Among the supreme commanders, General John J. Pershing began as the outsider. His awareness of this status shaped every aspect of his command, every decision he made. In a European war, he was a non-European. Among European armies, his army was an inexperienced newcomer; never before had it engaged in combat among the major continental powers. It was of uncertain quality in his and his lieutenants' minds as well as in the judgments of its enemies and the Allies with which the United States of America was an Associated Power.

Pershing looked the model of the soldier: of medium height, but seeming taller because he was ramrod-straight; blue eyes sharply penetrating; lips thin; jaw set firmly; his uniform somehow appearing freshly pressed and immaculate even when he returned from inspecting troops in the mud. With his formidable appearance he sought to conceal, however, his profound doubts about the performance of his army against the mightiest army in the world and probably his doubts about himself as military commander.

He would not speak openly concerning such misgivings except to a few American intimates, certainly not to the French and British soldiers and statesmen with whom he battled to assure the autonomy of the American army. But the training program he established for his American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) before he was willing to commit them to battle spoke eloquently about his misgivings. The First Division, AEF, had as its nucleus the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-sixth, and Twentyeighth Infantry Regiments and the Sixth Field Artillery Regiment that had served under Major General Pershing in the Mexican border campaign of 1916-17. Although much stripped of veteran instructors and much diluted by recruits when its first elements landed at Saint-Nazaire on June 28, 1917, the division retained a core of old regulars. Still, Pershing insisted on rigorous retraining in France under the supervision of experienced French soldiers during the summer and into the autumn before it began to enter the trenches on October 24. Not only did it then enter into a mere quiet sector of the front, around Sommerviller in Lorraine, but its battalions rotated in and out with their companies attached to tutelary French companies and each regiment attached to a French division, each battalion serving ten days on the line.