The Battle of Cantigny

The Battle of Cantigny was the US Army’s first major battle of the Great War.

The US in the Great War

“…[T]he Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,.. And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there!”

Thus did George M Cohan[1] capture the enthusiasm of some Americans for their country’s entry to the Great War, at a time when many in the USA regarded the terrible losses in blood and treasure in the conflict as the tragic consequences of competition amongst evil empires of the Old World. Quite apart from the long-held American attachment to resisting colonialism (except when perpetrated by Americans themselves, in Cuba and the Philippines, for example) many US citizens were only one generation removed from their ancestors – and living relatives – within the territories of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, whilst amongst Irish-Americans there was support for any enemies of Britain. For the USA to align itself with the long-established, global imperialists – Britain, France and (briefly) Russia – required a very peculiar set of circumstances.

On the other hand, Britain and France were very clear about why they needed the Americans. It was Philippe Pétain – then celebrated as a defender of Verdun and recently appointed as Chief of the French General Staff – who declared, “I await the tanks and the Americans.”[2] The drain on manpower as well as on the material resources of the Entente Powers to this point was already immense, and by April-May 1917 had provoked mutinies across the French armies on the Western Front. Indeed, Pétain’s remark was part of his response to these mutinies. For the British, conscription for military and industrial service as well as rationing[3] on the Home Front, marked the country’s immersion in Total War, whilst the liquidating of so many of Britain’s overseas assets underscored the ‘cash’ cost of the conflict. For the Entente Powers, the USA had vast reserves of men and matériel, a President (Wilson) who was sympathetic to the War Aims of the Entente Powers, and who had an idealistic attachment to the causes of liberty, representative democracy and nationalist self-determination. What proved decisive, however, was that Germany chose to provide the President with his casus belli: unrestricted U-boat warfare in the Atlantic, including attacks on US shipping.

German-Americans were at once numerous and outspoken in their opposition to the USA supporting the war efforts of the Entente Powers, although they stopped well short of advocating a US alliance with Germany. The close-run result of the 1916 Presidential election showed that many Americans preferred neutrality, which attitude Berlin might have fostered. Instead, the German successes towards enforcing their submarine blockade of Britain also sank the hopes for American neutrality. Berlin’s policy towards the USA was based on assumptions that proved false: that the USA lacked the will and potential to engage militarily, and that American responses to the U-boat campaign would not outweigh the substantial material damage to Britain’s war effort that the U-boats achieved.

Building US Forces in Europe…until the Spring Offensives

The challenges confronting the USA to give substance to its declaration of war (6 April 1917) were as immense as anything seen in Britain and France. The peace-time US Army was small, spread all over the world as well as the continental USA, and ignorant of what warfare in the 20^th century had already become: dominated by artillery, trenches, machine-guns and now aircraft. Volunteers and conscripts would be numerous – almost innumerable – but they needed training and equipment, as much for the officers as for the ‘doughboys’.[4] They also needed to be transported to the fronts on which the fighting was being done: the US did not consider making itself a ‘non-combatant’ actor, a provider of the weapons but not of the soldiers to see the War to its conclusion. Thus, the ‘regular’ US Army grew from 135,000 in the spring of 1917, to nearly 4,000,000 by the end of 1918, with over 2,000,000 men in Europe.[5] US plans were developed steadily over the period to early 1918, envisaging a build-up of forces in France that, led by US commanders, would co-operate as full partners with the French and British and their other allies, in assaulting the German positions – in 1919.

Germany’s 1918 Spring Offensives forced a dramatic re-drawing of all plans and in the depths of the emergency, US commander in Europe General John J Pershing subordinated US forces to their French allies, accelerated the deployment to the front lines – and combat – of the first units of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) to reach Europe, and made transporting US infantry across the Atlantic the priority.[6] Although US troops had been joining the front lines since January 1918, their initial deployments had been to ‘quiet’ sectors, so that more ‘combat-ready’ French and other units could confront the German forces. By May 1918, the Americans declared themselves ready to play their part, despite being reliant upon French planning, command, and supporting arms (artillery, aircraft and tanks). Thus, the AEF’s 1^st Division, the ‘Big Red One’ went into the attack on 28 May 1918, in a French operation to eliminate a German salient around Cantigny.[7]

The Battle of Cantigny and its Aftermath

These aerial photographs of the Battle of Cantigny are all from the Greg’s War Collection, with their original captions:

The battle and its significance are summarised by a modern historian.[8]

This first American attack of the war, though small, was quite successful. Perhaps even more impressive than planning and executing the initial assault was the tenacity and stamina shown by the American soldiers; they held their new positions at all costs, even when they came under strong, numerous, and costly counterattacks, and when the French withdrew most of their supporting artillery.[9] Cantigny thus demonstrated that the American forces were not just numerous and fresh, but tough and determined. Although many American units demonstrated their inexperience in future attacks, instances of German troops pushing back American units were extraordinarily rare throughout 1918.[10]

What flowed from the battle of Cantigny? Did the political determination to participate as soon as possible, cause unnecessary loss of life amongst American troops? Did the shedding of American blood legitimise American demands to be a full partner in the allies’ settlements with the Central Powers?[11] What of the Germans? According to Pershing, “The desperate efforts of the Germans gave the fighting at Cantigny a seeming tactical importance entirely out of proportion to the numbers involved.”[12] Perhaps some Germans hoped that by inflicting heavy casualties on the new ally, American public opinion would once more turn against participation in the War? For while the Americans could point with pride to their achievements in their first major battle, the German forces elsewhere on the Western Front were simultaneously making further considerable advances in the next phase of their Spring Offensives. The arrival of the AEF and of the tanks[13] by no means marked the ‘beginning of the end’.

What was certain, however, was that the fighting on the Western Front continued to be vicious, costly and highly destructive, for all participants both military and civilian. The War seemed endless.

Header image: Aerial view of Cantigny – detail from photograph captioned ‘1. The bombardment’. Credit: Greg’s War Collection

Notes

[1] Cohan was most memorably portrayed in the Hollywood movie starring James Cagney (1942) and the melody has its most awful rendition in the TV advertisements for ‘GoCompare.com’.

[2] The phrase is quoted most accurately at http://www.shotinthedark.info/wp/?p=61587

[3] The challenge of maintaining supplies of bread, for example, are described at https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/bread-a-slice-of-first-world-war-history/ . The Board of Trade’s figures show a 61% increase in food prices between July 1914 and July 1916, as cited by Ian F W Beckett Home Front, 1914-1918. How Britain Survived the Great War (Richmond, 2006) p. 110.

[4] The etymology of the nickname is unclear, although it was widely used at the time.

[5] https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/warfare_1917-1918_usa

[6] This was instead of creating ‘balanced’ forces that would have included appropriate contingents of artillery, engineers, logistics/supply, and mechanised/mobile units.

[7] Cantigny Park, Wheaton, IL, was the family home of Col. Robert R McCormick that he renamed in honour of the service he and others gave in the battle. It is now home to the museum of the US Army’s 1st Division.

[8] Mark Grotelueschen, PhD, is a Lieutenant Colonel in the USAF, serving as Professor of History at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.

[9] French forces were hurriedly redeployed to resist the successful German attack toward Chateau-Thierry, the Spring Offensive code-named ‘Blücher-Yorck’.

[10] https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/warfare_1917-1918_usa

[11] A further question for historians arising from the size and composition of the AEF, is did African-American soldiers, although serving in segregated units, raise their perception of themselves in the face of the open welcome they were so often accorded by the French, and their successes in their (limited) combat roles?

[12] http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/cantigny_pershing.htm

[13] In the photograph captioned ‘3. Advance of the tanks’ may be discerned the track marks behind tanks advancing across the battlefield.

The US in the Great War

Building US Forces in Europe…until the Spring Offensives

The Battle of Cantigny and its Aftermath

Further reading

Notes