0.2 The great war (part i)  (Page 14/14)

Over there, over there, send the word, send the word over there, that the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the drums rum tumming every where. So prepare, say a prayer, Send the word, send the word to beware, we'll be over, we're coming over, and we won't come back till it's over, over there.

Andrew Carp’s 1917 addition to patriotic war music I Have Come to Say Good-Bye includes specific reasons why the US is in the war to include fighting for freedom, in defense of American liberties, to make the world safe for democracy. Other songwriters such as William Hart and Eddie Nelson focused on the fringe benefits of serving overseas, such as in their 1918 song When Yankee Doodle Learns to Parlez Vous Francais : “ He will call each girlie ‘Ma Cherie’, To every Miss that wants a kiss he'll saw Wee, Wee On Ze Be, On Ze Bou, On Ze Boule, Boulevard, With a girl, with a curl, you can see him promenade When Yankee Doodle learns to Parlez vous Francais, ‘Oo La La, Sweet Papa’ he will teach them all to say.”

None of those reasons were evident in the letters written to Bess Wallace by her finance and officer in the US Army. In his first letter to Miss Wallace the thirty-four-year old Harry Truman gushed with pride over his recent military experience. I “fired five hundred rounds at the Germans . . . been shelled, didn’t run away . . . and never lost a man,” wrote Truman to Wallace on September 1 ^st , 1918. Truman sent numerous letters home, keeping his fiancé up to date with the places where he fought, the people under his command, the fallibility of German soldiers as well as German bomb-making technology, and his hope that Bess will keep writing. “Please keep on writing because it helps put the pep into me,” he told her in early October. He also became more personal as the battles waged on. Truman arrived back in the US in early spring of 1919. Less than two months later the Trumans were married. They settled in Kansas City where Harry opened up a haberdashery with his Army buddy, Eddie Jacobson. Harry will die the day after Christmas in 1972. His wife, Bess, will live another decade, dying in 1982 at the age of 97.

American troops were known by many names, to include the pejorative “doughboy.” There are many theories as to how and when this term entered the American lexicon. Some historians believe the word is based in the US Civil War. Union officers, from the vantage point of their horses, looked down upon rows of Northern troops whose headgear suggested rising muffins or small loaves of yeast rolls. Others argue that “doughboy” was a synonym only for a soldier, not Marines or members of the US Navy.

Yet, when American troops officially began arriving under the command and control of Pershing, French citizens shouted their support for the “Sammees.” A line from a 1917 song with the geographically challenged title I Don’t Know where I’m Going, But I’m On My Way included the line “Uncle Sammy is calling me so I must go.” On July 2 ^nd , 1917, Wythe Williams, a reporter for the New York Times noted this shift in terminology: “The ‘Sammees’ are American regulars,” reported Williams, “no longer are they ‘doughboys.’” Williams predicted that “Sammee” will one day be as synonymous with US soldiers as “Tommy” is for British troops or “Poilu” (“poilus” is the plural) for French fighters. Lazare Ponticelli, the last poilu of the trenches died in early March of 2008 at the age of 110. The last surviving Tommy to see combat in the trenches is Henry John Patch, who was born June 17, 1898.

One Sammee was named Frank Woodruff Buckles. He was born in rural Missouri in 1901. Sixteen years later he tried to enlist in the military. Buckles had dreamed of serving his country since he was a young boy. “When I was 12 or 13, I slept on the floor” to prepare for a soldier’s life, he said. Initially, Buckles tried to enlist in the Marines. He visited a recruiting booth at the Kansas state fair in 1917. “I said that I was 18, but the understanding sergeant said that I was too young. I had to be 21.” He returned to the recruiting booth and was rejected by another Marine recruiter. Determined to serve his country, he traveled to a Navy recruiting office in Oklahoma, where he was promptly denied enlistment. He tried enlisting in the Marines once more time before coming across an Army recruiter who did not press the age issue. Besides, said Buckles, he told the Army recruiter that his small town did not keep birth records and so the recruiter allowed the fifteen-year-old to enlist, believing he was eighteen. On August 14 ^th , 1917, Buckles joined the US Army.

He drove ambulances and worked in various administration positions in England and France. He returned to the US onboard the USS Pocahontas in late 1919 and was discharged by January of 1920 after serving in a unit escorting German prisoners back to Germany. Buckles had $114 in his pocket and escaped all injury. As of February of 2009, Buckles is the last living US veteran of the Great War at the age of 107.

Very little was known a bout the arrival of the first American troops except that their supplies included plenty of tobacco. “The American censor was the first man on the job,” Wythe Williams reported. “Sammee! Sammee! Vive Samme!” shouted the French crowd as the first Americans arrived.

Known as the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), some five million men and women entered the ranks of the US military with a little over two million being sent to Europe under the command and control of Pershing and the AEF.

Although Americans fought under British and French control for years (such as the American pilots who flew with the French military, to include Eugene Bullard), the first official battle that Americans participated as the AEF was the battle of Chateau-Thierry when approximately 70,000 US troops (to include all-black military units under French control and US Marines under Pershing’s control) helped stop a German thrust. AEF and French troops then launched a counter-offensive, driving back German forces. With at least 250,000 American troops and a massive amount of military equipment entering English ports each month, the war was quickly coming to an end. In the early fall of 1918, Pershing and the AEF took control of the southern front.

The war came to an end on November 11 ^th , 1918 at 11am. Although over 200,000 Americans were wounded and 113,000 troops died (around 52,000 in battle and 60,000 from non-combat issues such as disease), the relative short nature of the US role in the war saved the United States from experiencing the horror of trench warfare and the massive loss of lives which were the reality for Russian, German, French, and English people.

Military and civilian deaths for Great Britain topped one million, 1.7 million for France, 2.3 million for Russia, and 2.5 million for Germany. About 500,000 people were killed or wounded during the First Battle of Marne (1914), 230,000 at the Battle of Ypres (1914), and 700,000 at Verdun (1916). The massive destruction of human life would not be experienced by the United States, until the troops began returning home. Nevertheless, Americans will remain in Germany, as an occupying force, until 1926, when Germany is allowed to join the League of Nations.

(End of Part I)