To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [215]
Pershing felt himself weighed down by the words. “Yes, I am quite certain my staff is eyeing the road for some glimpse of my vehicle. My desk is most certainly buried in correspondence. I should return to Chaumont.”
He stood, and Joffre stayed in his chair, said, “Allow me to offer you one more bit of advice, John. Despite the desperate fight in front of you, there is another war being waged that you cannot win. If Germany is defeated, there will be a feeding frenzy among the civilian leaders, each one desperate for their proper share of the glory. Germany will become irrelevant. What will matter is which one of our ambitious leaders can cement his place in history as the man who engineered the great victory. To these men who place so much value on power, that will be all that matters. It is one of the obscenities of history. It may be that the Americans are the perfect foil. If we lose the war, you can be blamed, all your failures will be magnified. But if we win, you will receive none of the spoils, none of the glory. I hope you are immune to that. But I also hope you are prepared for it.”
THE MEETINGS CONTINUED, INCESSANT DEBATES AMONG THE SUPREME War Council and their generals that frustrated everyone involved. Foch’s plan continued to be endorsed by Lloyd George and Clemenceau, and rejected by Pétain and Haig. While the Allies debated and grappled with each other’s pride and priorities, to the north and west, fresh German divisions continued to march into an ever-strengthening line, troops flush with their success in putting Russia out of the war. The winter was passing, the mud and the chalky swamplands drying, the ground growing firmer.
On March 3, Germany and her allies and the new Bolshevik leaders in Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which officially ended the war in the East. To the German High Command, the advantage had swung completely their way. Inspired by an increase in troop strength along the Western Front, Ludendorff put into motion the plan that the Germans had every reason to believe would end the war.
It began on March 21, on a forty-mile front, from Arras to La Fère. Nearly three quarters of a million German troops surged forward toward the British lines, outnumbering the British defenders by three to one. The shock of the assault was complete and devastating, and opened a massive hole that no one could fill. In two days, the Germans had advanced to Mondidier, thirty-five miles from their starting point, and had yet to confront any British force formidable enough to slow their advance. Though Ludendorff continued the push, the German troops had gone as far as their supplies and their physical stamina would allow, and the advance slowed from the exhaustion of its troops. As the Allies struggled to contain the breach, Joffre’s predictions of change were realized. Desperation had turned to catastrophe, and the civilian and military leaders in France and Britain accepted that if Germany was to be stopped, the Allied forces must be coordinated and commanded by one man. On April 3, Ferdinand Foch was named generalissimo of the Allied armies.
Pershing could only respond to the disaster by stepping up the intensity of his own efforts, and American troops continued to fill the lines of the sector that lay just beyond the southern limits of the German breakthrough. It seemed that Ludendorff had focused his assault on his opponents, and had ignored the Americans. Pershing had to wonder if the Germans had put into motion some grand design that might yet engulf the raw troops in their new positions. But he could not dwell on what had not yet happened. Throughout the American sector, the troops continued to prepare themselves, every part of the AEF, from the fledgling tank corps to the inexperienced Air Service, bracing for what might yet come. Through it all, as the reports flowed into his headquarters, detailing every moment of the disaster to the north, Pershing had to wonder