11 - Neck of the bottle

Summary

Pershing’s leadership of the AEF suggested that no objective was more important to him than the formation of an independent American force in France capable of delivering a decisive blow against the German Army. The United States, however, had never created an army of such size and complexity, and it attempted to do so thousands of miles from its factories, raw materials, and farm land. During the prewar years, equipping, supplying, and transporting thousand-man regiments did not present the almost insurmountable difficulties associated with the super-sized AEF division of some 28,000 men. According to Johnson and Hillman, “it demanded twenty-eight times that effort – and General Pershing was asking for a hundred divisions!” Establishing effective lines of communication for an expeditionary force that would grow to some 2 million men by the Armistice was the foundation of everything that would follow. In Harbord’s words, the AEF’s lines of communication were “the neck of the bottle through which all men and supplies must pass.”

In selecting the region of Lorraine as the area in which to establish an all-American army, Pershing could not have selected a theater of operations more difficult for the War Department and Pershing’s staff to sustain. Great Britain, the other great power assisting the French to liberate their homeland, had established its battle front just across the Channel. Difficult lines of communication for the AEF with its own ship berths, warehouses, and in some cases railways, however, was the price that Pershing was prepared to pay to establish an independent army. By war’s end the War Department had shipped 1,500 locomotives, 20,000 railway cars, and 30,410 railway personnel. Even then the AEF failed to establish its own infrastructure that could possibly keep up with the escalating Allied demands for ever more American soldiers. Pershing consequently continued to depend upon the French for vital logistical support, including most of his motorized and animal transport for men and supplies. The United States had horses and mules (although many had been shipped to Europe prior to American intervention) and the industrial base to mass produce trucks, but it did not have the required shipping to get them to Europe. Consequently only 40,000 of the AEF’s 200,000 horses came from the United States and most Doughboys traveled in French trucks driven by Vietnamese.