ANOTHER CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY?
In the final month of World War I, the German army was near the breaking point. Throughout 1918, officer casualties had been especially heavy. Numbers had been so reduced that in the Argonne Forest a mere lieutenant commanded the 1st Battalion, 120th Landwehr Regiment. Fortunately for the Germans, that lieutenant, Paul Vollmer, had nearly four years of combat experience, and he was a well-educated man who spoke fluent English and had lived in Chicago before the war. On October 8, 1918, near the village of Châtel-Chéhéry, elements of his unit engaged in a fierce firefight with an Allied patrol. In the midst of the fighting Vollmer was captured by Corporal Alvin C. York of the U.S. 82nd Division’s 328th Infantry Regiment. “English?” Vollmer asked as he surrendered to York.
“No, not English,” York replied.
“What?”
“American.”
“Good Lord!” Vollmer blurted in disbelief.
Germany’s senior military leaders didn’t view American troops as ready for combat.
Vollmer’s mistake was understandable. The American khaki uniforms and “soup plate” steel helmets resembled those worn by the British and were nothing like the Adrian helmets and light-blue uniforms of the French. American troops had been fighting in the Argonne for two weeks, and although the German intelligence system was still functioning quite well, that information may not have trickled down to the rankand- file soldier. German military records make it very clear, however, that senior commanders in Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL—the German High Command), Army Group Gallwitz, and Fifth Army were well aware of who they were fighting immediately east of the Meuse River. As early as June 8, OHL directed German forces to “cause as much damage as possible, within the limits of the general situation, to the American units inserted in the front line, as they are to form the nucleus for the new [Allied] organizations.”
As we now know, Germany’s senior military leaders purposely misled the German people and even their frontline soldiers and commanders as to the number of American troops in France and in combat during the latter half of 1918. After all, German submarines were
