General Pershing, Meet the British High Command

Arrival in Liverpool, 8 June 1917

By Dr. Tyler R. Bamford

For nearly all active U.S. Army personnel, World War I marked the first time they came into contact with their British counterparts. It was also the first time the U.S. Army had ever deployed to Europe. Only once in the two armies’ histories, during the brief Boxer Rebellion of 1900–1901, had they fought side by side. Yet between April 1917 and November 1918, hundreds of thousands of American officers and men would train and fight with their British comrades. . .

Pershing’s stop in London was more than just a formality. It also acquainted him with the leaders of Britain’s Army and the political struggles within Great Britain. Pershing met with General Sir William R. Robertson, the British chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS); Field Marshal Viscount French (formerly Sir John French), the commander in chief, Home Forces; Maj. Gen. Sir Francis Lloyd, the general officer commanding the London District; and General Sir John S. Cowans, the quartermaster general of the British Army.  These meetings allowed the leaders to get the measure of one another and set the tone for their partnership.

Robertson

General Sir William R. Robertson

Perhaps the most important was with the CIGS, Robertson, whom Pershing described as “a rugged, heavy-set, blunt soldier.”  Robertson began his career as a private and became the first British soldier to ever rise from that rank to field marshal. In Robertson’s first meeting with Pershing, he explained the advantages of having American soldiers serve with or near British units. Pershing politely replied that it made far more sense to have American units serve near French units since it was French ports, railways, and materiel on which the U.S. Army would rely most heavily. Pershing neglected to mention that he, President Wilson, and Secretary of War Newton D. Baker had already decided that the AEF should have a closer affiliation with French rather than British forces. This decision stemmed both from American public sentiment and from the necessity of relying on French assistance in establishing the AEF. Pershing instead asked Robertson whether extra British shipping could be found to help bring the U.S. Army into the fight sooner. To this request, Robertson and other British leaders revealed the full extent of their enormous shipping losses to German U-boats in recent years, which greatly surprised Pershing.

In many ways, this exchange encapsulated t he relationship between AEF and British Army leaders over the next year: professional and friendly, yet plagued by disagreements. Robertson headed an army that had expended more than 400,000 lives before the Americans entered the war. The CIGS repeatedly had to defend the offensive plans of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), against criticisms from Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who feared escalating casualty rates.  Meanwhile, Robertson asked for more men to be drafted from his already depleted nation. Pershing stepped into this struggle promising help but without a definite timeline for his forces to enter combat. Moreover, his request for shipping above and beyond Great Britain’s previous commitments asked his allies to risk shrinking their food stores in the face of the German submarine peril.

Robertson and other British leaders’ appeals for American troops to serve with the British were perfectly reasonable from their standpoint. Such a proposal had the potential to relieve the British manpower crisis and get American soldiers into battle quickly. Pershing found the suggestion a nonstarter, however, in light of American national sentiment and the U.S. Army’s desire to build an independent field army in France. The problem was that building such an army required British help, and there was no guarantee the AEF would be ready in time to prevent the Allies’ defeat. Pershing’s initial meetings with British commanders resolved none of these issues. Fortunately, these disagreements did not sour the attitudes of all British and American officers even as they repeatedly strained relations between the armies’ commanders.  

Haig

Generals Haig and Pershing

A few days after landing in France, Pershing visited his most important British colleague for the duration of the war, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. Along with Colonel Harbord, Col. Benjamin Alvord Jr., and Pershing’s aide-de-camp, Capt. George S. Patton, Jr., General Pershing arrived at Haig’s headquarters in an old chateau nestled among a grove of chestnut trees near the village of Saint-Omer.  Haig and his staff gave the Americans a warm welcome. To Harbord, Haig appeared “a very good-looking man of fifty-six, not as tall as I had expected, but very dignified and soldierly as well as cordial in his greeting.”  

Haig also took the opportunity to size up Pershing. The BEF commander wrote, “I was much struck with [Pershing’s] quiet gentlemanly bearing—so unusual for an American. Most anxious to learn, and fully realises the greatness of the task before him.” This observation likely reflected Haig and other British officers’ assumptions that American officers would be uniformly arrogant and outspoken.

Over lunch, Pershing enjoyed reminiscing with British Lt. Gen. Sir George H. Fowke, the adjutant general of the British armies, whom Pershing had known in 1905 when they were both observers in the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria. Meanwhile, Patton chatted with Haig about their shared interests in hunting, polo, and sabers.

That afternoon, Haig and his staff treated Pershing and the other  American officers to a tour of the British headquarters. It gave the Americans the opportunity to observe the functioning of Haig’s command structure and ask many questions about the BEF. Harbord thought “the afternoon with the General Staff was most interesting and instructive and left us with a great respect for the splendid organization of the great army our virile imperial cousins have put in the field.”  

Pershing also found the visit informative. He recalled in-depth discussions about the organization, recruitment, and records of the British Army. Pershing wrote in his memoirs that “although our military system had been practically copied from the British a century and a half earlier, it was surprising to find so few points of difference after this lapse of time.”  These similarities only increased as the war progressed and U.S. Army officers borrowed freely from the British.

The three-day visit accomplished a great deal. It allowed American and British leaders to take stock of one another and express their opinions on the war and how best to prosecute it. Haig and his staff knew the scale of the task Pershing faced in assembling an army, supply organization, and headquarters from scratch. Haig worried it might take years before such a force could join the fight, and he wondered if the American officers had enough  experience to handle such an undertaking.

Pershing remained determined to construct the AEF as an independent force, and although he rejected Haig’s suggestion to incorporate American units into British divisions, Pershing saw the U.S. Army could learn much from the British. This meeting marked the start of a strong professional relationship between the two commanders, albeit one that was strained periodically by heated disagreements. 

Though Pershing and Haig’s interactions guided relations between their armies, the two met only occasionally during the war. On a daily basis, their liaison officers served as the representatives of the armies to each other. At Haig’s headquarters, Lt. Col. Robert H. Bacon, the former U.S. ambassador to France, represented Pershing. A wartime volunteer, Bacon’s diplomatic experience made him an asset to the American commander in chief, and he quickly gained the trust of British officers. Haig wrote that from the first time he met Bacon, “He struck me as a most honest, upright man, and absolutely to be trusted.” Haig treated Bacon as a member of his own staff and readily informed him about British plans. This personal trust was vital to cooperation between the two armies.

For this reason, Pershing handpicked the men who served as his liaisons. Bacon and other liaisons needed to understand their hosts and maintain their trust while also remaining dedicated to their own commander and his interests.

At AEF headquarters, Col. [later General] Cyril M. Wagstaff acted as Haig’s liaison. Wagstaff was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1897 and served with Australian troops on the staff of General William R. Birdwood during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. Charles à Court Repington, a reporter for The Times of London and a former lieutenant colonel in the British Army, described Wagstaff as “a good practical man and a typical English soldier, who appears to me to carry out his delicate duties with great tact and good sense, and to make himself helpful to all.”  Upon visiting AEF headquarters  at Chaumont in October 1917, Repington observed, “The American officers are constantly seeking [Wagstaff’s] advice. They come to his room one after another without ceasing.”  After the American attack on the Saint-Mihiel salient on 12 September 1918, Wagstaff submitted a detailed report on the operation that praised American planning and the troops’ quick movement.

He noted that although American methods differed from those of the British Army, they successfully caught the Germans off guard and captured large numbers of prisoners.  As Repington observed, liaison officers not only relayed messages between their commanders, but they coordinated activities and answered questions about their respective armies. They worked hard to smooth out disagreements, clarify miscommunications, and create favorable impressions in each other’s headquarters—and they largely succeeded. 

Still, the most persistent source of discord between the  two armies’ leadership was the issue of amalgamation. . .

Note:  We presented an extensive discussion of the amalgamation issue on Roads to the Great War HERE.

Source: Excerpted from "United in a Great Cause: U.S. and Allied Military Relations in World War I," by Tyler R. Bamford, Army History, Summer, 2020. The full article can be read online HERE.