MAP NO. 3OFFENSIVES OF SEPTEMBER, 1918. RELATION OF MEUSE-ARGONNE BATTLE TO THE DECISIVE ALLIED OFFENSIVE MOVEMENT.
MAP NO. 3OFFENSIVES OF SEPTEMBER, 1918. RELATION OF MEUSE-ARGONNE BATTLE TO THE DECISIVE ALLIED OFFENSIVE MOVEMENT.
MAP NO. 3OFFENSIVES OF SEPTEMBER, 1918. RELATION OF MEUSE-ARGONNE BATTLE TO THE DECISIVE ALLIED OFFENSIVE MOVEMENT.
Their divisions had been seasoned by long trench experience, tested in the terrific fire of the Ypres salient and trained in elaborate trench raids for a great offensive. All their methods were as deliberate as British thoroughness required. Units were carefully rehearsed in their parts, and theirliaisonworked out by staffs that had long operated together. Commanders of battalions, brigades, and divisions had been tried out, and corps commanders and staffs developed.
On the other hand, the Germans knew that the British attack was coming. Their army was in the prime of its numbers and efficiency. They had immence forces of reserves to draw upon to meet an offensive which was centered in one sector, with no danger of having to meet offensives in another sector. We were striking in one of several offensives, each having for its object rapidity and suddenness of execution, over about the same breadth of front as the British in 1916; and againstthe Germans, not in their prime, as I have said, but when they had lost the initiative and were deteriorating.
The increase of the skill of infantry in the attack, in their nicely calculated and acrobatic coördination with protecting curtains of accurate artillery fire, had been the supreme factor in the progress of tactics. As a young army we had all these lessons to learn and to apply to our own special problems. As we could not use the divisions that were at Saint-Mihiel in the initial onset in the Meuse-Argonne, we had to depend upon others from training camps and upon those which were just being relieved from the Château-Thierry area. Two of them had never been under fire; several had had only trench experience. They had not fought or trained together as an army. Many of our commanders had not been tried out. Some of the divisions were as yet without their artillery brigades; others had never served with their artillery brigades in action. By the morning of September 25th, or thirteen days after the Saint-Mihiel attack, all the infantry, the guns, the aviation, and the tanks must be in position to throw their weight, in disciplined solidarity, against a line of fortifications which had all the strengththat ant-like industry could build on chosen positions.
We had neither material nor time for extensive preparations. We must depend upon the shock of a sudden and terrific impact and the momentum of irresistible dash. If we took the enemy by surprise when he was holding the line weakly with few reserves, we might go far. Indeed, never was the element of surprise more essential. We were countering Ludendorff's anticipation that, if he withdrew from the salient, we should stall our forces ineffectually in the mud before Metz: countering it with the anticipation that he would never consider that a new army, though it grasped his intention, would within two weeks' time dare another offensive against the heights of the whale-back.
For our dense concentrations we had only two first-class roads leading up to the twenty-mile front between the Meuse and the Forest's edge. These were ill placed for our purpose. We might form our ammunition dumps in the woods, but nothing could have been more fatal than to have built a road, for to an aviator nothing is so visible as the line of a new road. Where aviators were flying at a height of twelve thousand feet in the Battle of the Somme, they were now flying with a splendid audacity as low as a thousand feet, which enabled them to locate new building, piles of material, evenwell-camouflaged gun positions; and the minute changes in a photograph taken today in comparison with one of yesterday were sufficient evidence to a staff expert that some movement was in progress. An unusual amount of motor-truck traffic or even an unusual number of automobiles, not to mention the marching of an unusual number of troops along a road by day, was immediately detected.
All our hundreds of thousands of men, all the artillery, all the transport must move forward at night. To show lights was to sprinkle tell-tale stars in the carpet of darkness as another indication that a sector which had known routine quiet for month on month was awakening with new life that could mean only one thing to a military observer. With the first suspicion of an offensive the enemy's troops in the trenches would be put on guard, reserves might be brought up, machine-guns installed, more aviators summoned, trench raids undertaken, and all the means of information quickened in search for enlightening details.
It was possible that the German might have learned our plan at its inception from secret agents within our own lines. If he had, it would not have been the first time that this had happened. In turn, his preparations for defense might be kept secret in order to make his reception hotter and more crafty. He might let the headlong initiative of our troopscarry us into a salient at certain points before he exerted his pressure disastrously for us on our flanks. Thus he had met the French offensive of the spring of 1917; thus he had concentrated his murder from Gommecourt to La Boisselle in the Somme Battle.
Not only had our army to "take over" from the French in all the details of a sector, from transport and headquarters to front line, but the Fourth French Army, on our left, which was to attack at the same hour, must be reinforced with troops and guns. The decision that the Saint-Mihiel offensive was not to follow through to Etain and Mars-la-Tour meant that French as well as American units and material must move from that sector to the Argonne. Immediately it had covered the charge of our troops the heavy artillery, both French and American, was to be started on its way, and, after it, other artillery and auxiliary troops and transport of all kinds as they could be spared.
"It sounds a bromide to say that you cannot begin attacking until your army is at the front," said a young reserve officer, "but I never knew what it meant before to get an army to the front."
He had studied his march tables at the Staff School at Langres; now he was applying them. Young reserve officers had a taste of the difficulties of troop movements. They had to locate units, seethat they received their orders, and set them on their way according to schedule, with strict injunctions from "on high" to see that everybody was up on time. They had lessons in the speed of units and the capacity of roads which, at the sight of a column of soldiers on the march, will always rise in their recollections of anxious days.
When haste is vital, unexpected contingencies due to the uneven character of men and materials break into any system. That is the "trouble" with war, as one of these young officers said. Everything depends upon system, and system is impossible when the very nature of war develops unexpected demands that are prejudicial to any dependable processes of routine. With urgent calls for locomotives and rolling stock coming from every quarter to meet the demands of the extension of the Allied offensive campaign over an unexampled breadth of front, the railroads, which were few in this region, could not transport troops and artillery which ordinarily would have gone by train.
Three road routes were available from the Saint-Mihiel to the Argonne region. Artillery tractors that could go only three were in columns with vehicles that could go ten and fifteen miles an hour. Field artillery regiments, coming out from the Saint-Mihiel sector after two weeks of ceaseless travail, were delayed by having their horses killed by shell-fire.The exhaustion of horses from overwork was becoming increasingly pitiful. They could not have the proper rest and care. In some instances they made in a night only half the distance which schedules required. When the deep mud, and outbursts of bombardment from the enemy, retarded the relief of troops, motor buses, which were waiting for them, had to be dispatched on other errands, leaving weary legs to march instead of ride. Military police, army and corps auxiliaries of all kinds, and various headquarters must be transferred.
Officers who had hoped for a little sleep once the Saint-Mihiel offensive was under way received "travel orders," with instructions to reach the Argonne area by hopping a motor-truck or in any way they could. Soldiers, after marching all night, might seek sleep in the villages if there were room in houses, barns, or haylofts. Blocks of traffic were frequent when some big gun or truck slewed into a slough in the darkness.
The processions on these three roads from Saint-Mihiel represented only one of many movements from all directions to the Argonne sector. French units had to pass by our new front to that of the Fourth Army. A French officer at Bar-le-Duc, who had charge of routing all the traffic, was an old hand at this business of moving armies. He perfectly appreciated that curses were speeding toward hisoffice from all four points of the compass where traffic was stalled or columns waited an interminably long time at cross-roads for their turn to move, or guns or tanks or anything else in all the varied assortment were not arriving on schedule time. By telephone he kept in touch with American and French units in the process of the mobilization, while he moved his chessmen on the rigid lines of his map.
The "sacred road" from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun coursed again with the full tide of urgent demands; only this time the traffic turned off on the roads to the left instead of going on to the town. With each passing day, as the concentration increased, daylight became a more portentous foe. "No lights! No lights!" was the watchword of all thought which the military police spoke in no uncertain tones to any chauffeur who thought that one flash of his lamps would do no harm; some of the language used was brimstone and figuratively illuminating enough to have made an aurora borealis. Camouflage became an obsession of everyone who had any responsibility. Discomfort, loss of temper and of time were the handicaps in this blind man's buff of trying to keep the landscape looking as natural by day as it had in the previous months of tranquil trench warfare.
Traffic management was only one and not themost trying or important part of the problem. If the demands upon the Services of Supply were not met, failure was certain: our army would be hungry and without ammunition. In no department was the additional burden of the Meuse-Argonne more keenly felt than in this. New railheads must be established, and additional vehicular transport sent forward to connect up with the new front. Though the mastering of the objective in the Saint-Mihiel operation released a certain surplus, it was disturbingly small. The line established after the salient was cut had become violent. It would require large quantities of supplies as long as we should hold it; and it was already evident that the Meuse-Argonne offensive was to be a greedy monster which could never have its hunger satisfied.
Every hour that we kept the enemy ignorant of the strength of our concentration was an hour gained. The one thing that he must not know was the number of divisions which we were marshaling for our effort. They were the sure criterion of the formidability of our intentions. The most delicate task of all was the taking over of the front line from the French. Not until the stage was set with the accessories of the heavy artillery, the new depots, and ammunition dumps did the roads near the front, cleared for their progress, throb under the blanket of night with the scraping rhythm of the doughboys'marching steps, infusing in the preparations the life of a myriad human pulse-beats in unison. Our faith was in them, in the days before the battle and all through the battle to the end. Their faces so many moving white points in the darkness, each figure under its heavy equipment seemed alike in shadowy silhouette. In the mystery of night their disciplined power, suggestive of the tiger creeping stealthily forward for the spring on his prey, was even more significant than by day.
The men were prepared in the red blood that coursed young arteries, in their litheness and their pride and will to "go to it." They had their rifles, their belts full of ammunition, their gas masks, and their rations. It was not for them to ask any questions—not even if the barrages which would cover their charges would be accurate, if the tanks would kill machine-gun nests, if the barbed wire would be cut, and if their generals would make mistakes. Suspense, not of the mind but of the heart, lightened at the sight of their movement, so automatic and yet so stirringly human. The gigantic preparations of dumps, gun positions, and trains of powerful tractors became only a demonstration of the mighty energy of our industrial age beside that subtler endeavor which had formed them for their task and set them down as the pawns of a staff in a gamble with death. Might the big guns that the troopspassed, grim hard shadows in ravines and woods, do their work well in order that the empty ambulances at rest in long lines might have little to do!
By battalions and companies the marching columns separated, taking by-roads and paths, as their officers studied their maps and received instructions from French guides who knew the ground. By daylight they were dissipated into the landscape. The hornets were in their hives; they would swarm as dawn broke to the thunders of the artillery. Attacks were always at dawn; and dawn had taken on a new meaning to us since the morning of July 18th, when our 1st and 2nd Divisions, in the company of crack French divisions, had started the first of the counter-offensives.
The success of Saint-Mihiel had developed corps staffs which must now direct the Meuse-Argonne, while others took over the arrangements at Saint-Mihiel. Major-General Hunter Liggett, pioneer of corps commanders, with the First Corps was to be on the left; Major-General George H. Cameron, with the Fifth Corps in the center; and Major-General Robert L. Bullard, with the Third Corps on the right. Groups of officers making a pilgrimage in automobiles to the new sector were to be the "brains" of the coming attack; for our corps command was an administrative unit which took over thedirection of a different set of divisions from those under it at Saint-Mihiel.
The corps staffs had only four or five days for their staff preparations for the battle. It was Army Headquarters in the town hall of Souilly which set the army objective, the corps limits, and the tactical direction of the attack as a whole, while the corps set the divisional limits and objectives to accord with the army objective. At our call we had French experience of the sector, and in this war of maps we had maps. Our prevision in this respect was excellent. The French furnished us with millions of maps in the course of the war; we had our own map-printing presses at Langres; and we had movable presses in the field for printing maps which gave the results of the latest observations of the enemy's defenses. A snowstorm of maps descended upon our army, and still the cry was for more. Not only battalion and company, but platoon and even squad commanders needed these large-scale backgrounds marked with their parts.
Yet maps have their limitations. They may show the ground in much detail, but, even when the blue diagrams and symbols are supposed up to date, not the bushes where the enemy's machine-gun nests are hidden, or what the enemy has done overnight in the way of defenses. Nor are maps plummets into human psychology. Even when they have locatedmachine-gun nests they cannot say whether the gunners who man them will yield easily or will fight to the death. If the British on the Somme, after months of preparation and study of the defenses of the sector, had more elaborate directions for their units than we, it does not mean that, considering its inexperience, our staff did not accomplish wonders.
Our corps commanders may have known their division commanders in time of peace, but they had never been their superiors in action of any kind. Their artillery groupings and aviation arrangements included French units as well as their own. There was no time for considering niceties in dispositions. Division commanders who had to arrange the details of their coöperation had never served together. They had scores of problems, due to the haste of their mobilization, to consider; for the burden of apprehension that pressed them close was of apprehension lest they should not be up on time. They and their officers went over the ground at the front, but they had not the time to make the thorough observation that any painstaking and energetic division commander would have preferred.
A division with all its artillery, machine-guns, and transport is a ponderous column in movement, with every part having its regulation place. One day in one set of villages and the next in another, the communication of orders and requirements downthrough all the branches is difficult, and the more so when you are short of dispatch riders, and there is a limit to what can be done over the field telephone. The unexpected demand for wires for our second great offensive must not find the signal corps unprepared; or a people as dependent on telephones and telegraph as we are, and so accustomed to having them materialize on request, would have been helpless in making war. The deepest tactical concern was, of course, the coördination of the artillery with the infantry advance. It is only a difference of a hundred yards' range, as we all know, between putting your shells among your own men instead of the enemy's.
Reliable communication from the infantry to the aviator and his reliable report of his observations to the artillery and infantry is one of the complicated features in that team-play, which, in the game of death, needs all the finesse of professional baseball, a secret service, and a political machine, plus the requisite poise, despite poor food and short hours of sleep, for worthily leading men in battle. Some divisions that went into this action had not yet received their artillery; or again their artillery arrived from the training camp, where the guns had just been received, barely in time to go into position, so that an inexperienced artillery commander reported to an inexperienced division commander with whom hehad never served. There were batteries without horses, which the horses of other batteries pulled into position after they had brought up their own. Battery commanders received their table of barrages and their objectives of fire, and, without registering, had to trust to observation by men untried in battle or by aviators who had never before observed in a big operation. Aviators had been trained to expect the infantry to put out panels, and they might say that the infantry did not show their panels, while the infantry would deny the charge. Such things had happened before. They would happen this time. They happen to the most veteran of armies, whose long experience, however, may have an excellent substitute in other qualities which we had in plenitude, as we shall see.
All our own guns were of French make, with the exception of a few howitzers. The gun-producing power of the French arsenals supplying us with our artillery and our machine-guns—the Brownings were only just beginning to arrive—in addition to supplying all their own forces over the long front of their offensive was one of the marvels of the war and an important factor in victory. The majority of our planes were also of French make: not until August had the Liberty motors begun to arrive. The French had supplied us with additional aviation and tanks, as well as artillery, from their own army; butmuch of this was new. All the Allies, indeed, were robbing their training camps for the supreme effort that was about to be made from the Meuse to the Channel.
While the public, which thinks of aviation in terms of combat, admired the exploits of the aces in bringing down enemy planes, which they looked for in the communiqués, the army was thinking of the value of the work of the observers, whose heroism in running the gamut of fire from air and earth in order to bring back information might change the fate of battles. Training for combat, perhaps, more nearly approximated service conditions than training for observation. A fighting aviator, with natural born courage, audacity, and coolness, who goes out determinedly to bring down his man, makes the ace. These qualities were never lacking in our fliers. They went after their men and got them, in a record of successes which was not the least of the honors which our army won in France. The observer had no public praise; he was always the butt of the complaint that he did not bring enough information, or that he brought inaccurate information. His complex responsibilities were singularly dependent upon that experience which comes only from practice.
Instead of applying the lessons of Saint-Mihiel at leisure, as we had hoped, to the whole army, we hadto apply them on the run in the rapid concentration of divisions which had not been at Saint-Mihiel. Yet the supreme thing was not schooling. It was a seemingly superhuman task in speed. It was to have the infantry up on time even if the other units were limping. In this we succeeded. On the night of September 24th, from the Meuse to the Forest's western edge every division was in position. We had kept faith with Marshal Foch's orders. We were ready to go "over the top."
The Marshal postponed the attack for another day. Rumor gave the reason that the French Fourth Army was not ready; possibly the real reason, or at least a contributory reason, was in the canniness of such an old hand at offensives as Marshal Foch. Ours was a new army under enormous pressure. Veteran armies were always asking, at the last moment, for more time in which to complete their preparations before attacking. Possibly the Marshal had set the 25th as the date with a view to forcing our effort under spur of the calendar, while he looked forward to granting the inevitable request for delay. At all events the respite was most welcome. Our staff had time for further conferences and attention to their arrangements for supplies, and our combat troops a breathing spell which gave their officers another day in which to study the positions they were to storm.
When I considered all the digging necessary for making the gun positions, or had even a cursory view of the parks of divisional transport, of the reserves crowded in villages and woods, of the ammunition trains, and of the busy corps and division headquarters, I wondered if it were possible that the Germans could not have been apprised that a concentration was in progress. Not only did pocket lamps flash like fireflies from the hands of those who used them thoughtlessly, but despite precautions careless drivers turned on motor lights, and some rolling kitchen was bound to let out a flare of sparks, while the locomotives running in and out at railheads showed streams of flames from their stacks, and here and there fires were unwittingly started. An aviator riding the night, as he surveyed the shadowy landscape, could not miss these manifestations of activity. If he shut off his engine he might hear above the low thunder of transport the roar of the tanks advancing into position, of the heavy caterpillar tractors drawing big guns. When the air was clear and the wind favorable, the increasing volume of sound directed toward the front must have been borne to sharp ears on the other side of No Man's Land. All this I may mention again, without reference to observations by spies within our lines.
On our side, we might try to learn if the enemy knew of our coming, and how much he knew. Athin fringe of French had remained in the front-line trenches, with our men in place behind them. Thus our voices of different timbre, speaking the English tongue in regions where only French had been spoken, might not be heard if we forgot the rules of silence, which were as mandatory by custom as in a church or a library; and besides, if the Germans made a raid for information they would not take American prisoners. They did make some minor raids, capturing Frenchmen who, perhaps unwittingly when wounded or in the reaction from danger, and subject to an intelligence system skilled in humoring and indirect catechism, told more than they thought they were telling. Information that we had from German prisoners left no doubt that the Germans knew at least that the Americans were moving into the sector, but did not expect a powerful offensive. This, as we had anticipated, was discounted as being out of the question on the heels of the Saint-Mihiel offensive. Our new army, the Germans thought, had not the skill or the material for such a concentration, even if we had the troops.
In our demonstration that we did have the skill and the energy, and that in one way and another we were able to secure the material even though it were inadequate, we were peculiarly American; and we were most significantly American in the adaptableexercise of the reserve nervous force of our restless, dynamic natures, which makes us wonderful in a race against time. We strengthen our optimism with the pessimism which spurs our ambition to accomplishment by its self-criticism that is never satisfied.
On all hands I heard complaints by officers concerning lack of equipment, of personnel, of training, and of time. But no one could spare the breath for more than objurgations, uttered in exclamatory emphasis, which eased the mind. I could make a chapter out of these railings. Yet if I implied that the unit, whether salvage or aviation, hospital or front-line battalion, tanks or signal corps, or any other, would not be able to carry out its part, I was assailed with a burst of outraged and flaming optimism. And optimism is the very basis of the psychologic formula of war. Americans have it by nature. We lean forward on our oars. Optimism comes to us from the conquest of a continent. It presides at the birth of every infant, who may one day be president of the United States.
Confidence was rock-ribbed in a commander-in-chief's square jaw; it rang out in voices over the telephone; it was in the very pulse-beats of the waiting infantry; it shone in every face, however weary. We had won at Château-Thierry; we had won at Saint-Mihiel; we should win again. The infantrymight not conceive the nature of the defenses or of the fire they might have to encounter. So much the better. They would have the more vim in "driving through," said the staff.
The objectives which we had set ourselves on that first day, after the conquest of the first-line fortifications, which we took for granted, were a tribute to our faith in Marshal Foch's own optimism. On the first day we were striking for the planets. In our second and third days' objectives we did not hesitate to strike for the stars. This plan would give us the more momentum, and if we were to be stopped it would carry us the farther before we were. Of course we did not admit that we might be stopped. If we were not, the German military machine would be broken; and any doubts on the part of generals were locked fast in their inner consciousness, for uttered word of scepticism was treason.
On the night of the 25th, when all the guns began the preliminary bombardment, stretching an aurora from the hills of Verdun into Champagne, our secret was out. From the whirlwind of shells into his positions the enemy knew that we were coming at dawn. With thousands of flashes saluting the heavens it no longer mattered if a rolling kitchen sent up a shower of sparks or an officer inadvertently turned the gleam of his pocket flash skyward. Along thefront our infantry slipped forward into the place of the French veterans, who came marching back down the roads.
"Gentlemen," said the French, "the sector is yours. A pleasant morning to you!"
A military machine impossible in human nature—Regular traditions—National Guard sentiment—National Army solidarity—Divisional pride—Our first six divisions unavailable to start in the Meuse-Argonne—British-trained divisions—What veteran divisions would have known.
A military machine impossible in human nature—Regular traditions—National Guard sentiment—National Army solidarity—Divisional pride—Our first six divisions unavailable to start in the Meuse-Argonne—British-trained divisions—What veteran divisions would have known.
The Leavenworth plan was to harmonize regulars, National Guard, and National Army into a force so homogeneous that flesh and blood became machinery, with every soldier, squad, platoon, brigade, and division as much like all the others as peas in a pod; but human elements older than the Leavenworth School, which had given soldiers cheer on the march and fire in battle from the days of the spear to the days of the quick-firer, hampered the practical application of the cold professional idea worked out in conscientious logic in the academic cloister. It may be whispered confidentially that all unconsciously their own training and associations sometimes made the inbred and most natural affection of the Leavenworth graduates for the regulars subversive of the very principle which they had set out to practise with such resolutely expressed impartiality. A regular felt that he was a little moreof a regular if he were serving with a regular division.
"We're not having any of this good-as-you-are nonsense in this regiment," said its Colonel, talking to a fellow-classman who was on the staff. "We're filled up with reserve officers and rookies,—but we're regulars nevertheless. We've started right with the regular idea—the way we did in the old —th"—in which the officers had served together as lieutenants.
By the same token of sentiment and association the National Guardsmen remained National Guardsmen. They also had a tradition. If they were not proud of it they would be unnatural fighters. While the average citizen had taken no interest in preparedness, except in the abstraction that national defense was an excellent thing, they had drilled on armory floors and attended annual encampments. Sometimes the average citizen had spoken of them as "tin soldiers"; and they were conscious perhaps of a certain superciliousness toward them on the part of regular officers. Drawn from the same communities, members of the same military club that met at the armory, they already had their pride of regiment and of company: a feeling held in common with Guardsmen from other parts of the country, who belonged to the same service from the same motives. Should that old Connecticut or Alabama or anyother regiment with a Civil War record, and, perhaps, with a record dating from the Revolution, forget its old number because it was given a new number, or its own armory, because it went to a training camp? Relatives and friends, who bowed to the edict of military uniformity and anonymity, would still think of it as their home regiment. If Minneapolis mixed its sons with St. Paul's, they would still be sons of Minneapolis.
While all volunteers felt that they were entitled to the credit of offering their services without waiting on the call, the draft men, who had awaited the call, had their own conviction about their duty, which, from the hour when they walked over from the railway stations to the camp, gave them a sense of comradeship: while they might argue that it was more honor to found than to follow a tradition. Their parents, sisters, and sweethearts were just as fond, and their friends just as proud, of them as they had been in the Guard. Aside from a few regular superiors, their officers were graduates of the Officers' Training Camps, who, as the regulars said, had nothing to unlearn and were subject to no political associations. Yes, the draft men considered themselves as the national army; and they would set a standard which should be in keeping with this distinction.
All the men assembled in any home cantonment,with the exception of the regulars, were almost invariably from the same part of the country, which gave them a neighborhood feeling. The doings of that cantonment became the intimate concern of the surrounding region. Its chronicles were carried in the local newspapers. There was a division to each cantonment; and in France the fighting unit was the division, complete in all its branches,—artillery, machine-guns, trench mortars, engineers, hospital, signal corps, transport, and other units. As a division it had its training area; as a division it traveled, went into battle, and was relieved.
Before a division was sent to France its men were already thinking in terms of their division; they met the men of no other division unless on leave, and met them in France only in passing, or on the left or right in battle. In the cantonment the division had its own camp newspaper, its own sports, its separate life on the background of the community interest, without the maneuvering of many divisions together on the European plan until they were sent into action in the Saint-Mihiel or Meuse-Argonne offensive. Each division commander and his staff, who were regular officers, conspired to develop a divisional pride, thereby, in a sense, humanly defeating the regular idea of making out of American citizens a machine which could be anything but humanly American. Within the division, pride of company,of battalion, of regiment, was instilled, and the different units developed rivalries which were amalgamated in a sense of rivalry with other divisions.
Every cantonment had the "best" division in the United States before it went to France, where rivalry expressed itself on the battlefield. The record of the war is by divisions. Men might know their division, but not their corps commander. Divisions might not vary in their courage, but they must in the amount of their experience and in the quality of their leaders. A division that had been in three or four actions might be better than one that had been in ten; but a division that had not been in a single action hardly had the advantage over one that had been in several. Our four pioneer divisions, which had been in the trenches during the winter of 1917-18 and later in the Château-Thierry operations, the 1st (regulars), and the 2nd (regulars and marines), and the 26th and the 42nd (both National Guard), were all at Saint-Mihiel. Their units were complete; their artillery had had long practice with their infantry; they had had long training-ground experience in France, had known every kind of action in modern war, and had kept touch under fire, rather than in school instruction, with the progress of tactics. If they were not our "best" divisions, it was their fault.
Of the two other divisions which had been longestafter these in our army sector, the 32nd had just finished helping Mangin break through at Juvigny, northwest of Soissons, and the 3rd was at Saint-Mihiel. These six formed the group which General Pershing had in France at the time of the emergency of the German offensive in March, which hastened our program of troop transport.
Now we were bringing to the American army five of the divisions which had been trained with the British, the 4th, 28th, 33rd, 35th, and 77th. From the British front the 77th had gone to Lorraine, whence it was recalled to the Château-Thierry theater. The 4th and the 28th were ordered from the British front, after the third German offensive in June, to stand between Paris and the foe, and then participated, along with the 77th, in the counter-offensive which reduced the Marne salient,—or as the French call it, the second Battle of the Marne, a simple, suggestive, and glorious name. Château-Thierry had thus been a stage in passage from the British to the American sector, and the call for the defense of Paris had been serviceable to the American command as a reason for detaching American divisions, which the British had trained, from Sir Douglas Haig, who, as he is Scotch, was none the less thriftily desirous of retaining them.
The 33rd Division, remaining at the British front after the other divisions had departed, gained experiencein offensive operations, as we know, which approximated that of the others at Château-Thierry, when, fighting in the inspiring company of the Australians in the Somme attacks beginning August 8th, the Illinois men took vital positions and numerous prisoners and guns. Though these four divisions, the 4th, 28th, 33rd, and 77th, had not had the long experience of the four pioneer divisions, they had had their "baptism of fire" under severe conditions, they knew German machine-gun methods from close contact, and they had the conviction of their power from having seen the enemy yield before their determined attacks. To Marshal Foch they had brought further evidence that the character of the pioneer divisions with their long training in France was common to all American troops. The National Guard divisions which had arrived late in France, though they had been filled with recruits, had, as the background of their training camp experience at home, not only the established inheritance of their organization but the thankless and instructive service on the Mexican border, where for many months they had been on a war footing.
According to European standards none of the divisions in the first shock of the Meuse-Argonne battle was veteran, of course; and the mission given them would have been considered beyond their powers. Indeed, the disaster of broken units, dispersingfrom lack of tactical skill, once they were against the fortifications, would have been considered inevitable. A veteran or "shock" division in the European sense—such divisions as the European armies used for major attacks and difficult operations—would have had a superior record in four years of war. Its survivors, through absorption no less than training, would have developed a craft which was now instinctive. They were Europeans fighting in Europe; they knew their enemy and how he would act in given emergencies; they knew the signs which showed that he was weakening or that he was going to resist sturdily; they knew how to find dead spaces, and how to avoid fire; and they had developed that sense of team-play which adjusts itself automatically to situations. All that our divisions knew of these things they had learned from schooling or in one or two battles. We had the advantage that experience had not hardened our initiative until we might be overcautious on some occasions.
The battle order of our divisions for the Meuse-Argonne battle was not based on the tactical adaptation of each unit to the task on its front. We must be satisfied with placing a division in line at a point somewhere between the Meuse and the Forest's edge where transportation most favored its arrival on time. One division was as good as another in abattle arranged in such haste. The French Fourth Army was to attack on the west of the Argonne Forest; on its right a regiment of the 92nd (colored) Division, National Army, with colored officers, was to form the connecting link between the French and the American forces. For men with no experience under heavy fire, who were not long ago working in the cotton fields and on the levees of the South, this was a trying assignment, which would have tested veterans. Never before had colored men under colored officers gone against a powerful trench system. All the British and French colored troops had white officers, and our other colored division, the 93rd, which was attached to the French Army through the summer and fall of 1918, had white officers.
We come now to our divisions in place on the night of September 25th, with whom will ever rest the honor of having stormed the fortifications. When I consider each one's part I should like to write it in full. I shall mention them individually when that best suits the purpose of my chronicle, and at other times I shall describe the common characteristics of their fighting: in either case mindful of the honor they did us all as Americans.
The Metropolitan Division in the Argonne proper—Six weeks without rest—Direct attack impossible in the Forest—Similar history of the Keystone Division—Pennsylvania pride—Its mission the "scalloping" of the Forest edge—The stalwart men of the 35th Division—Storming the Aire heights—Fine spirit of the Pacific Slope Division—A five-mile advance projected for the Ohio Division—North and South in the 79th Division—Never in line before, it was to strike deepest.
The Metropolitan Division in the Argonne proper—Six weeks without rest—Direct attack impossible in the Forest—Similar history of the Keystone Division—Pennsylvania pride—Its mission the "scalloping" of the Forest edge—The stalwart men of the 35th Division—Storming the Aire heights—Fine spirit of the Pacific Slope Division—A five-mile advance projected for the Ohio Division—North and South in the 79th Division—Never in line before, it was to strike deepest.
Three National Army divisions were to be in the initial attack. It was a far cry for the men who a year before had tumbled into the training camps at home, without knowledge of the manual of arms or of the first elements of army etiquette and discipline, to the march of trained divisions forward into line of battle in France. On the extreme left of the line was the Liberty Division, from New York City. The metropolitans were given the task of taking not a town, but a forest, with which their name will be as long connected as with our largest city. Its left flank on the western edge of the Argonne Forest and its right on the eastern, the 77th had a long divisional front of over four miles; but it would have been unsatisfied if it had had to share the Forest. The Forest was its very own. The publicat home seemed to have the idea that the whole battle was fought there. If it had been, the 77th would have had to share credit with twenty other divisions, which had equally stiff fighting in patches of woods which were equally dense even if they were not called forests.
MAP NO. 4DIVISIONS IN THE FIRST STAGE OF THE MEUSE-ARGONNE BATTLE, SEPTEMBER 26TH-OCTOBER 1ST.
MAP NO. 4DIVISIONS IN THE FIRST STAGE OF THE MEUSE-ARGONNE BATTLE, SEPTEMBER 26TH-OCTOBER 1ST.
MAP NO. 4DIVISIONS IN THE FIRST STAGE OF THE MEUSE-ARGONNE BATTLE, SEPTEMBER 26TH-OCTOBER 1ST.
If the Forest were stripped bare of its trees, it would present a great ridge-like bastion cut by ravines, with irregular hills and slopes of a character which, even though bald, would have been formidable in defense. Its timber had nothing in common with the park-like conception of a European forest, in which the ground opens between tree trunks in lines as regular as in an orchard. If the Argonne had been without roads, the Red Indians might have been as much at home in its depths as in the primeval Adirondacks. Underbrush grew as freely as in second-growth woods in our New England or Middle States; the leaves had not yet begun to fall from the trees.
It had not been until September 15th that the 77th had been relieved from the operations in the Château-Thierry region. A new division, fresh from training at the British front and in Lorraine, it had gone into line in August to hold the bank of the Vesle against continuous sniping, gassing, and artillery fire; and later, after holding the bottom of a valley with every avenue of approach shelled in nerve-racking strain, it had shown the mettle ofthe Americans of the tenements by fighting its way forward for ten days toward the Aisne Canal. It had been in action altogether too long according to accepted standards, though this seems only to have tempered its steel for service in the Argonne.
Ordinarily a new division would not only have been given time to recover from battle exhaustion, which is so severe because in the excitement men are carried forward by sheer will beyond all normal reactions to fatigue, but it would have been given time for drill and for applying the lessons of its first important battle experience. The value of this is the same to a division as a holiday at the mountains or the seashore to a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He recovers his physical vitality, and has leisure to see himself and his work in perspective.
Instead of knowing the relaxation and the joy of settling down in billets and receiving the attention of the "Y" and other ministrants, of having plenty of time to write letters home, and of receiving from home letters that were not more than six weeks old, the men of the 77th had long marches to make through ruined country, and were then switched about, in indescribably uncomfortable travel, on the way to the Argonne. The division commander made no complaint on this score; but it was a factto be taken into consideration. The 77th was short of transport; its horses were worn down. Yet, faithful to orders, its artillery as well as its infantry was up on the night of the 24th. Owing to the length of its front, all four infantry regiments were put into line, which meant that there could be no relief for any units after they reached their destination.
We admire hardy frontiersmen, of whom we expect such endurance; but what of these city-dwellers, these men from the factories and offices, short of stature and slight of body? Who that had seen them before they entered a training camp would have thought that they could be equal to carrying their heavy packs on long marches and undergoing the physical strain of battle? Their fortitude was not due altogether to good food and the healthy régime of disciplined camps; it was the spirit of their desire to prove that they were the "best" division because they were the "Liberty Division." Their hearty, resolute commander, Major-General Robert Alexander, was justly proud of them and believed in them; and they had excellent officers, who held them up by example and discipline to high standards.
Faith in the impregnability of the Forest, from ancient times a bulwark for which armies competed, had not led the Germans to neglect any detail inimproving its natural defenses. In that area where for four years the French and the Germans had stared across No Man's Land at each other, the reasons for the enforced stalemate were almost as obvious as those for the truce between the whale and the elephant. Either army had at its back the cover of woodland, while the slopes about the trenches formed a belt of shell-craters littered with trunks of trees. Any attempt to take the forest by frontal attack must have been madness. Action in front must be only an incident of pressure, and confined to "mopping up," as action on either side forced the enemy's withdrawal from a cross-fire. This was bound to be our plan, as the enemy foresaw; we shall see that he governed himself accordingly.
The 28th Division, which had been on the left of the 77th in the advance to the Aisne, was again on its left. These had really been the first two American divisions to fight side by side under an American corps command, that of Major-General Robert L. Bullard. In the enterprise that they were now undertaking they had need of every detail of team-play that they had learned.
Some elements of the 28th, which was then just arriving in the Château-Thierry region, had been in action against the fifth German offensive; then it had been pushed across the Marne, where it hadbeen put in by brigades and moved about under harassing circumstances in the ensuing counter-offensive. Later, having proved its worthiness for the honor, as an intact division it had taken over from the exhausted 32nd on the Vesle. Practically, from July 15th until it went to the Argonne it had had no rest. It had held not only the town of Fismes on the bank of the Vesle, but the exposed position of the little town of Fismettes on the other side of the river, during that period when the Germans were inclined to make a permanent stand there if their digging, their sniping, and their battering artillery fire, showered from the heights upon the 28th and the 77th in the valley, were any criterion. In the subsequent advance to the Aisne, and later in the transfer to the Argonne, the division had to submit to the same kind of irregularities and discomfort as the 77th, and to suffer in the same way for want of adequate transport and of leisure for studying its latest battle lessons for use in the next battle.
There is a general idea that such populous states as New York and Pennsylvania lack state pride, particularly in the sense of the southern states; but any state, whose National Guardsmen were numerous enough to form a complete division on the new war footing, had the advantage of the unity of sentiment of the old family, which does not have to includestrangers at its board. The 28th's deeds were Pennsylvania's. It stood proudly and exclusively for Pennsylvania with her wealth and prosperity and all her numerous colleges, large and small, from Allegheny in the northwest to the University of Pennsylvania. The men were evidently capable of eating three and four square meals a day, and they looked as if they were used to having them when they were at home.
"What about politics?" the critic always asks about any National Guard division. If there were politics in the 28th it was so mixed up with marching and fighting—and the men of the 28th were always doing one or the other when I saw them—that it was unrecognizable to one so unused to politics as the writer. Certainly, it was a good kind of politics, I should say, in that Pennsylvania had taken a downright interest in her National Guard, which was now bearing fruit. The 28th's commander, Major-General Charles H. Muir, was a man of equanimity and force, who had the strength of character, on occasion, to stand up to an Army staff when he knew that its orders were impracticable. The staff respected him for his confidence in the judgment of the man on the spot.
The 28th's losses both in officers and in men in that excoriating progress from the Vesle to the Aisne had been the price of a gallantry which wasa further reproof to the scepticism in certain quarters about the National Guard. Officers who had been killed or wounded had been replaced by young men who were often from the training camps though not Pennsylvanians; and in the fierce illumination of battle much had been learned about the qualities of the survivors. Some of these who had hitherto been called politicians had entirely overcome the aspersion. Others who had worn themselves out physically might be given a period of recuperation even if the division had none. The 28th had been indeed battle-tried in all that the word means. If it could have had two weeks before the Meuse-Argonne in which to digest its lessons, this would have been only fair to it as a division: though probably its determination would have been no stronger.
The 28th's front was from the edge of the Forest on its left to the village of Boureuilles on its right. Astride the Aire River it linked the Forest with the main battle-line. While maintaining its uniformity of advance on its right, its left had the same difficult maneuver in "scalloping" the eastern edge of the Forest as the French in "scalloping" the western edge. This meant that the 28th must storm the wooded escarpments which the Forest throws out on the western side of the Aire. On the eastern side of the valley were heights which interlocked with the escarpments. As one Guardsman said, the divisionhad a worse job than a Democrat running for governor of Pennsylvania in an off year for Democrats.
Now the 28th could not succeed unless the division on its right took the heights on the eastern side of the Aire. If the 28th failed, then the whole turning movement of the Army offensive toward the main series of heights which formed the crest of the whale-back was endangered. On the right of the 28th was the 35th Division, National Guard from Kansas and Missouri, which must offer the courage and vigor which is bred in their home country in place of the battle experience which had been the fortune of the Pennsylvanians. Major-General William M. Wright had been the first commander of the 35th. He was a man of the world, most human in his feeling and sound in his principles of war, with a personality which was particularly effective with troops of sturdy individualistic character, who were unaccustomed by their tradition of self-reliant independence of thought to the arbitrary system which a regular army develops in the handling of recruits in time of peace. Leonard Wood had the same class of men from the same region in the 89th, which Wright later led in the Meuse-Argonne battle with brilliant results.
Soon after the 35th arrived behind the British lines, Wright's accepted knowledge of regular army personnel and his capacity for inspiring harmoniouseffort in any group of subordinates led General Pershing to set him the task of organizing corps staffs, among them the Fifth, which was to develop exemplary traditions. Major-General Peter E. Traub, a scholarly soldier, fully equipped in the theories of war, succeeded him in command of the 35th. Traub's brigade of the 26th Division had received at Seicheprey the shock of the first attack in force that the Germans had made against our troops, where the quality which the young officers and men had shown in face of a surprise by overwhelming numbers, and their prompt recovery of the town without waiting on superior orders, had reflected credit on their brigade.
The physique and the good humor of the men of the 35th had been the admiration of everybody who had seen them after their arrival in the British area. The Guardsmen of Kansas had a fine tradition linked up with the career of Frederick Funston, who was in the fullest sense what is known as a born soldier. He was a combination of fire and steel; of human impulse and inherent common sense. His initiative was in tune with that of his Kansans. Through the authority of their faith in him he applied stern discipline.
With its left on Boureuilles and its right on Vauquois, the 35th must storm the heights of the eastern wall of the Aire under flanking artillery andmachine-gun fire from the escarpments of the Forest, unless these were promptly conquered by the 28th. No finer-looking soldiers ever went into action. Their eagerness was in keeping with their vitality. Compared to the little men of the 77th, who were overburdened with heavy packs, they were giants of the type which carried packs of double the army weight over the Chilcoot Pass in the Klondike rush. Their inheritance gave them not only the strength but the incentive of pioneers. Whoever had the leading and shaping of such a body of American citizens had a responsibility which went with a glorious opportunity. The stronger the men of a division, the abler the officers they require to be worthy of their potentiality. Given the battle experience of the 77th, under a Pershing, a Wood, a Bullard, a Summerall, or a Hines, and a group of officers as such a leader would have developed, the work of the 35th would never have become a subject for discussion: but we shall come to this later on.
On the right of the 35th we had the 91st, National Army from the Pacific Coast, as the left division of the Fifth or center Corps, with its front from Vauquois to Avocourt. Its commander was Major-General William H. Johnston, a redoubtable fighter and vigorous for his years, as anyone could see at a glance. There was no question as to the character of his men, who were six thousandmiles from home. Their physique was as good as that of the 35th, as you know if you know the region where they were called to service by the draft. Never before under fire, they were to fight their way through woods by a frontal attack, and then under the enemy's observation into an open ravine, and on through that up forbidding slopes. An appealing sentiment attached to this division from the other side of the continent, no less than to the 77th, from which it differed in its personnel as the Pacific Slope differs from the streets of New York. There were city men in its ranks, but not in the sense of city men from New York; and there were ranchmen, and lumbermen, and those among them who spoke broken English were not from tailors' benches.
On the right of the 91st was the 37th, Ohio National Guard under Major-General Charles S. Farnsworth, a regular officer of high repute, who was to take the division through its terrific experience in the Meuse-Argonne and afterward to Belgium. Why so excellent a division as the 37th should not have been earlier in France may be referred to geography, which gave an advantage to National Guard divisions from the seaboard states. The 37th had waited and drilled long for its chance, which now came in generous measure. After breaking through the trench system it must storm by frontal attack, for a depth of three miles, woods as thickas the Argonne; and this was only a little more than half the distance set for a single day's objective. Therefore, without previous trial in grand offensives, it was assigned a mission which would ordinarily have been supposed to be disastrous against even a moderate defense. The 37th was without its own artillery, but it had been assigned on short notice the artillery of the 30th Division, which, however zealous and well-trained, had not worked with the division or ever operated in a serious action, let alone protected infantry advancing for such a distance over such monstrously difficult ground.
On the right of the 37th was the 79th, National Army drawn from Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Major-General Joseph E. Kuhn, who was in command, was well-known as an able engineer officer. He had served as an attaché with the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War, seeing more of the operations than any other single foreign officer; and he had been an attaché in Germany early in the Great War, afterward becoming president of the War College in Washington. Aside from this equipment his untiring energy, his high spirits, and his personality fitted him for inculcating in a division confidence in itself and its leadership.
The 79th, with men from both sides of Mason and Dixon's line, united North and South in its ranks. Since its arrival from the States it had hardlyhad time to become acclimatized. In place of its own artillery, which was not yet equipped, it had not even a homogeneous artillery brigade. Of American artillery (aside from seventeen of the French batteries upon which we were relying so largely for our preliminary bombardment) it had three regiments, less six batteries, from the experienced 32nd Division, and one regiment from the 41st Division. Though the 79th had never been under fire before, though it had only training-camp experience, it was expected, after taking the first-line fortifications, to cover the most ground of any division on the first day, and though it did not have to fight its way through any important woods it was to proceed along the valley of the Montfaucon road, passing over formidable ridges which were under the observation of woods on either flank capable of concealing any amount of enemy artillery.
The ground of the Verdun battle—The Crown Prince's observatory—The Third Corps to move the right flank down the Meuse—Businesslike quality of the 4th Division—A marshy front and no roads—Swinging movement of the Blue Ridge Division—The Illinois Division to secure the right flank—Dominating heights east of the Meuse.
The ground of the Verdun battle—The Crown Prince's observatory—The Third Corps to move the right flank down the Meuse—Businesslike quality of the 4th Division—A marshy front and no roads—Swinging movement of the Blue Ridge Division—The Illinois Division to secure the right flank—Dominating heights east of the Meuse.
At this point let us consider the missions of the three corps. Liggett's First, with the 77th, 28th, and 35th Divisions, had the problem of the left flank, the conquest of the Argonne Forest, the valley of the Aire, and the heights of the eastern valley wall, which was so essential to supporting the movement of Cameron's Fifth Corps in the center. The Fifth, with the 91st, 37th, and 79th Divisions, was to make the bulge of the sweep toward the main crests of the whale-back. Its objective on the first day was the town of Montfaucon, whose whitish ruins on the distant hilltop pretty well commanded all the terrain on the corps front. Here the Crown Prince through his telescope, at the safe distance which was in keeping with the strong sense of self-preservation of the Hohenzollerns, had watched some of the attacks on Verdun.
This sector was near enough to the battleground of Verdun to have participated in some of the volume of shell-fire which had left no square yard of earth in No Man's Land, or for half a mile on either side of the trenches, untouched by explosions. The thicker the shell-craters, the more difficult it is to keep uniformity of movement. They are useful for cover for a halted charge, but for a charge that is intended to go through, as ours was, they meant that troops must pick their way over unstable footing. In view of the possibilities of French counter-attacks the Germans had hardly been negligent in perfecting all their defenses during the Verdun battle.
The groups of woods south of Montfaucon and north and west of Avocourt was the heart of the German defense against the Fifth Corps. Against Cheppy Wood which covered Vauquois the French, in 1915 when small offensives were still the rule, had made many attacks in order to gain the dominating position of Vauquois; and later, in the Verdun battle and subsequent offensive operations by the French, the Germans had used the woods as shelter for reserves, which drew persistent shell-fire of large caliber from the French. A thick second growth had sprouted up around the shell-craters and broken timbers, which afforded concealment to the enemy and confused any platoon or company commanderin keeping his men together and in touch with the platoon or company on either flank.
The assignment of such an ambitious objective to these three divisions required an abounding faith in their manhood, initiative, and training upon the part of an audacious command. I may add that before the attack the Germans had taken one prisoner from the 79th Division, which they thus identified; they did not know of the presence of the other two divisions. As the 79th had never been in line before, they were warranted in thinking that a green division could be there for no other purpose than the usual trench training which we had systematically given all our divisions before they went into serious action. When the 79th came rushing on toward Montfaucon on the morning of the 26th, the enemy's surprise was warranted by all their canons of military experience.
The Third Corps on the right flank, with its right on the Meuse River, had in a broad sense the same mission as the First in supporting the main drive toward the whale-back by the Fifth. On its left inliaisonwith the 79th was the 4th, the only regular division in the attack, under Major-General John L. Hines, whose ability was later rewarded by a corps command. Regular divisions had a certain advantage in the assignment of experienced professional officers and in the confidence of the staff inthe value of regular traditions which must be maintained. Though in detached units, the 4th had had a thorough trial in the Marne counter-offensive of July 18th to 24th. Then it had been swung round, and as an intact division had taken over from the 42nd, after the heights of the Ourcq were gained, for the final pursuit to the Vesle, where it had a taste of shells, gas, and machine-gun fire in the "pocket" before it was relieved by the 77th and started for Saint-Mihiel. The 4th was a thoroughly regular and singularly efficient division, disinclined to advertisement, doing its duty systematically and unflinchingly.
At the outset of its advance it would have to cross marshy ground and the Forges Brook, from which the footbridges had naturally been removed by the enemy. On the left it was to keep up with the swift progress of the 79th, with its course dominated on the left by the Montfaucon heights, and on the right by the heights east of the Meuse—of which we shall hear much before the story of the Meuse-Argonne battle is told. There were wicked slopes and woods to be conquered. Indeed, its position on the right flank of the 79th confronted as stern and complex difficulties as that of the 37th on the left flank of the 79th.
On its right was the 80th Division under Major-General Adelbert Cronkhite, sturdy, thick-set, cutout of sandstone, who faced the world all four-square with his Blue Ridge men. The 80th had done well at the British front, and had been in reserve at Saint-Mihiel. Though it had its own divisional artillery and its units complete, this was its first experience in a drive through first-line fortifications for an extensive objective. If it had not so far to go as the 4th, its trying maneuver in swinging toward the Meuse included passing between the Juré and Forges Woods, which, unless cleared of the enemy, would enfilade its advance with machine-gun fire.
The 33rd Division, Illinois National Guard, had the extreme right. I have mentioned already the preparation which the 33rd had had in the August offensive with the British. Major-General George Bell was calm and suave, but a stalwart disciplinarian. Before leaving the States he had eliminated many officers who for temperament, physical disability, or other reasons appeared less serviceable abroad than at home. This enabled him to travel to France without excess baggage, and to arrive there with his organization knit together by a harmonious and spirited personnel. As for his men, they were from Illinois and of the Illinois National Guard, as you may learn in Cairo, Springfield, or Chicago, for Illinois had been one of the forward states in supporting its Guardsmen.
The 33rd was to swing up along the Meuse by noon of the first day, and to rest there as a pivot for the Third Corps,—a delicate operation. Its position was as picturesque as its record was various, in its service first with the British under the Australian Corps, then with a French, and later with an American Corps. If the war had lasted long enough the Illinois men might have been sent to serve on the Italian front, to complete their itinerary of military cosmopolitanism. At its back now was the Mort Homme, or Dead Man's Hill, whose mention in the communiqués during the Verdun fighting was frequent in the days when the world hung on the news of a few hundred yards gained or lost on the right or left bank of the Meuse. There under countering barrages from the quick-firers and the plowing by high explosive shells, Frenchman and German had groveled in the torn earth, mixed with blood and flesh, between the throes of hectic charges for advantage. The Germans won the hill, but eventually the French regained it. Then silence fell on the shambles where the unrecognizable dead rested, and above them rose not the red poppies of the poet's pictures, but weed and ragged grass from the edges of the shell-craters.
Such was the texture of the rising undulating carpet unrolled to the northeast over the battlefield of Verdun. In the foreground it was variegatedby the ruins of villages and those exclamation points of desolation, the limbless trees, which melted into its greenish-ashen sweep over the fort-crowned hills in the distance. Beyond them was the plain of the Woëvre; and beyond that was Germany. An occasional shell-burst showed that the volcano of war still simmered; its report was an echo of the crashing thunders of the past, which we were to awaken again in the valley of the Meuse.
The Meuse seemed only a larger Aire, asking its way sinuously in this broken country. As vision followed its course past the German trench system in front of the Mort Homme and past the area of destruction, it was arrested by the bald ridge of the Borne de Cornouiller, or Hill 378. Mark the name! It will have a sinister part in our battle. Ten of our divisions were to know its wrath without knowing its name. Higher than any of the Verdun forts, except Douaumont, and higher than the heights of the whale-back, it had been in the possession of the Germans since August, 1914. From its summit observers could give the targets to the countless guns hidden in the woods and ravines of its reverse slopes.
An offensive against frontal positions resembles the swinging open of double doors, with their hinges at the points where the first-line fortifications are broken. The farther the doors are swung, thegreater the danger of enemy pressure on the hinges, whose protection is the tactician's nightmare. In broadening his front of offensive operations by alternating attacks Marshal Foch may be said to have been opening several doors which were to become the alternately advancing panels of a screen.
The Fourth French Army was the left flank of our army in the Meuse-Argonne. As its left, and therefore the left of the whole Franco-American attack, was making only a slight advance at the start, it was little exposed. Our Third Corps had the right flank of the whole movement, the Meuse River being the hinge, with the swing toward the west bank of the Meuse, which bends westward toward the heights of the whale-back on the Corps front. This gave it a frontal command of the west bank, while it put the German trench system on the east bank in the right rear of our line of general movement. Though the Meuse was an unfordable stream, and we held the bridgeheads to prevent any infantry counter-attack, this could not prevent cross-fire upon us from artillery and even from machine-guns. As from the Mort Homme one had a visual comprehension of the mission of the Third Corps, which was more informing, not to say more thrilling, than the study of maps at Headquarters, the inevitable question came to mind as to what was beingdone for our protection on the east bank. The answer was that French artillery and infantry were to undertake "exploitation." This was a familiar word, which could not intimidate the artillery on the Borne de Cornouiller. Forces in exploitation on the flanks, however encouraging in battle plans, form an elastic term in application, dependent upon what sacrifices they will make in the thankless task of diverting the enemy's fire to themselves. With the heights of the Meuse commanding one flank and the heights of the whale-back commanding the other, the Third Corps was to operate in the Meuse trough as in the pit of an amphitheater, striving to fight its way up the seats under a plunging fire from the gallery.
Still, there was nothing else to be done. Someone had to take punishment on the flanks for the support of the drive on the center. The grueling which the Third Corps was to endure in advancing on one side of the trough of a river valley beyond the enemy line on the other was as certain to entail severe losses as was the mission of the First Corps against the Argonne Forest and down the valley of the Aire. The duty of all concerned, in an offensive which was organized in haste in the hope of winning a great prize by springing into the breach of opportunity, was not to hesitate in consideration of handicaps, but to minimize them as much as possiblein the initial plan, and then to strike in fullness of confidence and of all the power at our command. The strategy of the battle was daring in conception, and resolute in execution.