16 - The beginning of the end

Summary

Time was running out for the Germans. The trickle of American reinforcements had turned into a torrent. Ludendorff’s four previous offensives in 1918 had cost him some 500,000 casualties; meanwhile the youth of America poured across the Atlantic, infusing hope and energy into the war-weary Allied forces. Prior to Germany’s last offensive of the war in July, the German Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army, Foreign Armies, submitted the following assessment: “Considering its small experience of war and defective training the combat value of the American division can in general be described as good. In defense even the most recently arrived troops represent an opponent worthy of respect. The American soldier shows himself to be brave, strong, and skillful. Losses are not avoided. However their leadership is not yet all that good.”

In the Marne salient, the French commander-in-chief, Henri-Philippe Pétain, had in mid-July three US divisions on the western flank of the Marne salient, two at the base and one supporting General Henri Gouraud’s Fourth Army. Elsewhere unbloodied US divisions occupied quiet sectors in Alsace-Lorraine or trained with the French and British. Many more divisions apparently were on the way, for Pershing had made a commitment to the British and French in June (unrealistic as it turned out) to ship 100 divisions to France by July 1919.