War Fever by Randy Roberts & Johnny Smith

Author:Randy Roberts & Johnny Smith [Roberts, Randy & Smith, Johnny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

13

Slackers and Shipyards

DURING MAY AND JUNE OF 1918, THE MONTHS WHEN BABE RUTH altered the strategy and tempo of the national game, American troops had their first taste of sustained warfare on the Western Front. They were still arriving in France that spring, hundreds of thousands of soldiers dressed in khaki facing daunting logistical problems, lacking practical military training, and confronting their own fears of going into battle on foreign soil. But there was no time for leisurely preparation; the German offensives that spring and summer would determine the American timetable. The Allies needed the American Expeditionary Force to fill holes made by the German assault.

With their minimal training, the US soldiers were forced to learn on the job. The price they paid for experience was thousands of lives and limbs. Although their French and British allies were initially skeptical of the professionalism and ability of the American troops, they soon began praising their courage and élan. The US 1st Division’s struggle to retake the town of Cantigny, the US 2nd and 3rd Divisions’ efforts to reinforce the sagging lines at the Marne, and the heroic stands by American soldiers and Marines at Vaux and Belleau Wood—all testified to the tenacity, determination, and grit of the doughboys. And as they fought, others disembarked from ships in Brest and Bordeaux. In March, only three hundred thousand poorly trained US soldiers had set foot in France. By June, there were 1.2 million, many with a better idea of the realities of warfare on the Western Front.

Manpower and firepower, Americans soon learned, were what mattered in industrialized warfare. They grew to appreciate that power on the battlefield, just as sports reporters were exploring the meaning of Ruth’s impact on baseball. By the end of June, journalists had begun to compare American fighting forces in France with Babe’s performances in America. “The story of Babe Ruth’s mighty hitting, his Homeric smashes, kindles a glow in the hearts of all those who know baseball,” commented a Boston Herald and Journal columnist. “In Italy, in Normandy, in Alsace, and in a hundred camps along the firing line, men meet and ask for the latest news of the gifted hitter of home runs. The story of each succeeding circuit clout is received with acclaim. It lightens and breaks the dangerous tension of a soldier’s duty and it’s not stretching a point to say that in his own inimitable way the Colossus is contributing a worth-while gift to the morale of Uncle Sam’s fighting men both in the new and the old world. He is the hero of all present day baseball.”1

Increasingly, Ruth’s power at the plate became a metaphor for America’s power in the war. As his reputation ascended, his ethnic heritage vanished into the mist of the past. Reporters molded Ruth into an emblem for all that was good in America. This ballplayer who “only lightly brushed by the social veneer we call civilization” was transformed, as Harry Hooper dimly said, “into something pretty close to a god.

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