Professor Tim Luckhurst examines how journalists covered the 1918 Meuse-Argonne offensive - the only extended campaign American soldiers fought as an independent force during the first world war.
Launched in late September 1918 as part of the final allied offensive on the western front, the 1918 Meuse-Argonne offensive was the largest and most deadly campaign the US army had ever fought.
Research suggests the American soldiers were inadequately trained and ineffective. Hastily mobilised and poorly led, they suffered a disproportionately heavy toll of dead and wounded. Yet the American correspondents who reported on the campaign praised the performance of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) as bold and heroic.
They did not deny that the doughboys, as American infantrymen were nicknamed, were suffering casualties. But their deaths were invariably courageous, their suffering was worthwhile, and the German casualties were always worse.
The US military press team assembled to brief correspondents were delighted. Instead of holding American commanders to account, the journalists dutifully conveyed a partial account of events. They depicted suffering, squalor and waste as glorious.
The most telling example of such reporting emerged when a force of 700 soldiers from the AEF’s 77th Division was surrounded in the Forest of Argonne in north-eastern France by a larger German force. It was a disaster, but journalists immediately gave the battle a glamorous label: “the story of the Lost Battalion”.
The name was invented by correspondents and military press officers at their field headquarters in the town of Bar-le-Duc. They ensured that the fate of the “Lost Battalion” was reported as a compelling tale of dauntless heroism. Correspondents described thirsty, hungry and exhausted doughboys fighting with unflinching commitment.
Edwin L. James, a correspondent for the New York Times who was accompanying the AEF, did not explore how the Germans had achieved their ambush. James noted only that they had “found an opening” and “filtered in fully a thousand men behind our battalion”.
For days the encircled soldiers were hammered by artillery and machine guns. Those still alive were rescued by a combined effort of AEF and French troops. James described the survivors as “an exhausted but still determined band”, and added that their fight was “one of the classics of the war”.
He reported that “more than three-fourths of them were safe”. But evidence suggests that more than half of those trapped were killed.
The military press officers’ report to the war department in Washington was full of praise. They noted that the correspondents “did a good American piece of work”, and that their reporting “justified all the confidence” which had been placed in them.
AEF press officers worked hard and effectively to persuade newspapermen to give national pride and military morale prominence, and disguise truth. During the first days of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, motorcycle couriers and army signallers brought a stream of reports to Bar-le-Duc.
They made sure it was easier for the correspondents to work from headquarters than by travelling to the frontline. Their copy inevitably lacked the eyewitness testimony and engaging quotes that might have provided a more accurate account. A way of working had been established between the AEF and correspondents.
Weeks after the battle at Argonne, when reporting on the 42nd Division’s failure to take Hill 288 in October 1918, James acknowledged that “our [the AEF’s] losses were considerable”. However, he wrote that “the general commanding the 42nd tells me that it was the toughest and pluckiest bit of fighting that any part of the division had done”.
He noted that only 800 of the 3,000 men involved had emerged from the fighting fit for action. Nevertheless, morale remained undimmed and “the new men borrow the spirit of the old ones … the regiments will fight at the drop of the hat if anyone suggests it”.
Edwin L. James was highly regarded. He would later serve as managing editor of the New York Times and help to build its reputation as a liberal newspaper with a reputation for excellent reporting. He would also protest about secrecy and censorship at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where peace terms were established for the defeated Central Powers.
However, in common with fellow American, British and French correspondents on the western front, he succumbed to intense pressure to self-censor.
During the first world war, correspondents did not depict the maimed and traumatised wreckage of humanity that staggered from each engagement. They depicted soldiers as fearless and idealistic. British correspondent Philip Gibbs of the Daily Chronicle wrote after the war: "We identified ourselves absolutely with the armies in the field. We wiped out of our minds all thought of personal scoops and all temptation to write one word which would make the task of officers and men more difficult or dangerous. There was no need of censorship of our dispatches. We were our own censors."
American correspondents reporting the AEF’s agonising experience during the Meuse-Argonne offensive learned fast an approach their British and French colleagues had adopted early in the war.
They did not hold governments or senior military officers to account. They did not challenge their government’s blithe disregard for soldiers’ lives. And they did not write an accurate first draft of history.
War correspondents failed to serve the ethical purposes of liberal journalism to which they and their editors professed allegiance. Their conduct promoted a belief among surviving military veterans that newspapers were vulnerable to manipulation.
It was a dangerous message. Extremist leaders, including Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, would later exploit the value of the press as a weapon of state propaganda.
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