He set the marines to helping a detail of Negro stevedores handle cargo. Somehow the railroads were put in motion. By the time the distractions and celebrations of the Fourth of July interrupted the labors of his staff at Paris headquarters, the quais of the old port of St. Nazaire were humming with unaccustomed activity and something like twelve thousand troops were on their way in French boxcars (forty men eight horses) to a training area at Gondrecourt in the bleak Burgundian hills north of Chaumont. The smartestlooking detachment that could be found was routed through Paris to be shown to the Parisians on Independence Day.
Although the battalion chosen from the 16th Infantry contained a good many raw recruits, the tall khakiclad Americans in their broadbrimmed campaign hats made a brave show when they paraded through the Court of Honor at the Invalides between ranks of helmeted French troops in horizon blue. General Pershing made a fine appearance. “… the shouts outside and the stirring of the crowd told that the American was approaching,” Harbord wrote in his diary, “and in came Pershing followed by a single aide. He was cheered to the echo. It is too early to say what the General will do in the war … But whatever the future holds for him, General Pershing certainly looks his part since he came here. He is a fine figure of a man: carries himself well, holds himself on every occasion with proper dignity; is easy in manner, knows how to enter a crowded room, and is fast developing into a world figure. He has captured the fickle Paris crowd.”
The tall American general with his sharp cleanshaven chin strode along the ranks of men at “present arms” beside dumpy bearded little Poincaré in his frock coat and tricolor sash, who had to waddle to keep up with him. Orders rang hoarse. Rifle butts clanged on the flagstones. There were presentations of battleflags. The bands played.
“It was a tremendously moving scene,” Harbord noted when he returned to his quarters that night. “Perhaps twice in her history foreign troops have entered that old Cour d’Honneur; once in 1815 after Waterloo; again after Sedan in 1870, and violated that inner shrine of French history; but never before has an ally with armed men violated that holy of French holies. It certainly meant much for France, much for Germany, and I believe a new era for America: and no American could look on it without a thrill and the tears starting to his eyes.”
After the ceremony at the Invalides the Americans in columns of fours marched three miles across Paris to Lafayette’s tomb in the Picpus cemetery. They marched in a storm of flowers. “Girls, women, men crowded into the street, linked arms with the flank men of the fours and swept on down the avenue in step with American music. The roar of applause rose and never died away.”
A luncheon followed at the American Chamber of Commerce; and a reception at the Embassy (privately known to Major Harbord and his friends as “the house of the stuffed shirt”); and a stately dinner of interminable courses with their appropriate wines, presided over by General Foch at Armenonville in the Bois de Boulogne. Speeches, speeches, speeches.
It was a wonder to the men on Pershing’s staff that the chief could get any work done at all. When his time wasn’t taken up with military festivities or conferring with French generals, groups of freshly arrived Americans pre-empted his officehours. “Almost every day some different American mission turns up,” wrote Harbord bitterly. “Apparently there is no one who applies to the powers who is not sent over, unless he be a soldier wishing to join an expedition.”
Paris in its time of crisis was more than ever the center of Europe’s ancient civilization. In spite of wartime restrictions life there held great fascinations. Americans swarmed about the city like flies about a cider-press.
All had good causes. There were groups from the Red Cross eager to combat the French war depression by deluging the soldiers’ families with American charity. A committee from the Y.M.C.A. was out to protect the morals of the American boys in khaki. There were railroadmen come to tell the French how to run their railroads, lumbermen to tell them how to cut their forests, commissions of chemists attempting to standardize weights and measures, engineers with plans for rebuilding the French ports.
The commission which had to be handled with the greatest care was the board of officers Baker sent over from the War Department to help Pershing plan the war. He solved that problem by taking them over to the rue Constantine and putting them to work with his staff.
By July 6 Pershing’s staff and the War Department board had reached certain conclusions. Pershing cabled Washington that day: “Plans should contemplate sending over at least 1,000,000 men by next May.”
Estimates kept rising. Five days later a joint session of his staff and War Department board adopted what became known as the General Organization Project. This was forwarded to Washington accompanied by a preliminary statement by the Commander in Chief:
“It is evident that a force of about 1,000,000 is the smallest unit which in modern war will be a complete well-balanced and independent fighting organization. However, it must be equally clear that the adoption of this size force as a basis of study should not be construed as the maximum force which will be needed in France. It is taken as the force which may be expected to reach France in time for an offensive in 1918, and as a unit and basis for organization. Plans for the future should be based, especially in reference to the manufacture etc. of artillery, aviation, and other material, on three times this force — i.e. at least 3,000,000 men.”
Pershing and his staff were so busy working on plans for the future and getting acquainted with the French that it was late in July before they could accept the British invitation to visit the general headquarters of their expeditionary force. Pershing and Harbord drove out from Paris, through beautiful rolling country, along roads bordered by great trees, to the walled town of Montreuil in the Pas de Calais which was the administrative center for the British. They were much impressed by the complicated hive of headquarters organization. In every office they found a general. The size and blondness of the British generals struck Harbord. Pershing who stalked like a giant among the stumpy French found himself a small man beside them. Poor Harbord still only a lieutenant colonel, although Chief of Staff, felt himself thoroughly outranked.
The British adjutant general turned out to be an acquaintance of General Pershing’s from the Russo-Japanese War, when they had both been among the group of foreign observers with General Kuroki’s staff who had such an interesting time watching Japanese operations in Manchuria. After a full day studying the workings of the G.H.Q. and a remarkably good lunch at the mansion where this General Fowke had his mess, they drove to Blendecques. There in a stately pile, Sir Douglas Haig had his quarters throughout the war.
“It was almost dusk,” wrote Pershing, “when we arrived at an old château, halfhidden in a magnificent grove of chestnut trees.” They found the Commander in Chief a remarkably handsome man, perfectly accoutered, almost the painted model of a wooden soldier, with his regular features, his keen gray eyes, his carefully clipped mustache. His greeting to the Americans was surprisingly cordial. His staff made them at home in the château.
Haig seems to have been taken with Pershing. “I was much struck with his quiet gentlemanly bearing — so unusual for an American,” he wrote in his diary. “Most anxious to learn, and fully realizes the greatness of the task before him. He has already begun to realize that the French are a broken reed.”