Duffy's War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I

21. “Not a Fight, But a Promenade”

21 “Not a Fight, But a Promenade” 311 T he real fight over the St. Mihiel salient took place behind the lines, in Bombon and Chaumont—in a battle of wills between the supreme commander of the Allied forces, Ferdinand Foch, and a general without an army, John Pershing. Since the day he had landed in Europe in June 1917, Pershing had taken on prime ministers, premiers, and a king in his fight to mold an all-American army. After three years of slaughter, France and England had been bled dry of most of their manpower. They did not want a U.S. army—just the strength of a million American doughboys. Pershing had brushed aside their demands. Staring down Foch, he said, “The time may come when the American Army will have to stand the brunt of this war, and it is not wise to fritter away our resources. . . . It would be a grave mistake to give up the idea of building an American army.”1 Foch gave in, and as the Forty-second Division knocked the Germans off the northern heights of the Ourcq River, Pershing got his army—the largest American force since the Civil War. He had taken command on 10 August. Now he wanted to show the world it could fight—and the place to do so was St. Mihiel. “It was certain,” he explained, “that the psychological effect on the enemy of success in this first operation by the American Army, as well as on the Allies, our own troops, and our people at home, would be of signal importance.”2 The St. Mihiel salient jutted out of the Hindenburg Line between the Meuse and the Moselle Rivers like a dagger aimed at the heart of Paris. The Germans had held it for four years. Twice the French had tried and failed to recapture it. Strategically, it protected the huge railroad center at Metz, a fortress city twentyfive miles to the northeast. It interrupted the great rail line that The St. Mihiel Operation Adapted from United States Army in the World War, 1917–1919: Military Operations; Vol. 8 (Center of Military History, U.S. Army: Washington, 1990). NOT A FIGHT, BUT A PROMENADE 313 connected Paris to the vital iron mines and coalfields in the industrial Saar region—sources of raw materials desperately needed by France as well as Germany. For several years St. Mihiel had slipped into being a quiet sector. The troops there, mostly Austrians, Bavarians, Saxons, and Hungarians, had grown complacent. Not among Germany’s crack units, they had settled down and, after herding away most of the Frenchmen of fighting age, lived with their families, even marrying into them and starting their own families. Still, the St. Mihiel salient remained strongly fortified, with deep trenches and rock-solid artillery bunkers. At its southwesternmost point, the two-hundred-fifty square-mile salient, a triangle rather than a square, overlooked the Meuse River from high, wooded bluffs. Further back, as the salient widened out, it reached a flat section of land called the Woevre Plain. Covered with more woods, as well as streams, lakes, and small villages, in the rainy season it mushed into a swampy morass. The rainy season usually started in mid-September. And when it got wet the roads turned impassable. It had been decided almost a year earlier that when an American army finally became a reality, a punch at the St. Mihiel salient would be its first offensive. Pershing drew up a plan for taking St. Mihiel, and on 24 July he went over it with Foch and got his blessing. It was simple: the French would demonstrate in front of the salient while the Americans would attack its flanks. Hunter Liggett’s First Corps and Joseph Dickman’s Fourth Corps would launch the main attack, at the eastern flank. It was all set: Pershing was ready. His army was ready. Troops were rolling in from all over France—well over a half a million enlisted men, five hundred officers, and a brigade full of tanks. They would bust through the salient for old Black Jack, and he would march them right up to the Hindenburg Line itself, take it, and show off the fighting spirit of the American doughboy. Then Foch had a change of heart. When the Allies had stopped Germany’s July offensive and counterattacked successfully, driving the enemy north of the...