4,925

Last night I finished reading No Man's Land: 1918—The Last Year of the Great War by John Toland. Published in 1980, its prologue starts on New Year's Day. The Allied forces waited feverishly for American troops to arrive, after President Woodrow Wilson declared war in April 1917. General John Pershing promised that at least 5,000,000 US troops would arrive, "a combat force greater by one quarter than the entire Allied armies on the Western Front, where the war would eventually be won or lost."

The Americans finally arrived in great numbers. Toland's book vividly shows Yank enthusiasm meeting the insanity of war in Europe. The numbers are stunning, rivaling the worst days of the Civil War. Toland tells of one battle in July 1918:

The remains of the battalion reached their starting place, the Forest of Retz. Of the 726 men who had gone into battle, 146 came out. "They just melted away," Denig recalled. Throughout Harbord's 2nd Division it was the same story. In forty-eight hours they had suffered 4,925 casualties.

That's one part of one battle. 

Toland draws a sharp contrast between the exhausted armies of Europe and the incoming Yanks. His descriptions of American military behavior caught my attention because of the high, even crazed, enthusiasm for fighting. The Germans picked up on this immediately, a theme repeated through the book as Germans encountered Americans:

The carnage was even worse on the other side of the river, where Allied artillery throughout the day had blasted the reserve units. "Never had I seen so many dead," wrote Lieutenant Hesse, "never contemplated a spectacle of war so frightful as on the northern slopes of the Marne. On the southern side the Americans in a hand-to-hand fight had completely wiped out two of our companies. Hidden in the wheat in a semicircle, they had let our men advance, then had annihilated them with a fire at thirty or forty feet away. This enemy had a coolness, one must acknowledge, but he also gave proof that day of a bestial brutality. 'The Americans are killing everyone!' Such was the terrifying word that spread through all our ranks on the 15th of July."

Toland's vignettes give glimpses of individuals, somber and quirky. Some historical background on this reference would have been useful: "Others were hit, and Lieutenant John Overton shouted to a friend to send his Skull and Cross Bones pin to his mother if he were killed." That must refer to the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale. 

Other stories relate to the doughboys' quest for memorabilia to take home to show the folks. Toland makes several references to this habit:

The prisoners told Gibbons that the British were in the war because they hated Germans; France because the battling was in their country; the Yanks only to collect souvenirs.

Gibbons stopped one of these collectors bound for the rear. He was one of the shortest men he had ever seen in U.S. uniform and he was herding two huge prisoners who towered above him. A white bandage ran around his forehead and there were blood-stained strips of cotton gauze on cheek and neck. He carried a huge chunk of German black bread; danging from his right hip were five holsters containing Lugers. Suspect from his right shoulder by straps to his left hip were six pairs of expensive field glasses. His filthy face was wreathed in a remarkable smile.

The slaughter continued far past the point where the Germans knew they would lose, in the summer of 1918. Armies had the ammunition and the orders, and they used both until the very last minute of combat. On that last day, November 11, 1918:

Along most of the Western Front there was a miserable drizzle. Georg Bucher, who had fought since 1914, was awaiting another American attack. The Yanks were as full of fight as crazed animals and didn't seem to know the war was about over.

The book hints at other sides of the American character and society.  A photo shows Eugene Bullard, the Black Swallow of Death," who fought for the French and served as a fighter pilot for the Lafayette Flying Corp. "When the U.S. entered the war, all American pilots were transferred to the U.S. Air Service with an advancement in rank as commissioned officers—all, this is except Bullard, a recipient of the Croix de Guerre, who was grounded."

Toland ends the book on a forboding note; in retrospect, how could he do other? An injured Adolph Hitler vows to devote his life to politics; Japanese leaders hope to gain German holdings in the Pacific, such as the Marshalls and the Marianas as "a formidable defense against any future danger from American warships based in Hawaii."

The War to End All Wars simply set the stage for the next round of global conflict.

The United States suffered 53,402 deaths from combat and missing in action in World War I and 116,402 total military deaths from all causes.