by Richard S.
Faulkner, Texas A&M Press, 2012.
The C.A. Brannen Series of books on WW1 published by Texas
A&M continues to be one of, if not the, best places to look for quality
books on the A.E.F. This work, The
School of Hard Knocks deals with what some might find a boring subject: how the
officers and NCO's of the AEF were trained. If you passed it by because that is what you
thought, look again.
The US army performed a miracle by growing its multi-million
man army in record time. No one disputes that, especially the Germans who said
it could not be done. In doig so, however, one of the corners cut was training.
This resulted in an army that had the spirit, but poor preparation for the war.
The result? A lot more casualties than might have been. After reading this book you will see a few
areas where the Americans could have improved their schools and classes, but
also realize how hard it was to keep the formations together when everything
kept expanding and you constantly needed men transferred to form new units. All
of the different forms of officer schools are covered: Plattsburgh Camps OTS,
COTS, and the rest. Also schools set up in Europe for continued training when
the units arrived there. Examples of how the training impacted combat are
given.
One of the more interesting concepts is that before the war
company level officers spent so long in their low rank that they had a great
deal of time to learn their trade, nto just in tactics but in how tom manage
men, that the suddenly enlarged army no longer had time for the previous type
of extended internship, and the lessons learned by senior officers at Leavenworth
no longer had any time to trickle down.
Great credit is given to the French Army officer's school,
and the question why we did not adopt the same principle is raised. However the
simple fact is the US Army was growing so fast there was little time to develop
the types of instructors needed, the very men needed for these schools were the
first ones to do anything to get transferred to the front, and the US was
continually afraid its men would be little more than replacement bodies for the
Allies. While this may seem silly today, Both England and France were
constantly pressuring America to just stick out men into their armies and let
them run the war. What I found quite interesting in this regard, was the
American units that were trained by the British, and commanded in the British
zone did not seem to fare any better than the ones kept under US training and
command.
I do feel that, once again, Pershing's desire to stress the
rifle and open warfare is misunderstood, and he has been wrongfully criticized
for this. In fact, there are places in
this book where the author unknowingly refutes some of the commonly held
theories by the anti-Pershing league. It
only makes sense that if you do not have any of the specialty weapons of war
handy (grenades, automatic rifles, machine guns, trench mortars, etc.) you
spent the time on getting the soldiers able to actually hit what they are
aiming at with the rifles. There, however, a disconnect between what Pershing
wanted and what was actually done in training, that distorted his plans, and left
the soldiers spending ungodly hours doing drill, and digging textbook trenches,
instead of becoming marksmen and learning about fire and movement.
In any event, this is a really good book on the AEF and goes
a long way to understanding how and why the AEF operated. It's recommended for
anyone that has a serious interest in the Americans in WW1, as it is not "just
a book on training." I found it fascinating.
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