And in any case, the Entente was overwhelming the German forces, having already conquered Lavau-sur-Loire, located on the direct path to St-Nazaire. Savenay was also being outflanked and encircled from the north and the south.

  Further north, the fortified town of Fay-de-Bretagne was also in danger of falling, its southwestern suburbs having already fallen to the combined assault of over ten French divisions.

  Copyrights Max Lamirande

  The German forces had also been pushed back from Herle, and the Entente was poised to advance there, while Nort-sur-Edre held, positioned behind a river and a series of fortified ridges. All in all, the entire German position was getting desperate, and the further south it bent, the more trouble it would be in when all hell broke loose and the front shattered.

  The American military buildup

  The new world comes to the aid of the old, April 1916

  By April 1916, General John Pershing’s military buildup plan, a concerted logistical, industrial, and recruiting effort by the United States from the moment the Americans entered the war, aimed to eventually mobilize 2 million soldiers by 1917, with another million by 1918.

  The initial plan had also been that the first real impact of the U.S. Army on European soil would be with 700,000 soldiers by the middle of April 1916. These soldiers were now spread from the Bay of Biscay to the quiet sectors near Verdun, supported by ports that had been transformed into engines of steel and noise. Under the impetus of American investments and manpower, Bordeaux had become a fortress of cranes and railway yards. La Rochelle, smaller and nearer to the frontlines, roared like a factory under the open sky. Between them lay depots, fuel tanks, hospitals, and endless barracks, all linked by rail lines that trembled night and day under trains of khaki and ammunition.

  It had begun almost a year earlier. When the first expeditionary regiments landed in the summer of 1915, France was already weary, its ranks hollowed by Verdun and the grave defeats in the North. Paris was occupied, as were a series of French ports along the coastline, including Brest, Cherbourg, and St-Nazaire.

  The Americans arrived in small groups at first, with officers, engineers, and medical detachments, then by brigades, and finally by divisions, with the arrival of the Big Red One in the fall of 1915. At Bordeaux, the quays were widened and new piers driven into the river to berth four transports at once. Beyond the city, American engineers built camps on the Garonne flats, stringing water pipes and electric lines through a sea of tents. By autumn, the first permanent warehouses had risen, their timbered walls painted with crude white letters: U.S. Army Depot No. 1.

  At La Rochelle, the transformation was even more radical. The old harbor was dredged to take deeper ships; breakwaters were rebuilt; a new rail spur connected the quays to the inland main line. By winter 1915-16, U.S. freighters and refitted liners arrived almost weekly, escorted by destroyers based in the Azores. They unloaded beneath arc-lights that burned all night, spilling crates of rifles, field kitchens, motor trucks, even whole locomotives lashed to the decks. The French townspeople stood on the seawall to watch the convoys arriving in an endless stream of gray hulls sliding through the mist, flags snapping in the wind, bugles calling from decks crowded with men in unfamiliar khaki.

  From these ports, the American tide rolled inland. Trains groaned under the weight of matériel: 155-millimeter guns on flatcars, horses in converted boxcars, shells stacked like cordwood. Engineers extended sidings into the countryside to feed vast supply dumps at Angoulême and Tours. The Services of Supply turned farm fields into cities of tents and corrugated sheds. Bakers produced thousands of loaves a day; refrigeration units kept beef from Chicago cold enough for the front. Along the roads, new motor convoys thundered east, each truck stenciled with a white star and a number. Villagers stopped their work to stare at the dust clouds rising behind the columns.

  By early spring, the organization had become smooth, almost mechanical. A convoy would dock at Bordeaux or La Rochelle; within twelve hours, its cargo was sorted, loaded onto railcars, and moving north. Infantry replacements disembarked under the roar of whistles and the smell of coal smoke, were marched to transit camps outside the city, and from there to the training grounds of the interior. The French called the lines of marching Americans “la rivière humaine,” or else in English, the human river.

  Camps spread across the Loire Valley, as Nantes, recently liberated, was transformed into the base of operations for further offensives north and west. Rows of identical huts stood on what had once been vineyards; the air was thick with dust and the scent of pine boards. Each camp was a self-contained town, complete with kitchens, field hospitals, drill grounds, and wireless stations. The men trained from dawn until dark under French instructors, learning the geometry of trench warfare, the angles of fire, the trajectory of a grenade, and the rhythm of the whistle before a charge. At night, they crowded the canteens, writing letters home under hanging bulbs while the sound of rain drummed on the tin roofs. Across the fields, the horizon flashed faintly with artillery far to the northeast.

  Behind them, the ports never slept. Bordeaux’s riverfront blazed under electric light, cranes swinging in slow arcs, cables squealing, winches rattling as they lifted gun carriages out of holds. The city’s warehouses bulged with flour, gasoline, and mail sacks. Trains left every hour; the whistle of the locomotives merged with the horns of the ships at anchor. La Rochelle mirrored the same motion on a smaller scale, with its streets jammed with lorries, its quays stacked with shell crates, its hotels filled with quartermasters and railway officers. The once-quiet squares smelled of oil and cordite.

  In March, as the thaw set in, the figures told their own story: twenty-five divisions were organizing and forming, with the 1st (Big Red One), 2nd (Indian Head), 3rd, and 4th (Ivy Division) already fighting at the front line, a total of 102,000 men. Furthermore, 2 million tons of cargo had been unloaded, and over 1,000 locomotives were operating under American control. The ports had become the lungs of an army. Each tide brought new drafts of men and new waves of machines; each outgoing train exhaled them toward the front. In addition to supplying their own troops, the “plentiful Yankees,” as the British liked to call them, had put a definitive end to any kind of shell or ammunition shortage within the Entente camp, with their prodigious industrial production, which was, unbelievingly, still ramping up.

  The French watched with astonishment. They had seen reinforcements before, with the Canadians, Australians, and Portuguese, but nothing like this. The Americans arrived with their own factories, hospitals, and even their own telegraph system. They built roads through the forests and erected wireless masts taller than church steeples. To the weary poilus, these newcomers seemed like creatures from another century, with no mud on their boots yet, no fear in their eyes, but a kind of vast, naïve confidence that lifted the spirits of every town they passed through.

  By the first week of April, trains were rumbling north from both Bordeaux and La Rochelle almost without pause. Columns of infantry followed the rails on foot, rifles slung, marching beneath trees just beginning to bud. On the open fields near Poitiers, artillery practiced barrages that rolled like thunder across the plain. Above them, new American aircraft, made of wood and linen, engines coughing, circled for reconnaissance, the silver of their wings flashing in the sun.

  In Bordeaux, the staff officers could measure progress solely by sound. From his office overlooking the quays, an American colonel could hear the layers of it: the hammering of shipfitters, the shout of stevedores, the chuff of locomotives, and beyond it all the faint rumble of the ocean. Every note meant motion. Every motion meant another thousand men moved closer to the front.

  By mid-April, seven hundred thousand uniforms bore the patch of the American Expeditionary Force, while more than double that were still planned to cross the Atlantic. They filled camps from the Bay of Biscay to the Champagne hills, or else they were fighting the Germans on the Savenay-Lavau-sur-Loire line. In the ports, the cranes never stopped swinging, and the rails never cooled. The first year of war for America had turned two sleepy Atlantic harbors into the arteries of a continent-sized machine. At night, when the lamps along the Garonne shimmered on the water, the whole waterfront glowed red and gold, a city remade in the image of war. Somewhere beyond the horizon, the guns waited, but here in the south of France, the army that would face them was already assembled, restless and ready, humming like the engines that had carried it across the sea.

  The entire affair did not bode well for the Central Powers, which were already operating at peak capacity and weary after a year and a half of war. Germany, in particular, would soon start to feel the brunt of these numerous, brave, and very well-equipped Yankees, who were about to bear down on them like wolves.

  If the Kaiser and his armies didn’t finish the war in the East soon, their western front would collapse under the sheer weight of the Entente’s soon-to-be quantitative supremacy.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE WAR IN THE WEST

  “This war devours men faster than victories can replace them. No commander can foresee where it will finally break.”

  General Alexei Brusilov, 1916

  Death Run

  The Naval Battle of St-Nazaire, April 21st, 1916

  (…) Zeppelin L47, above St-Nazaire (…)

  “Signal to the flagship,” said Captain Zuckmuller, the commander of the Zeppelin squadron hovering above the High Seas Fleet attempting to sortie out of St-Nazaire. “Yes, ready, Sir,” answered the signal officer. “Range to lead enemy ships 17,000 yards. The dreadnoughts can commence firing.” “Very well, Captain.”

  Following the man’s signal, two crewmen climbed out onto the narrow observation platform, the cold wind tearing at their coats. One carried a coil of signal flags, the other a gleaming pair of semaphore paddles, red and white against the dull sky. The signalman steadied himself against the rail and began to move, arms sweeping in sharp, deliberate arcs. Each motion was crisp, mechanical, like the choreography of men who had done this a hundred times before.

  Far below, the battleship Posen answered. A petty officer on the bridge raised his own flags, mirroring the gestures. Between them, the high airship and armored leviathan, the semaphore conversation flashed across the sky: Enemy battle fleet sighted east by northeast. Course 090. Distance, 17,000 yards.

  On the Zeppelin’s deck, the flags cracked in the wind like gunshots. The officer paused, waiting for acknowledgment, then nodded sharply. The answering signal came back: Message received. Engage when ready.

  The signalmen lowered their arms, breathing hard, faces raw from the cold. For a moment, they stood watching the sprawling array of ships below, a gray arrow cutting through the sea, smoke streaming from its funnels.

  In front were the modified trawlers, transport ships, and cargo vessels, armed with a hodgepodge array of artillery and cobbled-together naval guns, then followed Admiral Gädecke’s big guns, the dreadnought battleships Posen, Rheinland, Nassau, Prinzregent Luitpold, Scharnhorst, Kaiser, König Albert, along with pre-dreadnoughts Wittelsbach and Elsass. They were followed by the protected cruisers and the light cruisers, while the destroyers raced ahead as they were busy laying the thickest smoke screen possible to foul the Anglo-Americans’ gunnery aim.

  Then the Zeppelin banked gently, engines rising to a growl, and sped west to fly over the enemy fleet, her message delivered, while her shadow raced across the surface of the water like a large cloud.

  (…) Bridge of dreadnought battleship Posen (…)

  “Signal all battleships to fire from long range,” said Admiral Friedrich Gädecke, knowing that a hit was extremely unlikely at this distance. The idea was that it would at least keep the enemy busy while the smaller decoy and sacrificial modified gunships closed the range.

  The gunnery officer turned to his man beside the internal intercom, who signaled the turrets to fire. Soon thereafter, a low rumble shook the vessel, while big lances of flames and dark smoke shot out of the six forward-capable 28-cm gun turrets. A resounding boom was heard, and the shells were off to the west where Jellicoe and his ships awaited.

  Admiral Gädecke looked to his left and right and saw that Rheinland, Nassau, and Prinzregent Luitpold had also fired their first barrages.

  The battle had started.

  (…) Bridge of dreadnought battleship Iron Duke (…)

  The Grand Fleet was about to fight once more. Designed as the ultimate instrument of power for the British Empire, the fleet was the world's most powerful naval force in 1916. While it was scattered and split in different parts to chase the Germans, Italians, and Austro-Hungarians sailing across half the world, the elements left in and around British Home Waters, and those blockading the German-occupied ports, remained powerful enough to contain the Kaiserliche Marine's High Seas Fleet.

  Nothing embodied that power more than the mighty battleship Iron Duke, as it carried the white ensign high, her signal flags snapping in the wind as the order came down the voice pipes: 'Action stations.'

  Inside her armored citadel, bells rang and boots hammered against the steel decks. The crew of nine hundred men moved with machine precision, ensuring all doors were sealed and turret crews were braced for fire. Deep in the belly of the ship, stokers stripped to the waist, shoveled coal into roaring furnaces, the temperature rising to unbearable heat as the turbines surged. The vibrations ran through the hull like the pulse of a living creature.

  Above decks, the 13.5-inch Mark V guns loomed in their massive turrets (A and B forward, X and Y aft), with their barrels oiled and black as obsidian. Each gun could hurl a 1,250-pound shell nearly 23,000 yards, farther and with greater accuracy than any weapon afloat except the new 15-inch guns being forged for the Queen Elizabeth class, still unfinished in English shipyards. Iron Duke, with her improved armor belt, reinforced bulkheads, and centralized fire-control system, was the pride of the fleet, the Royal Navy’s most advanced dreadnought in service.

  As she swung into battle formation, her armored decks glinted under the thin northern sun. The gunnery officer, Commander Langford, peered through the director sight on the foretop, a rangefinder’s data clicking in his earphones. “Enemy bearing green one-five. Range, 17,500 yards.” His voice was steady. Down in the plotting room, the new Dreyer fire-control table whirred, gears and rollers translating data into firing solutions. “Open fire!”

  Iron Duke shuddered. Her forward turrets erupted as one, a bloom of orange flame and black smoke erupting from their muzzles. The air split with a deep, rolling concussion that tore at the ears and rattled every rivet in her hull. A heartbeat later, the deck pitched slightly under the recoil. Through binoculars, the officers watched the shells arc into the haze, then the dull orange bursts where they struck home against a distant silhouette.

  The ship’s rhythm became mechanical: load, aim, fire. Breech blocks slammed shut; shells and cordite charges rose on hydraulic hoists from the magazines below. The turrets trained and elevated with slow, majestic precision. Each salvo boomed like thunder across the sea, echoed by the answering flashes of the enemy far away on the horizon.

  To port and starboard, the rest of the Grand Fleet joined in, a wall of muzzle flashes stretching for miles. Over the din came the sound of crashing spray and the smell of cordite. On the bridge, Admiral Jellicoe stood motionless, cap brim shading his eyes. Under his command, Iron Duke led the line as the heart and soul of Britain’s power, the last word in dreadnought design, and, for this brief moment in history, the most modern weapon ever built by man.

  “What are those ships racing ahead toward us while the enemy dreadnoughts are peeling away northward?” asked the commanding admiral, the question directed to no one in particular. The lookout officer, however, knew that the question was for him to answer. “Sir, awaiting confirmation,” answered the man, with his ear to the intercom. The main forward guns fired again, and the ship shuddered once more, prolonging the silence while Jellicoe waited for his answer.

  “Sir,” the officer finally spoke. “The ships are about destroyer size or a little more. The lookout says they are nothing more than gunships or else what appears to be modified trawlers and transport ships with guns on them.” Jellicoe didn’t answer, instead walking to the edge of the viewport, clasping his hands behind his back. For a moment, his gaze went up above the German fleet to the approaching Zeppelins.

  For a moment, he saw that the enemy admiral would have an advantage in his vision of the battle because of the large airships, which could see from much further away than his men on the spotting tops high on the foremast and mainmast.

  “Very well. Signal Admiral Simms to detach all his destroyers, cruiser Seattle forward, so they can deal with these annoying ships. Order our own destroyers and cruisers to complement them. For good measure, signal Queen, Formidable and Irresistible, to race ahead and get in front to protect us from those approaching ships while we close the range on the big guns behind.”

  (…)

  With Jellicoe’s orders given out and the fleets in motion, the first part of the battle then started to unfold. Flags snapped up the halyards, semaphore blades flashed, and wireless crackled the command in half a dozen tongues. The American destroyers (fifteen of them) answered first, engines thudding as twenty-seven funnels churned to life. Protected cruiser Seattle’s grey bulk swung on her anchor and steamed out, a compact shadow accelerating toward the cluttered enemy. British destroyers (ten of them) burst from the screening line like wasps, foaming their wakes into twin arcs. Cruisers on both flanks turned inward to form a crescent, their quick-firing guns already trained.

  Ahead of them, the pre-dreadnoughts obeyed with old-fashioned gusto. Queen and Irresistible lurched forward, their throaty engines coughing steam, creaking into a low, brave run. They were older beasts, shorter, broader, armored where it mattered, and today they were to be the anvil against which the German screening fleet would be smashed. Sailors in the casemates muttered prayers; stokers hurled coal as if the furnaces fed the very will of the ship.