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Borrowed Soldiers: Americans under British Command, 1918.
By Mitchell A. Yockelson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.
256 pages. $29.95.
Reviewed by Dr. Douglas V. Johnson II (LTC, USA Ret.), Research Professor, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College.
Having read an earlier version of this book in draft and reacting with enough reservations to expect the author to be an enemy for life, this reviewer now has to say that Mitchell Yockelson has provided a highly competent piece of work that belongs in every World War I historian’s library. It has a place as well in the libraries of those who, not too many years ago, were shouting that Americans never have and never will serve under the command of foreigners.
Yockelson’s conclusions are an appropriate, well balanced, and supported critique of comparative inadequacies in the operations and sustainment of purely American forces operating under purely American command. As John Eisenhower notes in the Foreword, American soldiers serving in the 27th and 30th Divisions were routinely better fed than their counterparts in the American Expeditionary Forces serving in the 1st American Army, but they were not without their complaints. Americans are coffee drinkers; Englishmen drink tea. Englishmen eat light breakfasts; Americans prefer ham, eggs, toast, etc. and if you look at the typical menu for American soldiers, you have to wonder where breakfast and lunch divide. This culinary cultural difference was an enormous irritant to the Americans serving with the British forces, but, as Yockelson points out, one that was overcome.
The undercurrent in this book returns in various forms to the a historical posturing noted above, which forms the title — Borrowed Soldiers. When the United States entered the war, both the French and British made strong appeals for US manpower to be integrated into their armies. Americans are seriously touchy on such matters, and the French were quick to sense that the American government and people were simply not going to allow foreign command and quickly changed their approach. The British were not so perceptive. After all, weren’t “we” all of Anglo Saxon origin? As Stephen L. Harris makes abundantly clear in Duffy’s War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan,and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I, “we” were anything but, and Irish Americans were seriously ambivalent about fighting with the hated British under any circumstances. As the war ground on through the remainder of 1917, both the British and French returned to the entirely logical argument that the American Expeditionary Forces lacked the experience, in their hugely expanded structure and particularly in their greatly increased staffs, to manage effectively. But General Pershing had a man date from President Wilson and Secretary of War Baker to create a uniquely American Army. There were political reasons beneath the mandate, but Pershing was not about to deviate substantially from it and only reluctantly permitted these two divisions to remain under British command.
It was refreshing to read Charles Messenger’s abridged version of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg’s The Great War in which the old Field Marshal noted that the prewar Americans could become a problem, that Europe’s diplomats erred by allowing them to become a potential problem, and finally that matters should have been brought to a conclusion before the Americans arrived, as they had indeed become a problem. Yockelson relates that Field Marshal Haig wished he had more US forces and was privately bitter when Pershing reclaimed the divisions then training with the British, excepting the 27th and 30th.
All of this is relatively good reading, but when the narrative begins to describe the actual conduct of operations, many of the same ills that bedevilled American forces in WWI emerge with depressing familiarity. Training, even under British supervision with all the accumulated expertise of years of trench warfare, cannot “take” in a short time. Offensive operations, which the Allied armies were obliged to undertake, required extensive coordination of all arms, excellent small unit leadership, and ingrained initiative and imagination. Pershing condemned the British and French instruction in trench warfare tactics because he felt it sapped the initiative of Americans, especially the officers. It is an unhappy fact that many American unit histories of this period re port initial successes in combat followed shortly thereafter by sharp withdrawals. The 27th and 30th Divisions’ baptism under fire was not any more successful, as chaos was combined with a very able enemy that had just stymied the advances of some rather good British units. In the end, however, the American divisions improved markedly.
In addition to exceptionally thorough research of a number of primary sources, abetted by the fact Yockelson works at the National Archives, one of the more delightful aspects of this book is the maps. The supporting maps are clean of clutter and clearly depict the essentials of ground, boundaries, and unit organizations. The photography collection is likewise a well chosen set of illustrative shots. Buy and read Borrowed Soldiers, or at least read it.
