Mr. Wilson's War: From the Assassination of McKinley to the Defeat of the League of Nations by John Dos Passos

Author:John Dos Passos
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical - U.S., Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781626362383
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-11-05T11:00:00+00:00

Weekending with Sir Douglas

Pershing and his staff were so busy working on plans for the future and getting acquainted with the French that it was late in July before they could accept the British invitation to visit the general headquarters of their expeditionary force. Pershing and Harbord drove out from Paris, through beautiful rolling country, along roads bordered by great trees, to the walled town of Montreuil in the Pas de Calais which was the administrative center for the British. They were much impressed by the complicated hive of headquarters organization. In every office they found a general. The size and blondness of the British generals struck Harbord. Pershing who stalked like a giant among the stumpy French found himself a small man beside them. Poor Harbord still only a lieutenant colonel, although Chief of Staff, felt himself thoroughly outranked.

The British adjutant general turned out to be an acquaintance of General Pershing’s from the Russo-Japanese War, when they had both been among the group of foreign observers with General Kuroki’s staff who had such an interesting time watching Japanese operations in Manchuria. After a full day studying the workings of the G.H.Q. and a remarkably good lunch at the mansion where this General Fowke had his mess, they drove to Blendecques. There in a stately pile, Sir Douglas Haig had his quarters throughout the war.

“It was almost dusk,” wrote Pershing, “when we arrived at an old château, halfhidden in a magnificent grove of chestnut trees.” They found the Commander in Chief a remarkably handsome man, perfectly accoutered, almost the painted model of a wooden soldier, with his regular features, his keen gray eyes, his carefully clipped mustache. His greeting to the Americans was surprisingly cordial. His staff made them at home in the château.

Haig seems to have been taken with Pershing. “I was much struck with his quiet gentlemanly bearing—so unusual for an American,” he wrote in his diary. “Most anxious to learn, and fully realizes the greatness of the task before him. He has already begun to realize that the French are a broken reed.”

Haig was still smarting at the way Lloyd George had bullied him into taking a subordinate position to Nivelle during the preparations for Nivelle’s great fiasco.

At dinner the talk was mostly about guns and the difficulty of keeping them supplied with ammunition. The British averaged a piece of artillery to every twentyfive yards of front and still the Germans outgunned them. Haig spoke disparagingly of Nivelle’s plan. He had felt from the beginning it was no go. “His remarks,” noted Pershing, “entirely confirmed the belief I had long since held that real teamwork between the two armies was almost totally absent.”

After dinner they drank coffee on the lawn under the trees. Pershing noted that nothing disturbed the quiet of the place save the sound of distant guns “wafted in from the front by the evening breeze.” Harbord, whom Haig described as “a kindly soft looking fellow with the face of a Punchinello,” noted that the

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