When Lt. Col. Jason McKenzie arrived at Fort Hunter Liggett as the new deputy garrison commander, he wanted to make sure an important anniversary wouldn’t be overlooked. “This only happens once and never again,” said McKenzie, “It’s very important that we remember the battle and Lt. Gen. Hunter Liggett’s contributions.”
The 100th anniversary of the last major offensive of World War I was on Sept. 26, 2018, and the installation’s namesake had an important role to play in that battle.
On Sept. 26, 2018, the historic Hacienda dining room and bar was filled with Soldiers and Civilians who came to hear Dr. Stephen Payne, a historian from the Defense Language Institute, talk about the Meuse-Argonne Offensive that began a century ago to the day.
It was that battle, and the offensive to remove the St. Mihiel Salient several weeks earlier, that brought then-Maj. Gen. Hunter Liggett into the forefront of shaping a modern Army.
By today’s standards, Liggett wouldn’t have even been in a combat command position. He was 60 years old and portly (read overweight), but General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front, saw something in Liggett. Perhaps it was Liggett’s own appraisal of his abilities that kept him in France.
The 1879 West Point graduate said, “…(T)here is such a thing not only as being too old to fight but too fat. That disqualification is the more serious if the fat is above the collar.”
He arrived as commanding general of the 41st Division in Sept. 1917, was appointed commander of the I Corps four months later, one of only seven major generals in the American Army. Weeks before the Armistice, took command from Pershing of the U.S. 1st Army.
Payne said in his talk that Pershing “had a 19th Century view of warfare, pretty much Civil War tactics,” that didn’t work well against machine guns and an artillery barrage. Liggett found the American troops in France were woefully under-trained. “He felt it essential to gather his army as a team in what is now known as combined arms,’ said Payne, “You don’t do it just with the infantry, you don’t do it with just the cavalry. He gathered everyone together, including the signal corps.”
His penchant for reading about military tactics and his understanding that Pershing’s “open warfare” resulted in too many casualties led to modernization of battle tactics that helped permanently reshape the American Army. Liggett wrote “Commanding an American Army” in 1925, and three years later wrote “Ten Years Ago in France.”
In attendance at the luncheon commemoration was Brig. Gen. W. Shane Buzza, commanding general of the 91st Training Division (Operations) headquartered at Fort Hunter Liggett. He and his command team had just returned from the Meuse-Argonne commemoration in France where his unit as the 91st Infantry Division had fought. There was a display on the division’s activities in World War I.
There was also an array of original documents and photographs of a cousin of a FHL Civilian employee who died during the war, including a certificate signed by Gen. Pershing.
To celebrate the 100th Commemoration of World War I, the FHL Facebook page has featured an average of one World War I post every day since the middle of August. The final commemorative event happens during Organizational Day Nov. 8 at the post theater. Dr. Brian Neumann, historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C. will give a presentation on the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and Lt. Gen. Hunter Liggett’s contributions to ending the Great War and modernizing the way the Army fights.
McKenzie was also interviewed by KCBX-FM’s Tom Wilmer regarding the World War I Centennial events at Fort Hunter Liggett, Oct. 25, 2018.
The interview: http://www.kcbx.org/post/journeys-discovery-fort-hunter-liggett-honors-namesake-and-ww-1-armistice#stream/0