MAP NO. 6LINES REACHED BY GERMAN AND ALLIED OFFENSIVES 1918.
MAP NO. 6LINES REACHED BY GERMAN AND ALLIED OFFENSIVES 1918.
MAP NO. 6LINES REACHED BY GERMAN AND ALLIED OFFENSIVES 1918.
Second Corps Headquarters had been from the time of its organization in the British area. Neither division had served anywhere else than with the British. They had been isolated from the association of the American army in a world of their own within the British world. It was well that they should be there; that if we were to have divisions detached from our army some should be contributing their style of English to that spoken by English, Scotch, and Irish, by Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans.
On August 30th-September 1st the two fought side by side for the first time as divisions in the Ypres salient offensive. They advanced for the depth of a mile, the 27th until its outposts were on the famous Kemmel Hill which the German attacks had won in the preceding April, and the 30th taking the village of Voormezeele. They were now withdrawn and sent into training to digest the lessons of their first battle and to learn in practice maneuvers how to coöperate with tanks. After that post-graduate course they might be considered "shock" divisions, having the freshness of new troops plus an instructive experience. When they received their next order to move, they knew that they were to be used as such; they were going intoa "big fight."
Late in September they started across the old Somme battlefield, which the Germans had devastated in their retreat in the late winter of 1917 in face of the Anglo-French offensives. Here the results of war on the largest integral area in France were seen at their worst in a dismal, treeless landscape, pitted by the bursts of the countless shells fired in the Somme and Cambrai battles and the fighting in the period between them, and in the tidal wave of the great German offensive of March, 1918, which overflowed the desert of their making. The subsoil, having been mixed with the loam that once nourished succulent pasturage and rich fields of grain, now responded to sun and moisture in a subtropical growth of weeds and grass in a grizzly carpet, variegated by the gaping wounds in the earth of crumbling trench walls and great mine craters. Deserted tanks, and remnants of sheet-iron dugout roofs and of gun-carriages and caissons recalled as the débris of a dead world ghostly memories to all British soldiers, for at one time or another all had fought there, enduring the powers of destruction that made the wreckage.
Troops marching in this area, where man had at such labor and cost imitated the forces of earthquakes, volcanoes, and of chaos, found few billets.The villages were mostly level with the roads. Temporary buildings, with corrugated iron roofs and tar-paper walls, which would be called "shacks," had risen as the landmarks of pioneer hospitality. The two divisions marching toward the sound of guns through the silence where there was neither woman nor child living could people it with what reflections they chose on their way to battle.
They were attached to the Australian Corps, which was company to their taste. There were no better soldiers than the "Aussies." Our men liked them not only for this but for other qualities which have a man-to-man appeal when men from the ends of the earth meet. In the coming attack we were to have more intimate reasons for liking them: the reasons born of the gratitude which one brave man owes to another who does not hesitate at hell's door to come to his aid when he is hard pressed.
Beginning with the Anglo-French offensive on August 8th, the five divisions of the Australians in their "leap-frogging" advance—and they were very expert at "leap-frogging"—had not been out of line as a Corps until they had fought their way clear across the devastated region from the high-water mark of the German tidal wave of March to the point from which it had started. In the free stridewhich they had brought overseas from their island continent thousands of miles away, now guided by a veteran's wisdom and cunning, they had won back all they had fought for on these Somme fields with an enemy whose measure they had always taken—an enemy who they knew now could never fight on the offensive again. They had suffered for four years the fatigue, the shell-fire, the machine-gun fire, the gas, which our army was to know for a brief period of intensity. Long service and army discipline, accepted as a means to an end, had no more influence in making them militaristic than a course in boxing changes the anatomy of the kangaroo. They were ever the Australians.
Though the British had regained what they had lost in the spring, they were only back before the line to which Hindenburg had given his name, after he came with his Ludendorff from their victories in the east to prove that the western front was not necessarily the grave of German military reputations. German staff experts had chosen the ground which they had fortified at leisure behind their old Bapaume defenses during the winter of 1916-1917. German industry was then at its height, and German material was ample to carry out the plans for that elaborate system which was advertised by German propaganda as impregnable. In those days whenall offensives in the west had failed, many military experts were inclined to accept this view.
The portion of the Hindenburg line which the 27th and 30th Divisions were to attack had a distinctive character which might well relate its conquest to an action by such an integral force as our Second Corps, attached to another army. For six thousand yards the Saint-Quentin Canal, opened in Napoleon's time and used until the beginning of the war, runs in practically a straight line north and south under a ridge, whose crest, from the piling of the spoils of excavation, is almost as regular as an enormous parapet. The open canal being unfordable, this section, obviously inviting attack, was given particular attention in preparing the artificial defenses which the ground and the tunnel itself favored. The thickness of the earth over the stone arch was such that at no point had the largest caliber shell the slightest chance of successful penetration. In the tunnel, lighted by electricity, the number of reserves which could be accommodated was regulated by the extent of the wooden platforms laid across from wall to wall. It was said that there was room enough provided for a full division of infantry, which, while being entertained by moving pictures to while away idle hours, would be perfectly secure from any bombardment until such time as their services were required, when they hadprompt egress to their places assigned for a crisis through the openings to the reverse slope of the higher irregular crest in front. It was a most comfortable and adaptable arrangement, for which the French a century ago had done the spading.
On the crest in front of the tunnel, of course, none of the provisions in dugouts, traverses, strong points, and barbed wire of a thoroughgoing trench system was lacking. In front of this crest over which the main Hindenburg line ran, at a distance of a thousand yards, was another ridge, which formed the first or outpost line. Any troops who took this forward line must move down an apron in full view of the trenches of the main system, in range of its machine-guns and rifles, and under its observation for the direction of artillery fire, which of course had this apron accurately plotted. Between the two ridges, utilizing the ravines, sunken roads, and irregularities of ground, the Germans had deep communication trenches, which, with the passages out of the tunnel, further connected up the system in facilities for the swift utilization of their troops in making the most of all the details of natural and artificial advantage of a position which had on its flanks the unfordable canal. But the defenses had not been well kept up, partly as a result of the deterioration of German industry in digging, andmore largely because of Ludendorff's commitment to mobile warfare by his March offensive.
I recollect that the first news we had at Army Headquarters in the Meuse-Argonne of the progress of the Second Corps said that our troops and the Australians had surrounded a division of Germans. In view of what happened, this report now has a tragic mockery. The plan of the attack was made by the Australian Corps. The 30th Division was to be on the right; it went into position on the forward ridge, which in its sector was not as exposed as in that of the 27th. When the New Yorkers went into position, they faced the unpleasant fact that the British whom they relieved had not advanced beyond their own old outpost line. This meant that they must make a preliminary attack on September 27th in order to gain their assigned jumping-off place for the main attack on the 29th. Their daylight charge went home in gallant fashion, but, exposed, when they reached the crest, to machine-gun fire and to the blasts of artillery fire from behind the tunnel, they fought all day on the Knoll and among the ruins of the buildings of Gillemont and Quennemont farms. In and out of trenches, "mopping up" machine-gun nests only to have others reappear from sunken roads and subterranean passages which were said to lead back to the canal tunnel itself, they paid heavy casualtiesfor a persistence which left them that night and the next day hugging the slopes with the crest still unmastered.
It was not on the cards that the main attack, which was only one of a sequence in the general offensive movement, should be delayed on this account. What was to have been taken in a small bite must now be taken in a big bite. The first ridge would be rolled under in the mighty wave which was then to sweep down the apron and through the barbed wire and trenches up the slopes and over the crest of the main ridge and of the tunnel and on into the open country beyond. The fighting vigor of our Second Corps, nursed in training for such a purpose, was to be expended in one morning's tremendous effort; and at noon the 3rd and 5th Australian Divisions were to pass through our two divisions and to continue the advance with all possible speed on the heels of the broken enemy. For the American was not the only ambitious staff when it took to marking objectives on a map. Most ambitious of all was Marshal Foch. Our two divisions had all the "Don Acks," or divisional artillery, of the Australians, a total, with the Corps artillery, of 438 guns, or one for every forty feet of their front, to make their shields; and beside an array of British tanks the only American heavy tank unit in France. With the American divisions' artillerybrigades, which had never seen the British front, supporting other divisions in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, who shall say that there was not coöperation among the Allies?
The attack of the 30th Division on the right of the Corps line against the Hindenburg position, on the morning of September 29th, was a complete success—a clean drive through for two miles and a half to its objectives. If the division's flank was not exposed as the 27th's was, if it had relatively better ground to traverse, without the handicap of having to take its jumping-off place before it began its real advance, this in no wise detracts from the honor that these men of the Southern mountains, ninety-five per cent of whom were of Anglo-Saxon origin, did their forebears in fighting as a part of the British army. They won more Congressional Medals of Honor, the highest tribute our nation can pay any officer or man for gallantry in the field, than any other division. All that they did was in character with the best traditions of their grandfathers who had fought under Lee and Stonewall Jackson. They had named their division "Old Hickory" in honor of another Jackson who was a Southern hero; and hickory is hard, tough, and springy wood. Called "poor whites" by the heedless, they were rich in the qualities that count in battle. There were companies of them which weresixty per cent illiterate when they came to camp, which calls for thought on the part of the traveler in the "richest country in the world" who sees their faces at railroad stations or in their simple houses in the mountains.
Character and education, as we are not too often reminded, are not the same; and these men have character, which is sound in the warp and the woof, though it lacks frills and misses the motion pictures 'round the corner from the soda fountain. They were capable of education, too, not only in reading, writing, and arithmetic which they were taught in the schools established for them, but in military technique. What they learned they learned well. They did not think that any substitute "would do just as well" when it would not. If they were told to put out panels for the planes, they put them out, and in the way that they were told. Their discipline was in the devotion of the kind which kept the poorly fed, equipped, and clothed Southern armies resisting Northern power for four years, and the officers who led them were of a democracy which has its test in more than mere platitudes.
They believed in their officers, but maintained their attitude of self-respect, that individualism developed from their surroundings, which separated them by as wide a gulf from regiments drawn from the swarming streets of a great city as could wellexist in a country speaking a common tongue. With their drawling voices and romantic views, and their lean figures and clear eyes, it seemed to me that they gave a certain atmosphere of simple knightliness even to the processes of modern war. Their conscientious attention to all the details of instructions which taken together make the whole of battle efficiency, their accuracy of thought as accurate as their shooting, the confident hunter's zest with which they went straight at their foe, were contributing factors of more importance than any good fortune in their swift and positively brilliant advance through the defenses of one of the strongest positions on the western front. With surprisingly small losses, no day's work of any division of the American army deserves more praise than the Hickory's, both because of their own character and of that of their task. They did not think that they had done much. Their admiration was all for the British veterans on their right who had adroitly managed a crossing of the canal on rafts and had kept pace with their own movement.
The story of the 27th on the left, for the very reason that it was not the kind of success which moves the pencilings on schedule time on the map in keeping with staff plans, was to exhibit those qualities of the courage of individuals and groups in distress against odds, of which we stand in awe as thesupreme tribute to men as men in battle. The reports showed that all was going well at first. Under cover of foggy mist, which was most friendly in hiding the advance down the slope of both divisions, the 27th started off in the same admirable fashion as the 30th, following close behind its barrage. By noon not only was the 30th reported in Nauroy, beyond the canal, but troops of the 27th had been seen in Gouy and Le Catelet, practically one town, on the far side of the main ridge. Aviators later saw detachments of the Orions moving forward and Germans who were not convoys of prisoners moving in the opposite direction—a most suggestive spectacle. Divisional communications had been cut. The division staff could only wait on results, not knowing what orders to give. Such command as remained was with the leaders of the elements, theirliaisonbroken, which were fighting their hearts out. There could be no more doubt of the 27th's capability than of the fearful situation in which it was placed. The New York National Guard had been known as among the best state troops, having received liberal support, while its commander was a permanent officer on the state's pay-roll, who gave all his time to the organization. On the Mexican border it had won high praise. Later, when the New Yorkers were given an integral division in our army in the war with Germany, both in their trainingat home and in France and then in their fighting in the Ypres salient, they enhanced their reputation.
When I went over the field of the action of the 27th, I was struck with amazement at the results expected of them, and with awe as I visualized their effort, which like Pickett's charge owes its place in history not to the wisdom of generals but to valor—and that the valor of intelligence. While the British were to advance on the right of the 30th, they were not to succeed in advancing on the left of the 27th, where the canal, emerging from the tunnel's northern end, bends to the west, against the direction of the attack, across the Macquincourt valley, whose wall opposite the tunnel entrance has ravines and hillocks for cover. This area, covered with big shell-craters, sometimes half-filled in by other shell-bursts, included sections of communication trenches, machine-gun emplacements, dugouts, snarls of barbed wire, all in a chaotic disorder which had no system to the casual glance, except that every square yard of it was suited to desperate resistance by skilful soldiers. The 27th's left was to sweep across this valley over the ridge, and then throw out forces of exploitation for protection of its flank in face of the well-intrenched unfordable canal and the high ground behind it; after the canal tunnel had been taken, other forces were to swing north, while the British Third Corps, which had not been sent in afrontal attack against the open canal positions—over ground infinitely more difficult than at the other end of the tunnel,—was, with the aid of this support, to "join up." It could hardly be said of that plan, as of many others for swinging open the double doors against trench systems, that it even looked well on paper; but it was the plan adopted after thorough consideration by practical soldiers.
The Germans, of course, had information that an offensive was in preparation on this front, and that it would include the ridge over the canal tunnel. With their reserves in the tunnel ready, they would wait on its development before sending them to the point where they would do the most service. Anticipating their prevision, our command gave instructions that as we reached the openings in the tunnel they were to be guarded, thus preventing the egress of the Germans except as prisoners from their great dugout, in the same manner that trench dugouts were breached in an attack. That this could not be done in face of the numbers of the enemy emerging after our first wave had passed is not a criticism of the men who fought all day to do it.
The "get there" spirit which animated all our divisions was supreme in the men of the 27th. As they descended the slope, after sweeping over the forward ridge, their figures distinct as the smoke-screenand the fog lifted, the German artillery sent a curtain of shell-fire, which kept pace with their progress, through the curtain protecting them. Machine-guns from the high ground across the open canal were turned on their flank with increasing fire; and their own tanks, on which they relied so largely for protection, were to suffer severe casualties from accurate enemy defense. Each infantry unit had no thought except to keep on going. Every survivor had his face set toward the goal. The forces assigned to secure the openings in the tunnel and to "mop up," straggling over the uneven ground and raked by machine-gun fire, could not advance against the stubborn resistance developed by the enemy emerging from his hiding-places after our barrage had lifted. On the right the men of the 27th, striving to keep up with the 30th, drove into the main trench system about the ruined village of Bony, on the crest in front of the tunnel, and for all the accumulated effort of the enemy to throw them back from this vital hinge of his resistance, maintained their footing in a struggle that lasted all day. Passing over the northern end of the ridge, on the left, a battalion of the first wave, regardless of fire, reached the Le Catelet-Gouy villages, their final objective. It was their movement that the aeroplane observers had seen going in the opposite direction from German reserves coming into action. Thatbattalion had kept faith with the plan which required swift action to make the most of the initiative gained, before the enemy could mobilize for defense after the shock of the attack.
Naturally it had soon been apparent to the German command that there was no advance by the British Third Corps on the 27th's left up to the canal. Obviously this was the opening for reserves to frustrate the offensive. The German soldiers gradually losing morale as a whole were now to show their old form in one of those flashes of desperate counter-attack and resistance which was worthy of their regulation at its fiercest. It had always been characteristic of them that they fought best when they were winning; when the advantage was theirs. These veterans swarming out of the openings of the tunnel and up the Macquincourt valley on our exposed flank had their blood up. This was their Hindenburg line. They had been told that it was unassailable, and that any attack against it would break into confusion which would be their prey, an opportunity which was compensation for their retreats of the last month, arousing afresh their professional zeal in applying, in a field of a kind with which they were as familiar as prairie dogs with their warrens, all their skill in tactics of cunning infiltration under the support of their machine-guns. They were as old hounds who hadbeen having hard hunting of late with little success, and whose appetites were whetted by the sight of a quarry.
The report that we had an enemy division surrounded was probably founded on the observation of the counter-attacking parties of Germans observed between the battalion in Gouy and our main force. Wholly enveloped, the groups of this gallant unit—a Pickett's charge which had kept going until the remnants were swallowed up in the enemy's forces—could only surrender, when they saw gray uniforms on all sides, or, dodging from cover to cover, try to win their way back to their comrades. Other units, emerging into zones swept by unseen fire, sought any protection they could find. Others still tried to advance. "Mopping up" parties had to resist being "mopped up" themselves. The battle became a mêlée in front of the Hindenburg line; a free-for-all, in and out of burrows and craters; their general must trust his men to fight in the spirit in which he had trained them; and thus they did fight. Plunging machine-gun fire and hand-grenades sought out the wounded in folds of the ground and pits, while bullets whistled overhead. No platoon knew to a certainty what its neighbor was doing. Some bold man sprang out of shell-craters to seek close quarters or to try to reach a machine-gun, only to fall back dead into his companion's arms. Groupsfound that they were being slowly exterminated by scattering bullets, while any movement in any direction meant instant extermination. Always the spits of dust showed bullets coming in two directions—as ridge and valley wall looked down on them. The wonder is that they did not break into a panic. But that was not in the character of such men. On the contrary, they continued their efforts to advance. How many deeds of heroism, unseen by any observer, deserved Medals of Honor will never be known.
If ever the determined faces of sturdy men coming up in reserve were welcome, they were those of the Australians, as they appeared for their part of the program—which was to "leap-frog" our troops and carry on the advance: to find that they had hot work in prospect from the moment they passed the tape we had strung for our jumping-off line. Our battalion in Le Catelet having been effectively cut off, the battalion which had kept its footing in the Hindenburg line at Bony stayed on, mingled with the oncoming Australians, for that night and another day of fighting. The Australians who had passed through the 30th Division, on its objective at Nauroy, for a farther advance to the next village of Joncourt, were obliged to relinquish their gains in order to bend back their line diagonally to join up with the mixed Australians and New Yorkers atBony. The German hinge at that point was not to be broken until the next day; north of Bony the 27th's line that night slanted back, in order to face as far as possible the murderous fire on its exposed flank, to the outpost line from which they had been unable to advance. The 27th had suffered 4,000 casualties since September 27th. Now, as fast as units could be gathered and re-formed, it was withdrawn for reorganization, as was the 30th, leaving the Australians to finish the task. The fact that our Meuse-Argonne offensive had slowed down, and that at other points the progress of the general Allied movement was being stayed, may account, judging from German reports I have read, for a return of German staff confidence which was imparted to the German veterans, who, after their brilliant and savage use of their amazing opportunities against the 27th, kept up their resistance point by point for four days before the Australians had gained the complete objective set for the 27th on September 29th. It is never a pleasant task for any body of troops to have to do the work assigned to another; but the Australian staff had made the plan, and the "Aussies" accepted the legacy we had left with a spirit in keeping with their comradeship for the Americans. From our staff and our army, from the state of New York and our country, as well as from the men of the 27th,ever willing to give it with full hearts, they deserve the tribute due to their bravery and fellowship.
I may add that this was the Australians' last action. After thirteen months of continuous fighting they were sent into winter quarters. The men who had been out from home since 1914—and the Americans who were homesick after three months in France can imagine what this meant—were just starting on their first home leave when the armistice came. May the recollection of how they fought at our side in a war to end war keep the friendship of the two peoples secure.
On the night of October 5th the 30th Division, which had suffered far less than the 27th, relieved the Australians. The job was finished; on this part as on the rest of the British front, the once glorious Hindenburg line was left behind, suddenly become a somewhat frowsy irrelevance of deserted trenches, dugouts, shell-craters, and tangles of barbed wire. With its passing one knew that, for the northern half of the front, there was no question of stopping; careful, methodical planning, mindful of the necessary vigorous thrusts at the key positions of railway centers and canal and river defenses, would irresistibly sweep the enemy back to the Meuse line, while the slower movement "down below"—as the French and Americanfronts seemed from the north—would question his ability to stand even there.
Not that there was to be any spectacular rush about the movement, though one looked expectantly at the fitness of the British cavalry, which was always kept ready; the German staff could be expected to handle itself in this its most serious emergency. The spectacular and amazing thing was the steady, unruffled forward movement of millions of men, glacier-like in its assuredness. The temper of victory revealed itself in the eyes and bearing of the men who had waited four years, and who now saw Ypres disengaged, Lille on the point of recovery, Lens, Cambrai, Saint-Quentin restored to France. Americans might feel out of place in the midst of rejoicings, the depth of which they could not measure because they had not known the suffering which had gone before.
The Second Corps was now to take part in the advance of one French and three British armies which, by November 1st, was to expand until the whole line from the sea to the Argonne was in motion. From north of Cambrai to south of Saint-Quentin the line was to reach its apex before Le Cateau in the attack of October 8th-10th; on the 14th the Franco-Belgian and British attack north of Lille was to start bringing the line up to this level; from the 17th to the 25th the southern British andFrench armies would again take up the offensive to the gates of Valenciennes, while the French armies "around the corner" on the right would have passed over the Saint-Gobain bastion and straightened out the corner.
The plan of the advances in which the Second Corps took part was simple. The enemy had none but hastily organized defenses, and if he were pushed hard enough he would go. So the artillery was to be moved as far forward as possible to give the necessary protection to the infantry; the attack would start all along the thirty-mile front for generous objectives, and could be expected to go fairly well for two or three days, when stubborn resistance at various points would make it necessary to halt the advance until supplies were brought up and the resistance overcome in another general effort. The artillery declared that this was getting to be too much of an infantry war, nothing counting except keeping up with their giddy romp across fields. The infantry might have replied that they were pushing on so fast in order to keep the Germans from destroying the roads and light railways which the artillery and transport would be using. Not that I wish to imply that the infantry found it a giddy romp; there were always the machine-guns and the front-line artillery batteries, and, especially on the first day of the attack, a considerable quantityof "h-vic" shells, as they were called on the British front, from the large-calibre guns which were protecting the withdrawal of field-guns and material.
There was no question, however, of the withdrawal. When the 30th Division, after two days of waiting on the two miles of Corps front which the Australians had handed over, started forward on October 8th along the south edge of the Roman Road to Le Cateau, it was able to cover three miles by noon, taking the fair-sized towns of Brancourt and Prémont, and a number of solid farmhouses and small copses, on the way. Enough guns were moved up over virtually undamaged roads to permit another start at dawn on the 9th; and the end of that day found the Southerners four miles farther on and in possession of the important railway center and large town of Busigny, which the enemy had relinquished practically without a struggle. Another mile was gained on the 10th, and the division line brought to the Selle river, which was not much of a river in the eyes of the Americans, but on which the enemy had obviously intended to call a halt. The railway yards in front of Le Cateau, in the sector of the Thirteenth British Corps on the left, gave violent resistance to any further progress on that side; the rearward movement of enemy field-guns had apparently stopped, to judge from the quantity of shell-fire and gas which now came over;and worried intelligence officers were doing their best to decipher the mystery of prisoners from eleven German divisions who had been taken on the two-mile front. Incidentally, it should be said that the Southerners had gathered in 1,900 Germans in three days, which was more than their share of the total of 12,000 prisoners captured by the three British armies.
One who knew the dreary waste of the Somme battlefield, or indeed the level ruins of any part of the old trench line, might well rub his eyes when he came into this fresh landscape, where the Southerners seemed as much at home as if they had never seen mountains. One had forgotten, it seemed as if one had never known, that you could have war in a country where women and children walked about the streets, and lived in intact houses, and even went to shop, to school, and to mass. A Corps officer who had worked with Hoover in Belgium found a familiar task in distributing food to the four thousand civilians in the sector.
Sterner fighting was to follow from October 17th for the weakened divisions, which had received no replacements to bring them up from half strength, and which could therefore, together, take over little more than a mile of front. Starting from the Selle river south of Le Cateau, they met a stubborn resistance until the stand made by the enemy in that town,which had seen a fierce British resistance in 1914 in the retreat from Mons, was overcome by the Thirteenth British Corps; then our Southerners and New Yorkers, having advanced four miles in three days, were relieved and sent back to the dreary Somme fields east of Amiens. Had it been necessary to fight a way into Germany, they would probably have been called on again for their manly share.
As it was, they were the only American troops, aside from scattered units, which were not to be gathered into the fold of the main American forces. That this isolation did not please them is understandable; but I suspect that it was good for them. There could not be the exaggeration of their part in the final victory which there might have been if they had had American food and had seen none but American activity about them. If officially the British made much of them, they realized that it was not only for what they had done but in honor of the country which had sent them forth to fight for the common cause.
The race-horse division in another spearhead action—Regulars and Marines—A division that had learned coördination—Trying for Blanc-Mont—One attack that cost nothing—An exhausted division reinforced by the new Southwestern division—Which keeps up with the Marines—The 36th learns fast—And pursues the enemy to the Aisne.
The race-horse division in another spearhead action—Regulars and Marines—A division that had learned coördination—Trying for Blanc-Mont—One attack that cost nothing—An exhausted division reinforced by the new Southwestern division—Which keeps up with the Marines—The 36th learns fast—And pursues the enemy to the Aisne.
Ever the demand from all parts of the Allied line was for American troops. Their speed in attack had become a recognized factor in the plans of the unified command, which moved them about with an inconsiderate rapidity which was hard on shoe-leather and most uncomfortable. The very sight of the soldiers of our young army moving into a sector of their line before an action quickened the spirits of the veterans of the old armies.
If Sir Douglas Haig had two American divisions for storming the Hindenburg line, then General Gouraud, whose Fourth Army had broken the trench line for gains west of the Argonne Forest, in conjunction with our advance between the Forest and the Meuse, must have two divisions for the next step in the general offensive movement which was to disengage Rheims, in a drive northwardfrom Somme-Py to the Aisne. These two included the 2nd, Marines and Regulars, the race-horse division, which had the longest experience in France of any regular division except the pioneers of the 1st. Our sore need of its veteran skill in the Meuse-Argonne had to yield to an urgent request, which amounted to a command, from higher authority. Naturally, the 2nd would have preferred being with our own army; but wherever it was it would fight well. It was to add to its laurels now in the rolling country of Champagne, where the deep strata of chalk under the light subsoil formed solid walls for defenses, accrued through four years of digging, as distinct on the background of the landscape as the white tape on a tennis court or the base-lines on a baseball diamond. Soldiers in blue or khaki, after fighting in this region in rainy weather, looked like men who had just come from work in a flour-mill, where they had been wrestling with the splashing mill-wheel. It was a custom to rub helmets with the chalk of parapets for the sake of invisibility.
The action in which the 2nd was again, as on July 18th, to play the part of the spearhead was to cut the Rheims salient by thrusts on the sides, much as one would push in the roofless walls of a house on a man within, which is much more reasonable than trying to break up through the floor to get at him. The third German offensive of May had allbut encircled Rheims from the west; had the last and unsuccessful offensive attained its end of a deep advance east of the city, Rheims would have been far behind the enemy's line. As it was, heroic resistance had saved the city, at the price of leaving it for four months in a salient as pronounced and as dangerous as the Ypres salient, which must be reversed and then broken. The reversal which would put the enemy in turn into a salient was started west of Rheims, on September 30th, by General Berthelot's Fifth Army; in a three days' advance his line, pivoting on the city, swung up from an east-west direction to a northwest-southeast direction, effectively turning the salient inside out. The line now ran for some twenty miles southeast past the edge of Rheims, turned east through Champagne for another fifteen miles to Aubérive, and then, as a result of General Gouraud's advances from September 26th, turned northeast to the northern end of the Argonne. A simultaneous attack by Berthelot, on the west face of this flat arc with a thirty-mile chord, and by Gouraud on the east face, would send the enemy scurrying back to a maximum depth of twenty-five miles to the line of the Aisne river, which here runs roughly east and west.
From just north of Somme-Py, in the center of the up-slanting east face of the salient, the 2nd Division, attached with French divisions to theTwenty-first Corps, was to strike over chalk ridges and through woods northwest toward Machault. The attack was first set for October 2nd, but was postponed while the division spent this day in cleaning German recalcitrants out of a portion of the trench system taken over from a French division which had captured it. The Corps orders for the attack were then issued so late that there was not time to have them translated and written out, as the custom was, for the sake of accuracy which was considered indispensable to the team-play of units; but they had to be sent orally to our two brigades.
In the center of the field of attack was the Vipère Wood, which was known to hold many machine-gun nests. By a converging movement the Marine brigade was to pass this wood on the left, and the Regular brigade to pass it on the right in flank, and form line beyond it,—which was not a mission a general would assign to tyros who had not yet learned to maintain theliaisonof their units in difficult fighting. In order to go into position, the Regular brigade had a night march around the rear of the line. Happily the men of the 2nd Division had had experience of this sort of thing. They had gone in on the run at Château-Thierry, and again in the crucial drive at Soissons on July 18th. It had been said that they did things best in a hurry, which may have led to their being relied on as "hit-and-run"-experts;nevertheless they had an idea of their own that if they might have moved into line and looked over the ground a few hours before going into an attack, instead of charging when they were breathless from sprinting, they might have done equally well with slightly less nerve strain.
As the French guides who were to meet the Regular brigade at dark and show it the way did not appear, which was a common failing with guides, the brigade had to grope about among shell-craters and communication trenches to find its jumping-off place, which was still partly occupied by the enemy. By 5A.M.only six companies were in position; but by 5.50, the hour for attack, thanks to the owl's eyes and instinct of direction which seemed to be a part of the equipment of the 2nd, every company was up in order, ready for the charge. With tanks assisting against its machine-gun nests, they swept past the Vipère Wood. A loss of twenty per cent of their infantry did not interfere with their reaching their two-mile objective on schedule time at 8.30.
The race-horse proclivities of the 2nd, having been developed on no level speedway but over all the hurdles of modern defense against all arms of fire, were accentuated by the rivalry of the Regular and Marine brigades. The Marine was the better brigade of the two. All the Marines say so. I agree with them. The Regular brigade was alsothe better. All the Regulars say so. I agree with them. If the Marines were up to their objective, the Regulars must be; and if the Regulars were up the Marines must be, or die in the attempt. No ifs, or buts, or excuses of any kind except casualties were ever accepted in the 2nd for not advancing. And you must not lose life unskillfully, or your brigade might be convicted of not being as professional as the other,—and that would be a disgrace. The 2nd had been fortunate in its commanders. Major-General Harbord, a Regular, had leaned backward toward the Marines; and Major-General Lejeune, a Marine officer, who was now in command, leaned backward toward the Regulars. They were wise men, occupied with making the 2nd the "best" division in the army.
Despite the trouble it met on the way from cross-fire and machine-gun nests in the Somme-Py Wood, the Marine brigade was also up on schedule time at 8.30. The two brigades had not been thinking much of their flanks; they were concerned in racing each other. While either considered the other incapable of its own stride, neither thought that any brigade in the world except itself could keep pace with the other. They were not surprised to find that the French were not up on their flanks; and the fact that the French were not, interfered with the success of another advance planned for 11A.M.,unless the 2nd were to drive into a salient which increasing machine-gun fire indicated as an unprofessional effort,—suicide not being professional with the 2nd unless one brigade should make it a custom which the other would have to follow.
Though the French on the right might hold up their end in a further attack before noon, there was no chance that the French on the left could: with the Marine front line more than two miles in advance, the French were still occupied in trying to conquer the sinuous warrens of the Essen trench, which was acting an assassin's part in the rear of the Marines. Indeed, the Germans were counter-attacking, further intensifying the seriousness of the situation. The reserve regiment of Marines had other work to do than assisting the front-line regiment in a further advance. While its men, in helping the French division, were breaching dugouts, using their bayonets, throwing and dodging bombs as they rushed around traverses and met counter-rushes in an infernal hand-to-hand wrestle, and sending out chalk-plastered Germans in torn uniforms to join the groups of prisoners and wounded coming from the front, Marshal Foch sent a telegram of congratulation to the Corps, with word to press the advance.
At 4P.M., when the reserve regiment of the Marines had finished its task in applying in savagehand-to-hand fighting, characteristic of the old days before open warfare became the rule, all its training in trench warfare, an order was given to obey that of the Marshal; but it hardly concerned the front regiment of Marines, which was without the support of the reserve regiment, while the retarded French on the flank, still fighting hard for their gains, were well to the rear. The reserve regiment of the Regulars, passing through the front regiment, made three-quarters of a mile, where it met machine-gun fire from both flanks. At 7.30, the French on the left having made progress, the reserve regiment of Marines, passing through the front regiment, made another hard-won gain against flanking fire, and in the darkness had to repulse two counter-attacks.
It had been a great day even for the 2nd Division, with four miles of advance and a toll of two thousand prisoners; a day of systematic and masterly fighting which had added to its list of honors that of forcing the Germans forever out of the deep maze of the Champagne trenches. The trucks and the rolling kitchens as well as the artillery, which had never been far behind the infantry, were up that night; and the ambulances, in keeping with the race-horse spirit, running close up to the front, had made a record in their expeditious care of the wounded, who had been gathered with a promptness, in thefields under fire, worthy of a show drill at maneuvers. For if we had any division which knew how, and had reasons of long service for knowing how, to coördinate all its branches in action, it was the division which had learned its lessons in the taking of Belleau Wood, Vaux, and Vauxcastille.
It need not be said that the program was to continue the advance the next day; but the Germans had been preparing overnight to impede its fulfillment with something of the same ferocity they had shown in the Essen trench. As usual in these days, after the Allied attack had spent its initial momentum in breaking them out of their fortifications, the Germans reacted by applying open warfare tactics on a second line of resistance. While the French were striving to come up on both flanks, the whole line was being deluged with shells and machine-gun fire. On the afternoon of the first day, the Marines by their customarily swift tactics had taken a portion of Blanc-Mont—the adjective being used before the name, contrary to modern French fashion—a hill which ran back in an irregular shelf covered by patches of sparse woods. Well-made trenches, dugouts, and communicating trenches so easily dug and kept up in the firm chalk, were evidence of the German's appreciation of the hill's importance in the defense of their positions east of Rheims.
A congeries of machine-gun nests on its west slope, which was still untaken, by its enfilade fire from our sector had stopped the advance of the French on the left. Without waiting for them, and with a view to clearing the way for them, the Marines on the afternoon of the 4th, supported by their artillery, attacked this position. They tested out its strength well enough, in face of withering blasts, to learn that they must devise another plan of assault. This was a wise precaution, as the event was to prove. They spent the night in tireless and canny preparations for the next day's effort. Early in the morning a battalion started over the ridge. They did not want for shields; and their confidence in the accuracy of their veteran artillery led them to keep close behind the smothering fire of the barrage with a speed and agility in the systematic advance of their units which made a record even for the race-horse division. The German machine-gunners, as they saw that hurricane of bursting shells approaching, rushed to cover, which they hugged in desperate and prayerful intimacy as it passed over them. They rose, to find that a human whirlwind in its train was upon them. Without a single casualty the battalion had taken 213 prisoners and 75 machine-guns. The thing seemed miraculous; but there were the machine-guns, and there were the startled Germans who had thrown up theirhands. When I went over the ground, still littered with equipment and scattered cartridge cases, that commanded every avenue of approach, I had an example which might well be quoted in all future text-books of how speed and skill may get "the jump" on an enemy. Here was certainly something, not to tell the Marines, but for the Marines to tell those Regulars, who, holding a large section of the line, could respond that though they had no theatrical exhibits to please the gallery gods they were having an affair of their own which might make any Marine thankful for his health's sake that he was climbing hills.
On the right of the Regular brigade the French had not yet taken Médéah farm, which was a perfect haven for machine-guns bearing on the Regulars' flank. The Germans, in this section, were fighting hard enough to atone for the easy surrender of their comrades on Blanc-Mont in their defense of the ridges in front of the village of Saint-Etienne-à-Arnes, the next landmark in the path of the 2nd's progress. The Marines found a thorn in the flesh in a strong point near Blanc-Mont, whose defenders refused to be stampeded. Enemy artillery fire was furious throughout the 5th. On the morning of the 6th, at 6.30, under another hurricane barrage, a regiment of Regulars and one of Marines side by side set out to take the last ridge before Saint-Etienne.This meant that something had to break. It was one of the occasions when professional spirit did not consider the folly of suicide, as the rival units charged side by side. They took the ridge with a loss that was estimated at thirty per cent, and dug in. The French on the left had forged ahead. Meanwhile, with the French on the right valiantly struggling against Médéah farm, and our Regulars checked, our line was at a sharp angle.
It had been a grueling day for a division which notably never spared itself in its high-strung intensity; and four or five days seem to have been the limit of endurance for soldiers who were continuously fighting. Relief for the 2nd was due. On the night of the 6th the 36th Division, National Guard of Texas and Oklahoma, under command of Major-General William R. Smith, which was lately from home and had never been under fire before, began arriving. Its fresh and inexperienced battalions were now mixed with the tired battalions of the 2nd to learn the art of war at first hand from old masters, who included not only their comrades of the Regulars and Marines but the Germans in a very ugly mood. After a day of reorganizing and digging, while the French were in the outskirts of Saint-Etienne, the Marines on the left and a regiment of the 36th on the right charged Saint-Etienne on the morning of the 8th. The Frenchwere reported to have patrols in the town, but a portion of it at least seemed to be very much in the hands of the enemy. At least his machine-gunners, in the course of their supple infiltrations, had established themselves in the adjoining cemetery, which gave them a free sweep of fire across the ground of our advance, which was open fields without any more cover than a house floor. For half a kilometer the men of the 36th kept their line even with the veterans. The Marines entered the town while the men of the 36th were still in the open.
It was the Southwesterners' first taste of machine-gun nests. They had no standards of previous experience for judgment as to the density of fire which would warrant a halt. Their orders were to keep on going; and they kept on. In front of them, as they crossed the open, was a wooded ravine. Our guns could not bombard it with any appreciable effect upon its nests, which were sending a tornado of bullets into the 36th's charge in addition to the shower of shells from the German guns. The Southwesterners who were meeting both bullets and shells for the first time did not fall back before this deadly combination of artillery and machine-gun fire, which would have dismayed hardened veterans at their best, until they had kept faith with Alamo traditions by losing a third of their numbers.
The 2nd's engineers now came up for a fightingpart in protecting our hard-pressed flanks. We withdrew our front to the town, which we held. Meanwhile, though the French had taken Médéah farm, the division's right was still well back of the line of Saint-Etienne. All day of the 9th was spent in re-forming our position after the see-sawing conflict of the 8th; but the Germans, far from showing any signs of withdrawal, made a counter-attack on the French beyond Médéah farm and on our Regulars, who repulsed it with their rifle fire.
The race-horse division, which had been hurried from the mud of the Saint-Mihiel sector without time to rest, had been doing a steeple-chase for nine days. Physical exhaustion claimed it for its own. As it withdrew, with casualties of 4,771 and the capture of 1,963 prisoners from eight German divisions, the Regulars and Marines and the French of the Twenty-first Corps had the satisfaction of knowing that German guns had fired their last shot at the cathedral and the ruins of the city of Rheims.
The Texans and Oklahomans who now took up the battle were assigned the tired artillery of the 2nd, as they had no guns of their own. They lacked horses, transport, and nearly everything a division should have, except rifles, which were in the hands of men who knew how to use them. On the morning of the 10th their reconnaissance in force showed that the enemy artillery and machine-gun fire wasas powerful as ever. It was hardly in the books that an inexperienced division should begin a movement in the dark; but the French being ready to advance on the left, the 36th began an attack that evening.
The Germans, already preparing for retreat, still had large forces of field artillery in range. Evidently they were determined to take revenge on these new troops by expending in the rapid fire of a prolonged bombardment all they could of their ammunition, instead of leaving it behind to be captured. The accurate and moving sheet of death which was laid down upon the advancing infantry of the 36th was the kind from which men will withdraw in the sheer instinct of self-preservation. Indeed, a panic would have been excusable. But the lean tall Texans and Oklahomans had not come all the way from home to be in a battle at last with any idea of celebrating the occasion, or gratifying the Germans, by a retreat, because of a display of fireworks. Among the leaping flashes in the dark, with voices unheard and men revealed for an instant in shadowy outline, with officers who had the direction of units being killed and wounded, with gaps being torn in the line, there was bound to be some disorganization. But there was no faltering. The Texans and Oklahomans are not by nature panicky. They accepted stoically this screaming tumult of destruction. Particularlyit was not the nature of the Indians among them to be distracted by a "heap big noise." Officers agreed that there was no problem except that of keeping units together. All the men wanted was to "get back" at the German, straight into his barrage. Pressing on as they closed up their gaps, the charging groups with the bit in their teeth took the village of Machault.
The enemy resistance had suddenly broken. After this final spasm of splenetic reprisal, all the German guns were moving fast toward the Aisne. The Texans and Oklahomans did not waste much time over the machine-gunners who attempted a rearguard action, but "hiked" ahead for fifteen miles in a single day, as a reminder to the 2nd, which had considered them "tenderfeet," that in the matter of long-distance racing they yielded the honor to nobody. Bridges destroyed, machine-gun nests established on the north of the river, the German served notice that he was to make another stand. The Texans and Oklahomans enjoyed themselves in swimming across on scouting trips and in a period of active sniping gratifying to ranger inheritance. The last day they were in line they completed their brief service by cleaning up Forest farm, east of Attigny, in an uninterrupted rush which gave them the opportunity to make the most of their qualities, and in ejecting the enemy from a bend in the riverwhich he still held. Their casualties were 2,651, and they had taken 813 prisoners and an engineer depot worth ten millions of dollars, which had supplied that section of the German line for four years. It was their only battle, but they had fought it in a way to make the most of it, in attest to the enemy of what might be expected of such a new division, if, fully equipped, it should take to the war-path again.
Skill essential to break the heights east of the Aire—The "per schedule" 1st Division—The much-used 32nd Division—A combined frontal attack on October 4th—A thin wedge to Fléville on the Aire—Which is broadened to the east the next day.
Skill essential to break the heights east of the Aire—The "per schedule" 1st Division—The much-used 32nd Division—A combined frontal attack on October 4th—A thin wedge to Fléville on the Aire—Which is broadened to the east the next day.
After this diversion to the accounts of divisions detached for other offensives, we return now to our own battle in the Meuse-Argonne, where we had learned to our cost in the two last days of September that no nibbling attacks at the close of a drive that had spent its momentum would serve our purpose against the gathering power of the enemy. There was no abatement in our industry as we rested our weary divisions still in line, replaced exhausted with fresh divisions, brought up fresh material, improved our road facilities, and tightened our organization during the temporary deadlock of furious nagging under incessant fire at the front.