In 1917, the war was deadlocked. The previous year, British and French armies suffered horrendous casualties at Verdun and the Somme, and during the latter bloodbath, more than 19,000 of the king’s soldiers died on a single day, July 1, 1916. To the east, Russia was in the midst of revolution, and a year later, the country would drop out of the war. The kaiser’s army also suffered, but maintained the strategic upper hand while tucked in concrete, entrenched positions along the Western Front. At home, a British naval blockade kept the German people hungry.
Young American men as reinforcements, the Allies thought, were the key to breaking the stalemate and ultimate achieving victory. But President Woodrow Wilson thought otherwise. With good reason, he could have gone to war in 1915, when a German U-boat sank the Lusitania and 128 Americans perished. But Wilson did not and, in 1916, won a second term after promising to keep America out of the war.
The next year, Germany prodded Wilson with unrestricted attacks on American merchant shipping and sought to form a Mexican alliance. The intercepted Zimmermann Telegram exposed Germany’s offer to help Mexico regain territory lost to the United States in 1848, if Mexico went to war with America. This caused Wilson to reverse course and, in a speech to Congress on April 2, 1917, he asked for a declaration of war against Germany. Both the House and Senate swiftly agreed, and four days later, the United States joined Belgium, France, and Great Britain in a quest to keep the “world safe for democracy.”
As commander in chief, Wilson wisely kept American troops independent. They would fight under General John J. Pershing’s American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). My Fellow Soldiers tells Pershing’s story along with “the Americans who helped win the Great War” through their letters and memoirs. In this ambitious book, Andrew Carroll quotes volunteers who served before the United States entered the war, war correspondents, political leaders, and, of course, the doughboys who went over the top against artillery and machine-gun fire.
General Pershing takes center stage, and Carroll gives him plenty of room. Largely forgotten today—even though his name adorns numerous landmarks around America—a century ago John J. Pershing was a military hero. At West Point, fellow cadets revered him; in Cuba, he didn’t flinch while under fire; and in the Philippines, he tamed insurgents with compassion and diplomacy. Returning to West Point as an instructor, Pershing’s manner was cold and aloof to cadets. Behind his back, they cruelly called him “Black Jack”—a dig at his prior command of African-American troops.
Pershing had married the daughter of a senior senator who chaired the Military Affairs Committee, and his career blossomed. Promoted to brigadier general, life was seemingly perfect until the summer of 1915, when tragedy struck. While he was on border duty in El Paso, Pershing’s wife and three of their four children died when a fire destroyed their home at San Francisco’s Presidio. Devastated by the loss, Pershing relied on his Army service for solace: When the Mexican bandit Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916—7 American soldiers and 15 civilians killed—the Wilson administration retaliated with a punitive expedition commanded by Pershing. Villa proved elusive, but the year-long campaign wasn’t for nothing: Pershing adapted to the modern warfare of motor vehicles and airplanes, confirming him as the natural choice to command the AEF.
In France, Pershing slowly built his army while sparring with Allied commanders over how and when American troops would see action. The answer came at the end of May 1918, when two American regiments engaged the Germans outside the village of Cantigny. The doughboys were bloodied but victorious—and for the time being, Pershing silenced his critics. More battles followed. A thousand Marines were killed or wounded on the first day of the Battle of Belleau Wood: It took until the end of June before stubborn German troops were driven from the wheat fields and woods. At nearby Château-Thierry, American machine-gunners stopped the Germans on the Marne, and the German advance on Paris was halted.
The real test came in the autumn of 1918, when Pershing created and led the First Army and launched its baptism of fire against the German-held Saint-Mihiel salient. To everyone’s surprise, the battle went off without a hitch and the enemy was swept away. But the celebration was brief: The more daunting Meuse-Argonne operation was less than two weeks away.
The attack was planned and executed by Pershing’s operations officer, George C. Marshall, the Americans would initially attack across a 24-mile front through the dense Argonne Forest and up steep hills near the Meuse River. Besides Marshall, taking part in the battle were several other future leaders of World War II: Douglas MacArthur commanded the Rainbow (42nd) Division; George S. Patton led tanks until he was severely wounded; Harry S. Truman directed a National Guard artillery battery.
Two days into the battle, the doughboys were stopped cold by German resistance, and the attack stalled. Pershing was notably unsympathetic and demanding: Field commanders were dressed down or dismissed. Away from the front, however, Pershing was very different: In Paris, he relaxed with the young Romanian portrait artist Micheline Resco. The two had met shortly after his arrival in France and maintained a clandestine relationship that lasted until Pershing’s death in 1948. (Two years before, they had discreetly married in Pershing’s Walter Reed suite.)
After various fits and starts, heavy casualties, and a major command reorganization, Pershing’s troops prevailed in the Meuse-Argonne and after 47 days the Germans were soundly defeated. On the other fronts, Allied armies were also battering the enemy, forcing the Germans to sign an armistice on November 11. For Pershing, the triumph was bittersweet: Of the 1.2 million Americans who took part in the battle, over 26,000 had been killed and four times as many wounded.
The title of My Fellow Soldiers comes from a general order Pershing issued to thank his troops before returning home. Like Pershing’s note, it is a fitting tribute to the more than two million Americans who stepped forward a century ago to rescue the Allies and bring the United States onto the world’s stage.
Mitchell Yockelson is the author, most recently, of Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing’s Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I.
