Soldiers needed barracks, training areas, uniforms and equipment as well as a steady supply of recruits. Much of his time in France would be spent simply building - and protecting - the independent American presence in the country.īuilding an army takes more than just opening recruiting stations. He had been a successful combat leader in Cuba and the Philippines. Pershing was one of the few Army leaders to command large formations, having been in charge of the U.S. Pershing to lead what would become the American Expeditionary Forces in France. But the overriding reason for an independent American expeditionary force was the belief was that the American public would not support their soldiers fighting and dying under a foreign flag, Neumann said. ![]() Wilson believed that without an independent American fighting force, he would not be able to shape the post-war peace – that the overwhelming sacrifices made by all would mean nothing without a change to the status quo. No one on this side of the Atlantic agreed to either proposal.” ![]() The British wanted American soldiers to go through their training and be assigned to British units. “The French proposed taking American battalions and merging them into French brigades until enough arrived to form an American Army. “This was the heart of the whole amalgamation debate,” Neumann said. The British and French desperately needed soldiers, and they wanted them fast. Rather it was an Associated Power, which meant the United States would work with the Allies, but would be free to pursue its own strategic objectives. The United States did not formally join the alliance against Germany. What’s more, it had to be an American army. The United States had to match that level of manpower. The German army had 11 million under arms, the Ottoman Empire had 2.9 million, Russia had 12 million, and Austria-Hungary had 7.8 million. At its peak, the French army had 8.3 million “poilus” – as the French called their soldiers. In 1917, Britain had an army of roughly 4 million soldiers, not counting the contributions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and the other parts of its empire. “But after the war broke out, Britain began building its army.” Those were two pretty good barriers,” Neumann said. “Britain and the United States didn’t see the need for universal service because of the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain maintained a robust naval reserve, but did not have a commensurate universal service reserve for its army. Germany, France, Russia and Austria-Hungary had large standing armies and reserve formations in 1914 that the nations could call up in the event of a war. Continental European powers had a universal military service program in place, and when war broke out, reservists – already trained – went to their mobilization points and joined their units. The United States had no process in place to build a mass army, supply it, transport it and fight it. Both the country and the Army were absolutely unprepared for what was going to happen. Army was a constabulary force of 127,151 soldiers. “That meant building an Army and engaging the enemy on the Western Front.”ĭoing that was no simple task. “For the United States to have a voice at the peace table, it had to make a significant contribution to the war effort,” Neumann said. They saw the war as an inferno that would topple empires so democracy and the will of the people could triumph. Still others believed that going to war had to mean something greater than simply returning to the status quo on the continent, Neumann said. Others felt it was all right to help France, but not to help Great Britain, he said. Some Americans believed that because a naval provocation led to the war, the proportional response would be a naval campaign against Germany. Neumann, who edited a series on the Army during World War I, said it wasn’t a done deal that Americans would go to France to help man the Western Front. “The United States was in it, but they had to define what ‘it’ meant,” said Brian Neumann, a historian at the Army’s Center of Military History.
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