Red Cross Hospital at Neuilly, formerly the American Ambulance HospitalRed Cross Hospital at Neuilly, formerly the American Ambulance Hospital
The Red Cross had three hospitals of its own in Paris. The first of these was at Neuilly, the hospital which had been the American Ambulance Hospital from the beginning of the war, given over on the third anniversary of its inauguration. Here French and American soldiers, American civilians who worked with thearmy, and Red Cross officers and men were cared for. The second had been Doctor Blake's Hospital, and when it became a Red Cross hospital, it was made to include the gigantic laboratory where investigations were made, and where the American Red Cross had the honor to ferret out the cause of trench-fever. This fever had been one of the baffling tragedies of the war, because in the press of caring for their wounded, other hospitals had been unable to give it sufficient research.
The third was the Reid Hospital, equipped and supplied by Mrs. Whitelaw Reid.
In the long period when all this hospital organization was at the command of civilian France, inestimably fine work was done. It was a sort of poetic tuition fee for the instruction in war surgery which was meanwhile going on from veteran French surgeons to the American newcomers. At the end of the first year, the Medical Corps was itself ready for any stress, and it had mightily relieved the stress it had already found.
IF the army as a whole was a story of old skill in new uses, certainly the most extraordinary single upheaval was that of the Y. M. C. A. Though it had grown into many paths of civil life, in peace-times, that could not have been foreshadowed by its founders, probably the wildest speculation of its future never included the purveying of vaudeville and cigarettes to soldiers in France.
Yet just that was what the Y. M. C. A. was doing, within less than a year from the American Army's arrival in France, and its only lamentation was that it had nowhere near enough cigarettes and vaudeville to purvey.
It accepted the offer of the United States Government to watch over the morale of the soldiers abroad, partly because it was so excellently organized that it could handle a task of such vast scope, and partly because both French and British Armies had got such fineresults from similar organizations that the American Y. M. C. A. felt itself to be historically elected.
The Y. M. C. A. had cut its wisdom-teeth long before it became a part of the army. Its directors had accepted the fact that a young man is apt to be more interested in his biceps than in his soul, and that if he can have athletics aplenty, and entertainment that really entertains, he'd as lief be out of mischief as in it.
But even this was not quite broad enough for the needs of the army away from home. And one of the first things the Y. M. C. A. did in France, and the stoutest pillar of its great success, was to abandon the slightest aversion to bad language, or to the irreligion that brims out of a cold, wet, and tired soldier in defiant spurts, and to cultivate, in their stead, a sympathetic feeling for the want of smokes and a good show.
The secretaries sent abroad to build the first huts and watch over the first soldiers were men selected for their skill in getting results against considerable obstacles. Those who followed, as the organization grew, were specialists of every sort. There were nationally famoussportsmen, to keep the baseball games up to scratch, and to see that gymnastics out-of-doors were helped out by the rules. There were men who could handle crowds, keep an evening's entertainment going, play good ragtime, make good coffee, and produce cigarettes and matches out of thin air.
And, most important of all, they were men who could eradicate the doughboy's suspicion that the Y. M. C. A. was a doleful, overly prayerful, and effeminate institution.
The Y. M. C. A. was dealing with the doughboy when he was on his own time. If he didn't want to go to the "Y" hut, nobody could make him. Certain things that were bad for him were barred to him by army regulation. But there was a margin left over. If the doughboy was doing nothing else, he might be sitting alone somewhere, feeling of his feelings, and finding them very sad. The army did not cover this, but the Y. M. C. A. took the ground that being melancholy was about as bad as being drunk.
But, naturally, the Red Triangle man had to use his tact. If he didn't have any, he was sent home. His job was to persuade the doughboy,not to instruct him. And before long, the rule of the Y. M. C. A. was flatly put: "Never mind your own theories—do what the soldiers want."
That is why the "Y" huts—the combination shop, theatre, chapel, and reading-room, coffee-stall and soda fountain, baseball-locker and cigarette store, post-office and library which are run by the Y. M. C. A. from coast to battle-line—are packed by soldiers every hour of the day and evening.
The "Y" huts began with the army. Before the second day of the First Division's landing, there was a circus banner across the foot of the main street stating: "This is the way to the Y. M. C. A. Get your money changed, and write home." By following the pointing red finger painted on the banner, one found a wooden shack, with a few chairs, a lot of writing-paper and French money, a secretary and a heap of good-will.
As the army moved battleward, these huts appeared just ahead of the soldiers, with increased stores at each new place. American cigarettes were on the counters. A few books arrived.
The Y. M. C. A. proved its persuasiveness by its huts. A member of the quartermasters' corps said, one day, in a fit of exasperation over a waiting job: "How do these 'Y' fellows do it—I can't turn without falling over a shack, built for them by the soldiers in their off time. Do I get any work out of these soldiers when they're off? I do not. They're too busy building 'Y' huts."
The first entertainment in the "Y" huts was when the company bands moved into them because the weather was too bad to play out-of-doors. The concerts were a great success. By and by, men who knew something interesting were asked to make short lectures to the soldiers. It was an easy step to asking some clever professional entertainer to come down and give a one-man show. Then Elsie Janis, who was in Europe, made a flying tour of the "Y" huts, and a little while after, E. H. Sothern and Winthrop Ames went over to see how much organized entertainment could be sent from America.
The result of their visit was The Over-There Theatre League, to which virtually every actor and actress in America volunteered to belong.By the end of the first year, about 300 entertainers were either in France or on their way there or back.
Three months was the average time the performers were asked to give, and they circled so steadily that there were always about 200 of them at work on the "Y" circuit.
The work of the Y. M. C. A. did not stop with affording entertainment to the soldiers in the camps. They rented a big hotel in Paris and another in London, and they established many canteens in these two cities, so that their patrols—secretaries whose job was to rescue stray, lonely soldiers in the streets—would always have a near and comfortable place to offer to the wanderers.
Then they preceded the army to Aix-les-Bains and Chambery, the two resorts in the Savoy Alps where American soldiers were sent for their eight-day leaves, and arranged for cheap hotel accommodations, guides, theatres, etc., and they took over the Casino entirely for the soldiers.
Their field canteens were just back of the fighting-line, and late at night it was the dutyof the secretaries to store their pockets with cigarettes and chocolate and with letters from home, and shoulder the big tins of hot coffee made in the canteens and go into the front-line trenches to serve the men there. In fact, the "Y" men did everything with the army except go over the top.
The largest part of work of this type fell to the Y. M. C. A. because they had the most flexible organization ready at the beginning of American participation. But they had substantial help, which as time went on grew more and more in volume, from several other associations. The Knights of Columbus and the Salvation Army both did magnificent service, in canteens and trenches. And of course the Red Cross took over the sick soldier and entertained and supplied him, as a part of their co-army work.
There was one branch of the Red Cross which perhaps did more than any other one thing to keep up the hearts and spirits of the soldiers—it was called the Department of Home Communications, and it was directed by Henry Allen, a Wichita, Kansas, newspaper man.
Mr. Allen believed that a soldier's letters did more for him than any other one thing, and that, failing letters, he must at least have reliable news of his home folks from time to time. Further, that every soldier was easier in his mind if he knew that his home folks would have news of him, fully and authentically, no matter what happened to him.
So Mr. Allen posted his representatives in every hospital, in every trench sector, and through them kept track of every soldier. If a man was taken prisoner Mr. Allen knew it. If he was wounded Mr. Allen knew just where and how. The man's family was told of it immediately. Presently, where this was possible, Mr. Allen's representative was writing letters from the wounded men to their relatives, and was receiving all Mr. Allen's news of these relatives for the men in the hospital.
In addition to things of this kind, done by Red Triangle men, Red Cross men, and the Salvation Army and the Knights of Columbus, all these organizations worked together to effect distributions of comfort kits and sweaters, gift cigarettes and chocolate, and all the dozen andone things that made the soldiers find life a little more agreeable.
There was more than co-operation from the army itself. There was the deepest gratitude, openly expressed, from every member of the army, whether general or private, because it was a recognized fact that, though an army cannot do these things itself, it owes them more than it can ever repay.
AFTER months of training behind the lines the doughboys began to long for commencement. It came late in October. The point selected for the trench test of the Americans was in a quiet sector. The position lay about twelve miles due east from Nancy and five miles north of Lunéville. It extended roughly from Parroy to Saint-Die. Even after the entry of the Americans the sector remained under French command. In fact, the four battalions of our troops which made up the first American contingent on the fighting-line were backed up by French reserves. No better training sector could have been selected, for this was a quiet front. American officers who acted as observers along this line for several days before the doughboys went in found that shelling was restricted and raids few. Many villages close behind the lines on either side were respected because of a tacit agreement between the contending armies. French and Germans sent war-weary troops to the Lunéville sector to rest up. It also served to break in new troops without subjecting them to an oversevere ordeal, so that they might learn the tricks of modern warfare gradually.
Of course, even quiet sectors may become suddenly active, and care was taken to screen the movements of the soldiers carefully. It proved impossible, however, to keep the move a complete mystery, for when camion after camion of tin-hatted Americans moved away from the training area the villagers could not fail to suspect that something was about to happen. Perhaps these suspicions grew stronger when each group of fighting men sang loudly and cheerfully that they were "going to hang the Kaiser to a sour apple-tree."
The weather was distinctly favorable for the movement of troops. One of the blackest nights of the month awaited the Americans at the front. Rain fell, but not hard enough to impede transportation. Still, such weather was something of a moral handicap. Many of the newcomers would have been glad to take a little shelling if they could have had a bit of a moon or a few stars to light their way to the trenches. Instead they groped their way along roads which were soft enough to deaden every sound. A wind moaned lightly overhead and the strict command of silence made it impossible to seek the proper antidote of song. One or two men struck up "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching," as they headed for the front, but they were quickly silenced.
The march began about nine o'clock, after the soldiers had eaten heartily in a little village close to the lines. At the very edge of this village stood a cheerful inn and a moving-picture theatre. The doughboys looked a little longingly at both houses of diversion before they swung round the bend and followed the black road which led to the trench-line. The people of the village did not seem to be much excited by the fact that history was being made before their eyes. They had seen so many troops go by up that road that they could achieve no more than a friendly interest. They did not crowd close about the marchers as the people had done in Paris.
Seemingly the Germans had not been able to ascertain the time set for the coming of the Americans. The roads were not shelled at all. In fact, the German batteries were even more indolent than usual at this point. The relief was effected without incident, although a few stories drifted back about enthusiastic poilus who had greeted their new comrades with kisses.
The artillery beat the infantry into action. They had to have a start in order to get their guns into place, and some fifteen hours before the doughboys went into the trenches America had fired the first shot of the war against Germany. Alexander Arch, a sergeant from South Bend, Indiana, was the man who pulled the lanyard. The shot was a shrapnel shell and was directed at a German working-party who were presuming on the immunity offered by a misty dawn. They scattered at the first shot, but it was impossible to tell whether it caused any casualties. When the working-party took cover there were no targets which demanded immediate attention, and the various members of the gun crew were allowed the privilege offiring the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth shots of the war. After that, shooting at the Germans ceased to become a historical occasion, but was a mere incident in the routine of duty, and was treated as such.
The only unusual incident which seriously threatened the peace of mind of the infantrymen in their first night in the trenches was the flash of a green rocket which occurred some fifteen or twenty minutes after they arrived. They had been taught that a green rocket would be the alarm for a gas attack, but this particular signal came from the German trenches and had no message for the Americans. The Germans may have suspected the presence of new troops, for the men were just a bit jumpy, as all newcomers to the trenches are, and a few took pot-shots at objects out in No Man's Land which proved to be only stakes in the barbed wire or tufts of waving grass.
Although the Germans made the first successful raid, the Americans took the first prisoner. He was captured only a few nights after the coming of the doughboys. A patrol picked him up close to the American wire. He was amail-carrier, and in cutting across lots to reach some of his comrades he lost his way and wandered over to the American lines. Although he was surprised, he was not willing to surrender, but made an attempt to escape after he had been ordered to halt. One of the doughboys fired at him as he ran and he was carried into the American trenches badly wounded. He died the next day.
Beginning on the night of November 2 and extending over into the early morning of November 3, the Germans made a successful raid against the American lines immediately after a relief. After a severe preliminary bombardment a large party of raiders came across. The bombardment had cut the telephone wires of the little group of Americans which met the attack and they were completely isolated. They fought bravely but greenly. Three Americans were killed, five were wounded, and twelve were captured. The Germans retired quickly with their prisoners.
American morale was not injured by this first jab of the Germans. On the other hand, it made the doughboys mad, and, better thanthat, made them careful. A German attempt to repeat the raid a few nights later was repulsed. The three men who were killed in this first clash were buried close to the lines, while minute-guns fired shells over the graveyard toward the Germans. General Bordeaux, who commanded the French division at this point, saluted before each of the three graves, and then turned to the officers and men drawn up before him and said:
"In the name of the division, in the name of the French Army, and in the name of France, I bid farewell to Private Enright, Private Gresham, and Private Hay of the American Army.
"Of their own free will they had left a prosperous and happy country to come over here. They knew war was continuing in Europe; they knew that the forces fighting for honor, love of justice and civilization were still checked by the long-prepared forces serving the powers of brutal domination, oppression, and barbarity. They knew that efforts were still necessary. They wished to give us their generous hearts, and they have not forgotten old historical memories while others forget more recent ones.They ignored nothing of the circumstances and nothing had been concealed from them—neither the length and hardships of war, nor the violence of battle, nor the dreadfulness of new weapons, nor the perfidy of the foe.
"Nothing stopped them. They accepted the hard and strenuous life; they crossed the ocean at great peril; they took their places on the front by our side, and they have fallen facing the foe in a hard and desperate hand-to-hand fight. Honor to them. Their families, friends, and fellow citizens will be proud when they learn of their deaths.
"Men! These graves, the first to be dug in our national soil and but a short distance from the enemy, are as a mark of the mighty land we and our allies firmly cling to in the common task, confirming the will of the people and the army of the United States to fight with us to a finish, ready to sacrifice so long as is necessary until victory for the most noble of causes, that of the liberty of nations, the weak as well as the mighty. Thus the deaths of these humble soldiers appear to us with extraordinary grandeur.
"We will, therefore, ask that the mortal remains of these young men be left here, be left with us forever. We inscribe on the tombs: 'Here lie the first soldiers of the Republic of the United States to fall on the soil of France for liberty and justice.' The passer-by will stop and uncover his head. Travellers and men of heart will go out of their way to come here to pay their respective tributes.
"Private Enright! Private Gresham! Private Hay! In the name of France I thank you. God receive your souls. Farewell!"
After the Germans had identified Americans on the Lunéville front it was supposed that they might maintain an aggressive policy and make the front an active one. The Germans were too crafty for that. They realized that the Americans were in the line for training, and so they gave them few opportunities to learn anything in the school of experience. In spite of the lack of co-operation by the Germans, the doughboys gained valuable knowledge during their stay in the trenches. There were several spirited patrol encounters and much sniping. American aviators got a taste of warfare bygoing on some of the bombing expeditions of the French. They went as passengers, but one American at least was able to pay for his passage by crawling out from his seat and releasing a bomb which had become jammed. When every battalion had been in the trenches the American division was withdrawn, and for a short time in the winter of 1917 there was no American infantry at the front.
Curiously enough, the honor of participation in a major engagement hopped over the infantry and came first to the engineers. It came quite by accident. The 11th Engineers had been detailed for work behind the British front. Early on the morning of November 30 four officers and 280 men went to Gouzeaucourt, a village fully three miles back of the line. But this was the particular day the Germans had chosen for a surprise attack. The engineers had hardly begun work before the Germans laid a barrage upon the village, and almost before the Americans realized what was happening German infantry entered the outskirts of the place while low-flying German planes peppered our men with machine-gun fire. The engineerswere unarmed, but they picked up what weapons they could find and used shovels and fists as well as they retired before the German attack. According to the stories of the men, one soldier knocked two Germans down with a pickaxe before they could make a successful bayonet thrust. He was eventually wounded but did not fall into the hands of the enemy. Seventeen of the engineers were captured, but the rest managed to fight their way out or take shelter in shell-holes, where they lay until a slight advance by the British rescued them.
Having had a taste of fighting, the engineers were by no means disposed to have done with it. The entire regiment, including the survivors of Gouzeaucourt, were ordered first to dig trenches and then to occupy them. This time they were armed with rifles as well as intrenching-tools. They held the line until reinforcements arrived.
The conduct of the engineers was made the subject of a communication from Field-Marshal Haig to General Pershing. "I desire to express to you my thanks and those of the British engaged for the prompt and valuable assistancerendered," wrote the British commander, "and I trust that you will be good enough to convey to these gallant men how much we all appreciate their prompt and soldierly readiness to assist in what was for a time a difficult situation."
THE Lunéville sector was merely a sort of postgraduate school of warfare, but shortly after the beginning of 1918 the American Army took over a part of the line for its very own. This sector was gradually enlarged. By the middle of April the Americans were holding more than twenty miles. The sector lay due north of Toul and extended very roughly from Saint-Mihiel to Pont-à-Mousson. Later other sections of front were given over to the Americans at various points on the Allied line. Perhaps there was not quite the same thrill in the march to the Toul sector as in the earlier movement to the trenches of the Lunéville line. After all, even the limited service which the men had received gave them something of the spirit of veterans. Then, too, the movement was less of an adventure. Motor-trucks were few and most of the men marched all the way over roads that were icy. The troops stood upsplendidly under the marching test and under the rigorous conditions of housing which were necessary on the march. They had learned to take the weather of France in the same easy, inconsequential way they took the language.
For a second time the German spy system fell a good deal short of its reputed omniscience. Seemingly, the enemy was not forewarned of the coming of the Americans. Despite the fact that the troops were tired from their long march, the relief was carried out without a hitch. Toul had been regarded as a comparatively quiet sector, and, while it never did blaze up into major actions during the early months of 1918, it was hardly a rest-camp. It was, as the phrase goes, "locally active." Few parts of the front were enlivened with as many raids and minor thrusts, and No Man's Land was the scene of constant patrol encounters, which lost nothing in spirit, even if they bulked small in size and importance.
It is probable that the Germans had no ambitious offensive plans in regard to the Toul sector. They tried, however, to keep the Americans at that point so busy and so harassedthat it would be impossible for Pershing to send men to help stem the drives against the French and the English. The failure of this plan will be shown in the later chapters.
Before going on to take up in some detail the life of the men in the Toul sector, it is necessary to record a casualty suffered by Major-General Leonard Wood. While inspecting the French lines General Wood was wounded in the arm when a French gun exploded. Five French soldiers were killed and Lieutenant-Colonel Charles E. Kilbourne and Major Kenyon A. Joyce, who accompanied General Wood, were slightly wounded. Wood returned to America shortly after the accident, and did not have the privilege of coming back to France with the division he had trained. But for all that he had a unique distinction. Leonard Wood was the first American major-general to earn the right to a wounded stripe.
The German artillery was active along the Toul front and the percentage of losses, while small, was higher than it had been in the Lunéville trenches. Of course, the American artillery was not inactive. It had a deal of practice during the early days of February. The Germans attempted to ambush a patrol on the 19th and failed, and on the next night a sizable raid broke down under a barrage which was promptly furnished by the American batteries in response to signals from the trench which the Germans were attempting to isolate.
The first job for America did not come on the Toul sector, but near the Chemin-des-Dames. American artillery had already shown proficiency in this sector by laying down a barrage for the French, who took a small height near Tahure. Hilaire Belloc referred to this action as "small in extent but of high historical importance." The importance consisted in the fact that for the first time American artillerymen had an opportunity of rolling a barrage ahead of an attacking force. They showed their ability to solve the rather difficult timing problems involved. Certain historical importance, then, must be given to the action of February 23, when an American raiding-party in conjunction with the French penetrated a few hundred yards into the German lines and captured two German officers, twenty men, and amachine-gun. This little action should not be forgotten, because it was practically the first success of the Americans. It gave some indication of the efficient help which Pershing's men were to give later on in Foch's great counter-attack which drove the Germans across the Marne.
It is interesting to know that every man in the American battalion stationed on the Chemin-des-Dames volunteered for the raid. Of this number only twenty-six were picked. There were approximately three times as many French in the party, and it must be remembered that the affair was strictly a French "show." The raid was carefully planned and rehearsals were held back of the line, over country similar to that which the Americans would cross in the raid. At 5.30 in the morning the barrage began and it continued for an hour with guns of many calibres having their say. The attack was timed almost identically with the relief in the German trenches and the Boches were caught unawares. The fact that a shell made a direct hit on a big dugout did not tend to improve German morale. The little party of Americans had already cut 2,999 miles and some yardsfrom the distance which separated their country from the war, and they were anxious to cover the remaining distance. Their French companions set them the example of not running into their own barrage. Poilus and doughboys jumped into the enemy trench together. There was a little sharp hand-to-hand fighting, but not a great deal, as the German officers ordered their men to give ground. The group of prisoners were captured almost in a body. Further researches along communicating trenches and into dugouts failed to yield any more.
Attackers and prisoners started back for their own lines on schedule time. The German artillery tried to cut them off. One shell wounded five of the Germans and six Frenchmen, but the American contingent was fortunate enough to escape without a single casualty. The French expressed themselves as well pleased with the conduct of their pupils. They said that the Americans had approached the barrage too closely once or twice, but this was not remarkable, as it was the first time American infantry had advanced behind a screen of shell fire. Their inexperience also excused their tendencyto go a little too far after the German trench-line had been reached.
On February 26 the Americans on the Toul front had their first experience with a serious gas attack. Of course, gas-shells had been thrown at them before, but this was the first time they had been subjected to a steady bombardment. Some of the men were not sufficiently cautious. A few were slow in getting their masks on and others took theirs off too soon. The result was that five men were killed and fifty or sixty injured by the gas. Two days later the Americans on the Chemin-des-Dames were heavily attacked, but the Germans were driven off.
March found the Toul sector receiving more attention than usual from the Germans. The Germans made a strong thrust on the morning of March 1. The raid was a failure, as three German prisoners remained in American hands and many Germans were killed. Gas did not prove as effective as on the last occasion. The doughboys were quick to put on their masks and as soon as the bombardment ended they waited for the attacking-party and swept themwith machine-guns. About 240 Germans participated in the attack. Some succeeded in entering the American first-line trench, but they were expelled after a little sharp fighting. An American captain who tried to cut off the German retreat by waylaying the raiders as they started back for their own lines was killed. On the same day a raid against the Chemin-des-Dames position failed. The Germans left four prisoners.
Two days after the attempted Toul raid Premier Clemenceau visited the American sector and awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm to two lieutenants, two sergeants, and two privates. The premier, who knows American inhibitions just as well as he knows the language, departed a little from established customs in awarding the medals. Nobody was kissed. Instead Clemenceau patted the doughboys on the shoulder and said: "That's the way to do it." One soldier was late in arriving, and he seemed to be much afraid that this might cost him his cross, but the premier handed it to him with a smile. "You were on time the other morning," he said. "That's enough." In anofficial note Clemenceau described the action of the Americans as follows: "It was a very fine success, reflecting great honor on the tenacity of the American infantry and the accuracy of the artillery fire."
The Americans made a number of raids during March, but the Germans were holding their front lines loosely, and usually abandoned them when attacked, which made it difficult to get prisoners. An incident which stands out occurred on March 7, when a lone sentry succeeded in repulsing a German patrol practically unaided. He was fortunate enough to kill the only officer with his first shot. This took the heart out of the Germans. The lone American was shooting so fast that they did not realize he was a solitary defender, and they fled. On March 14 American troops made their first territorial gain, but it can hardly be classed as an offensive. Some enemy trenches northeast of Badonviller, in the Lunéville sector, were abandoned by the Germans because they had been pretty thoroughly smashed up by American artillery fire. These trenches were consolidated with the American position.
April saw the first full-scale engagement in which American troops took part at Seicheprey, but earlier in the month there was some spirited fighting by Americans. Poilus and doughboys repelled an attack in the Apremont Forest on April 12. The American elements of the defending force took twenty-two prisoners. The German attack was renewed the next day, but the Franco-American forces dislodged the Germans by a vigorous counter-attack, after they had gained a foothold in the first-line trenches. The biggest attack yet attempted on the Toul front occurred on April 14. Picked troops from four German companies, numbering some 400 men, were sent forward to attack after an unusually heavy bombardment. The Germans were known to have had 64 men killed, and 11 were taken prisoner.
Numerous stories, more or less authentic, were circulated after this engagement. One which is well vouched for concerns a young Italian who met eight Germans in a communicating trench and killed one and captured three. The remaining four found safety in flight. The youngster turned his prisoners over to a sergeantand asked for a match. "I'll give you a match if you'll bring me another German," said the non-commissioned officer. The little Italian was a literal man and he wanted the match very much. He went back over the parapet, and in five minutes he returned escorting quite a large German, who was crying: "Kamerad."
While American soldiers on the front were gaining experience, which stood them in good stead at Seicheprey and later at Cantigny, great progress was made in the organization of the American forces. Late in the spring the first field-army was formed. This army was composed of two army corps each made up of one Regular Army division, one National Army division, and one division of National Guard. Major-General Hunter Liggett became the first field-army commander of the overseas forces, and it was his men who covered themselves with so much distinction in the great counter-blows of July.
DESTINY always plays the flying wedge. There is always the significant little happening, half noticed or miscalculated, which trails great happenings after it. On March 19, 1918, a derby hat appeared in the front-line trenches held by the American Army in France. This promptly was accorded the honor by the army and the Allied representatives of being the first derby hat that had ever been seen in a trench. The hat had the honor to be on the head of the first American Secretary of War who had ever been in Europe in his term of office. And this first American Secretary of War away from home was presently to have the honor of helping to create the first generalissimo who had ever commanded an army of twenty-six allies.
All of which is to say that Newton D. Baker, on a tour of inspection of the A. E. F., whosevisit was to have such terrific fruition, repudiated the war counsels which would have kept him out of the trenches on this gusty March day, and went down to see for himself and all the Americans at home how the doughboy was faring, and what could be done for him.
And as he peered over the parapet into No Man's Land, Secretary Baker said: "I am standing on the frontier of freedom." The phrase grew its wings in the saying, and by nightfall it had found the farthest doughboy.
The Paris newspapers announced, on the morning of March 12, that Secretary Baker was in France. The troops had it by noon. And questions flew in swarms. It was discovered that he would review the brigade of veterans who had returned from service at the front on March 20, and that meanwhile he would investigate the lines of communication.
After a few days in Paris, during which Secretary Baker delivered all the persuasions he had brought from President Wilson on behalf of a unified command of the Allied armies, and had, it was rumored, turned the scale in favor of a generalissimo, the distinguished civilianwent to the coast to see the port city which was the pride of the army and the marvel of France.
The secretary rode to the coast on a French train, but, once there, he was transferred to an American train, which had to make up in sentimental importance the large lack it had of elegance.
A flat car was rapidly rigged up with plank benches. This had the merit of affording plenty of view, and, after all, that was what the secretary had come for.
After rolling over the main arteries of the 200 miles of terminal trackage, Secretary Baker inspected the warehouses, assembling-plants, camps, etc., and walked three mortal miles of dock front which his countrymen had evolved from an oozing marsh. He paid his highest compliments to the engineers and the laborers, and amazed the officers by the acuteness of his questions. If his visit did nothing else, it convinced the men on the job that the man back home knew what the obstacles were.
Secretary Baker's next visit was to the biggest of the aviation-fields, where again his technical understanding, as it came out in his questions,astounded and cheered the men who were doing the building.
Copyright by the Committee on Public Information. Secretary Baker riding on flat car during his tour of inspection of the American Expeditionary Forces.Copyright by the Committee on Public Information.Secretary Baker riding on flat car during his tour of inspection of the American Expeditionary Forces.
Copyright by the Committee on Public Information.
Secretary Baker riding on flat car during his tour of inspection of the American Expeditionary Forces.
Secretary Baker carried his office with him, a delightful discovery to the men in the aviation-fields, who had some problems sorely pressing for decision, and who found, when they told them to Mr. Baker, that he had no aversion to taking action on the spot. For example, at aviation headquarters, Mr. Baker asked if the fliers who came first from America were the first to have their commissions after the final flights in France. He learned that because of some delay in giving final instruction, through no fault of the aviators, these first commissions had not been given. Mr. Baker instituted a full inquiry at once, and at the end of it directed that the commissions, when finally awarded, should bear a date one day in advance of all others, so that the priority rightfully earned should not be lost.
After hours in the field, during which hundreds of machines with American pilots flew in squadron formation, and many experts did spectacular single flights, Mr. Baker made a short speech to the fliers. A French officer,who had been instructing at the field, said to Mr. Baker: "With all these machines in the air, you see no more than a tenth of what America has in this one school. You will soon have no more need of French instruction. We have shown everything we know, and your young men have taken to the art with astonishing facility, as well as audacity, nerve, and resource. The danger and difficulties fascinate and inspire them. I think it must be what you call the 'sporting spirit.'"
As he was leaving the aviation-field Secretary Baker said: "The spirit of every man in this camp seems in keeping with the mission which brought him to France. The camps, appointments, and organization are admirable. It is gratifying to learn from their French instructors that our young aviators are proving themselves daring, cool, and skilful."
On the night of March 18 Secretary Baker began his preparations for a visit to the trenches. With a general commanding a division and one other officer he motored to the farthest point, where he dined and stayed the night in a French château. At dawn the next morning the partymade ready to go on. But the Boches appeared to have a hunch. They shelled the road on which Secretary Baker had planned to travel with such ferocity that the officers in command refused to take the risk of permitting Mr. Baker to go over it. The American general and all the French officers then begged Mr. Baker to give up the trip to the trenches. They wasted a lot of persuasion. Mr. Baker just went by another road. A colonel of about Mr. Baker's build had loaned him a trench overcoat, and some rubber boots, and the secretary had a tin helmet and a gas-mask, but he would wear the tin helmet only for a moment, and the mask not at all.
The officers in charge of the party found presently, to their acute horror, that even the trenches were not enough for Mr. Baker. Nothing would do him but a listening-post. And when he had finally got back safe, and had come back to the communication-trenches from the front, everybody breathed a sigh of relief. The relief was premature, for the liveliest danger of all was on the return motor trip, when an immense shell buried itself in a crater notfifty yards from the secretary. Fortunately, the débris flew all in the opposite direction, and nobody was hurt.
The First Division heard an address the following day from Secretary Baker. "It would seem more fit," he said, "and I should much prefer it, if, instead of addressing you, I should listen to your experiences. Your division has the distinction of being the first to arrive in France. May every man in your ranks aim to make the First Division the first in accomplishment. With you came a body of the marines, those well-disciplined, ship-shape soldiers of the navy.
"Yours was the first experience in being billeted, and in all the initial details of adjusting yourselves to new and strange conditions. In this, as in developing a system of training, you were the pioneers, blazing the way, while succeeding contingents could profit by your mistakes.
"Day after day and week after week you had to continue the hard drudgery of instruction which is necessary to proficiency in modern war. You had to restrain your impatience togo into the trenches under General Pershing's wise demand for that thoroughness, the value of which you now appreciate as a result of actual service in the trenches.
"If sometimes the discipline seemed wearing, you now know you would have paid for its absence with your lives.
"If I had any advice to give, it is to strike hard and shoot straight, and I would warn you at the same time against any carelessness, any surrendering to curiosity, which would make you a mark needlessly. The better you are trained the more valuable is your life to your country, as a fighter who seeks to make the soldier of the enemy, rather than yourself, pay the supreme price of war.
"On every hand I am told that you are prepared to fight 'to the end,' and I see this spirit in your faces. Depend upon us at home to stand by you in a spirit worthy of you."
Next Secretary Baker spoke, though informally, to the Forty-second Division, far better known as the Rainbow Division. There he explained some of the reasons for military secrecy.
"While it was in training at home I saw a good deal of the Rainbow Division," he said "Then, one day, it was gone to France, where it disappeared behind the curtain of military secrecy which must be drawn unless we choose to sacrifice the lives of our men for the sake of publicity. The enemy's elaborate intelligence system seeks at any cost to learn the strength, the preparedness, and the character of our troops. Our own intelligence service assures us that the knowledge of our army in France which some assume to exist does not, in fact, exist.
"If we were to announce the identity of each unit that comes to France, then we would fully inform the enemy of the number and nature of our forces. Published details about any division are most useful to expert military intelligence officers in determining the state of the division's preparedness, and the probable assignment of the division to any section.
"But now it is safe to mention certain divisions which were first to arrive in France and have already been in the line. This includes the Rainbow Division, famous because it is representative of all parts of the United States.This division should find in its character an inspiration toesprit de corpsand general excellence. It should be conscious of its mission as a symbol of national unity.
"The men of Ohio I know as Ohioans, and I am proud that they have been worthy of Ohio. A citizen of another State will find himself equally at home in some other group, and the gauge of this State's pride will be the discipline of that group of soldiers, its conduct as men, its courage, and its skill in the trenches. You may learn more than war in France. You may learn lessons from France, whose unity and courage have been a bulwark against that sinister force whose character you are learning in the trenches. The Frenchman is, first of all, a Frenchman, which stimulates, rather than weakens, his pride in Brittany as a Breton, in Lorraine as a Lorrainer, and his loyalty and affection for his own town, or village, or home. In truth he fights for his family and his home when he fights for France and civilization. Thus, you will fight best and serve best by being first an American, with no diminution of your loyalty to your State and your community.
"With us at home the development of a new national unity seems a vague process compared to the concrete process you are undergoing. You are uniting North, East, South, and West in action. We aim to support you with all our resources, to make sure that you do not fight in vain."
The brigade of the veterans was reviewed on the last day of the camp inspection.
Secretary Baker went by motor, with officers and aides, as far as the foot of the hill from which he was to review the troops deploying in the Marne valley. Twenty days of rain had made the hilltop inaccessible by motor. As Secretary Baker started up one slope, General Pershing and his aides ascended another, and the two men met at the top.
The brigade swept by at company front, with full marching equipment. They were the first brigade to be reviewed after it had been in action, and they held to their flawless formation, chins up and chests out, in spite of clogging mud that was almost too much for the mules.
The review ended in compliments all around.Secretary Baker's enthusiasm was conveyed even to the lesser officers. General Pershing said: "These men have been there and know what it is. You can tell that by the way they throw out their chests as they swing by."
America at last had her veterans. They were to dignify the coming gift of them to heroic size.
WHEN America had put the power of all her eloquence into the growing demand among the Allies for a unified command, and when, as a result of this pressure, General Foch, chief of staff of the French Army and hero of the battle of the Marne, had been made generalissimo, General Pershing put into words in what the French called a "superb gesture" the final sacrifice his country was prepared to make.
The first of the great German drives of 1918 had halted, but the battle was nowhere near its end. General Foch was sparing every possible energy on the battle-front and heaping up every atom of force for his reserve.
And on the morning of March 28 General Pershing went to headquarters and offered the American Army in full to General Foch, to put where he pleased, without any regard whatever for America's earlier wish to fight with her army intact.
It was the final sacrifice to the idealistic point of view. It had indisputably the heroic quality. And as such it was rewarded in the countries of the Allies with appreciation beyond measure.
"I have come," said General Pershing to General Foch that morning, "to say to you that the American people would hold it a great honor for our troops if they were engaged in the present battle. I ask it of you in my name and in that of the American people.
"There is at this moment no other question than that of fighting. Infantry, artillery, aviation—all that we have are yours, to dispose of them as you will. Others are coming, which are as numerous as will be necessary. I have come to say to you that the American people would be proud to be engaged in the greatest battle in history."
This offer was placed immediately by General Foch before the French war-council at the front, a council including Premier Clemenceau, Commander-in-Chief Pétain, and Louis Loucheur, Minister of Munitions, and was immediately accepted. American Army orders wentforth in French from that day. And on those orders the army was presently scattered through the vast reserve army, from Flanders with the British to Verdun with the Italians and the French. They were not to go into actual battle, except near their own sectors, till the third monster drive, in July, for General Foch makes a religion of the reserve army and Fabian tactics. But they spread through the battle-line from Switzerland to the sea, as General Pershing had suggested, and "all we have" was at work.
Paris acclaimed the move royally.La Libertéwrote: "General Pershing yesterday took, in the name of his country, action which was grand in its simplicity and of moving beauty. In a few words, without adornment, but in which vibrated an accent of chivalrous passion, General Pershing made to France the offer of an entire people. 'Take all,' he said; 'all is yours.' The honor Pershing claims is shared by us, and it is with the sentiment of real pride that our soldiers will greet into their ranks those of the New World who come to them as brothers."
Secretary Baker, from American General Headquarters, gave out a statement. "I am delighted at General Pershing's prompt and effective action," he said, "in placing all the American troops and facilities at the disposal of the Allies in the present situation.
"It will be met with hearty approval in the United States, where the people desire their expeditionary force to be of the utmost service in the common cause. I have visited all the American troops in France, some of them recently, and had an opportunity to observe the enthusiasm with which officers and men received the announcement that they would be used in the present conflict. One regiment to which the announcement was made spontaneously broke into cheers."
The British Government issued an official statement on the night of April 1: "As a result of communications which have passed between the Prime Minister and President Wilson; of deliberations between Secretary Baker, who visited London a few days ago, and the Prime Minister, Mr. Balfour, and Lord Derby, and consultations in France in which General Pershing and General Bliss participated, important decisions have been come to by which large forces of trained men in the American Army can be brought to the assistance of the Allies in the present struggle.
"The government of our great Western ally is not only sending large numbers of American battalions to Europe during the coming critical months, but has agreed to such of its regiments as cannot be used in divisions of their own being brigaded with French and British units so long as the necessity lasts.
"By this means troops which are not sufficiently trained to fight as divisions and army corps will form part of seasoned divisions, until such time as they have completed their training and General Pershing wishes to withdraw them in order to build up the American Army.
"Throughout these discussions President Wilson has shown the greatest anxiety to do everything possible to assist the Allies, and has left nothing undone which could contribute thereto.
"This decision, however of vital importance it will be to the maintenance of the Allied strength in the next few months, will in noway diminish the need for those further measures for raising fresh troops at home to which reference has already been made.
"It is announced at once, because the Prime Minister feels that the singleness of purpose with which the United States have made this immediate and, indeed, indispensable contribution toward the triumph of the Allied cause should be clearly recognized by the British people."
Lord Reading, the British Ambassador at Washington, conveyed to President Wilson a message of thanks from the British Government, for "the instant and comprehensive measures" which the President took in response to the request that American troops be used to reinforce the Allied armies in France. The Embassy then gave out a statement that "the knowledge that, owing to the President's prompt co-operation, the Allies will receive the strong reinforcement necessary during the next few months is most welcome to the British Government and people."
The London papers reflected this sentiment in even stronger terms. Said theWestminster Gazette: "It seals the unity of the Allied forcesin France, and so far from weakening the determination to provide all possible reinforcements from this country, it will, we are confident, give it fresh energy. All the big loans America has made to Great Britain and France, her heavy contributions of food, her princely gifts through the Red Cross, and the high, stimulating utterances of President Wilson, have done much to strengthen the Allied morale and lend material assistance to the war against autocracy, but none of these counts so heavily with the masses, because there are few families here or in France who have not a personal and intimate interest in the soldiers battling on the plains of Picardy."
TheEvening Starwrote: "In a true spirit of soldierly comradeship they will march to the sound of guns, and will merge their national pride in a common stock of courage for the common good. It is a chivalrous decision, and President Wilson, Mr. Baker, and General Bliss have done a very great thing in a very great way. The British and French people are moved by this splendid proof of America's fellowship in the fight for world freedom."
If this gift was so significant in spirit, it was also bravely helpful in round numbers. At the end of March, 1918, General Pershing had 366,142 soldiers in his command in France, and of these, after nine months of training and adjustment, he could put about 100,000 in the line.
And within three months after this time he had more than 1,000,000 soldiers in France, the Navy Department having accomplished the astounding feat of transporting 637,929 in April, May, and June. The month that the reinforcement of the French and British Armies was planned and accepted the transport figures jumped from forty-eight thousand odd to eighty-three thousand odd. The month of its first practical operation the figures jumped again to one hundred and seventeen thousand odd, and in the month of June, the month of the anniversary of the first debarkation, there was a transportation of 276,372 men.
The last few days of March, 1918, saw the first large troop movements from the American zone—that is, saw them strictly in the mind's eye. Actually, the rain came down in suchdrenching downpours that the French villagers whom the motor-trucks passed did not so much see as hear the doughboys. Throughout the whole zone the activity was prodigious. Along the muddy roads two great processions of motor-trucks crossed each other day and night, the one taking the soldiers to one front, the other to another. Sometimes the camions slithered in the mud till they came to a stop in the gutter. Then the boisterous, jubilant soldiers would tumble out and set their shoulders under wheels and mud-guards, and hoist the car into the road again. The singing was incessant. The mood of the songs swung from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night."
The exuberance of the soldiers knew no bounds. They were about to answer "present" to the roll-call of the big guns, the call they had been hearing for so many months, that had seemed to them so persistently and personally compelling. They were going to become a part of that living wall which for three years and a half had held the enemy out of Paris.
Those who were going to the British frontwere particularly exultant because they expected to find open fighting there, the kind they called "our specialty."
To all the units going into the French and British Armies a general order was read, jacking up discipline to the topmost notch.
"The character of the service this command is now about to undertake," read the order, "demands the enforcement of stricter discipline and the maintenance of higher standards of efficiency than any heretofore required.
"In future the troops of this command will be held at all times to the strictest observance of that rigid discipline in camp and on the march which is essential to their maximum efficiency on the day of battle."
The first of the fighting troops arrived on the British front on the morning of April 10, after an all-night march. They were grimed and mud-spattered, hungry, and tired, and cold. But the cheering that rose from the Tommies when they recognized the American uniforms at the head of the column would have revived more exhausted men than they.
The first comers were infantry, a battalion ofthem. Others came up during the day, with artillerymen and machine-gunners. The celebration of their coming lasted far into the next night, and the commanders of the British front exchanged telegrams of congratulation with the commanders of the French front that they were to be so welcomely refreshed.
But Generalissimo Foch, with his stanch determination not to be done out of his reserve, held the Americans back, and they were destined to remain behind the main battle-line for three and a half months longer.
Meanwhile the American strength was piling steadily up in the reserve, and in mid-May a large contingent of the National Army, said to be the first of them to land in Europe, reached the Flanders front and began to train at once behind the British lines, without preliminary work in American camps in France.
These men had what was probably the most exhilarating welcome of the war. The Tommies, many of them wounded and sick, poured out into the roadways as the new American Army arrived, and threw their caps into the air and split their throats with cheers. TheBritish had been terrifically hard pressed in the German offensive. They had given ground only after incredible fighting. They were, in the phrase of General Haig, at last "with their backs to the wall." They held their line magnificently, but they could not have been less than filled with thanksgiving that they were now to have the help of the least war-worn of all their allies.
WHILE Generalissimo Foch was strengthening his long line, with American troops as flying buttresses, those sectors delegated to the Americans in their own right saw two battles, within a few weeks of each other, which attained to the dignity of names. The battle of Seicheprey, the first big American defensive action, and the battle of Cantigny, the first big offensive, the one in the Toul sector, the other in Picardy, were the occasions of the American baptism of fire. The one was so valiant, the other so brilliant, and both were so reassuring to the high commands of the Allies, that they would deserve a special emphasis even if they had not the distinction of being America's first battles.
On the night of April 20-21 the German bombardment of Seicheprey, a village east of the Renners wood, and just northwest of Toul, grew to monstrous proportions. Frenchmenwho had seen the great Verdun offensive, in which the German Crown Prince had made a new record for artillery preparation, said that the heavy firing on the American sector eclipsed any of the action at Verdun.
The firing covered a front of a mile and a quarter. The bombardment was of high explosive shells and gas, apparently an effort to disable the return fire from American artillery. But all through the night the artillerymen sent their shells, encasing themselves in gas-masks.
Toward dawn the attack began. A full regiment of German soldiers, preceded by 1,200 shock troops, advanced under a barrage. Halfway across No Man's Land the American artillery laid down a counter-barrage, and many of the Germans dropped under it, but still the great waves of them came on, focussing on the village of Seicheprey.
The impact of their terrific numbers was too powerful to be withstood at once. The American troops fell back from some of their first-line trenches, which the first bombardment had caused them to hold loosely, and part of the forces fell back even from the village. TheGermans marched into the village, evidently believing it to have been totally abandoned, carrying their flame-throwers and grenades, but making no use of them. Suddenly they discovered that certain American troops had been left to defend the village, while the main force reformed at the rear, and hand-to-hand fighting in the street became necessary. An American commander sent word back that the troops were giving ground by inches, and that they could hold for a few hours.
Seicheprey, the first big American battle, had every element of the World War in little. Before the loss of the village, which occurred about noon, the troops defending it had fought from ambush and in the open, had fought with gas and liquid fire, with grenades, rifles, and machine-guns. In the inferno the new troops were giving proof of valor that was to come out later and be scattered broadcast, as a measure of what America would bring.
In and out of the streets of Seicheprey, in its little public square, from the yards of its houses, hundreds of American soldiers were fighting for their lives. France lay behind them, trusting tobe saved. Other Americans were behind them, racing into formation with French troops for the counter-attack. The defenders of Seicheprey, "giving by inches," had a battle-cry of their own, brief and racy, of the football-fields: "Hold 'em."
After a while the Germans took Seicheprey. The hideously pressed, slow-giving outpost moved back. Before the day had finished the shell-stripped streets of Seicheprey, sheltering the invaders, weltered again under the first American shells of the counter-attack. By nightfall the troops were creeping forward under the counter-barrage. The army, reformed, refreshed, and replenished, was on its way to take its own back again. The counter-battle lacked the monstrous gruelling of the first attack. It took less time. The superiority of numbers had shifted to the other side, and the white heat of determination did its share.
The Germans held Seicheprey about four hours.
The main positions of the army, which were threatened, were untouched because of the stoutness of the resistance at the village, andmost of the first-line positions were retaken with the rush of the counter-attack.
The German prisoners who were captured had many days' rations in their kits and extra loads of trench-tools on their backs. They had intended to hold the American trenches for several days, facing them the other way, before they commenced the new attack, which, in the plan of the German high command, was to break apart the French and American lines where they joined, above Toul. Once this wedge was into the Allied vitals the rest was to be easy.
Though Seicheprey did not count as a big battle in point of numbers engaged or numbers lost, it loomed large enough in the importance it had strategically. The German high command obviously expected little or nothing from the "green American troops." The shock troops had been rehearsed for weeks to take the American lines and hold them till the Allied line should be broken apart. In fact, it was nobly planned. The only compliment the Americans could squeeze out of it was that the Germans were sent over in many places eight to theirone. But the capture of Seicheprey lasted just four hours, and the disruption of the Franco-American line remained a mere brain-child of the Wilhelmstrasse.
The French soldiers who joined the counter-attack told thrilling stories of the Americans. They told that in one place north of Seicheprey, an American detachment was separated into small groups, and was cut off from the company to which it belonged through the entire fight. Behind the Americans and on their left flank were German units, but they could have retired on the right. They decided to stay and fight, so there they stayed, notwithstanding incessant enemy bombardment.
In the town of Seicheprey a squad of Americans found a few cases of hand-grenades. With these they put up a tremendous fight through the whole day, holding to a strip at the northern end of the village. They refused to surrender when they were ordered to, and at the end of the fighting only nine of the original twenty-three were left. By the grace of these nine men Seicheprey was never wholly German, even for the four hours.
One New England boy passed through the enemy barrage seven times to carry ammunition to his comrades. A courier who was twice blown off the road by shell explosions carried his message through and dropped as he reported. A lieutenant with only six men patrolled six hundred yards of the front throughout the day, holding communications open between the battalions to the right and left of him. A sanitary-squad runner captured by the Germans, escaped them and made his way into Seicheprey, tending the wounded there till help came. A machine-gunner found himself alone with his gun, and on being asked by a superior officer if he could hold the line there, replied that he could if he were not killed. He did. A regimental chaplain went to the assistance of a battery which was hard pressed, and carried ammunition for them for hours, then took his turn at the gun.
These make no roster of the heroes of Seicheprey. There were hundreds of them. But the censor's passionate aversion to details of all battles has scotched the narrative of heroes for the present.
Cantigny will warm the cockles of the American heart as long as it beats. There was a battle that for spirit, flare, brilliancy, came up to the rosiest dream that ever was dreamed, in Washington, or London, or Paris.
Cantigny, like Seicheprey, was not an engagement of great numbers. It was a little town that was hard to capture. It commanded a fine view of the American lines for miles back, and it had been able to withstand some violent attempts earlier, so it was particularly desirable. And it was in a salient, so that it formed an angle in the line. Its taking straightened the line, heartily disgruntled the Boches, who lost 200 prisoners and many hundred wounded and dead in defending it, and it gave the American troops their first taste of the offensive. But more than all that, it gave these same troops a record of absolutely flawless workmanship which, if not large, was at least complete.
The capture of Cantigny and 200 yards beyond it, which included the German second line, took just three-quarters of an hour.
In the niggardly terms of the communique: "This morning in Picardy our troops attackedon a front of one and a fourth miles, advanced our lines, and captured the village of Cantigny. We took 200 prisoners and inflicted on the enemy severe losses in killed and wounded. Our casualties were relatively small. Hostile counter-attacks broke down under our fire."
It was on the morning of May 28. At a quarter to six a bombardment began. At a quarter to seven the troops went over the top. The barrage went first, a dense gray veil. Then came twelve French tanks. Just behind the tanks stalked the doughboys.
The soldiers moved like clockwork. There were no unruly fringes to be nipped by the barrage. There was no break in the methodical stride. They went forward first a hundred yards in two minutes. Then the barrage slowed to a hundred yards in four minutes. In a little while the troops had arrived at the edge of the village; then the close-quarter fighting began.
At 7.30 a white rocket rose from the centre of Cantigny, dim against the smoky sky, to tell the men behind that "the objective is reached and prisoners are coming."
The Americans found the enemy in confusionand unreadiness, and the initial resistance from machine-guns at the town's edge was easily overcome. Where the burden of hard fighting came was in routing the Germans out from the caves and tunnels and cellars of the town into which they had retired.
There was a long tunnel in the town, which, after furious fighting, was surrounded and isolated. The flame-throwers were placed at both ends of the tunnel, and that episode was ended. Some of the caves were large enough to hold a battalion. These were handled by the mopping-up troops, who threw hand-grenades.
The prisoners began to file back almost immediately. One grinning Pittsburgher, wounded in the arm, marched in the rear of a prison squad. "That's handin' it to them Huns, blankety-blank 'em," he said cheerfully.
The village caught fire from the bombardment and the firing of the tunnel, and for hours after its capture the soldiers had to fight flames.
The first of the American "shock troops" went from the village on to the German second-line trenches, and under a hail of bullets fromGerman machine-guns dug themselves in and faced the trenches the other way.
All that day they held their prize unmolested. They had all the high ground beyond Cantigny, and an approach was, to put it mildly, precarious. But by five of the afternoon the German counter-attacks had begun. One wave after another stormed half-way up the hill, then tumbled down again, broken under the American artillery. Four counter-attacks were made against Cantigny, but all of them failed. The new positions were consolidated, under heavy fire and gas attack, and there they stayed.
This gallant battle called forth intemperate commendation from the headquarters of the Allies. The French despatch to Washington told officially of the high opinion the French held of it, and there were many congratulatory telegrams from London. The press of London and Paris glowed with praises. The LondonEvening Newswrote:
"Bravo, the young Americans! Nothing in to-day's battle narrative from the front is more exhilarating than the account of their fight at Cantigny. It was clean-cut from beginning toend, like one of their countrymen's short stories, and the short story of Cantigny is going to expand into a full-length novel, which will write the doom of the Kaiser and Kaiserism. We expected it. We have seen those young Americans in London, and merely to glance at them was to know that they are conquerors and brothers in that great Anglo-Saxon-Latin compact which will bring down the Prussian idol.... They do not swagger, and they have no war illusions. They have done their first job with swift precision, characteristic of the United States, and Cantigny will one day be repeated a thousand-fold."
The Timeswrote:
"Our allies know the significance of that as well as we do. So, too, do the German generals and the German statesmen. It means that the last great factor between autocracy and freedom is coming into effective play on the battle-field.... There could be no reflection more heartening for the Allies or more dismaying to their adversaries."
"Their adversaries," meanwhile, were doing what they could to keep their dismay to themselves.In the German announcement of the loss of Cantigny there was mention only of "the enemy." The German people were not to know for a while that the "ridiculous little American Army" had got to work.