Saluting the ‘Doughboys’ who 100 years ago entered WWI, ending American neutrality

By John J. Metzler
via the World Tribune web site

St. NAZAIRE, France — “Lafayette, we are here,” became the clarion call upon the arrival of the American Expeditionary Force to France in 1917.

The USA had just entered the hostilities, three years into the Great War, and now the battle hardened U.S. General John Pershing was in a sense returning the favor of French military assistance during the American Revolution.

A statue by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney honoring the Doughboys of the American Expeditionary Force stands in the harbor at St. Nazaire, France.The Sammies, as they were affectionately called by the French as a play on the words Uncle Sam, were also known as the Doughboys in the USA.

President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to join the Allies after 32 months of neutrality was as controversial as it was militarily complicated. On the one hand, the young American Republic had by choice stayed away from European conflicts and overseas missions.

On the more practical side, when Wilson declared war on Germany in April 1917, the regular U.S. army stood at an understaffed 140,000 troops and with an additional 200,000 in the National Guard.

Mobilization would be nothing short of extraordinary with a combination of mass conscription and an amazing American industrial might to support it.

After all it was U.S. military assistance which decisively tipped the military balance on the Western Front, the site of three years of unmitigated carnage for the French and British forces facing Imperial Germany. The battles of Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele, and Vimy Ridge were nothing less than a grinding abattoir of killing; all sides were literally bled white and exhausted.

Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and the Russian Revolution decisively changed the political calculus.

The Allies; the British Empire, France and Russia were slogging it out with the Central Powers; Germany, Austria/Hungary and Turkey. Once the Czar was overthrown, Russia would later withdrew from the war after two million soldiers were killed, the balance of power decisively tipped against France in the West.

As 1917 wore on, American troops flooded into France, first through St. Nazaire which became a logistical hub which saw delivery of 2 million tons of equipment ranging from disassembled steam locomotives from Philadelphia, to cars, trucks and horses. The logistical genius of the U.S military was on display with more than 500 transport ships bringing everything from tons of beef to cigarette rations for the troops. Supply depots and bases dotted the Loire River region.

Read the entire article on the World Tribune web site here.World Tribune web site here.

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