To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [399]
In all countries, heroes emerge, and in America, the public’s need to cherish and embellish some positive side of the war results in the rise of legends, men like Eddie Rickenbacker and Alvin York. But for every Sergeant York, there are men whose names are much less celebrated, and for the most part remain unknown to this day: Samuel Woodfill, Ulysses Grant McAlexander, Jesse Wooldridge, Charles Whittlesey, Henry Hulbert, Harry Adams. And Raoul Lufbery.
For every veteran of the Great War who rises to extraordinary notoriety in the Second World War, for every George Patton, George Marshall, or Douglas MacArthur, there are thousands more who will serve again, enlisted men and junior officers who rise to command, all of whom are better soldiers because of their experiences in 1918.
Though historians continue to debate the overall impact of the American military’s role, the economic impact of America’s exports to England and France had been felt long before the first soldiers of the AEF ever landed in France. From wheat and textiles to steel and lumber, American goods become a lifeblood of survival, particularly for Great Britain. It was this aid that gives rise to considerable protest in Germany, and ammunition to critics of Woodrow Wilson, who realizes that the United States was never truly a neutral party to the war. Once Wilson declares war, America begins to contribute enormous quantities of munitions and chemicals for high explosives (including gas), which eventually give the Allies an enormous advantage on the battlefield.
Throughout history, wars are often decided by technology, and in no event in modern history is this more evident than in the First World War, which of course explains the enormous cost in human life. For the first time, nations bring to combat the submarine and the airplane, the machine gun and the flamethrower, poison gas, portable trench mortars, and the grenade, plus the development of far more efficient artillery and small arms. Yet through much of the war, the commanders continue to march their men in slow formations, attacking headlong into an entrenched enemy.
During Christmas, 1914, the soldiers who faced each other along many stretches of the Western Front violated the orders of their officers and began a spontaneous celebration of the holiday. British, French, and German soldiers gathered in no-man’s-land and traded goods or saluted each other with greetings painted on huge wooden signs. Christmas trees were placed by German troops on the parapets of trenches. In some instances, games of soccer were played, the spirit of innocence still spread throughout the armies on both sides. After that first Christmas of the war, it never happened again.
The men who return home in 1918 bring with them the horrible memories and the lessons of their experience that inspire numerous articles and books, all insisting with perfect certainty that no war of this magnitude could ever occur again. The view is one of hope, of optimism, that man’s worst instincts have been extinguished. Today, nearly a century later, the world knows that to be regretfully untrue.
To this day historians continue to write from both sides of the fence regarding the impact of the American army on the outcome of the war. For decades after the Treaty of Versailles, many British and French historians completely dismiss America’s role, some even describing the American effort as nothing more than a quick grab at glory by entering the war when it was all but over. Regardless of the ongoing debates, many of which echo the sentiments of what is currently fashionable, the facts and the documented words of so many of the Allied (and German) leaders indicate a clear consensus. If the United States army had not arrived when it did and had not fought the way it did, the Allies would have lost the war.
American Comrades: I am grateful to you for the blood
so generously spilled on the soil of my country. I am proud