Fighting the Great War: Reconsidering the American Soldier Experience

Why men fight is a particularly apt question to ask about the American soldier in World War I. Unlike Europeans in 1914, Americans went to war with their eyes wide open. They had already seen the worst of industrial warfare both on the high seas when the 1915 Lusitania sinking illustrated the dangers of ocean travel and on the battlefield when the 1916 battles of the Somme and Verdun left no doubt about the staggering casualties trench warfare engendered. Nonetheless, Americans displayed a certain naive enthusiasm for war in 1917. When American soldiers arrived overseas, French soldiers noted how much the U.S. troops reminded them of themselves in 1914, filled as they were with energy and optimism for a quick, easy victory against Germany. The cheering crowds, the smiling doughboys, the ultra-patriot war bond posters: these are the images that create the portrait of a nation eagerly engaging in a war whose conclusion would cruelly dash their expectations of it being "the war to end all wars."

Scratch below the surface of these images, however, and a different portrait emerges. The problem, literary critic Susan Sontag suggests, is not that "people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs."¹ Viewing these images and celebrations not as spontaneous expressions of war enthusiasm but as carefully orchestrated events dramatically changes the meaning of these iconic images associated with World War I. Instead of Americans enthusiastically embracing war as a redemptive endeavor, we see the expectation or fear of resistance molding nearly every decision that the government made about raising, training, and fighting overseas.

After two and a half years of remaining neutral, the United States finally entered the war in April 1917. The road to war had been long and full of controversy, and President Woodrow Wilson was unsure how firmly committed the nation was to fighting. Wilson's own mixed feelings about declaring war perfectly mirrored the divided state of opinion within the country. Even the publication of the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany promised Mexico parts of the United States if it provoked a border war, failed to win over all skeptics. Indifferent acceptance by other Americans was better than active opposition, but in the long run even apathy would hurt the nation's ability (physically and emotionally) to fight what all expected to be a long war that might stretch into 1920.

To raise an army, the government faced the choice of relying primarily on volunteers, instituting an immediate draft, or waiting until enlistments began to flag before turning to a draft to bring men into the army. When Congress authorized the draft, the legislators initially intended to maintain the traditional American practice of using conscription to spur enlistments. An expanded Regular Army and National Guard continued to accept volunteers, while a new yet-to-be-formed National Army was reserved for conscripts. Fully aware of the mass slaughter underway along the Western Front, Wilson took steps early on to prevent the inevitable sag in enlistments once long casualty lists became a reality. The primary innovation involved giving local communities the responsibility for registering, selecting, and inducting soldiers for military service. Under the watchful eyes of community leaders, many draft-age men were given little chance to wrestle with their consciences over going to war.

On June 5, 1917, ship horns, church bells, and factory whistles rang out in cities and towns to announce the start of registration for the draft, and many families accompanied their sons, husbands, and brothers to the designated registration sites. When the moment to depart for the training camps arrived, communities gathered once again. On August 31, 1917, designated the "day of the Selected Man," recruits, many dressed in their best clothes, marched past their friends and neighbors to the trains that transported them to their new army lives. In Washington, D.C., President Wilson marched with local draftees, while in New York City, former president Theodore Roosevelt sat in the reviewing stand as 7,000 newly inducted soldiers paraded up Fifth Avenue.

Peaceful compliance with conscription reaped the government the images it...