Optimism at Armageddon: Voices of American Participants in the First World War

277 Pages·1997·14.61 MB·English

by  Mark Meigs (auth.)

OPTIMISM AT ARMAGEDDON
Optimism at
Armageddon
Voices of American Participants
in the First World War
Mark Meigs
in association with
Palgrave Macmillan
© Mark Meigs 1997
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London W1P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified
as the authors of this work in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 1997 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-13936-1 ISBN 978-1-349-13934-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-13934-7
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97
In memory of
Robert Rodgers Meigs
Henry Howard Houston
and
Henry Howard Houston Woodward
For my father and mother
Contents
Acknowledgements
Vlll
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 "It's a great life if you don't weaken:"
American Participants' Understanding
of their Involvement in World War I 8
Chapter 2 "It's a great life if you don't weaken,
but believe me there are few who don't:"
The Meaning Americans Gave to
Action at the Front in World War I 36
Chapter 3 "From a hayloft to a hotel where kings
have spent their summers:" Americans'
Encounter with French Culture 69
Chapter 4 "Mad'moiselle from Armentieres,
Parlez-vous?" Sexual Attitudes of
Americans in World War I 107
Chapter 5 "A Grave Diggin' Feelin' in my Heart:"
American War Dead of World War I 143
Chapter 6 "The best place to live on Earth:"
Lessons for the Doughboys' Return 188
Conclusion 221
Notes 227
Bibliography 249
Index 259
Vll
Acknowledgements
Many organizations and individuals have contributed to this work
over a long period of time. But the project truly started in
Berkeley at the University of California, where the intellectual
energy and generosity of the faculty and students have been a
source of wonder and delight. There, Paula Fass, Suzanna
Barrows, Carolyn Porter, James Kettner, Randolph Starn and
Sam Haber read drafts of the manuscript and always gave advice
and encouragement about the project. Jeffrey Lena, Reid Mit
chell and Michael O'Malley, fellow students, but by now scat
tered on their own careers, gave invaluable help and critical
readings as well as the support of friendship. At later stages,
historians Charles Royster and Russell Weigley helped as well,
reading early drafts with understanding.
A book needs all kinds of professional care and this one has
been singularly blessed. Archivists and librarians across the
United States and France have helped continuously, with pa
tience and imagination. In France, town records in remote
warehouses have been made available, and desks in busy town
halls have been set aside for my visits. I must thank especially Dr.
Richard Sommers and his assistant, David Keogh of the United
States Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks. They
introduced me to the remarkable historical resources under their
care. James Dallett, retired archivist at the University of Pennsyl
vania, has several times sent me references and photocopies of
documents I needed. The anonymous readers for publishers sent
excellent detailed critiques. Editors Niko Pfund and Annabelle
Buckley have been encouraging right to the the end of the process
of creating this book.
The author needs looking after as well. The family of Madame
Genevieve De Bergh has welcomed me in its several branches
across France. In Washington, Craig and Edith Eder opened
their house to me.
The French Republic and the United States Marine Corps also
supported this work. Through the French Embassy, I received a
Chateaubriand Scholarship that allowed me to spend a year in
France. The Marine Corps Historical Foundation awarded me a
fellowship to complete my research in Washington, D.C.
Vlll
Acknowledgements IX
My new colleagues in France, at the University of Paris Nord,
and on the Research Committee of the Historial de la Grande
Guerre, Peronne, have given me an intellectual home in France,
without which I could not have finisheq this book. Hubert
Perrier's doctoral seminars on intercultural relations have reani
mated American issues for me with a new perspective. Annette
Becker and Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau of the Historial have
raised my interest in and understanding of World War I to new
levels.
Finally, I must thank Divina Frau-Meigs for the completion of
this book. At the earliest stages of research she lent me her car
for trips. And since she has read, re-read, proofread, and advised
on every version. I can only hope over a long life to repay this
labor of love.
M.M.
Introduction
World War I has been a matter of unresolved interpretation for
American participants from the first moments of their involve
ment to the return of the last soldiers and bodies of soldiers in
the 1920s and even to the present day. The signs of the historical
significance of the American effort were plentiful in Europe by
the end of the war. American supplies had supported the allies.
Americans had enlarged several ports in France and laid railroads
to move goods and men to the Western front. There were camps,
hospitals, and even a university of pre-fabricated buildings that
had gone up with a speed and disregard for expense that
astonished the French. They were abandoned or sold in 1919:
solid, if ambiguous, testimony to the extent and importance of the
American effort.
Nothing is more real than the death of individual people by the
violent destruction of their bodies. But the disposition of those
bodies, some returned to the United States, some arranged in
cemeteries in France, commemorated in individual graves or by
the collective symbol of the 'unknown soldier,' leaves the inter
pretation of that human loss ambiguous as well. The event has
no obvious meaning in American history. On one level, the
nation seemed to quit the isolation from European affairs that
had characterised American foreign policy in the nineteenth
century. But afterwards that policy revived. On another level, the
war had been fought to a successful conclusion by the Allies with
American help, but given the size of the United States, the
contribution of Americans to the war, though essential at the end,
cannot compare to the involvement of Europeans. At the same
time because of the magnitude and stakes of the war effort - for
a combatant soldier literally a matter of life and death - Ameri
can participants were obliged to create meaning out of the
materials around them. World War I is an opportunity for
studying the creation of meaning in strange surroundings, adopt
ing and accommodating beliefs to realities, testing a national
identity against foreign identities.
That the experience ofWorld War I differed for both America
and Americans from the experience of the European combatant
nations and combatants cannot be stated too strongly. European
1
2 Introduction
soldiers may not have been generally enthusiastic for war, but few
Germans or Englishmen or Frenchmen initially had doubts about
why they fought, or later, that the actual experience of fighting
the war changed Europe and their countries. Four years of trench
warfare has become inextricably linked with the meaning of
World War I to Europeans and the hegemony of the trench
image has spread its disillusioning power back from the lines to
symbolize the end of eras, cultures, world views and political
systems. For Americans involved in the war, both the certainty of
purpose and the position of the experience of combat as symbolic
of the war's meaning must be questioned.
To pinpoint changes brought about in American society and
culture by the war is difficult too. Americans arrived late, fought
briefly, and quickly found themselves among the victors. The
fighting that they did required as much courage as fighting done
by others. The conditions in which they fought and the tactics
used were comparable to the conditions and tactics used by
European armies since early in the war. But while their numbers
were necessary to the victory, the contribution of the American
forces must be seen as only part of the long process of exhausting
Germany. Mter some delays, Americans returned home to a
country whose political climate rejected the continued interna
tional engagements that were the Wilsonian fruits of victory,
embracing an agenda of "Normalcy" and isolationism. These
"effects" of World War I on America seem to deny that the war
had significant effects.
The "Great War" for the people of the United States must
either be the Civil War where the nation's survival was at stake,
or World War II whose victory set the stage of American foreign
policy for the second half of the twentieth century and whose
social upheavals so altered American society. To be usefully
understood, the connection between the military facts of World
War I and American society and culture must be seen in some
more carefully constructed context than a catalogue of the war's
cultural effects. No cataclysm like Pearl Harbor, but rather an
accumulation of events, lead the country from neutrality to war.
No clear military victory or cataclysm like the atomic bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the war
either; the battles in which Americans fought were important as
part of that general wearing away of all Germany. But the war
nevertheless gives an opportunity to make a portrait of Americans