Proving your worth.
It is September 12, 1918.
The first day of the American fight to push back a triangular German bulge into the Allied lines near Verdun in northeast France.
The bulge is 25 miles wide at its base and 15 miles deep and is called the Saint-Mihiel salient.
The Germans had fortified the salient with dense entanglements of barbed wire, trenches, machine-gun nests, and artillery emplacements.
This would be a significant operation.
It would be the first battle in which American forces would be commanded by American officers rather than British or French commanders.
And the battle would include an air assault involving almost 1,500 aircraft.
This aspect of the battle would be directed by Col. Billie Mitchell, a pioneer in the use of offensive air power.
The battle would be the first attempt at a combined-arms operation involving land and air forces.
The overall plan for the Battle of Saint-Mihiel was devised by Col. George C. Marshall.
It was large and elaborate.
Marshall then served as an aide to Gen. Pershing, the commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
Two decades later, Marshall will serve as the Army Chief of Staff and be labeled the Army’s ‘indispensible man’ in achieving the Allied victory in World War II.
Douglas MacArthur and George Patton also played significant roles in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.
And in the afternoon of the first day of the battle, they met near the French town of Essey.
At the time, MacArthur commanded a large infantry brigade, and Patton commanded a unit of 267 light tanks.
As Patton’s tanks approached a farmhouse near Essey, he recognized MacArthur standing on a small hill.
So, Patton walked over to him while artillery shells flew overhead.
“I was the only man on the front-line except for … MacArthur who never ducked a shell.” — Patton’s letter to his wife
Witnesses to the brief encounter say the two men stood unmoved as infantrymen scattered for cover.
Patton and MacArthur would talk once more, in Essey’s town square after the town fell under American control.
There, they agreed that Patton would take his tanks on to the next village, while MacArthur would remain in Essey, assisting in the rounding up of German prisoners.
Although both men would rank among the most prominent American commanders of World War II, Patton and MacArthur would never meet again.
The American victory at Saint-Mihiel, coming in just a few days, was a milestone, proving the value of the US contribution to the Allied war effort.
Gen. Pershing was jubilant:
“An American Army had suddenly appeared on the front and crushed the enemy in one of his strongest positions.
“The organization and initial operation … fully justified our belief in the natural initiative, resourcefulness, and adaptability of the American [Army].”
A few weeks after the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, Corporal Adolf Hitler was temporarily blinded by a British gas shell and evacuated to a German military hospital, becoming one of the forty million people, military and civilian, who were killed or wounded in the First World War.
The war extracted a heavy price from everyone involved.
“You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make a good use of it.” — US President John Adams
In two decades, Marshall, MacArthur, Patton and Hitler would go at it again.
But Hitler left us with no choice.
As John Adams also said, “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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