The AEF Way of War: The American Army and Combat in World War I
Language: English
Pages: 398
ISBN: 0521169097
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This book provides the most comprehensive examination of American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) combat doctrine and methods ever published. It shows how AEF combat units actually fought on the Western Front in World War I. It describes how four AEF divisions (the 1st, 2nd, 26th, and 77th) planned and conducted their battles and how they adapted their doctrine, tactics, and other operational methods during the war. General John Pershing and other AEF leaders promulgated an inadequate prewar doctrine, with only minor modification, as the official doctrine of the AEF. Many early American attacks suffered from these unrealistic ideas that retained too much faith in the infantry rifleman on the modern battlefield. However, many AEF divisions adjusted their doctrine and operational methods as they fought, preparing more comprehensive attack plans, employing flexible infantry formations, and maximizing firepower to seize limited objectives.
192 automatic rifles, sixteen heavy machine guns, six 3-inch Stokes mortars, and three 37mm guns. Each infantry brigade also had its own sixty-four– gun machine-gun battalion, and a third similar battalion reported directly to the division staff.44 For the basic weapon of the rifleman, the War Department supplemented existing Springfield rifles with a modified version of the British Enfield, then in mass production in many American plants. The U.S. Enfield Model 1917 rifle, rechambered to take Springfield
were possible and expected.76 Although the 1917 American FSR claimed that “preconcerted plans” were “objectionable” for attacks because they limited initiative and flexibility, Allied instructors insisted that because of the strength of enemy defensive positions, “preconcerted plans covering all phases of the attack, far from being objectionable, now prove to be the only ones likely to meet with any success.”77 These Allied officers even claimed that during the pursuit stage of an attack –
about which the initial training centered.”9 The division history states plainly, “as was to be expected . . . almost all instruction was in trench warfare.”10 The next phase of training, the four-week period from late October to late November in the front-line trenches near Sommerville under the instruction of the French 18th Infantry, could not in any way have made 6 7 8 9 10 HQ 1st Division, Memorandum for Brigade Commanders, 21 September 1917, USAWW, 3: 43. See also HQ 1st Division,
weaponry. HQ 1st Infantry Brigade, “Report on Operations of Sept. 12th–13th, 1918,” 19 September 1918, Folder 33.6, Box 62, 1st Division Historical File, RG 120, NA; HQ 6th Field Artillery, “Report on Recent Operations,” 18 September 1918, Folder 33.6, Box 101, 1st Division Historical File, RG 120, NA. HQ 1st Division, “Report on Operations of 1st Division against St. Mihiel Salient September 12–13, inclusive,” 21 September 1918, WWRFD, vol. 13. HQ 1st Infantry Brigade, “Report on Operations of
Ben´et-Merci´e gun, which had been recognized by officers as unsatisfactory as early as 1913. Machinegun companies were still organized as they had been in 1908. David Armstrong insists that “American interest in machine-gun tactics” actually “declined after 1910.” Even after the Great War started, Army officers were convinced that the extraordinary reports of massive machine-gun use in France were the result of the “special conditions” at play on the Western Front, and potential lessons were