September, 1916
Paris, France
It was a Monday, when my life took a significant turn. I had completed my morning exercise at the embassy and had arrived in my office when I was summoned to Mr. Stark's office for what was described as an urgent meeting.
This in itself was not unusual, as I spent almost half my time in the ambassador's company, discussing events, planning strategies or interpreting for him.
But this time, I found him in the company of a high-ranking British general and the second-in-command at the French Foreign Ministry. Introductions were made and I was offered a seat in the semicircle in front of Mr. Stark's desk.
"Robert, you have been called here for a new assignment," he began. "We have talked much of America's coming role in this war, and I have been ordered to begin preliminary preparations. It is not a matter of whether the United States will enter the war, but when and how. Of course, nothing will happen until after the election, and probably not until after the new year. But you and I both know it is inevitable. The stakes are too damn high for us to not act. If Germany wins, it will be a catastrophe for Western civilization. Democracy will be set back at least a generation. As such, it is crucial that we have some detailed understanding of what our troops are going to confront once they get here."
"And how does my role fit in this?" I said, as a queasy feeling grew in my stomach.
"Mr. Guidry, you have been close to the front, but you have not actually seen what it is like on the front lines," the British officer said. "We are proposing to take you directly to where the fighting is, for you to use your special talents for observation and analysis so that you may assess what you Yanks are going to need when the time comes."
"Has the Secretary of State signed off on this?" I asked, not quite believing that a high-ranking functionary in the Wilson Administration would have proposed such a dangerous breach of American neutrality.
"He has, and so has the President," William Stark said, pointedly. "They specifically proposed that you be the one to undertake this mission. They are assured of your thoroughness and discretion."
"Will I be in danger in this mission?" I said, now beginning to warm to the idea. "And if so, will I be able to defend myself?"
"Monsieur, you will be protected as much as it is possible, but, yes, there could be danger," the French official spoke for the first time. "You will, of course, be allowed to use any means necessary to protect yourself, should it come to that. But I do not believe you will be tested in that manner."
As I looked in the faces of the French official and the British general, I could see just a hint of desperation on their faces. They had tried everything to break the stalemate on the Western Front, and nothing had worked. So now they were just waiting for the Americans to come to the rescue.
The only consolation for them was that the war wasn't going any better for the Germans, either.
In early spring, Germany had launched a ferocious assault on the French fortress at Verdun, knowing that France would throw everything it had into the defense of what was a city of great emotional significance to the French people.
The idea, which could be gleaned from whispered conversations among the neutral diplomats and intercepted wireless messages that found their way into our hands, was that the Germans intended to bleed France dry at Verdun, and if they could actually take the fortresses and the city of Verdun itself, that it might well break the French will.
But by this point, after months of bloody, ineffectual fighting and autumn approaching, I could see that strategy backfiring on Germany, as their casualties were every bit as high as those of the French.
As for the British, they had their own problems. They had spent much of 1915 engaged in an utterly futile mess in the area near Constantinople, where they had made hoped to force the Ottoman Turks to capitulate. Instead, it had been the British who had been embarrassed, with a shocking number of casualties.
The British had also been blind-sided by a sudden uprising in Ireland, which had been put down with considerably more force and loss of life than most impartial observers deemed necessary.
But all of that had paled in comparison to the debacle they had endured in July at the Somme, where 60,000 British soldiers had been killed in the first day of what was supposed to be a decisive offensive. They were at that moment still trying to achieve a breakthrough, but for the most part, it had simply petered out with only a few hundred yards -- maybe -- changing hands.
This war had unfolded much like I had warned Marcel two years earlier, only it had become much more of a bloody nightmare than even I could have envisioned.
And now, I was apparently going to be thrust into the middle of it, whether I was ready or not.
Madeleine was still not fully recovered from childbirth when I told her the news of my new assignment. I impressed upon her that she must tell absolutely no one of what I was going to be engaged in, not even her father -- especially not her father.
As much as I loved Marcel, I knew his nature was to share news with everyone, and I had reason to believe that his bistro harbored a few men from the diplomatic corps who were working as agents for the Germans.
Indeed, a young Brazilian functionary who often drank at Marcel's bar had been expelled from the country a few months earlier, allegedly for espionage. In my opinion, he'd been lucky the French hadn't stood him up in front of a firing squad, and the only reason he wasn't was that he was a diplomat from a neutral nation.
I knew how tricky my position was to those in my own embassy, and by extension in America itself. Americans were deeply divided over the war, but at that moment the majority still favored staying out of it.
In fact, Mr. Wilson was in a hotly-contested re-election campaign against the Republican, Charles Evans Hughes, and both men were running on neutrality platforms.
Moreover, there were plenty of neutralists in the American embassy in Paris, who would highly disapprove of an American attaché becoming involved in a mission that was clearly, overwhelmingly partisan to the Allies.
And I knew, too, that if I were captured or killed that my government would make every effort to distance itself from my activities. Therefore, I had to be careful, knowing I was on my own.
Needless to say, Madeleine was very upset over the thought of my going anywhere near the front, but she also understood that I had a duty to serve my country in any way necessary. This was my job, and I couldn't say no.
The worst part was that Madeleine was still restricted from sexual relations after childbirth, so the extent of our last night together before I left was some cuddling and kissing. Not bad in itself, but not what I would have wanted before heading off to experience the war.
On October 1, I met my contact with the British Army, who was assigned to escort me to the front. By mid-afternoon, I was in the rear reaches of the trench system, and it was then I began the process that cost me a part of my soul.
The trenches were an elaborate system of defenses in depth, an incredible feat of engineering, really. But the whole process, the whole lifestyle built around the trenches was completely dehumanizing.
If you put men in situations where they are forced to live like animals, one shouldn't be surprised when they act like animals. And that was very close to how men lived in the trenches during that dreadful time, like animals.
By this time, efforts were made to rotate units from the front to the rear for rest, recuperation and refitting. But when a soldier was on the front line, there was little opportunity to bathe or practice anything like proper hygiene.
Worse then anything, however, were the smells of the trenches, almost all of them foul. There was the acrid stench of explosives, the rich odor from the latrines, the putrid smell of rotting flesh and, of course, the earthy smell of mud, which seemed to absorb all of these smells into one pungent stew.
Mud, in fact, was the one constant in the trenches. It was everywhere, and when you were on the front lines, you could forget about dry feet, especially when it rained. There was always a detail repairing and refurbishing the trenches in one spot or another, and it was because of the mud.
I took with me stacks of notebooks and recorded everything I saw and did. I did everything with the units I was with except go over the top, which happened once or twice while I was there, to little effect.
The reaction of the French and British troops could be boiled down to two basic types. There was resentment at this Yank in their midst, "playing at war," as one Limey soldier put it. Or there was a sort of mad joy as they assumed that my presence meant that America was entering the war on the side of the Allies.
I always hated to disappoint them by telling them that, no, we weren't yet in the war. As for the others, they soon came around when I proved willing to pitch in and help out whenever needed.
However, America's entry into the war became a stronger possibility when we got the news that President Wilson had been re-elected, though not by much.
I knew from the brief conversation we had had on the one occasion when I had met the president back in 1914, that he believed strongly in Western-style democracy, which was best represented by the Allies.
Whatever other shortcomings the man possessed, he was sincere about that and never wavered in his belief that America would and should be the defender of democracy, should it come to that.
At any rate, I spent two months in the theater, and it was a life-changing time. If I had been a skeptic about life and politics before, my time at the front made my a full-blown cynic.
I just could not fathom the mindset of the leaders who had gotten the world to the point where millions of men were living and acting like mindless animals. And, of course, I learned in the trenches that life was awfully cheap.
The one thing that came through loud and clear, and which was reflected in the report I subsequently delivered, was that if America came into the war, it must play by its own rules, and try not to get sucked into the trenches.
The British and French had this notion that America would merely provide fresh fodder for the war machine in the West. I stressed over and over in my report that we must not allow this to happen.
