Historian Edward "Mac" Coffman Reflects on America's World War I

Friend and Great Historian, E.M. "Mac" Coffman
(1929–2020)

In 2012, when I was editor for one of the World War I military journals, I asked the (now) late American historian Mac Coffman for an article summarizing his thoughts and feelings about our country's participation in the Great War. I did not give any other guidelines or suggestions.  This is what Mac came up with. I think it's worth recirculating.  Incidentally,  when he  passed away, I published a tribute to him on Roads that can be read HERE. MH

As the centennial of World War I approaches, those of us who are interested in that war must hope that the American participation will be better remembered in the United States than it was during the 50th anniversary. More than a third of those who were in military service during the war were then still alive. They remembered, but the American public generally did not give much, if any, thought to their elders' contribution because the nation's war in Vietnam reached its nadir with the Tet Offensive in 1968.

The American effort clearly shifted the balance of power on the Western Front when two million men in the American Expeditionary Force threw their weight against the Germans in the last five-plus months of the war. After the war, both Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Max von Gallwitz, the commander of the German force that faced the AEF in the greatest battle (in number of men involved and casualties suffered) in American history, agreed that this massive reinforcement won the war. 

Within a few months after the Armistice, Wilson's and most of the American public's high hopes of victory waned greatly as the aspirations and infighting of the Allies resulted in the Treaty of Versailles, which certainly did not live up to the hopes of Wilson and caused many Americans to understand that this was not going to be the war to end all wars.

Americans also did not appreciate either the recalcitrance of the Allies in paying off war debts or their belittling of the American combat effort. There was an incident at a meeting of political scientists in the 1920s that illustrates the point. An American general who had served in the recent war listened to the academics give papers on the war and was impressed that little if any credit was given to the American effort. During the question and answer period after the papers were read, the general asked what they considered was the American effect on the war. After a period of hemming and hawing, one professor said, “It was the straw that broke the camel's back.” The general responded, “Straw, hell. It was the sledgehammer that broke that damn camel's back.”

In the early 1930s there was a Senate investigation of the significance of American bankers and munitions manufacturers who, it was argued, brought about the American entrance into the war. This led to several neutrality acts and a peace movement that in 1937 had the support of 95 percent of the American public. As late as 1940 a peace group put out a poster depicting a veteran in a wheelchair with the caption “Hello, Sucker.”

As a schoolboy in the 1930s in Hopkinsville, KY, I was not aware of this attitude toward World War I. My father and most of his friends were veterans whom I respected. There were parades on Armistice Day that impressed me because of the local National Guard troop of cavalry. In grade school, we memorized "In Flanders Field" and stood every year for one minute of silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I knew who General Pershing, Alvin York, and Eddie Rickenbacker were. By 1940, I was in the habit of dropping in to talk with Erskine B. Bassett, a retired National Guard colonel who commanded an infantry regiment in the 92nd Division in the last days of the war. He owned a ladies' store that had to be unique—each counter had World War I posters on its front, and the colors of the 150 Infantry Regiment, the National Guard unit he had commanded earlier in the war, were on top of a shelf. His helmet and sword were by its side. We talked not just about World War I but also about his experiences in National Guard units from the 1880s into the 1920s. With the advent of the American entrance into World War II we discussed that also. 

I was a journalism major as an undergraduate, but my first job after graduation was the army as an infantry officer. While in the army, I decided that I would go to graduate school and major in history. Fortunately, the GI bill paid my way for four years at the University of Kentucky. At that time, in the mid-1950s, I wanted to work on a Civil War topic, but a professor warned me that the field was flooded with books, so I turned to a World War I topic—Peyton C. March as chief of staff of the army—as my dissertation topic. It is a clear indication of the lack of interest in World War I that I then knew of only one other academic who was working on a U.S. Army topic. Later, in the advanced stage of my research, I spent two-plus months in the National Archives and became acquainted with other World War I researchers. They were working on different topics involved with the use of gas by the AEF. They published a limited edition of several excellent monographs for the Chemical Corps. In addition to my research in personal papers, newspapers, and memoirs, I worked on a lot of oral history and corresponded with other significant figures from World War I. This was a great opportunity to be able to ask participants questions.

When I tried to get my March biography published in the early 1960s I became increasingly aware that there was little interest in World War I subjects. Fortunately, the University of Wisconsin Press published The Hilt of the Sword in 1964, but sales were low. By that time I already had a contract from Oxford University Press to write a book on the American participation in the war. A World War I veteran and former governor of Wisconsin, Philip LaFollette, made that possible by recommending me to an Oxford University Press editor, Sheldon Meyer. Oxford was planning a series on American wars. As it happened, my The War to End All Wars and Charles MacDonald's The Mighty Endeavor, about the American war in Europe in World War II, were the only volumes in the planned series that were published.

The press hoped that my book would sell well because of the significance of the date of publication—1968. In addition, a book about the AEF—The Doughboys—had sold well in 1963. However, the author was the well-known writer Laurence Stallings, a Marine veteran who had lost a leg at Belleau Wood. As publication time neared, I heard that another author, Harvey DeWeerd, was bringing out President Wilson Fights His War as one of the distinguished series that Louis Morton developed for Macmillan Press. When I read DeWeerd's book I was impressed by the difference in our approaches. A third of his book was devoted to the war before the American entry. His coverage of the American part of the war is primarily concerned with diplomacy, strategy, and logistics at the high command level. I was relieved that I had dealt with the American military experience from the time of mobilization to the end of the war and gave the soldiers as well as the leaders due coverage. I should add that when I finally visited the Western Front in 1990 I was very pleased to see that my dependence on the maps in the American Battle Monuments Commission's American Armies and Battle Monuments in Europe (1938) was justified. Having learned a lot in map reading at the Fort Benning Infantry School helped me in recognizing terrain features. 

Still Recommended for Students of the Great War
It Can Be Ordered HERE

I was very glad that I could give my father a copy of my book. By then he was referring to himself and other Great War veterans as the “forgotten men.” Over the years, I stayed in touch with some of the veterans I had interviewed. Every time I went to Washington I would visit General Charles L. Bolte, who as a lieutenant had been wounded early in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. I often visited Sidney C. Graves, who led the first American raid against German lines and later wound up in Siberia. On several occasions I also visited Doug Campbell, who was the first U.S. Air Service pilot to achieve ace status after our entry into the war. General Bolte and Campbell lived into their nineties. 

When the French awarded Legions of Honor to veterans in 1998, a friend and I visited George Fugate, the last veteran surviving in Lexington, KY, and helped him to apply for the medal.  An infantry lieutenant, he had been in France about a month before the Armistice.  He died in 1999 at age 105. Unfortunately, his medal did not arrive until a few weeks later. 

They are all gone now, but I know that readers of this periodical and I will never forget them.

This article originally appeared in the Journal of the World War One Historical Association, Vol. 1, Num. 2, 2012