On
our Verdun mini-site we discussed the many reasons for the Great War and
how it affected France. We considered too the effect of the arms race from
the end of the Franco-Prussian war up until the turn of the 19/20th.
centuries and how that affected the thinking and caused the constant
evolution of the Verdun forts and latterly even the Maginot Line. These
factors were not peculiar to Verdun, nor even to France; they affected
army tactics and fortification thinking worldwide. There is little point
in repeating this discourse now so we would recommend that you visit our
Verdun mini-site if you wish to refresh your memory.
Saint
Mihiel is the sector of the western front in France situated directly
south east of the Verdun sector. Before September 1918 it formed a classic
and highly tactically inconvenient salient (or bulge) into the French
lines similar to the far better known Ypres Salient held by the British
some 260 miles further north. During the Great War years prior to 1918
this sector was defended against the invading Germans solely by the French
army; unlike the Somme for example which began as a French area of
operations but was rapidly assimilated into the British theatre late in
1916.
Saint Mihiel remained a
completely French controlled sector until the Americans deployed above and
below Verdun in the Meuse-Argonne and Saint Mihiel sectors respectively.
The American nation declared war on Germany and her allies in 1917 but was
quite unable to do anything material to aid the war effort until late in
1918, even relying upon donated British and French weaponry and support at
first. They also had little or no training in fighting this kind of
warfare which had become bogged down and completely static as early as
October 1914 when the race for the coast resulted in stalemate. Their only
other remotely similar experience to date had been the American Civil War
some forty-three years earlier in 1861 - 65, but although that war had
also degenerated into trenches, siege artillery, machine guns (of the
Gatling variety) et all, it was still a far cry from the mighty industrial
warfare that so epitomises the horror of the Great War.
The
reason for the American deployment at Saint Mihiel (and Meuse-Argonne) was
two fold - they did not wish to fight alongside their greatest world power
rivals the British Empire, and it therefore made good sense to relieve the
by now extremely war weary French army which had suffered mass mutinies
only the year before after three and a half years of senseless man power
waste pursuing suicidal "elan" tactics.
In September 1918 the American
army attacked at Saint Mihiel with the intention of pinching out the
salient and advancing into Germany. Initially they suffered tremendous
losses here and in the Meuse-Argonne sector occasioned by the fact that
their commander in chief General John
"Black Jack"
Pershing
LEFT completely
ignored British advice, deciding instead that he knew better how to
conduct warfare in this theatre. His obstinacy is all the more surprising
given that his fighting experience to date had not included any fighting
in the American Civil War; instead he had fought as a junior officer in the
U.S. Cavalry killing
native American "Indians", then later Spanish irregulars in Cuba, and
finally he had
helped suppress the uprising of the natives in the Philippines. Sadly many thousands of
his enthusiastic but untried men fell in a matter of seconds as they bayonet charged
heavily defended German graben (trenches) almost invisible in the dense
woodland over which they chose to fight, and it was not until the
American army commanders, and Pershing in particular, realised that the British advice,
learned the hard way by making many of the same costly mistakes over the previous 49 months, should be observed after
all. Then and only then did the Americans make any impression on the
western front, but by October 1918 when they finally began to win ground
from the Germans, the war was effectively finished
and practically everyone except Pershing was
just waiting for the fat lady to sing. It is interesting to consider that this
man who sent so many of his soldiers to a pointless and potentially
avoidable death also wanted to continue the war until Germany had been
conquered and Berlin had fallen!
Having pretty much visited
almost all of the major Verdun forts over the past twenty some years TJ
and I decided to broaden our horizons a little and to that end we visited
our first two Saint Mihiel forts in February 2013.
NB: This
part of the site is still under construction at the moment.
Only forts
Lucey,
and
d' Ecrouves are finished
pages.
Please
continue to check for further fort reports as they come on line. |
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