After eleven months of war, the army and the National Guard had multiplied more than eight times to slightly fewer than 1.7 million, of which a quarter million were in France. Over there, Pershing had the foundation of the AEF in place, but as yet only a relative few American troops had seen frontline service, and they had not staged even a regimental assault. Ahead of him, Pershing had major confrontations with Allied political and military leaders over the issue of whether the AEF would fight as an independent force or distribute its troops as replacements in the British and French ranks. Pershing’s firm stand for independence won that battle, but before the AEF could have a significant impact, the War Department would have to send a lot more troops across the Atlantic and establish a logistical supply chain adequate to meet their demands. It was March’s challenge to achieve those goals.

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As chief of staff, March brought to the position qualities that his predecessors lacked — a solid sense of the proper place and power of his office and the dynamism and ruthlessness necessary to galvanize the army’s effort. As one of the General Staff officers commented, He took the War Department like a dog takes a cat by the neck and he shook it. Another recalled that there was an immediate change: Everyone worked longer hours and with far greater efficiency.

For more than a century, the bureau chiefs who controlled the army’s logistics had dominated the War Department. Their power continued despite the creation in 1903 of the General Staff, which was supposed to coordinate all army affairs. March, who had recently served in one of the most powerful bureaus, the Adjutant General’s Office, fully understood the bureau chiefs’ degree of power and knew that it was an obstacle to the efficiency of the War Department. Within weeks he neutralized their power by ousting some, restricting others, and bringing in younger AEF veterans to head the Quartermaster and Ordnance departments. He made no effort to salve the feelings of those he relieved. Soon after he became chief of staff he decided to organize a more comprehensive and powerful agency in the general staff to coordinate logistics: the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division. He put Goethals at its head. March called into his office the director of the division that was to be folded into this new organization and bluntly told him, I have cut your head off and ordered you out of the War Department. The acting quartermaster general who succeeded Goethals, Robert E. Wood — one of those AEF veterans — recalled that March supported him one hundred percent. He succinctly explained March’s method of command: He did not work out problems with people — he ordered. He was the War Department.

When the secretary of the General Staff who sifted through the pile of staff papers and correspondence to select those to pass on to March each morning asked him what his policy was as to letters requesting favors, March curtly responded, As chief of staff I have no friends. Such a policy might bruise egos, but his refusal to respond to requests for special treatment for friends of senators and congressmen naturally alienated the powerful on Capitol Hill.

Even President Wilson was not exempt. When Secretary Baker forwarded a note from Wilson specifying that, War Department policy permitting, he would like to see a person get a commission or particular assignment, March read the note and then went to see the secretary. After a lengthy discussion, March returned to his desk and Baker went to the White House with the note in hand. There were no more such letters from the White House. Baker did point out that he had to waste a lot of time going around with a cruse of oil and bandage to fix up the wounds which he had made. But March did not change his methods.

The German offensives in the spring of 1918 forced the British to make available the transports necessary to bring larger numbers of Americans to France. Meanwhile, the draft kept bringing in hundreds of thousands of men to the training camps, and Bernard M. Baruch, whom President Wilson had named to coordinate industry during the war, pushed industrial leaders to provide the myriad supplies necessary to sustain such a great force. On one occasion, Baruch questioned March about the capacity of the transports and the French railroads to carry the numbers of men March was pushing to the embarkation points. March bluntly responded, We’ll pack them in like sardines and What did God give them feet for? Baruch, who had participated in the war effort from its beginning, appreciated the changes that March had made and later complimented him, saying, He was the right man in the right place.

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