Kenneth E. Hamburger

“ Learning Lessons in the American Expeditionary Forces FOREWORD If history has shown anything, it has underlined both the importance and difficulty of preparing for the unexpected. A trained and ready Army must possess a sound doctrine, competent leaders, and effective, rugged equipment. Just as important to success is the Army’s capacity to change. It must be able to rapidly adapt existing organizations, tactics, techniques, and procedures to meet the demands of emerging situations. ”

“ It seems more helpful, however, to heed the sage notion that “History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.” ”

“ Pershing described the importance of the schools after the war:
A school system would have been desirable in the best of armies, but it was indispensable in an army which had to be created almost wholly from raw material. The training of troops for combat was, of course, the primary objective, and schools for instructors were merely a means to that end. [20]
Unit training was as important as individual training. Ideally, units would spend about a month training in small unit tactics, weapons proficiency, and similar tasks. ”

“ Army leaders believed that marksmanship was a singularly American tradition that they could exploit. As General Harbord put it, “The authentic story of an Allied soldier with a rifle strapped on his back, chasing an enemy to get close enough to throw a hand grenade would never have been true of any American.” [31] In August 1917 Pershing cabled the War Department that all soldiers shipped to France needed to be fully trained in marksmanship. The pace of training and hurrying divisions to France, however, never allowed adequate marksmanship training in the United States. ”

“ How a nation and its military use history and the experiences of the past to chart the future in war and peace constitutes a significant subject for the military professional in any age. Many observers have been decidedly pessimistic regarding mankind’s ability to learn from history— George Bernard Shaw said, “Alas! Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that men never learn anything from history.” ”

“ The Army had few weapons beyond small arms that were similar to those combatants were using in Europe, and no personnel trained to use them. For the United States to make a timely contribution to the Allies in land warfare, it would have to accept weapons and training from them, at least in the beginning.
Pershing had few illusions about how much training his AEF would need. In critical subjects ranging from field hygiene and small unit tactics to the employment of machine guns and howitzers, all ranks were at best enthusiastic novices. ”

“ In the military, and especially among those with formal training in history, there is often skepticism about lessons from history as well. This grows out of the tendency of some professional soldiers who have little formal training in history to consider the study of military history as much the same sort of utilitarian undertaking as a housewife collecting recipes— when one has a good collection of historical analogies, all the practitioner has to do is to run through his file until he has the right menu of solutions to his problems. ”

“ It is hard to convince some that one studies history to sharpen judgment and, in the words of the aphorism, “make one wise for all time instead of merely smart for next time.”
The case of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I provides three perspectives on how that force drew lessons from experience. First, it absorbed experiences that the French and British provided in training the AEF in camps near the battlefields. ”

“ Too often sentient beings have made flawed use of their own or others’ experiences; misguided applications of the past range from Mark Twain’s cat that learned never to sit on a stove, hot or cold, to statesmen who confused Seoul and Saigon with Munich. Nonetheless, when the lessons drawn from experience are limited to, as Mark Twain put it, “only the wisdom that is there,” such as the techniques of tactics and administration of military units, the lessons can be helpful and accurate. ”

“ When even one soldier climbed out and moved to the front, the adventure for him became open warfare, a war of movement, and the essentials of minor tactics were then in play. His flanks and rear must be protected as his maneuvers began. Mere training in trench warfare would not be enough for our officers when this event happened. [29]
Consequently, Pershing ordered a training program stressing open warfare methods and offensive action: “The...methods to be employed must remain and become distinctly our own. All instruction must contemplate the assumption of a vigorous offensive. ”

“ In keeping with the demands of trench warfare, American military leaders believed that larger divisions would have greater staying power on the battlefield, lessening the need for rotation in battle and simplifying both the training of staffs and division support units and the overall conduct of defensive operations. General Harbord explained that we sought to provide a division with sufficient overhead in the way of staff, communications, and supplies to permit the infantry and artillery to continue fighting for some time. ”

“ Another lesson of World War I quickly forgotten was the shortage of infantry lieutenants caused by diverting to other uses all soldiers possessing any practical skills, already cited as “one of the most serious mistakes of the war.” The shortage of lieutenants was a significant problem in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. In World War II and the Korean War, the Army attempted to solve the problem by giving direct commissions to competent noncommissioned officers, thus directly creating a secondary problem of noncommissioned officer shortages. ”

“ Artillery, engineer, and signal officer courses were graduating another 1,400 monthly. Transforming a young enlisted man into an infantry platoon leader is a daunting task in the best of circumstances even in peacetime; doing it in a few weeks in wartime is almost impossible. As one journalist expressed the problem after the war, “A lot of men are buried in the Argonne because people cannot in a short time learn even the elements of warfare so as not to forget them in the stress of battle.” ”

“ The senior officers of the Allied armies saw clearly that the Americans were largely untrained civilians in uniform who would require months of drill and training before they were ready to go into the line against the Central Powers. It seemed obvious to them that the most efficient way to use the fresh troops from across the Atlantic would be to train them with Allied instructors and put them into the trenches with British and French units that could shepherd them through their encounters with the Germans. ”

“ The most relevant and readily available lessons for the soldiers of the AEF to absorb were those of the Allies. Both the French and British offered to provide instructors for the Americans. Both had large school systems and training centers set up in safe areas behind the front where they trained both individuals and units. These included officer candidate schools as well as schools for enlisted men and specialists, and they offered to let soldiers from the AEF attend these courses. The schools adjusted their curricula as experiences at the front demonstrated new requirements. ”

“ With the deep and very powerful defense developed in the World War, no decisive stroke could be secured in battle without a penetration necessitating several days of steady fighting. It was thus reasoned that the infantry of the division must be of such strength as to permit it to continue in combat for such a number of days that the continuity of battle would not be interrupted before decision was reached. ”

“ Nevertheless, the iron-willed American commander prevailed over all of the arguments, cajoling, and threats from the military and civilian leadership of the Allies. He employed the AEF in a sector of its own, using tactics that emphasized the spirit of the offensive and individual marksmanship.
Professionals in the Army were attempting to draw lessons from the war in Europe even before their nation entered the war. Articles in the professional journals and the periodicals that served military audiences dealt with ramifications of the war from the time of its outbreak in 1914. ”

“ Using American doughboys as cannon fodder for British- or French-led offensives would have obvious domestic effects in the American heartland, especially if those attacks fared no better than earlier ones. Pershing’s only compromises on the amalgamation question were to provide four black regiments to the French Army and a white corps to the British. Although these units served throughout the war with the Allies, building a distinguished combat record, the AEF commander refused to expand the program further. ”

“ In addition, they were determined that the AEF would serve as part of an Allied army, either as units or as individuals, and not as an American Army with its own sector. Amalgamation—the integration of American troops in some fashion with their own—promised the quickest solution to their growing shortages of manpower. The French and British military and civilian leaders thus argued incessantly with Pershing over the matter and, when he proved adamant, went around him to President Wilson. ”

“ A well-conditioned soldier with a minor wound often healed rapidly and returned to duty quickly; cold injuries of even moderate degree, however, often rendered even well-trained and experienced soldiers unfit for duty for long periods, sometimes permanently. Yet these injuries constituted only a minor problem for the AEF during World War I, thanks largely to British AEF instructors who emphasized the role of the chain of command in preventive measures. ”

“ Unit histories are likewise a difficult area to generalize. Some are useful as a record of the day-to-day happenings of the unit, and some are entertaining as social history, giving extensive accounts of personalities and events through the eyes of participants. ”

“ The Army’s Superior Board on Organization and Tactics conducted the most important formal study of the war experience immediately following the conflict, rendering its report in June 1920. In it the board drew a number of lessons that were on the mark; others showed that its crystal ball was a bit clouded; while the many omissions of important topics speak for themselves. ”

“ In the process of deploying, manning, and maintaining railway coast artillery, the United States squandered millions of scarce dollars during the interwar period, all to field a weapon that was unable to perform its mission of destroying enemy warships and was obsolete before it was built. ”

“ Another example pertained to the dependence on other nations for the provision of contemporary military equipment of all types—and the associated length of time needed to build an effective war economy to produce such equipment. (The U.S. Army never had a qualitative edge over its German opponents during World War II despite the superior productive capabilities of American industry.) ”

“ After eight paragraphs describing formations and methods of crossing open areas, for example, the authors reminded the reader that the methods described were only suggestions, that “other and better formations may be devised to fit particular cases, [and that] the best formation is the one which advances the line farthest with the least loss of men, time, and control.” ”

“ The Americans adopted a huge division organization consisting of more than 28,000 men and approximating the size of a French, British, or German corps. Although part of the argument for such a large organization was the shortage of trained American officers required for divisions, the primary rationale was tactical. ”

“ The team included the chief of the Army schools, a lieutenant colonel from the Operations Section, and Colonel Fiske, then deputy training officer of the AEF. The report is concise and thorough. The three pages of “Observations and Conclusions” listed specific procedural or organizational changes needed to avoid similar incidents, such as:
To facilitate rapid exit, hand ropes should be placed on both sides of the dugout steps, the trenches themselves should be provided with steps or ramps, and the whole procedure drilled until every man knows what he is to do. ”