William G. Haan to Enoch H. Crowder
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Major General EH Crowder,
War Department,
Washington, DC
My Dear Crowder:
Since my letter to you on , in which I gave you an outline of how things looked to me from this angle, the Germans have made a second attempt as you know, of course. On I find in my note book the following remark: "The German drive has again come to a stop; the second attempt was much less than the first and I am thinking that the resources are not as plentiful as they might be with the Germans." They have now been quiet for over a month but they seem to be gathering force for another drive. I believe the Allies are better prepared now to meet it than they were when the first start was made and I also believe their spirit is better. I am, as you know, now attached to a French Corps, and connected up with two divisions which were in the midst of the Western German drive. These French soldiers feel absolutely confident that the Germans are not going to succeed in their coming drive which has been considerably advertised.
You remember I spoke in my letter of three phases of battle that the Germans evidently had in mind. The first one was to separate the armies of the Allies, while the battle is now more than two months old and is still in its first phase. The second socalled drive was apparently merely an attempt to widen the breach and give them a better front on which to attack. I don't think they have gained much in this second drive, although the taking of Kemmel Hill was quite a feather in their hats; they paid very heavily for it.
From rumors I hear floating about, I take it that our troops are coming over quite rapidly now and the Germans know that; I don't think they are feeling very comfortable about it, and everything seems to indicate that they will try further conclusions before long.
My belief is that they will not succeed in ever accomplishing the first phase in the battle, and I believe the time is not so very far distant when the Allies will under a single leader be able to take the offensive. The American divisions are getting into condition now where they are about ready to take their places in line with other divisions as divisions, but not yet as ARmy Corps or Armies nor should they in my opinion be put in as Army Corps any time this year. We have no Army Corps staffs and indeed we have practically no division staffs and without staffs in this warfare an Army is helpless. Since I have been working in this Division with the French in the sector, I have only begun to appreciate the importance of trained staffs. I have now W. D. Connor as Chief of Staff. I think he is one of the best men we have over here but even so he is not yet ready to handle the staff end of a division in action but he will be in the near future, and I hope that I will be able to keep him until after at least one good scrap with my division. Before I got him I was my own Chief of Staff I had no one in the Division who had any experience at all in staff work before joining the Division, but they are all learning now and I think I will have a fairly good staff before long.
My Division moved a distance of a hundred miles in record time without a hitch and without delaying one of the 28 trains a single minute. I thought that was pretty good for the first move with new equipment and new horses bought in France and generally very poor.
I have four of my battalions in the front line and the French are good enough to say they are well pleased with their work. The other troops are in the support and reserve lines and are getting a great deal of valuable training with the aid of more than 100 French officers to help in the final instruction, and they sure are getting some valuable training. The men are happy to at last get out of the hated training areas; they have been at it every day since last September and are blooming tired of it, but now there is new life in the Division. I had a man killed yesterday and another one today by machine gun fire and the other one by artillery; another one was slightly wounded today. Those are my first casualties in battle and I take it we will soon get some more. As I am dictating, some shells are exploding and some of ours are also exploding on the other side. I don't think the Boche is feeling any too easy about our moving in here. I think the French have at least twice as many troops on this part of the line now as they now have, that is including ours, and I feel certain that we could go through the line for a considerable distance if we got the order to do so. I would like to go to the banks of the Rhine anyhow that would be a good place to stop for awhile.
My experience in this final training under French supervision convinces me that our own system of training lacks much. It is good for discipline but it is very deficient in learning the real trade of fighting. Discipline, of course, is now as always the principle thing. AFter a force is disciplined it soon learns how to do things. I see that every day. My men learn now more in a day than they could have been taught in a week last fall, and, moreover, they are doing it cheerfully. I don't think there are any slackers or cowards in the whole Division, with the possible exception of one whom I have now under test. If he shows much more weakness I'll send him over the top at the first opportunity, which I don't think will be in the very distant future.
Food seems to be still quite plentiful in France, and from what I can learn at close range they are by no means starving to death in Germany, but they are rather lean I think in Austria. Russia's collapse has not helped them as much as they advertised about however, but then it has helped them a good deal in raising their spirits, but I think with the British aeroplanes bombing cities on the Rhine they are not feeling quite so good. The British air service is quite remarkable, and if we can only get ours into action in the near future it will be a marvelous help. The Germans are afraid of it now.
On this part of the line there are not enough machines on either side to keep the others from flying over the lines almost at will. There is plenty of shooting by antiaircraft guns and they appear to get close to them but they don't seem to get any down and the machines fly around and the whole thing looks like a big circus a hippodrome rather than war. We have some big railroad American artillery here. They liven things up about three or four times a week by throwing some heavy shells on German batteries. They demolished one completely the other day. The officer in command of it is one of my good Coast artillerymen from Boston, and he is a good one too. The French say he is doing fine work. Our Coast Artillery has been at it in full force since early in February, and they are having the times of their lives.
In war time it is dangerous to make predictions, but the spirit of the troops here gives me confidence that we are going to get the Germans in the end, and I wish you would tell your friends in Washington, who are pessimistic, to change their views and become a little more optimistic and enthusiastic; that will help a little. Our Naval officers say they feel certain that the submarines are not going to be a serious menace after the , and I note that the British Prime Minister thinks the same way. He is a good sport and a scrapper and so are all the British and the French, and the Americans, and we are going to get them in the end. Write me when you have time and please consider these letters just personal remarks.
(signed) Hahn
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