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32 3 deutschland and Yearning Oh darling just to crush you to pieces, and love you for days on end is all I desire. —Truman Smith, letter to Kay, 29 July 1919 Smith had distinguished himself in a campaign that was brief, intense , and conclusive. As the American Army demobilized and diplomats engaged in the preliminaries to peacemaking, Truman’s regiment remained in Europe to become part of the occupation force in Germany. His letters to his wife during this time reveal a new affinity to things German and his disenchantment with the French. Just as he was becoming bored with garrison routine, he was asked if he would accept a civil affairs assignment requiring close and regular contact with the German civilian authorities in and around Coblenz. He accepted the assignment and found himself in in an optimal position from which to observe Europe being reshaped in the aftermath of war. He also saw Left-Right clashes in German streets as the Weimar Republic was born. His close attention to the unfolding of these events was accompanied by his yearning for his bride and his attempts to get her to Germany. As Smith attempted to rejoin his regiment after his hospital stay in early November 1918 and recuperation leave in Nice, he left a detailed record of his experiences in a stream of letters to Kay. Circumstances at the time permitted him to write even more frequently. His letters confirm the self-confidence he attributes to his performance in the extremely difficult close combat of October. A detached observer almost a century later is struck by his maturity and by the general clumsiness of the United States Army in France. Educated and socialized in elite circles, Smith had limited experience with “other classes” in New York before he joined the army. That changed during his time spent on the Mexican frontier, while training later in the United States, and then in France. His soldiers earned his respect. One is reminded of the 1914 observation of deutschland and Yearning 33 French intellectual Marc Bloch, later a distinguished historian, and still later a martyr executed by the Nazis. As a sergeant-reservist recalled to the colors at the beginning of the war, Bloch comes to respect the simple soldiers around him, remarking that in normal times his only contact with their like was when he brought his shoes to be repaired. This discovery, described in his Memoirs of War, 1914– 1915, is shared with others who served in the trenches, among them Smith, who also learned to respect his soldiers. He was twenty-five and just three years out of Yale when he commanded 900 of them in circumstances unimaginable to his peers safe abed at home. One commentator has noted, “The Meuse-Argonne was the greatest battle yet fought by the U.S. Army. Almost 1,250,000 American troops had participated during the course of the offensive. Casualties were high—120,000 of all types—but the results were impressive .”1 Indeed the results were impressive enough to convince German military leadership to tell civil authority that it was in the national interest to terminate the war. One can reasonably conclude that the contribution of the U.S. Army made the difference. Without it, the Allied counteroffensive in 1918 might not have succeeded. The Americans, fresh and growing in numbers and combat skills, tipped the scale in favor of the Allies on the battlefield and empowered the American president both in the Alliance and with the Germans . The Armistice, in which Woodrow Wilson took the initiative in negotiations with the Germans, was tantamount to German surrender . But combat success and a general euphoria at the end of the war concealed serious logistical and administrative deficiencies in the U.S. Army. Poorly trained men were sent to the front, the supply system almost broke down, and the U.S. Army depended upon its allies for air, artillery, and tank support. That there would be mistakes , blunders, shortcomings under such a rapid expansion and commitment was perhaps inevitable. Smith was not so petty as to point to the mishandling of his promotion and valor award as examples of his army’s administrative ineptness, but he could have. Despite strenuous efforts to rejoin his regiment, which began on 22 November, he wrote Kay on 1 December: “The way from hospital to front is indeed devious and uncertain. Casual officers [officers not with their units because they were in transit or in hospital...

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