Beatrice, there is no advice that I could give you and nothing to suggest that you would not know better than I. Few men could be so fortunate to have such a wife.
All my property is yours though it is not much.d My sword is yours, also my pistol, the silver one. I will give Sylvia [his horse] to Gen. Pershing and Simalarity [his horse] to Viner.
I think that if you should fall in love you should marry again. I would approve.
The only regret that I have in our marriage is that it was not sooner and that I was mean to you at first.
If I go I trust that it will be in a manner such as to be worthy of you and of my ideals.
Kiss Beatrice Jr. and Ruth Ellen for me and tell them that I love them very much and that I know they will be good.
Beat I love you infinitely.33
Thus, brave Georgie Patton, who sometimes wondered if he wasn’t more like the cowardly lion in L. Frank Baum’s story, went off to the front to view what soldiers in an earlier war called “seeing the elephant.”
About six miles from the lines Patton began to hear the roar of the guns. It was a constant roar, he said, because there were so many guns on both sides, a kind of dull throbbing that became so much louder the closer they came that he reflexively began to flinch. He was riding in an automobile with several Frenchmen and bragged later that while the conversation was incessant he never spoke a word of English.
He spent the night at a French brigade headquarters and next morning, May 30, he was escorted to the front by the commandant, a Major La Favre. On the approach Patton was interested that everything was camouflaged with enormous spreads of green sacking—acre after acre of artillery batteries, sleeping areas, messes, buildings—against air observation and strikes. At a point where it became too dangerous to continue driving they got out and walked through a field potted with shell holes. Then some shells began to explode about a hundred yards away. Presently they came to a hill at the top of which was a farm “all shot to pieces,” and Major La Favre pointed out a line of trees several hundred yards away saying, “There are the Bosch.”e
La Favre said the Germans could see them, which was “quite evident,” Patton wrote later, when two shells screeched over and exploded in a field behind them. Patton walked over and picked up a fragment, which was still hot, that he intended to send to Beatrice. They continued walking with Patton feeling “thrilled” but a little nervous the more they walked on the top of a French communications trench, which he frankly confessed he would rather have been in than on.
They passed by a freshly dug grave featuring a wooden cross that contained the body of a German soldier a French patrol had killed earlier that morning. Major La Favre paused to point out what an “excellent” field of fire the Germans had, which caused Patton to note that “we were the only available target and the range was deadly,” adding that he disliked standing there turned as he was to Major La Favre in case it be recorded that George Patton died by being shot in the back.
La Favre then led his guest across what impressed Patton at the time as “the longest field in the world,” in plain view of the German guns. As they neared the edge of some woods, the French major bent over, ostensibly to tuck trousers into his leggings, a pose that actually exposed his backside to the Germans in their trenches. Seeing this, and wanting to “express a contempt equal to his,” Patton removed his helmet and lit a cigarette, smoking it while the two strolled across the ridge to the safety of the woods. Patton to the end of his days could not get over the fact that the Germans had not fired a shot at them.
“It was about the same thrill as riding in a steeplechase,” he told Beatrice.
ON MARCH 21, 1918, six thousand German cannons—the largest concentration yet seen in the war, or any war—opened up for several hours along a fifty-mile front that ran from Arras to the river Oise. This was followed at dawn by a massive German attack against the already jittery British that seemed to catch them completely, and strangely, off guard.
The Germans had developed new tactics they believed would win the war. Teams of “storm troopers” would rush forward after a tremendous but short artillery barrage, bypassing enemy strongpoints that could be mopped up later by more powerfully armed infantry. Light field guns would follow on the heels of the infantry attack; the entire idea was highly mobile warfare, the paramount objective being to infiltrate as far into the enemy rear as possible, sowing death and confusion. The result hoped for was to split the British and French armies and capture the channel ports, which would knock Great Britain out of the war and cause the French to sue for peace.
A million Germans emerged wraithlike out of the mists that shrouded no-man’s-land, throwing hand grenades and mowing down what defenders remained after the bombardment. They overran the British frontline trenches first, followed by the reserve and support trenches, then the artillery positions, headquarters, and supply. Both sides were stunned at the German assault’s success. Airplanes began taking off for fields nearer the coast; at one place, the British took time to evacuate the eight hundred inmates of a lunatic asylum.
The German onslaught seemed irresistible. The British suffered 150,000 casualties and had been pushed back twenty-five miles—more ground than they had given up at any time during the war. But though their line bent, it did not yet break, and, as George Marshall put it later, the German offensive “had assumed the proportions of a great catastrophe.”34
In what became the greatest drama of the war, the Germans continued their attacks without letup. Both sides knew that ultimate victory or ultimate defeat hung in the balance. In the crisis, the French government gave Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch overall command of the Allied armies, including the American divisions. After the meeting at which the decision was made, the French premier Georges Clemenceau, who did not like Foch, told him, “Well, you’ve got what you wanted.” Foch replied icily, “A fine present … you give me a lost battle and tell me to win it.”35
FOCH IMMEDIATELY ASKED FOR the American First Division to be thrown into the breach caused by the German onrush, and Pershing agreed. Marshall, who had been on temporary duty at Langres teaching a class for senior officers, hastily returned to his job as the First Division’s operations officer. In November he had been promoted to major, and right after Christmas he wore the silver oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel. Now he had to scramble to find the right combinations of 40 hommes–8 chevaux to hurriedly transport the 40,000-man division from Lorraine to the fighting line in Picardy.
Upon arrival, the decision was made that the First Division would conduct an attack on the village of Cantigny, which the Germans were using as an artillery observation post. The assault was successful—at least at first. But the Germans began a series of violent counterattacks that left 200 Americans killed, 600 wounded, 300 gassed, and 16 missing. Marshall was often down in the front lines scouting around and was “officially commended for his bravery in carrying out his duties under fire.”
At one point in the battle, a mud-spattered lieutenant stormed into headquarters wanting to know why his machine-gun company had been ordered back into the fight when it had just been relieved from the line. Marshall got him coffee, sat him down, and patiently explained that it was vital to hold Cantigny against the counterattacks and headquarters thought that his company was the best for the job. The lieutenant later remembered leaving “with a feeling of added pride in my outfit.” When he relayed what Marshall had told him, “it restored officers and men to top combat efficiency.”36
The Germans, however, continued their ferocious assaults, which for the Allies had reached crisis proportions. The Americans, including regiments of marines, were drawn into savage fighting at Belleau Wood and Château-Thierry. These sharp battles represented the first time American forces went on the attack. They successfully threw back the German army from the Marne, though not without more than twenty thousand casualties including particularly heavy losses in a battalion of the Fifth U.S. Marines. At the height of the action Gunnery
Sergeant Dan Daley issued his famous remark, “Well come on, ya sons of bitches. Ya want to live forever?” The twin victories at Belleau Wood and Château-Thierry have been described as the turning point in the war, and certainly they erased any lingering doubts about the bravery and resourcefulness of the U.S. expeditionary force.
While the French and Americans were fighting the Second Battle of the Marne, a worried George Marshall began organizing two entirely new scratch fighting battalions out of the division’s supply of men, stevedores, muleskinners, truck drivers, and various cooks and bottle washers. One of these was commanded by the division adjutant, the other by the judge advocate. When they reported for instructions, Marshall led them to a window, below which a lovely valley spread with a rail track running through it. “You are to die east of the railroad,” he said, pointing. “That is all the orders you need.”37
ON JUNE 6 RUMOR HAD IT that Patton’s tanks were to be used in a major upcoming operation, and he reorganized the Tank Center into two battalions to reflect the added men and equipment. Major Viner and Major Brett would each command a battalion and Patton would command what amounted now to a tank regiment.
But as the summer waned, there were no orders to bring the tanks to the fighting line and Patton was becoming antsy. He had honed his men and equipment to a fine edge and there they sat while the fighting raged. Out of exasperation and boredom, Patton decided to take the course at the Army Staff College that Pershing had set up at Chaumont.
Meanwhile, the battle being fought on the chalk plains of Champagne was long and bloody, and a “startling success” for the Germans. By the end of June an emergency was declared as the Germans appeared to be on the verge of taking the French capital. On July 4, 1918, the 42nd Division was pulled out of Baccarat and force-marched to the railheads of Champagne, scene of some of the bitterest fighting. They left behind more than two thousand of their comrades killed or wounded.
As chief of staff, MacArthur was of course in the midst of the loading when General Pershing showed up unannounced for one of his surprise “inspections.” After watching the activity for a short while, Pershing suddenly strode up to MacArthur, who was busying himself on the loading ramp, and loudly said words to the effect that “This division is a disgrace! The men are poorly disciplined and they are not properly trained! The whole outfit is about the worst that I’ve seen.” The ramp was crowded with dozens of officers and enlisted men who stopped whatever they were doing to listen to the commanding general’s rant.
“MacArthur,” Pershing shouted, “I am going to hold you personally responsible for getting order and discipline into this division! I won’t stand for this! It’s a disgrace!”38
Pershing’s outburst left the Rainbow’s chief of staff flabbergasted and flush-faced. Pershing strode away to his car and MacArthur left the loading ramp and walked into the nearby town of Charmes, where he sat on a park bench trying to fathom Pershing’s reasons for singling out him and his division. What he didn’t know was that “he had just been initiated into a growing fraternity of officers” who would become targets of Pershing’s fury. In the AEF it had become something like a Red Badge of Courage to be publicly bawled out by the commanding general, who went around indiscriminately and at will making known his displeasure upon high-ranking subordinate officers.
MacArthur didn’t see it that way. He began to harbor strong intimations that the “Pershing Faction” at AEF headquarters was persecuting him. This was an unfortunate side of MacArthur’s personality and it would dog him for the remainder of his career. Something—some subtle distorted impulse in his psyche—led him to conjure conspiracies, designs, and intrigues against him by higher headquarters, which eventually included the Office of the Chief of Staff and the president of the United States. Even so, less than a week after his dressing down by the commanding general, MacArthur became the youngest brigadier general in the AEF.39
Now the Rainbow Division was under the operational supervision of the brilliant one-armed, one-legged French Fourth Army commander General Henri J. E. Gouraud. Popularly known as the “Lion of Morocco,” Gouraud became so impressed with MacArthur during this period that an offhand but remarkably complimentary endorsement of the new brigadier found its way into MacArthur’s permanent military records. Be that as it may, not everyone was as high on the “Boy General” MacArthur as Gouraud was. Once, after pinning a third Silver Star on him, the 42nd Division commander said, “Mac, there are people at GHQ [Pershing’s headquarters] who consider you irresponsible. They feel you have no business leading attacks like some expendable line officer.”
MacArthur replied that he didn’t consider his line officers any more expendable than himself, adding that it makes for “a fighting spirit.” Furthermore, it raised the question of whether MacArthur’s seeming paranoia about General Headquarters actually had a reasonable basis in fact. Here he was, so to speak, down in the trenches, and around Pershing’s headquarters they were calling him “the showoff.”40
On July 14, Bastille Day, General Gouraud was seized by an implacable intuition that the Germans were going to launch a major attack in his sector. He invited all of the generals and senior colonels of the Rainbow Division to luncheon at his headquarters and told them so. It turned out that Gouraud was right. At midnight that night, the German bombardment began—5,500 guns on both sides firing at maximum rate so that “the whole sky seemed to be torn apart with sound,” which could be heard in Paris, a hundred miles away. Four hours later the enemy attacked with three armies under Crown Prince Wilhelm—forty-seven divisions (500,000 men) in a two-pronged defensive on either side of the city of Reims through the forests and on the white-chalked plains of the Champagne sector.41
The storm burst into the 42nd Division’s sector just after dawn as Germans began pouring into the Allied frontline trenches. What the enemy found there, however, startled them: almost nothing. As per the new Allied plan of “defense in depth,” only a few troops were kept in the front line, and those mostly to signal back with flares and rockets that the enemy had arrived. The main Allied forces were entrenched in a well-fortified “intermediate line” about two miles in the rear. Every square yard of that distance was preregistered with Allied artillery.
All morning the Germans flung themselves into the trap and were thrown back. Again and again they re-formed and charged and were mown down with hideous losses. By midafternoon as they were repulsed for a final time it had become clear that the last great German offensive of the war was a failure and Paris was safe.42
On July 18 a desperate and hastily organized Allied counterattack was launched to destroy the German army. MacArthur’s 84th Brigade was among the units spearheading the assault. Orders were that the enemy was retreating and must be pursued at all costs, in particular from the heights across the river Ourcq, which the Rainbow Division was told to surprise silently, with the bayonet only—no shots were to be fired. Here, however, the Germans had laid a death trap of their own. As the Americans waded across the river, the chalk bluffs to their front came alive with vicious stabs of machine-gun fire that turned the waters bloodred. MacArthur went immediately to the front and saw for himself where they had gone wrong. He vowed never again to launch a frontal attack unless he had personally reconnoitered the ground.
Now the Germans were playing a game of cat and mouse, ostensibly withdrawing, but apparently only for the sake of luring the Americans into a trap—or traps of their own. Allied intelligence had concluded that the enemy was retreating hastily with only small rearguard actions, but this was not so. The Germans had carefully set up strong, well-fortified positions among the myriad stone farm buildings of the fighting front, so that the only way to get at them was with suicidal attacks across open ground covered by precleared fields of fire.
The problem was that as intelligence kept reporting the Germans on the run Allied headquarters kept ordering close pursuit. It was frightening, demoralizing, and maddening—men crossing open fields only to be shot to rags by
death-dealing automatic weapons hidden behind walls, rock, or clumps of trees.
Finally MacArthur told them to start fighting like the western Indians of his youth, creeping up along the ground in groups of twos and threes. During the next week, the Rainbow thus slouched forward in a series of horrid little encounters: La Croix Rouge, Ferme Beauvardes, Sergy, Meurcy Farm, Nesles, Forêt de Fer, Villers-sur-Fère, Hill 212—each place named on a military map that told nothing of the blood-drenched squalor that went on there. The Americans would crawl up Indian-style, throw grenades, and finish it off hand to hand with bayonets and rifle butts. Little or no quarter was given and little was asked.
Many times the enemy positions were wiped out to the last man, but the price was high. In those five days the Rainbow suffered an appalling 6,500 men killed or wounded. MacArthur’s 84th Brigade was composed mostly of Alabama and Iowa National Guard infantry who were not held in high esteem by the regular army men. But they had learned to kill just as well as anybody else and MacArthur was immensely proud of them.
The battle had also taken its toll on MacArthur. Even though he earned a second Silver Star and the French Legion of Honor, something in his personality had changed. A group of officers was toasting the victory at a drinking party at Châlons, singing ever bawdier stanzas of “Mademoiselle from Armentières,” but for MacArthur something was missing. “It may have been the vision of those writhing bodies hanging on the wire or the stench of dead flesh … Perhaps I was just getting old,” he said. “Somehow, I had forgotten how to play.”
* On her return trip a few days later, however, the Covington was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats.
† Tanks—mechanized, armored, and armed fighting vehicles with caterpillar treads—had only recently been developed by the British and French as an answer to the three-year stalemate in the trenches.