John K. Mahon and Romana Danysh

“ Small units of men inched themselves forward, taking advantage of shell holes and other cover. It remains to mention briefly two allies of infantrymen that virtually revolutionized their combat methods. The first was the motor truck, which gave foot soldiers greater mobility than they had ever before had. The second was a miscellany of signal equipment. This helped the infantry to operate with some degree of co-ordination on huge battlefields where arm signals could no longer be seen and noise drowned out the human voice. ”

“ In addition to being organized to give depth, units at all levels were formed to give effect to the new weapons and to avoid losses from them in the hands of the enemy. It has been noted that the expanding use of machine guns required reorganizations which reached from divisions down to companies. The other weapons exacted changes, but they were not quite as widely disseminated. For example, infantry mortars and one-pounder guns found a place in the headquarters companies of regiments. ”

“ At the time of the armistice on 11 November 1918, an American division contained 28,105 men, nearly twice the number in European units. Firepower in both division and brigade was greatly augmented. In the transition from triangular to square divisions, and in the consequent alteration of regiments and battalions, the elements of the National Guard were seriously dislocated. Since out of the 367,223 enlisted men of the Guard originally inducted, 242,000 (66 percent) were infantrymen, it was believed necessary to break up many infantry units. ”

“ This made a very awkward arrangement since machine gun companies had to be drawn from three sources-regiment, brigade, and division-in order to work with infantry battalions. Although the arrangement remained awkward throughout the war, and brigade and divisional battalions continued to exist, the division machine gun battalion was finally reduced to two companies. These were motorized and used as a highly mobile element of the divisional reserve. It was easier to alter organization in order to include machine guns than it was to supply these weapons. ”

“ Accordingly, he required that American foot soldiers be trained primarily for open warfare, and only incidentally for duty in the trenches. As already noted, depth was necessary to infantry formations. In the attack this meant successive waves of men; in defense, numerous positions, staggered irregularly one behind the other. Thus, all units from division down to platoon were organized to give the required depth within their respective sectors. The war confirmed the trend toward refining the organization of infantry units. ”

“ All were included in a rifle company, but sometimes the automatic riflemen were formed together, as were the grenadiers and rifle grenadiers, other times they were scattered among the squads. As late as November 1918, in the Meuse-Argonne campaign, the specialists stayed together in combat groups, but the trend was toward dispersion so that every squad contained at least one automatic rifleman, one good grenade thrower, and one rifle grenadier. Whatever the organization, extended order became necessary in combat. Men could not bunch up and live. ”