighting soldiers with English and French assistance—and the Allies were desperate to have the doughboys get into the trenches, ready or not.
The Allies were eager to train the American forces, as they had gained much experience fighting the Germans to a standstill for three years. “If the Americans do not permit the French to teach them, the Germans will do so at great cost of life,” said French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau to Edward House.18 However, Pershing was disappointed that this focused on trench warfare. He wanted the soldiers trained for “open warfare,” which would be necessary once they broke through German lines. The Allies were overly reliant on artillery, he believed, whereas Pershing wanted his men to be experts with a rifle. “I am making every effort to inculcate a strong, aggressive, fighting spirit among our forces, and to overcome a more or less perfunctory attitude engendered by years of peace,” Pershing wrote to Secretary of War Newton Baker. Baker supported his decision to relieve brigade and division commanders whom Pershing believed were not aggressive or fit enough. Pershing preferred young commanders with a boundless sense of energy and confidence. Any commander who led from behind would soon be sent back to the States. One of the first to go was General William Sibert, the commander of the 1st Division. Pershing would fire more than a thousand officers over the course of the war.19
In addition, Pershing believed that training with the British and French was bad for his soldiers. “The morale of the Allies is low and association with them has had a bad effect upon our men,” he wrote Baker. “To counteract the talk our men have heard, we have had to say to our troops, through their officers, that we had come over to brace up the Allies and help them win and that they must pay no attention to loose remarks along that line by their Allied comrades.”20
Pershing’s open warfare doctrine butted against the more experienced British and French, who understood that trench warfare was siege warfare, that artillery and the machine gun were the keys to overwhelming firepower, and that the rifle was secondary to the greater weapons of mass killing. Pershing somehow believed he knew better, that the American fighting spirit would prevail against a well-emplaced machine gun nest with a clear field of fire.
Open warfare meant long waves of infantry rising up out of the trenches to assault an enemy position frontally. It was a costly tactic, one that would take the army time to learn to undo (the Americans used open warfare tactics in their initial battles at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Soissons, three battles with very high casualties among the infantry). The Allies had learned from the disaster at the Somme in 1916 how to use the rolling artillery barrage, and the need for smaller teams of infantry to advance, take cover, and provide supporting fire while flankers took out a strongpoint. The rifle was certainly paramount to the infantryman, but infantry was almost defenseless against artillery and machine guns if caught in the open. Even infantrymen had to specialize: some would carry machine guns, others trench mortars and flamethrowers, while others would specialize in launching grenades. Being an infantryman was more complicated than just charging forward with a bayonet affixed to a rifle. The Americans had much to learn, and Pershing’s adherence to his flawed open warfare doctrine would cost many young men their lives.
Although American industry produced prodigious amounts of steel, and American farms grew bountiful surpluses, American weapons-making capacity was sorely lacking. The American Expeditionary Forces became heavily dependent upon Allied production for automatic rifles, masks, machine guns, munitions, trench mortars, and even mules. The Americans requisitioned airplanes, artillery, light tanks, railroad equipment, and trucks from the French, and bought gas mask and heavy tanks from the British. “Pershing commanded a beggar army,” noted army historian David Woodward.21
American artillery batteries were outfitted with French guns, often manufactured with American steel: the heavy 155mm howitzer, and the light but devastating 75mm cannon, better known as the French 75. This little howitzer was revolutionary: a top-secret hydropneumatic design allowed it to remain in place after firing. It was lightweight and rapid-firing, and thus was an extremely lethal weapon on the battlefield. The Germans called it the Devil Gun. In honor of the nimble little gun, a New Orleans bartender invented the French 75 cocktail.22
The 1st Division would prove the guinea pig for the rest of the army. George Marshall called it the “only child,” as it was initially on its own in France.23 By October 1917, the division’s initial training was complete. Pershing agreed to test it by deploying it with the French army on a quiet sector of the front. The battalions rotated in and out of the trenches to gain experience. On October 23, doughboys fired the first artillery shell directed at German lines. The honor went to Sergeant Alex Arch of South Bend, Indiana, who pulled the lanyard of a French 75mm howitzer from Battery C of the 6th Field Artillery. The brass casing was saved and presented to President Wilson.24
A second American division, the 26th “Yankee” Division, arrived in the fall. By the end of 1917, American forces in France numbered about 175,000, organized in four divisions, with another forty-five divisions being trained in the U.S. The question of training and transportation loomed over all.25 The winter was severely cold and there was too little fuel to warm the soldiers, who froze in their billets and haylofts. In February 1918, however, the army created an independent newspaper for the doughboys, known as the Stars and Stripes. Pershing authorized publication of the newspaper to give doughboys patriotic news of the war effort and news from the home front.
Much of the American Expeditionary Forces would not arrive for a year or later after war was declared. It took the U.S. a considerable time to assemble and train an army nearly from scratch, as well as construct the ships that would carry them to Europe. Part of the U.S. Army was shipped over by the British, and they assumed responsibility for training these units in trench warfare. The British were eager to have the American troops amalgamated into their army, but Pershing would have none of that: American soldiers had to be under the American flag. Although he intended for these troops eventually to be transferred to the American zone in Lorraine, the springtime crisis of 1918 left several divisions in place in Flanders, and there they fought in support of the British and Belgians for the duration of the war.
The American soldiers serving in Flanders shared rations with other Allied countries. The Belgians were particularly fond of fried potatoes, which they called frites, named after a Parisian restaurant owner named Fritz who perfected how to cook the potatoes known as pommes frites in French. The doughboys came to call the delicacy French fries.
A crucial part of training was how to fight while wearing a gas mask, a necessary implement of war since the Germans began gassing the Allies in 1915. War correspondent Floyd Gibbons, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, described the claustrophobia of wearing a gas mask: “Our heads were topped with uncomfortable steel casques, harder than the backs of turtles. Our eyes were large, flat, round glazed surfaces unblinking and owl-like. Our faces were shapeless folds of black rubber cloth. Our lungs sucked air through tubes from a canvas bag under our chins and we were inhabiting a tree top like a family of apes.” Soldiers might have to spend six hours or longer wearing a mask after a gas attack, or risk an excruciating, choking death.26
Captain George Patton had accompanied Pershing to Europe in 1917 after serving with the general in Mexico. He spent much of the year 1917 in boredom, running a motor pool and conspiring to get his wife Beatrice to Europe for a visit. Patton came from a wealthy family and spent a large sum, $4,386, buying a Packard Twin Six automobile so he could drive himself around northern France. That fall, an opportunity presented for him to establish an American tank school. It was a fateful decision for the young officer, who wrote his father, “I have a hunch that my Mexican Auto Battle was the fore runner of this,” referring to his time battling Villistas. “Who can say?”27
It was an opportune time for Patton, just as tanks were proving their worth on the battlefield. On November 20, the British army attacked at Cambrai with hundreds of heavy tanks, briefly breaking through the German lines and showing what massed tanks could do in combat. Patton established the American tank school in Bourg. He borrowed ten French light tanks to train his men in March 1918. “When the procession of ten started across the fields I was delighted as I have been living on hopes for the last four months,” Patton wrote his wife. Patton would eventually train two battalions of tankers, and he would lead them into battle as the 1st Tank Brigade.28
Douglas MacArthur was one of the more charismatic, flamboyant, and handsome officers in the American army. Often at odds with the army headquarters, he had a knack for casual insubordination. When his Rainbow Division reached France in late 1917, he soon learned that it would be broken up to reinforce other divisions. He called in a favor with Pershing’s chief of staff, and the division remained together. MacArthur served as the division chief of staff and later commanded a brigade, always placing himself on the front line. He developed his own modified field uniform: a crushed cap instead of a helmet, a scarf knit by his mother, a turtleneck, and a riding crop. He never carried a weapon or a gas mask, and as a result he was gassed twice.29
Another soldier who would rise to prominence after the war was Harry Truman of Independence, Missouri. He was thirty-three years old, had terrible eyesight, and was the sole breadwinner for a farming family—yet he volunteered to serve. He signed up, as he felt it was his patriotic duty, and was elected a lieutenant in a Missouri field artillery battery. It was the first position he would ever be elected to. Truman led Battery D of the 2nd Battalion, 129th Field Artillery Regiment. It was largely an unruly, Irish Catholic unit. Truman was strict but fair, and the men came to appreciate him. Many became lifelong friends.
Truman and an advanced party of his battalion sailed from New York on March 29, 1918, aboard the George Washington, the converted German ocean liner. Truman’s eyesight was so bad that he took six pairs of eyeglasses with him.30 In France, Truman was run through a French artillery school to learn about the French 75mm howitzer, which his unit would be equipped with—and then had to train the other officers of his unit. His unit was first deployed in August 1918 to the Vosges Mountains in Lorraine, a quiet stretch of the front, in order to experience the front line. The first rounds that his battery fired were poison gas shells, though the inexperienced soldiers panicked and ran when the Germans fired back.31
Some 367,710 African-Americans enlisted in the armed forces during the Great War; of these, about 200,000 were sent to France, though most ended up being relegated to traditional roles in hard labor. Only 50,000 black soldiers saw combat. Army training was a major challenge in the segregated Deep South, where black soldiers always had the worst camps and facilities and were discriminated against whenever they attempted to patronize businesses. Much of the South still could not accept blacks as fellow citizens and cringed at the idea that blacks in uniform might demand equality for serving their country.32
Two infantry divisions were composed of African-Americans: the 92nd and 93rd. The War Department dispatched the 92nd Division to train with the British, who in May 1918 protested having black troops assigned to them. Pershing wrote back to the British commander, Field Marshal Douglas Haig: “You will, of course, appreciate my position in this matter, which, in brief, is that these negroes are American citizens. My Government, for reasons which concern itself alone, has decided to organize colored combat divisions and now desires the early dispatch of one of these divisions to France. Naturally I cannot and will not discriminate against these soldiers.” The British continued the protest, and the War Department eventually backed down, assigning the division to train with the French.33
The 93rd Division likewise trained with the French, its four regiments broken up so that each supported a French division, rather than fighting as a cohesive unit or under the American Expeditionary Forces. Pershing claimed in his memoirs that he had asked the French to return the division, but they did not. Pershing was known to get his way when it came to having his men assigned to the American army, but his protest was either feeble or nonexistent. That fact is, it was a relief to Pershing for the French to keep the black soldiers, as he was well aware of the intrinsic racism in much of the American army. Many white doughboys did not see black soldiers as equals, and this created antagonisms that would continue well after the war.34
And as supportive as he was toward black soldiers—he had led them for years and was probably more tolerant than most officers and soldiers—Pershing viewed their role best as enlisted men. “Under capable white officers and with sufficient training, negro soldiers have always acquitted themselves creditably,” Pershing wrote.35
The War Department protested to Pershing when it heard that black troops were placed in dangerous areas of the front but had not received adequate medical care. Pershing noted that this was likely from German propaganda, and that the black troops were in fact stationed on quiet fronts. He cabled back, “Only regret expressed by colored troops is that they are not given more dangerous work to do. They are especially amused at the stories being circulated that the American troops are placed in the most dangerous positions and all are desirous of having more active service than has been permitted so far.” In fact, most of the black units were used as labor battalions, rather than combat forces. It was likely a disappointment for many of the black soldiers who hoped to be part of the fighting.36
Of the black units, none achieved the fame of the 369th Regiment, known as the “Harlem Hellfighters.” Commanded largely by white officers, the unit was organized as the 15th New York, comprised of urban soldiers. It had one of the finest regimental bands around. After a period serving as dock workers helping upgrade St. Nazaire’s port facilities, the unit was unceremoniously renamed the 369th and assigned to the French sector. The regimental commander, William Hayward, pleaded with Pershing to allow his men to fight in the trenches, but Pershing was leery of having a black combat unit among white infantry. Placing the 369th with the French solved that problem: the French poilu (the rank-and-file infantrymen) were more egalitarian and there were fewer discipline problems over race. The French equipped the Hellfighters as one of their own units, down to helmets, rifles, and uniforms. Colonel Hayward wrote a friend, “Our great American general simply put the black orphan in a basket, set it on the doorstep, pulled the bell, and went away.”37
On May 11, 1918, the Hellfighters won their first recognition for gallantry during a deployment to the front. Two privates, Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, were sent forward to a listening post, and there they were attacked by a platoon-size German raiding party. Roberts was shot but continued fighting, while Johnson killed four Germans, including one with a bolo knife, and wounded several others, forcing the raiders to retreat. The two soldiers were awarded the French Croix de Guerre.38
Women at War
Women had long been left behind to tend the home fires while men went off to fight wars, but the Great War was different. Because of the nature of total warfare, every citizen was involved in the conflict, like it or not. Not only did American women replace men in industry and shipbuilding, serve in the vast military bureaucracy, and work as nurses, they even joined the armed forces. Encouraged by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, some eleven thousand women served in the navy and received the same pay as men, while another 350 women joined the marines. It was women’s contribution during the war that would directly lead to them getting the vote.39
The American Red Cross undertook a massive expansion during the Great War, mostly guided by women. Women set up and staffed thousands of local Red Cross stations in the U.S. and in Europe, rolled bandages, and volunteered in countless ways. First Lady Edith Wilson and the president’s daughters sewed bandages during the war and volunteered for the American Red Cross. Edith worked at the canteen at Washington’s Union Station, where trainloads of hungry soldiers passed through daily en route to New York, where they would sail to Europe.
Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the assistant navy secretary, volunteered at the same Red Cross canteen as Mrs. Wilson. Like her husband, Eleanor spoke with the Yankee lockjaw that Northeasterners affected. She had not yet gained the self-confidence and independence that she would exercise as First Lady in the 1930s. But the Great War gave her an opportunity to serve, and she loved it. Like many American women, she took up knitting during the war. “No one moved without her knitting,” she noted.40
The American Red Cross furnished fifty hospitals in France, all privately funded, with staffs of doctors and thousands of women nurses. Other women served as communications specialists and telephone operators with the AEF. Some worked for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), staffing canteens, providing hot beverages and a place for doughboys to relax while they were away from the front. The Salvation Army sent a contingent to France, where they developed a mobile kitchen that produced doughnuts. The women became known as the “Doughnut Girls.”41
As hundreds of thousands of American soldiers prepared to ship off to Europe, Isabel Anderson volunteered to serve at Red Cross canteens in France. She was a wealthy woman who combined her considerable fortune with her husband Larz. She published her memoirs of the experience in 1918, before the war had even ended, donating the proceeds to the American Red Cross. The book was called Zigzagging, a phrase generally associated with the zigzagging that ships used to foil submarine attacks. In this case, Anderson zigzagged across Europe. When asked about her time in Europe, she explained casually, “Well, I worked with an American Red Cross canteen in the army zone for a time, and assisted for several weeks in an operating-room with the Queen of Belgium, and among other things I had the good fortune to dine with General Pershing at headquarters at the American front.”42 On that latter occasion, she arrived so late because of automobile trouble that the general had already eaten. “The only thing which I remember General Pershing’s saying was that he was very much troubled by the lack of ships,” Anderson recalled.43
The War in the Air
One of the first American officers to arrive in France was Lieutenant Colonel William Mitchell, better known as Billy, a brilliant and flamboyant member of the general staff who would become one of the leading innovators in the American armed forces. His father was a U.S. senator from Wisconsin. The opinionated young man had an independent streak and an outspoken tongue that would land him in trouble. Mitchell talked incessantly, a trait that earned him few allies. As an army officer, he was intrigued by aviation, a technology that was only a decade old. However, the War Department spent precious little money on developing American aviation. Mitchell was stationed in Washington, D.C., but the army would not pay for flight school. He enrolled and paid for it out of his own pocket.
Mitchell landed in Europe just as the U.S. declared war in April 1917. He was assigned to the American embassy in Paris, but he spent almost no time there, instead traveling to British and French lines to observe how they conducted wartime aviation. Three years of warfare had led to startling developments in flying. New specialty airplanes were developed: interceptors, day bombers, night bombers, reconnaissance, even torpedo bombers. Most of the planes were biplanes, twin-winged aircraft constructed of wood, though the Germans developed a Fokker triplane late in the war, best associated with the “Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen.
Colonel Mitchell’s assignment was to build an air service to support Pershing’s army. He had to create this literally out of nothing, as no American air service existed. “Our air force consisted of one Nieuport airplane which I used myself and that was all,” he wrote. His first pilots were American members of the French Foreign Legion. Mitchell arranged for French airplanes and mechanics.44
Mitchell eventually ditched his obsolete Nieuport for a speedy French Spad, a single-engine biplane that became the backbone of the American air service by summer 1918. Mitchell flew himself around the battlefield in northern France and though he avoided dogfights, he often reconnoitered the area. He soon observed how the two sides operated in the skies overhead: the French tended to use constant air patrols along the front lines, whereas the Germans left the skies open, massing their planes to dominate the skies in support of a particular mission. The Germans had excellent aircraft and experienced pilots. This made them tough to beat.
By April 1918, just as the bulk of the American Expeditionary Forces began to arrive in France, Mitchell had assembled his air service command and numerous pursuit (fighter) squadrons. His men would support the U.S. Army in every major battle from the air. The Americans focused on pursuit aircraft, relying on the Allies to provide bombers when needed.
Billy Mitchell recalled a prank that his pilots played on a hospital. The infirmary was near his aerodrome, and many hotshot pilots took to spending their downtime there on account of the pretty American nurses. The chief surgeon ordered the pilots to stop fraternizing with his staff. The pilots stated their objections by bombing the hospital with toilet paper rolls. Mitchell called it “the funniest sight I had seen in a long time. Of course I knew who had done it but took no action beyond telling them to cut out all foolishness in the future.”45
There was a great deal of chivalry and respect among pilots, even among enemies. If a pilot was shot down and killed over enemy territory, they were given a funeral with honors, and the opposing air service was notified of the last rites. Such was done with both Manfred von Richthofen and Quentin Roosevelt.
Both sides sent up observation balloons, heavily protected by antiaircraft batteries, to keep track of enemy movements and to adjust artillery fire. Despite being filled with hydrogen, these balloons were difficult to blow up, even with incendiary bullets.
One of the young men Mitchell recruited to become a fighter pilot was an Ohioan with a slight accent named Eddie Rickenbacher. His parents were German-speaking Swiss, and during the war he changed the “h” to a “k” in his last name so it sounded less German. Rickenbacker came from a modest, working-class family. Before the war, he was road tester for automobile companies, and soon found himself racing cars. Over the years of high-speed driving, he developed instincts for daring maneuvers and anticipating an opponent’s move—skills that would serve him well as a combat pilot.
Rickenbacker joined the army and became a driver in Pershing’s motor pool, as he was not only a skillful driver but also knew how to fix engines. It was not what he had signed up for. One day he fixed a broken-down car on the side of the road in France, which drew the attention of Colonel Billy Mitchell. Rickenbacker let Mitchell know that he wanted to fly, and Mitchell in turn got Pershing to release Rickenbacker for the French flight school at Tours.
Rickenbacker joined the 94th Pursuit Squadron in March 1918, known as the “Hat-in-the-Ring” squadron for its logo of Uncle Sam’s stovepipe hat surrounded by a ring. The nickname came from the idea that America had thrown its hat in the ring by entering the European conflict. The squadron included the famed pilot, Raoul Lufbery, who had flown with the Lafayette Escadrille for two years. The squadron was issued old French Nieuport fighters. The Nieuport was speedy and climbed quickly, but it had one major flaw: the wing fabric stripped away during a steep dive. The Americans had to make do with surplus aircraft, as the U.S. had virtually no combat aircraft manufacturing.
April 14 dawned cloudy with low-lying fog obstructing visibility. The sound of approaching German aircraft could be heard as they crossed the front lines, and two American pursuit craft, flown by Douglas Campbell and Alan Winslow, scrambled from the aerodrome near Toul to intercept them. The pilots flew up through the fog just as two German fighters descended through the clouds. The dogfight was on, directly over the airfield where much of the squadron could see the action. American machine guns tore through the German aircraft, forcing both to land, their pilots taken prisoner and their aircraft seized as prizes. One of the pilots was badly burned and died, while the other, a Pole, survived. They admitted they were lost. Billy Mitchell was impressed by the speed with which his men had acted, as “our pilots were back on the aerodrome within four and one-half minutes after they left it.” These were the first two German planes that the budding American air service had shot down.46
Fifteen days later, Eddie Rickenbacker shot down his first German plane, a Pfalz fighter. “At 150 yards I pressed my triggers. The tracer bullets cut a streak of living fire into the rear of the Pfalz tail,” he wrote in his 1919 memoir. “Raising the nose of the airplane slightly the fiery streak lifted itself like the stream of water pouring from a garden hose. Gradually it settled into the pilot’s seat.” The enemy aircraft began its death spiral to the earth. By May 28, Rickenbacker had shot down five planes, officially making him an ace. Over the course of the war, Rickenbacker shot down twenty-six German airplanes and balloons, more than any other American pilot, and became America’s “ace of aces.”47
Drinking Doughboys
Influenced by the Anti-Saloon League—the organization pushing for national Prohibition—Congress made it illegal to serve alcohol to a soldier in uniform. Soldiers were expected to be upstanding examples of sobriety, although drinking and soldiering had long gone hand in hand. However, the law could not be enforced outside the United States. American doughboys fighting in France discovered that French soldiers regularly drank in uniform. Wine and cognac were simply part of their rations, which they often shared with Americans. George Cassiday, an American tanker from West Virginia, noted how normal it was for soldiers to drink. “We saw liquor being used in all the allied countries and when we were at the front, detailed with French troops, I received rations of cognac along with the other men.”48
Colonel Billy Mitchell noted the French supply columns that fed the troops. “Long trains of trucks, each carrying three small hogsheads of wine or beer ran up behind the lines every day, were emptied of their contents and returned for more,” he wrote. “The French soldiers are as used to their wine as ours are to their coffee.”49
Similarly, Captain (and future president) Harry Truman had billeted with the French army and experienced their hospitality. With the news of the pending Eighteenth Amendment, which would enact national Prohibition, Truman noted that some of his soldiers were discussing future plans. “It looks to me like the moonshine business is going to be pretty good in the land of the Liberty Loans and Green Trading Stamps, and some of us want to get in on the ground floor,” he wrote his fiancée Bess Wallace. “At least we want to get there in time to lay in a supply for future consumption.”50
Edwin Parsons, who flew fighter planes for the Lafayette Escadrille, observed that pilots often drank to quiet their nerves. There were no abstainers in his squadron. A favorite beverage was the Lafayette Cocktail, a blend of brandy and champagne “with the kick of a mule,” as he called it. After his first dogfight, Parsons landed and was so trembling with fear that he could barely stand. He made his way to the squadron bar. “I swallowed half a glass of brandy neat, in one gulp, without even a shudder,” he wrote. It had little effect, so he continued drinking until he had consumed most of the bottle and his nerves finally settled down. After that, Parsons drank a couple shots before each patrol and sipped from a hip flask to warm himself in the frigid high altitudes. When they received complaints that upright American flyers were spoiling their lofty reputation by drinking, the squadron shifted their bar to a neighboring squadron’s fifty feet away, and continued business as usual.51
General Pershing turned a blind eye toward American soldiers drinking wine when they were billeted with the French. He understood that barring beer and wine consumption by American forces while in France was impractical. However, he could not ignore the greater disciplinary problems that ensued when soldiers drank liquor. Pershing placed any bar or restaurant near a cantonment area off limits if it served distilled spirits. He expected his officers to enforce this order.52
Pershing recalled a meal with a French general who had traveled across the United States and stopped in Iowa, then a dry state. “If there is any one thing that a Frenchman cannot understand it is that any people should deliberately enact a law to deprive themselves of taking a glass of wine,” he observed. “To have heard him describe how he suffered while in Iowa one would have thought he was telling of a trip across the Sahara Desert.”53
George Patton, who led the American tank school at Bourg, noted with dismay that four of his officers were arrested for drinking. “We are getting full of virtue here,” he wrote his wife sarcastically. “The French do as they please so why not we. People who are going to be killed deserve as much pleasure as they can get.”54
In his memoirs, Colonel George Marshall noted over and over how he and his fellow officers toasted with champagne after each battlefield success. On a victory parade of American soldiers in London after the war, the Prince of Wales remarked to him, “What a magnificent body of men never to take another drink.” Most would likely continue drinking during the dark days of Prohibition ahead.55
The War in Fall 1917
In October and November 1917, the Austrians and Germans leveled a decisive defeat against Italy at the Battle of Caporetto, sending the Italian forces reeling and capturing more than a quarter million prisoners. The British and French quickly sent reinforcements before Italy was knocked out of the war.
Things were even worse in Russia. The Germans had captured Riga in August, a heavy blow to Kerensky’s Provisional Government. The Germans continued their offensive northward along the Baltic, marching ever closer to the Russian capital, Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg). The Kerensky government prepared to evacuate to Moscow in October. The army had lost faith in the government and deserted en masse, stoked by revolutionary fervor and land reform promised by the Bolsheviks.
The Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government and seized Petrograd on November 7. (The second Russian Revolution of 1917 is often called the “October Revolution,” as the Russians still used the pre-Gregorian calendar, although it was more a coup than a popular revolt.) Russia was desperate to remove itself from the war, and the Bolshevik leaders, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, promised bread, land, and peace. American socialist journalist John Reed witnessed the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd. He published his account of the takeover in early 1919 in his book Ten Days That Shook the World, which became an instant bestseller as Americans were eager to learn what was happening in Russia. When Reed died of typhus the following year, his ashes were buried in the Kremlin Wall.56
The Bolsheviks promised not just political but economic revolution as well, ending private ownership of land and turning factories over to workers’ committees. According to Marxist ideology, the proletariat would rise spontaneously to overthrow capitalism, uniting workers around the world and forming a working-class utopia worldwide, what Karl Marx called the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Communism promised a classless society, one based on factory workers and farmers, sailors and soldiers. Led by Lenin, who soon renamed the Bolsheviks as the Communist Party, the Russians expected the working class to rise across Europe in support of the October Revolution. Though there were uprisings in numerous countries, the proletariat revolution largely remained confined to Russia.
The expected workers’ utopia in Russia instead found itself in a brutal civil war. The czarist and anti-communist forces, known as the Whites, counterattacked against the communist Red Army. Fearing that Czar Nicholas would be rescued, the Bolsheviks executed him and his family in July 1918. The conflict would last more than four years before the communists emerged victorious, having conquered much of the former Russian Empire at the point of the bayonet. The Russian Civil War cost millions of lives. Millions more would die from starvation during the communist land reforms.
The United States had recognized Kerensky’s Provisional Government, as it was founded on a democratic basis; however, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian government in November 1917, the U.S. did not recognize the radical new government. The U.S. would not establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union until 1933.
Just as Russia was undergoing upheaval, France too experienced political turmoil. In November 1917, Prime Minister Paul Painlevé’s coalition government collapsed, and Georges Clemenceau took over. Clemenceau was seventy-six years old but fiercely energetic and a devout German-hater. He was known as “the Tiger.” Having experienced the humiliating defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1871, Clemenceau was determined to rescue France from the German foe and secure the country’s borders.
When the U.S. declared war against Germany, it opted not to make war against Austria-Hungary, as it hoped to drive a wedge between the Central Powers by negotiating a separate peace. This effort failed. The Austrians and the Turks recalled their diplomats in support of their German ally. The U.S. declared war on Austria eight months later, on December 7, 1917. As it turned out, the question of the Central Powers would all be dealt with in the Treaty of Versailles, including the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
America’s War Aims
On September 2, 1917, President Wilson asked his political adviser Edward House to put together the Commission of Inquiry, or simply the “Inquiry” as it became known. It was a chance for Americans to gather independent facts free of the Allies. House brought in two key figures to lead the Inquiry: Sidney Mezes (House’s brother-in-law), and liberal journalist Walter Lippmann of the New Republic. The commissioners—in particular Lippmann—had a strong influence in drafting what would become Wilson’s Fourteen Points. As House lived in New York, the Inquiry was headquartered in New York and organized under the American Geographical Society. The Inquiry gathered huge amounts of data, historical documents, and maps for an eventual peace conference. Wilson also instructed House to gather ideas for a how a League of Nations might work.
The twenty-seven-year-old Lippmann soon irritated the intellectuals providing the materials for the Inquiry with his demanding and critical tone. In spring 1918, he took a commission in the army, went to France, and worked as a propagandist. He got in trouble with President Wilson for acting beyond the authority of George Creel’s Committee on Public Information. He was dispatched home in early 1919, his outspoken views removing him from the scene of influence just as the Paris Peace Conference began.57
Wilson sent House to Europe in late October 1917 to head the American delegation to the Supreme War Council. It included General Tasker Bliss, who would take a permanent seat on the council, among numerous other experts who could coordinate armaments, industrial output, shipping, and supplies with the Allies. The council would coordinate the war effort. However, no one wanted to give up sovereignty over their armies, nor could the Allies agree on war aims. In his report to the president, House wrote, “The Supreme War Council as at present constituted is almost a farce.”58 House quietly left France without most realizing he had gone. He was like a ghost, a man who eschewed the limelight and preferred to work behind the scenes. Wilson gave House few instructions; House was his alter ego, and he trusted the man implicitly.59
The Bolsheviks took control of Russia just as the Supreme War Council met in France. The communists demanded peace without territorial annexations; anything otherwise was imperialist. The Russian economy was imploding, the population was starving, and the country desperately needed peace. The Bolsheviks sent out peace feelers to the Germans, and likewise insisted that the various belligerents state their war aims. The failure of the Supreme War Council to unite on Allied goals, combined with the Bolshevik call for peace, led President Wilson to respond.
Wilson had spent years calling for a peaceful adjudication between the combatants. Only after nearly three years of neutrality had failed, he led the country into war when the Germans acted belligerently through unrestricted submarine warfare and by goading Mexico into a hostile alliance. “The world must be made safe for democracy,” he had proclaimed in his war address. Now as 1918 began the global conflict was entering its fourth year. American armed forces were preparing to ship out for Europe as the fighting raged with no end in sight. As American lives would soon be at stake fighting on the ground, Wilson poignantly laid out the country’s war aims—and called for other countries to do the same, as he understood it would be a crucial for eventual peace negotiations.
On January 8, 1918, Wilson stood before a joint session of Congress and delivered America’s war aims in what became known as the Fourteen Points Address. Peace talks between Germany and Russia had just commenced at Brest-Litovsk, and Wilson was hopeful that a just peace could be concluded. The Fourteen Points were a mixture of idealism and realism: Wilson called for “open covenants of peace” rather than secret treaties and alliances, freedom of the seas, the resumption of trade, arms control, resolution of colonial claims, the restoration of Belgian and Russian territory, the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, a redrawing of the Italian border, a breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and autonomy for its people, territorial integrity of the Balkan states, many of which were newly freed from either the Austrians or the Turks, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the establishment of Poland, and “a general association of nations” to help secure the peace, what would later be known as the League of Nations. This was what the United States was fighting for. In fact, most of Wilson’s Fourteen Points would be enacted, some of them to the lasting embitterment of the nations affected.60 The New York Times gushed that the speech was a smashing success. “The resolve to make the foundations of the world’s peace sure is one and irrevocable.”61
The Fourteen Points were developed in part to rein in more extreme Allied demands at the peace table. The Allies never fully embraced the Fourteen Points, though they were willing to negotiate with the Germans using the American war aims as a foundation for an armistice. Many of the countries viewed the points as restricting their actions, even as they had dreams of expanding their empires. England would have to abide by the American interpretation of the “freedom of the seas”; Italy would be denied Tyrolia and the Adriatic coast; England and France would be prevented from land grabs in the Middle East.
With its fair and balanced terms, the Fourteen Points were designed to appeal to German liberals, driving a wedge between them and the militarists running the war effort. Wilson made clear that the fight was with Germany’s military leaders, not its people, as his Flag Day speech in 1917 demonstrated. The Fourteen Points Address had an impact in Germany: on January 28, a general strike broke out across the country as a million industrial workers walked off the job. Germans were tired of the war, the food shortages, and the deaths of their sons. Wilson’s policy of encouraging German democrats and socialists would ultimately succeed.
A month later, on February 11, Wilson addressed Congress with a major foreign policy speech, the Four Points Address. He declared that, “self-determination is not a mere phase. It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.” He outlined four points in addition to the Fourteen Points that would be necessary for peaceful negotiations. They included resolving conflicts with justice in mind; that peoples and territories were not simply to be bargained away like “pawns in a game”; that territorial settlement should benefit the people living there, rather than the states that were eager to claim them; and that new countries had the right to emerge based on their national aspirations.62
In his Four Points Address, Wilson specifically rejected a Congress of Vienna–style settlement that would restore the balance of power, as was done after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. “The method the German Chancellor proposes is the method of the Congress of Vienna,” Wilson stated. “We cannot and will not return to that. What is at stake now is the peace of the world. What we are striving for is a new international order based upon broad and universal principles of right and justice—no mere peace of shreds and patches.” That is to say, the Germans proposed a series of negotiations between individual countries, such as the German-Russian negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, one that would in essence leave the balance of powers intact. Wilson rejected that process; he wanted a grand settlement among all the combatants that would resolve all of the issues and lead to a general peace. “All the parties to this war must join in the settlement of every issue anywhere involved in it; because what we are seeking is a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain and every item of it must be submitted to the common judgment whether it be right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a bargain between sovereigns.”63
Even as Wilson hoped for a democratic victory over autocracy, he was stunned to learn how cruelly the Germans treated the Russians at the peace table. But what choice did the Russians have? The Bolsheviks were desperate for peace and signed the unfair accord, known as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, on March 3, 1918. Germany claimed the Baltic States; Ukraine was declared independent and made a German fiefdom, a buffer state that would protect Germany from Russia while providing food from its vast breadbasket. Russia was to pay six billion German gold marks in reparations. President Wilson was livid and said so publicly in Baltimore on the one year anniversary of the war declaration. “They are enjoying in Russia a cheap triumph in which no brave or gallant nation can long take pride,” he railed. “A great people, helpless by their own act, lies for the time at their mercy.” Wilson called the German empire an “empire of force,” one that would lead to an “empire of gain and commercial supremacy” and no autonomy for the conquered peoples. The strong would rule the weak. “Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether Justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether Right as America conceives it or Dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind.”64
The Bolsheviks opened the czar’s archives and published many of the Allied “secret treaties” to embarrass Russia’s erstwhile allies, whom the communists viewed as imperialists and therefore no better than the Germans. To the communists, imperialism was the highest and most malignant form of capitalism, as it allowed governments not only to exploit their own workers, but those of foreign countries as well. The publication revealed the extent of Allied territorial ambitions. When President Wilson sent a sympathetic note to the Soviet Congress, promising that the injustice of Brest-Litovsk would not stand, the Soviets responded, “the happy time is not far distant when the laboring masses of all countries will throw off the yoke of capitalism and will establish a socialistic state of society, which alone is capable of securing just and lasting peace.” They berated the president, who led the leading capitalist country in the world, promising that the proletariat revolution would happen there just as Karl Marx had foretold.65
As Wilson developed his postwar plans for peace, he became ever more convinced that the League of Nations must arise out of the ashes of war to adjudicate national differences before they resulted in war. Secretary of State Robert Lansing was not a supporter of the league concept. He wrote Edward House in April 1918: “Until Autocracy is entirely discredited and Democracy becomes not only the dominant but the practically universal principle in the political systems of the world, I fear a League of Nations, particularly one purposing to employ force, would not function.” Lansing saw the war in more practical yet high-minded terms: defeating Germany. “We must crush Prussianism so completely that it can never rise again, and we must end autocracy in every other nation as well.” House was undeterred by Lansing’s opposition: he had the president’s support and drafted an initial constitution, known as the Covenant, for the League of Nations that summer as the war reached its climax.66
On May 27, President Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress to raise taxes to help pay for the war effort. He pleaded for the sake of the wave of sailors and soldiers reaching European shores. “We are not only in the midst of the war, we are at the very peak and crisis of it,” Wilson stated. “Hundreds of thousands of our men, carrying our hearts with them and our fortunes, are in the field, and ships are crowding faster and faster to the ports of France and England with regiment after regiment, thousand after thousand, to join them until the enemy shall be beaten and brought to a reckoning with mankind.” It was the country’s duty to rise to the challenge. The president added a line that would come back to haunt him: “We must meet it without selfishness or fear of consequences. Politics is adjourned.” High-minded words, no doubt, but in a democracy, politics are never adjourned.67
Having knocked Russia out of the war in early 1918, the Germans could now shift hundreds of thousands of veteran soldiers to the Western Front for the spring offensive and inflict a decisive defeat on the Allies. The double defeats of Italy and Russia did not bode well for the Allies, who teetered on collapse. All eyes looked west to the Americans. Would the doughboys arrive in time and in sufficient strength to stop the Germans from winning the war?