General Pershing clearly had ambition. Becoming a five-star general was just part of what he was after.
Using World War I as his chance, he wanted to turn the U.S. Army into a real fighting force — keep the best parts of it after the war and turn America into a country with a proud military tradition, just like Germany. That was his real goal.
Under normal circumstances, a country like the U.S. — protected by two giant oceans on both sides, with no strong land neighbors to pose a military threat — would naturally focus on building up its navy instead of wasting money on an army that barely fights a few battles a year.
But if the army doesn’t get any love, then generals from the army branch lose their influence and status. They’d get pushed around by the navy, just like in the British Empire.
That’s the curse of island nations. Countries like that are built for navies. If the army wants to grow big, it has to seize a historic opportunity.
And World War I? That was the U.S. Army’s moment.
But to seize that opportunity, the army had to prove it had what it takes.
An army that can’t win battles has no say in anything.
Three days later, after the Second Army was fully in position, the Americans finally launched another attack on the Germans.
Learning from their last failure, this time the Americans came with a much more focused plan.
They concentrated a ton of troops and firepower, shelled a few salients sticking out of the German lines, then sent tanks forward to cover the infantry advance again.
At the same time, they launched a bunch of observation balloons behind their own lines to get a bird’s-eye view of the German troop movements and frontline defenses. They also used long-range heavy artillery to hit a few hidden communication trenches, trying to block or even cut off German reinforcements from the second line heading to the front.
Under the cover of artillery and tanks, the Americans finally reached the German trenches after taking massive casualties. Both sides immediately got into brutal hand-to-hand combat.
One German soldier thrust his Mauser rifle forward at a tricky angle, driving the bayonet fixed to the muzzle into the chest of an American soldier trying to climb over the trench wall.
The guy screamed, instinctively grabbing the bayonet with his hands to stop it from going deeper. Blood sprayed out like a little fountain, splattering all over the German soldier’s face.
The German tried to pull the bayonet out, but the American was gripping it too tight. He couldn’t yank it free. Just as he was about to brace his foot against the trench wall and push back, another American soldier who’d charged into the trench shot him a few times with a pistol and dropped him.
But that American soldier didn’t even have time to swing his gun toward the next target before a German soldier charging out from a corner of the trench mowed him down with a submachine gun.
The fighting was intense. Soldiers on both sides used every weapon they could get their hands on, carrying out the most primitive kind of killing.
Men were falling every second on the battlefield. The bodies of the dead from both sides nearly filled up the German trenches.
Unlike a few days ago, with General Pershing personally overseeing the battle, the Americans’ fighting spirit had jumped several levels.
Even under enormous casualties, they refused to retreat.
Even though the Germans were inflicting heavy losses on the Americans, the U.S. kept throwing fresh troops into the fight with their numerical advantage, continuing to grind against the Germans.
Behind the trenches, the communication routes the Germans had hastily dug over the past three days had already been flattened by the Americans’ intense shelling.
This meant that every time the Germans sent reinforcements, they had to brave heavy enemy bombardment just to reach the front. Many battle-hardened veterans died on the way before they even saw the enemy.
Watching from the rear, Wilhelm’s heart ached. These were the Empire’s finest, and now they were falling so easily under enemy fire.
"Tell the artillery to open fire. Cover our men’s withdrawal!"
The heavy losses forced Wilhelm to change his plan.
The American positions they’d taken earlier were both a prize and a trap for the Germans.
Unlike the German’s own positions, the no-man’s land between the two sides was over a thousand meters wide. That made it really hard for German reinforcements to reach the front in time.
On top of that, the enemy was deliberately destroying the German communication trenches, making reinforcement even harder and more dangerous.
Meanwhile, the Americans had it easier. The positions the Germans had captured were closer to their own lines, so they could move troops up faster and more smoothly.
With all that working against them, the Germans were almost always fighting with inferior numbers against superior enemy forces.
According to Lanchester’s Square Law, if the outnumbered side can’t dominate in firepower, they’re going to come out worse in the exchange ratio.
If the enemy hadn’t made it into the German trenches, the Germans could have used long-range fire to suppress them.
But once the enemy got into their positions, the Germans lost their firepower advantage and got dragged into close-quarters fighting where numbers mattered.
This kind of trade was bad for the Germans. If they kept swapping like this, they’d burn through all their assets.
After the order was given, the German artillery roared to life, pounding the attacking Americans with heavy shelling.
This barrage landed very close to where both sides were fighting. While it killed and wounded a lot of Americans, it also unavoidably caused some friendly fire.
But at this point, they couldn’t worry about that. If they didn’t cut off the steady stream of American reinforcements, the Germans at the front wouldn’t be able to pull back safely.
Even so, by the time all the frontline troops had withdrawn, the Germans had still lost nearly a third of their men.
In just two days, the Germans had lost twenty to thirty thousand men. Wilhelm was hurting bad.
The Western Front meat grinder. No wonder it had that reputation.
And this was just the weakest of the enemies — the Americans. If they’d been facing peak French forces or the British army from after 1917, the German casualties would have been even worse.
"That old bastard Pershing has something to him. His tactics aren’t fancy — just brute force attrition. But he’s got deep pockets, so he can afford to play that game."
If Wilhelm had the peak Second Empire backing him up, he could’ve traded blows with Pershing all day. But with the Second Empire already gone, he couldn’t afford to fight a war of attrition anymore.
Still, even though the Germans took some losses, they’d inflicted heavy damage on the Americans too.
Looking at his system panel, where his merit points had shot up to over 80,000, Wilhelm figured they’d killed at least 30,000 enemies in those two days.
And after the fighting stopped, the merit points were still climbing fast, which meant a lot of badly wounded enemies too.
This battle probably caused sixty to seventy thousand total casualties for the enemy. A loss ratio of about 1:2. Not bad, all things considered.
And giving up the positions they’d taken earlier might not be such a bad thing for the Germans either.
Compared to the carefully built defensive line they’d been holding for months, those newly captured positions were honestly a pain to defend.
If the Americans got cocky from one little victory and thought the next fight would be just as easy, they’d pay for their arrogance soon enough.
But the real focus of this battle wasn’t on the battlefield. It was a few hundred kilometers away, at the negotiating table.