To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [310]
“There is no such thing as perfect training. The American divisions now in the field are quite likely the most effective fighting force that confronts the enemy. Are you telling me you do not wish my original plan to be carried out? The same plan you approved less than a month ago?”
“General, it is simply that I am trying to find the most meaningful strategy to defeat the enemy. I believe a large-scale assault along both sides of the Aisne River has the greatest chance of success. And the benefits of that success will outweigh what you might accomplish at St. Mihiel.”
“I disagree, sir. If my plan succeeds, it will place a sizable force of our troops in a lightly defended region, where we will cause considerable disruption to the enemy’s supplies and communications. If we push through the breakthrough I have planned, we will be in open ground on the plain of Woevre, and can advance with great speed against the fortress at Metz, threaten the valuable mining region beyond, and cause the complete disruption of the enemy’s communications and supply routes. The enemy can only respond by pulling forces away from other sectors, forcing them to withdraw from territory from which no one has dislodged them for four years! I would think this would be of some help to you and to Marshal Haig!” He realized his voice had risen, and he stopped, saw quivering anger on Foch’s face. “Marshal Foch, you must forgive my impatience, but surely you must see my position. Every time the AEF is ready to take the field, someone attempts to stand in the way. There is always some new plan. The president of the United States has been quite adamant. The American people and the soldiers they have sent to this war must fight as an independent army, under our own flag, under our own officers, just as the British, the Italians, the Russians, and the French have done. To disperse our army further than I have already allowed would be to crush the morale of the American soldiers. I should not have to explain this . . . yet again!”
Foch straightened, seemed to stare past him. “General Pershing, do you wish to take part in this battle?”
“Most assuredly, sir. But only as an American army.”
“Then you have a choice to make. The Allied armies require the American presence along the Meuse-Argonne front, to commence an assault on September fifteenth. Regardless of how your troops may be deployed, General, you will participate in the greatest battle in all of history, a massed assault that will ultimately include the entire front from Flanders to Lorraine. If we succeed, the enemy may very well seek peace, but on terms that you and I would approve of.”
“Marshal Foch, with all respect to you, sir, you do not have the authority to call upon me to yield up my command of the American army and have it scattered among the Allied forces where it will not be an American army at all.”
Foch seemed surprised, and Pershing could see the man’s frailty now, a slight shake in his hands. “General, I must insist upon the arrangement I have proposed.”
“You may insist all you please, but I absolutely decline to agree to your plan. While our army will fight wherever you may decide, it will not fight except as an American army. I have relied upon you as an ally; I have sent American soldiers to points of crisis wherever they were needed. I have relied upon you for assistance in securing the artillery and aircraft support that my country could not yet provide. You have agreed with my plan for placing the AEF in its own sector, and you have approved my plan for what we must accomplish once we are in place. We have built roads, rail lines, hospitals. We have transported more than a half million American troops to the area you approved. In your authority as commander in chief of the Allied armies, if you now desire that the AEF be moved to