Quote Originally Posted by Old Eagle View Post
I highly recommend a CRITICAL reading of Pershing's memoirs from "The Great War".

Please brush off your old college notes about the advantages and disadvantages of first person accounts of events.

In it Pershing explains his version of the how and why he organized, trained, and employed the AEF the way he did. His line and box chart expansion of the Army was pretty innovative. The AEF had its own staff course in theater.

Another really fascinating section is on the re-establishment of large organizations using conventional tactics when the Army was at the time a small wars endeavor scattered across the frontier. So, as Gian likes to remind us, there are problems inherent in having a force that is overwhelmingly conducting non-conventional missions, then having a big balloon go up.
Let's also remember that the American military model at this time called for a massive call-up of state volunteer units (which had happened during the Spanish-American War...with the attendant problems). The Army had always trained (when it trained at all) for large-scale conflicts. The biggest training flaw had always been the small size of the Army, which dictated the two-company posts.

In response to Bob's post...the industrial base had cranked up to a degree to deal with munitions orders and small arms, but things like mass-producing aircraft engines (Liberty engine, anyone?) were well behind that in terms of scale.