Robert Lee Bullard commanded the First Division, the III Corps, and the Second Army over the course of World War One. He lived until 1947.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I have been reading some of the first-hand accounts of the Great War. Last night I began Robert Lee Bullard’s American Soldiers Also Fought. As it title suggests the book is a response to those, especially those Europeans, who downplayed America’s contribution to the war effort. That is a subject I will tackle in future posts. What I am most interested in here is Bullard’s introductory statement. On page one he writes:
We did not go into the war, as has been contended, to support “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Nor did we go in to support democracy against autocracy: the President of the United States was in that war a greater autocrat than the Kaiser.
Plainly it was because our rights were being violated worse by Germany than by England. If Germany won we’d be “next” on their list.
I find the first paragraph striking on several levels. If I am reading it correctly–and I don’t know that I am–Bullard seems to be taking the Wilson Administration to task for its numerous misdeeds during the war. The zeal with which A. Mitchell Palmer scapegoated German-Americans comes to mind. The Creel Committee did some important work, but it too frequently succumbed to reactionary impulses. Bullard is going deeper though. As he saw it, Wilson’s failures also included the flawed outcome at Versailles and his advocacy for the League of Nations.
What is interesting is that in this small treatise Bullard is looking backward and forward at the same time. In the next line he is warning his readers about the German threat. The timing is important here. Bullard published Americans Soldiers Also Fought in 1936, just over a decade after he retired as commander of the Department of the East on Governors Island. After his retirement Bullard had become head of the National Security League, a preparedness organization begun by Leonard Wood and others just after the outbreak of the Great War. The group was still around decades later, taking on challenges wherever it saw them. By 1936 Hitler was entrenched in power and the Kaiser was still very much alive, living in exile in a manor in Holland. Wilhelm II lived another five years, long enough to see the Germans take Paris in 1940.
(image/The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Corps Commander Bullard” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1860 – 1920. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-b337-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)
The Strawfoot 
Another book I need to read!
This one is a short little book that tells the story crisply. WW1 makes for some sober reading. I’m hoping the First World War centennial does what the Civil War 15oth did for our understanding of that conflict.
Great posts and really look forward to continued Great War posts – I see my own WWI reading list beginning to grow…till now, all I had ever read was Guns of August (last year) and Castles of Steel (several years ago)…this year I’ve already read Backwash of War and am currently reading “The Unsubstantial Air,” which is just terrific. I’ll be keeping an eye on your blog for other reading recommendations.
Jim, thanks for the comment. At first I felt I was getting away from the Civil War, but the deeper one goes into it one sees that they are very much part of the same broader story. The American Army that fought in France was very much a product of the events of 1861-65.
Two good general interest books on America’s involvement in WW1 are John S.D. Eisenhower’s “Yanks” and Edward M. Coffman’s “The War to End All War.”
My focus is the 80th Division (part of the Third Corps) — and I cannot admire Bullard. When his accounts of the Meuse-Argonne offensive are compared with those of the men who fought it, he appears distant and uninformed. In accounts of the attack on the Bois des Ogons in early October, numerous sources who were in the front lines mention the lack of AEF air support and the presence of German aircraft. Bullard says that the American flyers were everywhere. Bullard doesn’t even know where his troops are from — he thinks the 80th Blue Ridge division were from the Carolinas – when they were from Western Pennsylvania and Virginia. He at least could have looked this one up after the war.
Thanks for the comment. I have heard other stories that portray Bullard in a less-than-complementary light. I can’t say I’m surprised.