A roster of the high command in the American Army during World War I is a roster of the lieutenants who served in the Philippines at the turn of the century.
William T. Sexton, Soldiers in the Sun
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| General Pershing with Moro Tribesmen and Staff Officers in the Philippines |
The decade following the Spanish-American War gave the generation of American officers destined to serve in command positions during the Great War a remarkable number and variety of missions to perform. Of course, none of these challenges were comparable in scope to the fighting that would come on the Western Front, but they did allow these men to develop their capacity to grasp large, complicated, and unusual military operations. Serving in deployments remote from the American heartland and with duties far beyond what individuals of their age and rank would normally face, they gained an awareness of the greater world and learned to bear the weight of great responsibility. Several of these missions stand out as particularly valuable seasoning experiences and by far the most important of these were the long-lasting actions known as the Philippine War and Insurrection, 1902–1913.
At the time of that armistice, veterans of the Philippines deployment were in command of almost all elements of the American Expeditionary Force. General Pershing, every field army and corps commander, the chiefs of the Intelligence, Supply, and Air Services, and both the AEF Headquarters and First Army chiefs of operations, were veterans of the Philippine war.
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| Casualties from the First Battle of Bud Dajo, March 1906 |
There were two phases to the American military effort in the Philippines, the second much longer than the first. After defeating the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, Commodore Dewey encouraged and supported rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo and his force of 15,000 supporters to rise up against the Spanish colonial forces. Their efforts against the shaky Spaniards, who except in Manila were mostly widely dispersed and easy to pick off, succeeded, with the victors quickly declaring independence and establishing a constitution. The U.S., however, had meanwhile negotiated a purchase of the archipelago as part of the Treaty of Paris that ended the war. After prayerful reflection, President McKinley decided the Philippines were not to be granted independence. Aguinaldo and his supporters understandably rejected this decision and fighting ensued.
Soon American forces, some Army regulars and a larger contingent of volunteers, were fighting a brutal war for possession of the islands. The ensuing combat was vicious for the combatants and also took a cruel toll on Filipino civilians. After gaining victories in several conventional battles and securing Manila, the U.S. troops found they were now facing a guerilla war. It would eventually take a 74,000-man contingent and an intense campaign to gain control of the scattered battlefields. The war ended with the surrender of guerilla commander General Vincente Lukban in April 1902. In the three-year insurrection, 4,000 American and 20,000 Filipino soldiers and many thousands of Filipino civilians had perished.
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| American Soldiers with Native Prisoners, Date Unknown |
The need for a large deployment ended and most of the volunteers were sent home. The regular army then assumed almost full responsibility for security of the islands, with an occupying force that would average about 15,000 men for the next decade. The new American governors, though, had a lingering problem to deal with. In the southern islands, the Muslim Moro population was not interested in surrendering and continued to resist American rule in the Sulu region and on the Island of Mindanao until the eve of the Great War. It was in this second phase in the Philippines that almost all the future leadership of the AEF gained their most important command experience, and not unimportant, had the opportunity to prove themselves to the most influential American officer in the Philippines, the future commander of the American forces in the Great War—John J. Pershing. Pershing was the last military governor of the islands and established his credentials for high command by disarming the Moros and ending the guerilla campaign.
But, of what possible relevance for fighting on the battlefields of Europe was this experience in the Philippines? One clue comes from Philippine veteran General George Marshall, writing about his experience in France in World War I: "[The Frenchman] feels the French method is the only method. We are adaptable, and it was this trait alone that made it possible for us to survive the difficulties of this period." An officer in the Philippines either adapted or failed. The need to adapt to local conditions, of course, was not unique to the Philippines. Since the Civil War, the regular U.S. Army had been involved primarily in unconventional warfare on the American prairie and in the Pacific and Caribbean deployments discussed above. But the Philippines offered such extremes of climate, geography, culture, religion, and local traditions that American soldiers must have thought they had left not their country but their planet. It was so shockingly different, the fighting so intense, and the adjustments required so demanding, that the Philippines served as a finishing school in adaptability for Army officers. To borrow the cliché, if you could succeed there you could succeed anywhere.
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| Moving a Gatling Gun Across a Destroyed Bridge |
The regular army was in full charge during this second phase, which lasted 12 years. Since its professional cadre was still small, a very higher percentage of officers in the age group likely to be in command positions by 1917 and 1918—the mid- and junior-level officers—were rotated through the Philippine pressure cooker. Service in the Philippines gave these officers challenges and responsibilities beyond their years, providing outstanding preparation for command of larger formations. As U.S. Army counterinsurgency expert Frank Andrews recently wrote:
American success [in the Philippines] ultimately depended on the men who implemented the counterinsurgency policies developed by the generals — the junior officers, or in some cases sergeants, who served as some of the 600 garrison commanders. These men were responsible not only for leading their soldiers in forays against the insurgents, but they were also charged with the establishment and supervision of the town government, schools, and local police force. In addition to preventing the townspeople from giving supplies or information to the guerrillas, the garrison commanders were responsible for protecting the town and his command against insurgent attacks. They also acted as the provost judge and performed all military staff duties, as well as the multitude of administrative tasks required by the army.
Subtly, by the eve of America's entry into the Great War, the Army's officer corps had been divided. Those who had been found wanting in the Philippines saw their advancement in grade slowed. The successful were marked for higher posts if the Army ever needed to expand. These would form the command cadre of the AEF and in 1917 and 1918 would find themselves thrown into a modern and conventional land war with which they had absolutely no experience. On the Western Front they would apply the main lesson they had learned in the Philippines—the practice of learning and adjusting as the fighting went on. The differences in operational planning and combat efficiency between the AEF that fought at Cantigny, Château-Thierry, and Soissons in the summer and spring of 1918 and the AEF that launched the dramatic and decisive breakthrough, only five months later, on 1 November 1918 are staggering.
Source: Over the Top: Magazine of the World War I Centennial, May 2014
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