[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 52 (Monday, April 28, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1897-H1900]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FUTURE OF THE U.S. MILITARY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Skelton] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, today is the first of three speeches I
intend to make on the future of the U.S. military. This afternoon I
will address the principles that should shape U.S. military strategy in
coming years. In the second speech I will discuss whether projected
budgets are sufficient to support U.S. strategy. In the final speech, I
intend to consider how we are treating our most important resource for
protecting national security, our people, the men and women who serve
in the Armed Forces and the civilian personnel who support them.
I intend to begin each of these speeches by making a simple point
that Congress is responsible for ensuring that U.S. Armed Forces are
prepared to preserve and protect the security of the United States. Let
me emphasize the key phrase in this statement: Congress is responsible.
Under the Constitution, it is the duty of the Congress, not of the
President, let alone of the Secretary of Defense or the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, who are not constitutional officers, to determine the size and
composition of the Armed Forces. Article I, section 8 of the
Constitution, which lists the powers of the Congress, makes this clear.
It assigns to Congress the powers to raise and support armies, to
provide and maintain a navy and to make rules for the Government and
regulation of the land and naval forces.
It falls to the Congress, therefore, to ensure that our military
strength is adequate to defend our Nation and our national interests.
Indeed, there is no more important duty placed upon us as Members of
this institution than to provide for the common defense. It is a duty
which we owe not only to our fellow citizens today, but to the
Americans of tomorrow.
We have a duty, as well, not to squander, through short-sightedness
and neglect, the sacrifices which generations before us have made to
grant us the peace and security with which we are blessed. We have a
duty to future generations of Americans to pass on to them the legacy
of peace, prosperity, and freedom which has been bequeathed to us.
It is the Congress, therefore, which is ultimately responsible for
approving a strategy to guide U.S. military policy and, above all, for
establishing a proper balance between national strategy and the
resources available to carry it out.
Historically, Congress has often failed in this responsibility. In
the years since the end of the cold war, many commentators have noted
how badly the Nation has handled the aftermath of major conflicts in
the 20th century. After World War I, after World War II, and after the
war in Vietnam, we allowed our military forces to deteriorate to a
degree that cost us dearly in the conflicts that inevitably arose later
on.
In fact, such a failure is not unique to this century. A few years
ago, I discovered a speech made in 1923 by then-Army Maj. George C.
Marshall that discerned a similar, though not quite identical, pattern
of failure even earlier in our history.
Major Marshall, of course, later became the most distinguished
American soldier and statesman of this century, as Chief of Staff in
the Army in World War II, Secretary of State in the early years of the
cold war, and Secretary of Defense during the war in Korea.
``From the earliest days of this country,'' said Marshall in 1923,
``the Regular Army was materially increased in strength and drastically
reduced with somewhat monotonous regularity.'' It was perhaps
understandable, he said, that there should be a reduction in the size
of the military following a war. But, in fact, he discovered the
pattern was not quite so simple.
Often, following a war, the size of the Regular Army was increased
above what it had been before the conflict, but then, within a very few
years, or even a few months, in some cases it was reduced below the
pre-war level. In struggling to comprehend this inconsistency, Marshall
offered the following explanation:
``It appears that when the war was over, every American's thoughts
were centered on the tragedies involved in the lessons just learned. So
the Congress, strongly backed by public opinion, determined that we
should be adequately prepared for the future, and accordingly enacted a
law well devised for this express purpose. However, in a few months,
the public mind ran away from the tragedies of the war and reasons
therefor and became obsessed with the magnitude of the public debt and
the problem of its reduction. Forgetting almost immediately the bitter
lesson of unpreparedness, they demanded and secured the reduction of
the Army, which their representatives had so recently increased for
very evident reasons.''
It is this pattern of failure that I fear we may now be repeating.
For my own part, I have been debating whether the current era resembles
more the period of about 1903 or the period of about 1923. At the turn
of the century, the Nation had just won a short, popular war against
Spain, after which, support for the Army and Navy ran high. But within
a few years, funding for the military was reduced, in part because the
world seemed to be comfortably at peace, and many believed that war had
become impossible.
Just a few years later, all of Europe was in flames, and by 1917, the
United States had declared war on Germany, but without any degree of
military preparedness.
{time} 1415
Marshall recalled seeing United States soldiers in France at the end
of 1917 marching through the ice and snow ``without shoes and with
their feet wrapped in gunny-sacks.'' The allies had to continue to hold
the line for more than a year before the United States was prepared to
participate in the final battles that brought the Great War to a close.
In 1923, the United States had recently participated in what was then
the most horrible war in human history. But the public mind, as
Marshall lamented, had already forgotten the lessons of that war and
the costs of unpreparedness. The majority in Congress could not foresee
circumstances in which the United States would again embroil itself in
Europe's conflicts, and support for military expenditures had
dissolved. Less than 20 years later, we were engaged in an even more
destructive global war, for which we were also terribly unprepared.
Today, in the aftermath of a successful conclusion of the cold war
with the USSR, we are well on our way to repeating the same mistake of
denuding ourselves militarily. The world is no less turbulent or
dangerous than it was during the cold war. Regional threats, along with
rising terrorism and the possibility of nuclear and chemical weapons
proliferation, should cause us to keep up our guard.
Today, a few of my colleagues frequently challenge me with a question
[[Page H1898]]
that surely echoed through these Halls in 1903 or 1923. ``What is the
enemy,'' I am asked? And with that question, there are many others. Why
continue to support more spending for defense when the cold war is
over? Why plan for two major regional wars when a second threat did not
materialize during the Persian Gulf war? Why continue to pursue
expensive, new, advanced weapons when U.S. technology was so dominant
in Operation Desert Storm, and when no other nation is spending nearly
what we do on military hardware? Why keep a robust force structure and
a fair-sized personnel level?
Today, and in the two speeches to follow, I will provide answers to
those narrower questions. But to the broader question of what is the
enemy, there is no clear and simple answer; as, indeed, there was no
clear and simple answer that Marshall could have given in 1923.
For my part, I think any attempt to see into the future is like
looking into a kaleidoscope. We never know what new pattern will
emerge. We only know that the colors making up the pattern will remain
the same. In viewing the future of international affairs, we cannot
foresee the new shape of the world, but we know that the colors are
those of the human condition, including all the traits of human
character and all the circumstances of human life that have ever led to
war. Those colors have not changed, and the need to prepare for
conflict has not diminished merely because an era of conflict with a
particular foe has ended and a new era, of yet uncertain pattern, is
emerging.
So to respond to my colleagues who ask, ``what is the enemy,'' I say,
true; today we cannot define precisely what the enemy is or will be. We
can say, however, that we will fail in our responsibility in this
Congress if, once again, we allow the armed forces to be unprepared for
the enemies that may emerge.
In fact, as I will argue today, a failure to support a strong
military in the present historical circumstances would be even more
unfortunate and more unforgivable than in the past for two reasons.
First, today the United States is the only Nation able to protect the
peace. In the past we were fortunate that allies were able, often by
the narrowest of margins, to hold the line while we belatedly prepared
for war. Bismarck once said: ``God protects fools, and the United
States.''
Today, no one else is capable either of preventing conflict from
arising in the first place, or of responding decisively if a major
threat to the peace does occur. While I trust in God, I believe God has
given us the tools we need to keep peace, and it is our task to use
them wisely.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, if we fail in our
responsibility to maintain U.S. military power, the United States, and,
indeed, the world as a whole, may lose an unprecedented opportunity to
construct an era of relative peace that could last for many, many
years.
Today, our military strength is the foundation of a relatively secure
international order in which small conflicts, though endemic and
inevitable, will not decisively erode global stability. As such, our
military strength is also a means of preventing the growth of one or
more new powers that could, in time, constitute a threat to peace and
evolve into the enemy we do not now foresee.
Because of this, the very limited investment required to maintain our
military strength, though somewhat larger than we are making right now,
is disproportionately small compared to the benefits we, and the rest
of the world, derive from it.
My fellow Missourian, Harry S Truman, stated this clearly: ``We must
be prepared to pay the price for peace, or assuredly we will pay the
price of war.'' These two premises, that the United States alone is
able to protect the peace, and that adequate, visible U.S. military
power may prevent new enemies from arising in the future, are, it seems
to me, the cornerstones of a sound strategy for the years to come.
These are the premises that will guide my evaluation of the current
reassessment of defense policy, called the Quadrennial Defense Review,
or QDR, that the Defense Department is due to deliver to the Congress
on May 15.
In the remainder of this statement I want to discuss what I have
heard of the strategy that is evolving in the process of the
Quadrennial Defense Review, the QDR, what I see as its strengths, and
how I think it might be improved.
In carrying out this assessment, I will be referring on occasion to a
draft of the QDR statement of strategy that was printed recently in a
reliable newsletter called ``Inside the Army.'' To be sure, this is not
the final draft of this strategy, which is still to be released
officially. It remains subject to change. I will refer to it,
nonetheless, because it reflects the thinking going on inside the
Pentagon to date, and moreover, because I believe it is a good start in
defining a military strategy for the future.
That being said, I do not at all agree with the judgment, which
appears to be emerging from the QDR, that the new strategy can be
supported with a force smaller than the force determined to be
necessary by the QDR's predecessor, the Bottom-Up Review of 1993.
The key theme of the new strategy is that U.S. military forces must
be able to shape the international security environment in ways
favorable to U.S. interests, to respond to the full spectrum of crises
when it is in our interest to do so, and to prepare now to meet the
challenges of an uncertain future.
So the three elements of the strategy are these: Shape, respond,
prepare. To shape requires forward deployment of U.S. forces; various
means of defense cooperation with allies, including security
assistance; and joint trading with allies and others.
To respond requires the ability to execute the full spectrum of
military operations, including showing the flag to deter aggression;
conducting multiple, concurrent, small-scale contingency operations;
and fighting and winning major theater wars, including the ability to
prevail in two nearly simultaneous conflicts.
To prepare requires adequately sized forces for the air, sea, and
especially the land; increased investments in weapons modernization;
robust efforts to exploit the evolving revolution in military affairs;
and investments in research and development that hedge against the
evolution of unexpected but potentially dangerous developments in
military technology in the future.
Now, there are those who will say of this statement of strategy that
it fails because it is not selective enough in defining for what
challenges U.S. military forces should prepare. Some have complained
that United States military forces are being used too often to respond
to crises, like the conflict in Bosnia, that are not directly
threatening to United States security. I have sometimes agreed with
those complaints.
Others with whom I have not agreed have argued that the United States
should give up the Bottom-Up Review strategy of being prepared to
prevail in two near-simultaneous regional conflicts, now called major
theater wars, and instead prepare for one such conflict plus smaller
peace operations.
Still others say we should focus less of our effort on the current
challenges to our security and devote much more attention to preparing
for potential new threats from a peer or near-peer military competitor
in the future.
I think the QDR draft statement of strategy is preferable to any of
these alternative views. As against those who would be more selective
in identifying commitments, the emerging QDR strategy statements
reflects the fact that Presidents have long been able to commit large
numbers of U.S. troops to sometimes long-lasting operations abroad
pretty much as they see fit.
President Clinton has done so more than others, but he is not alone
in asserting his authority as Commander in Chief to undertake major new
missions abroad. Since Presidents can define what U.S. interests abroad
are vital enough to require the commitment of U.S. forces, then the
U.S. military will have to be prepared to carry out an extraordinarily
broad range of tasks short of major war.
It would be misleading, for military planning purposes, for a
statement of strategy to identify only a narrow range of missions,
when, in fact, the military can, at any time, be called on to carry out
any imaginable kind of mission while still preparing for major wars.
[[Page H1899]]
Indeed, the key flaw of the Bottom-Up Review was that it failed to
take account of the demands that would be put on forces by missions
other than the requirement to be prepared to fight two nearly
simultaneous major regional conflicts.
As against those who would give up the Bottom-Up Review's two-war
requirement, that, to me, is a prescription for giving up on being a
superpower. If we lack the ability to respond to a second crisis should
a first arise, then in every case we would be hesitant in committing
our forces to action in the first instance. Would we really respond to
Saddam Hussein, for example, at the cost of critically weakening our
deterrent posture in Korea? That is a choice we should never have to
make.
As to those who would spend less on maintaining current readiness in
order to invest in future technology, I do not agree that we are in a
``threat trough''. On the contrary, the evidence of recent years is
that the world after the cold war is more turbulent than ever. We have
to be prepared to deal with today's conflicts, or we may be critically
weakened by confronting the challenges of the future by failure to
preserve the peace today.
So a new statement of strategy that calls for forces able to shape,
respond, and prepare seems to me to be a valuable contribution to the
debate about U.S. military preparedness. It is a demanding strategy,
and under current circumstances, one that will be challenging to
fulfill. It is a matter of great concern to me, therefore, that
everything I have heard about the rest of the QDR is at odds with the
requirements implied by the new statement of strategy.
Earlier this year Secretary Cohen assured the Committee on National
Security that the QDR process would be driven by the strategy, not by
the budget.
The new strategy, it seems very clear, requires forces perhaps larger
and certainly more flexible than the forces required by the Bottom-Up
Review. The QDR strategy maintains the requirement to prepare for two
major regional conflicts, now called major theater wars, and adds to
that requirement the need to shape the environment, respond to lesser
crises, and prepare for the future. It cannot be done with less. Yet,
the QDR is, by all accounts, looking for cuts in the size of the force
structure. Indeed, the draft statement of strategy to which I have been
referring hints at reasons for cutting forces, despite the strategy.
One way to cut, it says, would be to rely more on reserves. Another
is to rely more on allies. I believe that these are merely transparent
excuses for making reductions in forces required by budget constraints
and not driven by considerations of strategy. The bulk of reserve
forces are already built into war plans in a wholly integrated fashion,
and other forces constitute a valuable strategic reserve. To depend on
allies to be able to carry out our own strategy is the height of folly.
At the very least, dependence on allies may force us to limit our
strategic goals or make us hesitant to act.
{time} 1430
Also, it is not clear that we can depend on the allies to provide
forces of the quality we maintain in our own forces. We can and should
expect the allies to contribute in the event of major conflicts, as
they did during the Persian Gulf war, but we cannot afford to assume
allied participation in making our own plans. The strategy emerging
from the QDR is appropriately broad and demanding. The remainder of the
QDR should address frankly what forces and what weapon investment are
needed to carry it out.
Mr. Speaker, the time is now for the Congress to learn from the past
and not repeat the mistakes of our predecessors, mistakes that allowed
unpreparedness and led to battlefield disasters such as the costly
defeat at Kasserine Pass in North Africa in World War II and the
destruction of Task Force Smith in the Korean war. Such unpreparedness
is paid for in the blood and lives of young Americans.
The warning of Major, later General, George C. Marshall in 1923,
though not heeded by his generation, should be heard by our generation.
This Congress must not fail in this responsibility.
Mr. Speaker, the 1923 Marshall speech follows for the Record.
(By Major George C. Marshall, Jr.)
Mr. President and Gentlemen:--
I must ask your indulgence this afternoon because, until
General Gignilliat requested me to make this talk the latter
part of the morning, I had no expectation of participating in
this meeting.
You gentlemen, I am sure, are all interested in the
National Defense, and I would like to talk to you for a few
minutes regarding the effect of our school histories on this
question.
The Army, which is the principal arm we depend upon for the
defense of the country, can hardly be called the result of a
slow growth. Its history has been a series of ups and downs,
a continuing record of vicissitudes, with which you may be
somewhat familiar in more recent years, but I cannot believe
many people understand or are aware of what has happened in
the past, because it seems improbable that what has happened
should continue to happen if our citizens were familiar with
the facts.
In looking back through the history of the infantry
component of the Regular Army, we find that from the earliest
days of this country, it was materially increased in strength
and drastically reduced with somewhat monotonous regularity.
From eighty men immediately after the Revolutionary War, it
was increased to sixteen regiments, about as many regiments
of infantry as we have today. In 1798, two years later, it
was reduced to eight regiments. With the War of 1812, it was
increased considerably and then decreased immediately
afterwards. I am not talking about the temporary army, but
the Regular Army. Another increase came during the Mexican
War, about trebling its size; and immediately thereafter came
the inevitable reduction. In the early months of the Civil
War it was increased from about eight regiments to sixteen.
But the odd phase of this policy develops in 1866. Then the
war was over, but the infantry was increased to forty-six
regiments, and suddenly, but a few years later, reduced to
twenty-five regiments, with which we entered the war with
Spain. In 1901, this number was increased to thirty. Just
before our entry into the World War, Congress provided for
sixty-five regiments. Thereafter you cannot get an accurate
parallel, because the Congress varied its method. Instead of
authorizing regiments, it gave us numbers.
When the World War was over, in the summer of 1920, they
gave us 285,000 men. Nine months later this was cut to
175,000. Three months later, came a cut to 150,000; followed
six months later by a further cut to 125,000. And just by the
skin of our teeth we got through this last Congress without a
further cut to 75,000.
The remarkable aspect of this procedure to me, and I think
to any one, is that both increases and reductions should have
been order after the war was over and all within a brief
period of time, which can be measured in months. A decrease
following the establishment of peace is readily understood,
but the combination of two diametrically opposed policies is
difficult to comprehend.
In searching for reasons to explain this inconsistency, it
appears that when the war was over every American's thoughts
were centered on the tragedies involved in the lessons just
learned, the excessive cost of the war in human lives and
money. So the Congress, strongly backed by public opinion,
determined that we should be adequately prepared for the
future, and accordingly enacted a law well devised for this
express purpose. However, in a few months, the public mind
ran away from the tragedies of the War and the reasons
therefor, and became obsessed with the magnitude of the
public debt and the problem of its reduction. Forgetting
almost immediately the bitter lesson of unpreparedness, they
demanded and secured the reduction of the Army, which their
representatives had so recently increased for very evident
reasons. Now what has occurred but recently has many
precedents in the past. There are numerous ramifications of
the same general nature, but the astonishing fact is, that we
continue to follow a regular cycle in the doing and undoing
of measures for the National Defense. We start in the making
of adequate provisions and then turn abruptly in the opposite
direction and abolish what has just been done.
Careful investigation leads to the belief that this
illogical course of action is the result of the inadequacies
of our school histories so far as pertains to the record of
our wars, and in a measure, to the manner in which history is
taught. During the past few months, the War Department has
been concerned as to what might properly be done to correct
the defects in the school textbooks which are now being
published. Naturally, it is a matter that must be handled
very carefully. The Department is loathe to take any positive
action, because immediately the Army would be open to the
criticism of trying to create a militaristic public opinion.
Furthermore, criticism of the existing textbooks would
probably arouse the hostility of the publishers, and
particularly, of the authors.
Following a discussion between General Pershing and a
prominent publisher, several of the more recent school
histories were submitted to the Historical Section of the War
College, and each reviewed by a number of specially qualified
officers. When these reviews were assembled and digested, it
became apparent that what had been done in the past, was
again in the process of repetition. A reading of these
reviews convinces
[[Page H1900]]
one that our military history would probably suffer another
repetition.
It is apparent that you can talk about the present National
Defense Act as much as you please and of the scheme of
military education provided in the Reserve Officers' Training
Corps Units, etc., but we will repeat our errors of the past
unless public opinion is enlightened, and public opinion in
these matters depends in a large measure on the written word
of our histories, except for a few months immediately
following such a National calamity as the World War. It
is almost purposeless for the War Department to attempt to
make an impression on Congress which is not in accord with
public opinion.
When a boy goes to school he studies history. Thereafter I
believe less than five per cent of the men of the country
continue this study. You gentlemen are of a class apart, and
if you were not familiar with the important facts of our
military history, certainly no other class of men will be.
The lasting impression of the American man on what has
happened in the past, is absorbed from his school history. I
remember studying Barnes' American History, and I still have,
I suppose, the same feeling I acquired then regarding the
English nation and the British Army, so depicted in
Revolutionary days. In the course of my present occupation it
has become necessary for me to learn something of the actual
facts in the case, which I have found are often strikingly at
variance with many of the ideas Mr. Barnes implanted in my
mind.
You gentlemen are no doubt familiar with most of these
facts, but I believe there are some of them of which even you
are not aware. Certainly the average man is in the dark as to
the difficulties our military leaders have invariably
encountered. Take the history of the Revolutionary War for
example; I imagine there are but few men today who have even
a vague idea of Washington's troubles in maintaining his
Revolutionary Army,--what they actually were and the causes
that lay behind them. Virtually the same difficulties
continued to arise in the history of our army and with the
same basic reason for their recurrence. Is the average boy
given an idea of the lessons of these incidents?
What has the American youth been taught of the War of
1812--that it was one of the most ignominious pages in our
history,--wonderful on the sea, splendid at New Orleans,--but
in almost everything else, a series of glaring failures and
humiliating occurrences? Were you given any such idea as
this? In the Mexican War the operations of our armies were
carried out in very shipshape fashion, thanks to a long
period in which to prepare. But I doubt if there are more
than a few people who know that after the capture of Vera
Cruz, General Scott's army, preparing for its advance to
Mexico City, was well nigh emasculated and rendered impotent
by the policy of the Government which permitted a large
proportion of the Volunteers to secure their discharges and
return home. It has been alleged that this course was
intended to wreck any political aspirations of General Scott.
But it was an American army on foreign soil far from home,
that was imperiled in this fashion.
We find almost an exact repetition of this incident in the
Philippines in 1809, when the obligation of the Government to
return home the state volunteer troops, left a small force of
the Regular Army besieged in Manila until fresh quotas of
volunteers could be raised in the United States and
dispatched seven thousand miles to its support. We do not
realize how fraught with the possibility of National tragedy
were these occurrences. Think what the result might have been
had our opponent been efficient and made us pay the penalty
for such a mistaken policy.
Until recently the Civil War formed the major portion of
our military background. In your study of the history of that
period was your attention drawn to any conclusions? As to
why, for example, the North experienced so many difficulties
and failures during the early years of the war, and the South
was so uniformly successful? There are very definite reasons
for this and therefore, lessons to the drawn, but the one
time school boy when he casts his vote at the polls, or
represents his District in Congress, must as a rule, base his
action on false and misleading premises.
Popular American histories of the World War would more than
startle the German reader. It is possible that he might think
he was reading of some other struggles in which his country
had no part. I will venture the assertion that for every boy
who comes out of our public schools realizing that over a
year elapsed before America's soldiers could make their first
attack on the enemy,--for every youth so informed, there will
be a thousand whose attention is not called to this, but who
can recite the date on which we entered the war. This may
seem a small matter, but it will have a definite effect on
every paragraph of legislation attempted for the National
Defense.
We talk of Valley Forge in Revolutionary days, and do not
realize that American soldiers experienced something very
like Valley Forge over in France in the fall of 1917. I have
seen soldiers of the First Division without shoes and with
their feet wrapped in gunny-sacks, marching ten or fifteen
kilometers through the ice and snow. You do not have to go
back to Washington's army at Valley Forge for a period of
hardships experienced, because of unpreparedness. I have seen
so many horses of the First Division drop dead on the field
from starvation, that we had to terminate the movements in
which they engaged. One night I recall Division Headquarters
being notified that the troops in an adjacent village were
out of rations and the animals were too weak to haul the
necessary supplies. The question to be derived was, should
the men be marched to the rations and the animals left to
die, or would it be possible to secure other transportation.
That was in the fall of 1917. It was a small matter but it
reflects the general condition of unpreparedness with which
we entered the war, and it was only the strength of our
Allies who held the enemy at bay for more than a year, that
enabled us to fight the victorious battles which ended the
war. The small boy learns that we were successful in the end,
but he is carefully prevented from discovering how narrow has
been the margin of our success. Good luck has always seemed
to be with us and the attending circumstances seem to prove
Bismarck's saying that ``God takes care of the fools in the
United States.''
Some of these days, now that we are a dominant, if not the
dominant power in the world, we may have to make good without
Allies or time or fortuitous circumstances to assist us.
There seems to have been a conspiracy to omit the pertinent
facts or the lessons of our military history which would
prepare the boy to be an intelligent voter or legislator. So
long as this is the case, we will continue in a series of the
errors I have been describing.
The study of ancient history reveals innumerable
occurrences which have that exact parallel in modern times.
There must be some lesson to be drawn. For example: General
Pershing recently called attention to the fact that while the
Peace Conference was sitting in Paris in 1919, building up
the Treaty which we did not accept, there were English
soldiers at Cologne, American soldiers at Coblenz, and French
soldiers at Mayence, and a general reserve at Treves,
(General Pershing's own Headquarters). Eighteen hundred years
before, during a prolonged peace, Roman Legions were
stationed at Cologne, Coblenz and Mayence, with a reserve of
ten thousand at Treves. The setting was identical with the
recent deployment of the Allied troops along the Rhine. There
must be some lesson to be drawn from this repetition of
history, that is of much more moment that a recollection of
the date of the signing of the Peace Treaty.
The other day I had occasion to look up something regarding
Phillip Sheridan, who was one of the five Generals of the
Army, of which General Pershing is the most recent, and
General Washington was the first. After locating my
information, I read a little further and came across, what to
me, was a most remarkable coincidence.
General Sheridan after the Civil War was sent abroad to
observe the operations of the Prussian Army in the Franco-
Prussian War. He joined the Staff of the Emperor William west
of Metz on the eve of the Battle of Gravelotte. The day after
this fight, riding in the carriage of Bismarck, he drove
through Point-a-Mousson. This town was the right flank of the
American army in the St. Mihiel operation. Turing west,
Bismarck and Sheridan drove on to Commercy and were billeted
there for the night. They followed the exact route of the
American troops being transferred from the St. Mihiel front
to the Meuse-Argonne. From Commercy, Sheridan passed on to
Bar-le-Duc, and he describes how he stood on a little portico
of that town and watched the Bavarians marching through the
Central Place as they turned north towards the Argonne in the
great maneuver to corner McHahon's French Army on the Belgian
frontier. American troops followed this same route and
executed the same turn to the north, and I happened to have
watched them pass through the Central Place of Bar-le-Duc.
With Bismarck, Sheridan drove north to Clermont, following
the principal axis of the advance taken by the American army
in September, 1918. After a night's billet in that village,
they drove through a series of towns, later to be captured by
the Americans from Bismarck's descendants, and billeted in
Grandpre at the other tip of the Argonne Forest.
Now comes a more remarkable coincidence. General Sheridan
describes how he drove from Grandpre through the Foret de
Dieulet into Beaumont, where a French division had on that
morning been surprised and captured by the Germans. this was
the opening phase of the Battle of Sedan. Our Second Division
passed through that identical Forest at night and surprised
Germans at roll call in the early morning in the streets of
Beaumont.
Accompanying the entourage of the Emperor William, General
Sheridan pressed on to Wadelincourt, and from a hilltop
nearby looked down across the Meuse at the French Army,
cornered but not yet captured, at Sedan. A battalion of the
Sixteenth American Infantry on November 7, 1918, pressed
forward to that same hill and looked down on the Germans in
Sedan. Is not this a remarkable coincidence, and does it not
point to the uncertainties of the future and the necessity of
being prepared for almost any eventuality?
I hope you will pardon my very disjointed remarks and I
deeply appreciate your kind attention. (Applause.)
The President, Dr. Newhall: ``Factors Contributing to
Morale and Espirit de Corps,'' by General L.R. Gignilliat.
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