XVIMASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH

MAP NO. 7IN THE TROUGH OF THE AIRE.

All thought centered, every finger moving about a map eventually came to rest, on the bastion of the heights to the east of the Aire river. To the west its fire swept across the river trough, where the Pennsylvanians of the 28th Division were in a vise, to the Forest where the New York City menof the 77th were held fast in their tracks; southwest and south it looked down upon Exermont ravine and the ground which the Missourians and Kansans had had to yield after the charges that had taken the last of their strength, leaving the 28th's flank in the trough further exposed; southeast upon Gesnes and Cierges, where the battalions of the Pacific Coast men of the 91st and the Ohio men of the 37th in their weariness had been stopped by its blasts; and to the east on the valley north of Montfaucon, where the Eastern Coast men of the 79th had expended the last of their reserves against the Ogons Wood, and beyond upon the stalwart 4th, which was also being shelled by the batteries across the Meuse, whose bank the Illinois men of the 33rd were holding.

This mighty outpost locked the door to all the approaches to the whale-back. There was no use of puttering with Fabian tactics; it could be taken only by a spearhead drive. Though salients are the bane of generals, the only thing to do in this case was to make a salient. For this we must have troops of the mettle of Pickett's charge and the charge at Cold Harbor, whose courage would hesitate at no sacrifice, and whose skill and thrift would win victory with their sacrifice.

Our 1st was our pioneer division in France. Ithad fired our first shot in the war; had fought the first American offensive at Cantigny; had driven through with the loss of half its infantry to the heights of Soissons in turning the tide against the Germans; and in its swift and faultless maneuver in the Saint-Mihiel operation it had joined hands with the 26th Division to close the salient. Being a proved "shock" division, too valuable to be kept in a stationary line when another offensive was in preparation, it was immediately withdrawn from Saint-Mihiel and sent to the Meuse-Argonne area, where its presence in reserve was a consoling thought. At first the Army command considered expending it in a sweep up the east bank of the Meuse to take the heights which were raking our Third Corps with flanking artillery fire; and later considered using it to follow through the center, after the taking of Montfaucon, in a direct thrust at the whale-back. These missions had to yield to the more pressing one, which stopped all traffic to make way for its rapid march around the rear of the line on September 30th to take the place of the 35th in face of these monstrous heights.

This division wasted little time and few words on sentiment. The hardships of war had become a matter of course to its survivors. Recruits who filled the gaps from death, as they were rapidly inculcated into its standards, absorbed the professionalspirit. "You belong to the 1st, Buddy. And this is the way we do things in the 1st"—was the mandate of initiation into a proud company, which was facing its second winter in France. The only way to escape another winter in France was to win the war; and the way to win the war was by hard fighting. The regular field officers had been trained in a severe school; five out of six of the company officers were reservists. It was one of these young lieutenants, later killed in action, who characterized the views of the division when he said: "This is a mean and nasty kind of war, but it's the only war we've got, and I hope it's the last we'll ever have. The right way to fight it is to be just as mean and nasty, and just as much on the job, as the mean and nasty Boche."

In command was Major-General Charles P. Summerall, who had led the 1st in the drive to Soissons. He is a leader compounded of all kinds of fighting qualities, a crusader and a calculating tactician, who, some say, can be as gentle as a sweet-natured chaplain, while others say that he is nothing but brimstone and ruthless determination. "As per schedule" are the first words of his divisional report, which is as brief and cold prose as I have seen, describing as hot action as I have ever known. He might be called "per schedule" Summerall, and the 1st the "per schedule" division.

Another veteran division was to form the right side of the wedge: the 32nd, National Guard of Michigan and Wisconsin, under Major-General William G. Haan, a leader whose fatherly direction and "flare" communicated team-play and enthusiasm which an iron will could drive to its limit in battle. Iron was needed now: the iron of the spearhead, which would not blunt. The 32nd knew open warfare from its storming of the heights of the Ourcq in the Château-Thierry operations; and working its way over trench warrens from its three days' fighting as a division attached to Mangin's Army in the Juvigny operation north of Soissons. Sent from its first hard battle to its second without time for rest or replacements, it marched away from Juvigny, after losses of seven thousand six hundred men in the two battles, with half its requisite number of infantry officers and its infantry companies reduced to one hundred men. When it went into camp at Joinville, it had eight days, hardly enough to recuperate from its exhaustion, in which to train in its veteran ways five thousand replacements, before, with only two hundred men to the company—and half recruits, be it remembered,—and with each company short three officers, it was started for the Meuse-Argonne area. But it was considered—it must be considered—veteran by the Army command for this emergency, whichwas to give it a front of three miles in the place of the relieved 37th and 91st Divisions. The Arrow division, as it was called, which had twice pierced the German line, was to pierce it a third time before it was withdrawn again.

In comparison with the 32nd, the 1st was at the top of its form. It had not had heavy losses since its Soissons drive of July 18th-22nd. The two months' training of the replacements which it had then received included its experience in the Saint-Mihiel operation, which had been instructive without leaving many gaps in its ranks. On the 1st's front were the 5th Guard and 52nd German Divisions, which had come fresh into line. So veterans met veterans. The character of the opposition which the Missourians and Kansans of the 35th, whom the 1st had relieved, had faced, may be judged by the fact that for the four days in line before it advanced the 1st had daily average casualties of five hundred, while its men were hugging their fox-holes, readjusting their line, and throwing out patrols to gain information of service in the coming attack.

Immediately ahead of it was the Montrebeau Wood, which the Germans had been fortifying since they recovered it from the 35th; beyond that the deep broad Exermont ravine, guarded in the center by the Montrefagne, or Hill 240, with its crestcrowned by woods which covered its slopes almost to the edge of the ravine. This was only the highest of the series of hills which extended west to east from the Aire valley across the sector of the 32nd. When the first series was taken, other hills still higher commanded the valleys and reverse slopes beyond, in a witchery of irregularities which had their culmination in a final congeries of wooded hills in front of the Kriemhilde Stellung of the whale-back, some six miles beyond the 1st's line of departure. Every open space was covered by interlocking machine-gun nests supported by artillery concentrations. Ravines were corridors for the sweep of fire; or if they gave cover their ends were sealed by fire. With its left moving along the eastern wall of the Aire, its flank naked to the fire from the western wall, the 1st was to drive a human wedge over these hills in order to gain one of the two sides of the trough, whose interlocking and plunging fire, as we have seen, had stayed the First Corps in the trough and in the Forest. Of course, the 1st would "go through" at the start. Its own record and standards compelled it to go through. It would make the wedge. What would be the result after the wedge was made? Unless the point of the wedge were protected by a spreading movement at its base, it would be crushed by pressure from both sides. Here the part of the 32nd became vital ingaining the hills on its front, which, remaining in the enemy's hands, would threaten the right of the 1st with a fire interlocking with that from the western wall of the Aire. In the valley of the Aire, of course, the Pennsylvanians of the 28th were to try to advance under cover of the 1st's thrust. If they were checked, and the 32nd were also checked, the Germans would not be slow to see or to improve their opportunity to force a repetition of the bloody result of Pickett's charge and of the assault at Cold Harbor.

The 1st and the 32nd were not the only veterans attacking on October 4th. There was to be an offensive along our whole line to engage the enemy at every point to support the prime object of making the wedge. The 1st started for its objectives at the same hour, daylight, as the other divisions. Its left overran the Germans of the 5th Guard Division in Montrebeau Wood, and swept down into the Exermont ravine. There the groups of dead of the 35th, killed by shell-bursts, gave warning against "bunching" that the men of the 1st took to heart. They did not move forward in dense formation, but in thin swift lines offering the enemy few targets, and those briefly. Orders were simple; responsibility direct and ruthlessly delegated. Company leaders knew what to do against machine-gunnests, and they did it, thanks to the fresh vigor and thorough training of the men.

MAP NO. 8THE APPROACH OF THE CENTER TO THE WHALE-BACK.

Quivering under the blows of the hammer of command and determination, the left was driven three miles that day, against fire from three directions manipulated by the cleverly conceived and cunningly executed open warfare tactics of the enemy: in and out of the folds of ground, uphill and downhill, taking machine-guns with barrels hot, as the German gunners fired until the last moment. That night it sent patrols into Fléville, a village on the bank of the Aire at the foot of a bluff, with the Germans holding the other bank three miles in their rear. The possession of Fléville was that of a name on the map, which read well in communiqués. Holding the high ground above it was what counted, in the same way that possession of the porch counts if you wish to throw stones at a man on the driveway below; and holding it in face of fire from flank and rear flank required men who would dig holes and stick to them. The wedge was made, but it was a sharp one of only one brigade front, as things had not gone as well as they might either with the right of the 1st or with the 32nd.

The right of the 1st crossing Exermont ravine under enfilade and frontal fire charged into the wooded slopes of the Montrefagne, or Hill 240. Twice that day we had the hill; and twice the Germans, reinforced, surged back and drove us off.Our men were saying that "every Boche who didn't have a machine-gun had a cannon"; for the enemy, realizing the value of every foot of ground, was using roving guns attached to his infantry battalions. We were doing the same. There were instances, in the course of this battle for the heights, when our infantry charges came within a hundred feet of field guns which the enemy boldly—and it seemed miraculously—withdrew under our rifle fire to the cover of reverse slopes.

The repulse of the right of the 1st was of course intimately concerned with the situation of the 32nd, which was fighting against the same kind of tactics on the same general kind of ground, which had its own particularly refractory qualities. Before the attack the Arrows had entered Cierges, which they found unoccupied; but the German evacuation of the village only opened up a field of approach commanded by the strengthened defenses of the surrounding positions, which had already forced the withdrawal of the last of the reserves of the 37th and 91st in their final charges before being relieved. Thus the 32nd had its center in a kind of trough, commanded by heights and woods. Gesnes was its first goal; but to take Gesnes the positions east and west of it must be conquered. On the right the charge reached the summit of Hill 239, due east ofthe village of Gesnes, but could go no farther. To the west were the two woods Chêne Sec and Morine, forming a single oblong patch. The left charged them repeatedly, in vain. The Arrows were fighting with veteran will, but their charges could not proceed against the welter of machine-gun and artillery fire, while they were swept by bullets from German aeroplanes flying audaciously low.

In all that long day of ceaseless endeavor, when its replacements were learning their lessons hot from the enemy's guns and rifles, the 32nd had been able to gain a little more than half a mile, with every rod counted. Its effort and that of the right of the 1st, let it be repeated, had been mutually dependent for success on theirliaisonin the hectic rushes of units for points of advantage over the treacherous ground. That is, if an element of one division made a gain, it must have the support of a gain by the other. Though the wedge made by the left of the 1st on October 4th was narrower than we had planned, we did have a wedge, and where we wanted it—on the wall of the Aire valley. We must not lose that wedge, though the 28th had been able to make only a slight advance in the valley. The dangerous position of the left of the 1st on the bluff above Fléville called for desperately hard driving the next day by both the 32nd and the 1st's retarded right.

In supporting the 1st's right, whose advance was so vital in protecting the entrant the 1st's left had made, the 32nd set its heart on gaining the block of the Morine and Chêne Sec woods and Hill 255 beyond. From midnight to the hour of attack, all the artillery of the 32nd pounded them, keeping the dark masses of the woods and the outlines of the hill flickeringly visible in the flashes of a stream of bursting shells, which it would seem no defender could withstand. At 6.30 three battalions of infantry began the assault of the woods, and over the fresh shell-craters, past smashed machine-gun nests, through a litter of fallen saplings and splintered limbs, they kept on until they reached the open. This was a triumph of incalculable value to the right of the 1st, and in turn to the wedge on the Aire wall. But when the charge started to go on to Hill 255, the artillery concentration could not stifle the irresistible machine-gun fire of the nests hidden in all the recesses of the forward slopes, or the guns on the reverse slopes and on the series of heights beyond.

Meanwhile the center and right had passed the village of Gesnes through encircling fire, which, once they were beyond the village, grew to such volume that they were stopped. Demands went back for more shells from the divisional artillery,—demands which the artillery of three or four divisions and allthe heavy artillery of the Army, which could alone reach the more distant enemy guns, could not have filled. However, the gunners gave all the volume in their power with all possible rapidity. Again the infantry moved forward to the attack; but our bombardment seemed only to have stirred up a heavier one in answer, and brought additional enemy machine-guns to bear. It was hopeless to try to go on. If the Arrows could not go on, it was folly to remain targets nailed to exposed ground around Gesnes, and accordingly they withdrew through the town, but still retaining the hard-won woods on the left, whose possession was essential to the success of the attack of the right of the 1st.

The 1st's goal on the 5th was that wooded hill and the wooded slopes of the Montrefagne, which had resisted the efforts of yesterday. During the night Summerall had appeared among his men, a dynamic, restless figure, insisting that there must be no failure on the morrow. With all the divisional artillery at play in a mobile pattern of fire, at once smashing the enemy machine-gun nests and advancing the shields where needed, the infantry in systematic charges continued making progress until the Montrefagne was theirs. When darkness came, they joined up with the left in line with Fléville. The wedge was this much broadened, its position accordingly stronger. As the 28th had still beenunable to make much headway, the wedge could not be driven farther until the base was spread, without exposing a longer flank to the fire from the western wall of the Aire valley, and on the right from the sector of the 32nd, whose elements were in poorliaisonthat night with those of the 1st. So the men of the 1st, become cave-dwellers on the heights in their industrious digging, had one side of the Aire trough as far as Fléville,—and that was the intrinsic value of the wedge. The next step was to be the spreading of the wedge across the valley of the Aire itself, by thrusting in another fresh division between the 1st and the 28th at the base of the bluffs to assault the Forest escarpments. This movement would support the 1st, and would in turn be supported by the 1st's further advance.

West of the river—The 82nd Division called for—A difficult alignment—The outpost hills taken on the 7th of October—And the 28th cleans up the escarpments on its front—The all-American character of the 82nd—The enemy defends desperately the remaining escarpments—Repeated charges up the bluffs—Which are cleared by the 10th.

Hovering in reserve since September 26th, the 82nd Division, National Army, was now to have its turn to be "expended" in the battle. During its period of waiting it had two battalions severely shelled on the way to assist the 35th Division in an attack which was countermanded; and of course its engineers had been kept employed on the roads. No engineers in sight were ever out of work, from the beginning to the end of the battle. Previously the division, which had stayed but a brief time on the British front, had served during the summer months on the Toul front, where it had advanced on the extreme right flank of the Saint-Mihiel operation. Originally formed in the South, the 82nd had been called the "All-American" division because it had been filled with draft men from all parts of the country, though its training-camp associations remainedSouthern, and most of its officers were Southerners. Now it was chosen for the thrust in the valley of the Aire to spread the wedge which the 1st had driven.

We know how the 28th Division threw its men against the Argonne escarpments in the first days of the battle. Since then it had remained in the trough of the Aire under continual flanking fire, while its units had alternate periods of rest; but after all it had endured, even its determination could not give it the vigor of a fresh division. On the 4th and 5th, while the 1st on its flank was advancing, and again on the 6th, while the 1st was dug in, it had kept up its attacks, with the net result that its left had made some further progress against the Taille l'Abbé of infamous reputation, and its right had advanced as far as Hill 180, a mile and a half to the south of the village of Fléville where the men of the 1st were hugging the bluffs, which formed a bastion in the trough interlocking the fire from either side.

Having moved down the valley of the Aire under the portion of the eastern wall which the 1st held, the 82nd was to face west and attack toward the western wall. Getting into position for the action was itself a ticklish business as a tactical maneuver for the infantry. The shell-swept road which it was to use for bringing its artillery and transportup this narrow passage under the enemy's flanking machine-gun nests, was already taxed with the transport of the 28th, which was still to go on attacking. The 28th had sworn that it would not leave the valley until it had taken the Taille l'Abbé. It had prior rights to that formidable escarpment.

If ever a division needed capable guides, it was the 82nd on the night of the 6th. It had to slip past Châtel-Chéhéry on the opposite bank of the river, from which patrols of the 28th had been ejected in the day's attack, and on past Hill 223 and Hill 180 to a point near Fléville, in a winding, exposed passage. There were unexpected delays on the roads. At 2.30 in the morning the artillery was stalled, and some of the infantry was still at Varennes, five miles from its jumping-off place for the attack set for three hours later. Guides failing to appear, it was not surprising that the regiment which was to attack on the left, or south, against Hill 223 should have gone too far in the darkness, when a man was hardly visible ten yards away; and, after marching and groping all night, should have had to retrace its steps. With men exhausted and units confused, it arrived at its jumping-off line to find that not a single gun was up for its support. An advance according to schedule became out of the question.

By accepted canons this misfortune might haveruined the whole movement, or at least led to delaying the movements of the other units; but delays were out of the question. There was no time to communicate counter-orders to the 28th, which had gathered all its strength for a supreme effort whose success depended upon the coöperation of the 82nd. If the whole line could not go forward at daylight, then all of it that could must go. Fortunately the dark night, which had screened their movement from accurate fire by the enemy, was followed by a thick morning fog. This was opportune in partially screening an attack which must cross the river in face of the heights which they were to storm. The right, or north, regiment, as it started on time, had the advantage of the fog in its first rush. The men forded through water two and three feet deep; the officers who were leading pulled them up the steep banks on the other side. By 8.30 Hill 180, with its machine-gun nests, which had been one of the bulwarks defying the thin line of the 28th for nearly two weeks, was no longer in German hands. The men of the left regiment, starting at 9 o'clock against a still higher hill, 223, overlooking Châtel-Chéhéry, were swept at the fords by enfilade shell-fire and storms of machine-gun bullets in front, which made fearful gaps in their ranks. Under the spur of their delay, considering nothing except that they must make up for lost time, they plungedahead, and once across they did not bother with any deliberate infiltration around machine-gun nests, but simply swept over them in headlong impatience. By one o'clock they had the hill, a portion of which had been reached by a small detachment of the 28th. They did not know whether or not the 28th had reached Châtel-Chéhéry until they saw soldiers of the 28th climbing the steep sides of Hill 244 back of the town. The fact that two-thirds of the men of two of the companies of the 82nd were killed or wounded was evidence enough that the 1st was not the only division willing to pay a price for gains when it was called upon to be a human wedge. This finished the day's work for the left regiment, except for a German counter-attack which received such prompt and efficacious attention that another was not attempted.

The 82nd having taken over a portion of its line, the 28th had been able to concentrate its forces on the remainder. Though by all criteria the 28th should have been counted as already "expended," it had an access of energy at the prospect of attacking under more favorable circumstances the positions which had so long held it back. After building a footbridge across the Aire, the right regiment charged across the level toward the village of Châtel-Chéhéry, at the base of the heights. This time the Pennsylvanians meant to put more thanpatrols into the village. Lashed by gun-fire and whipped by machine-gun fire from the heights which had them seemingly at their mercy, units were riddled and their officers killed, with resulting dispersion as undaunted survivors sought for dead spaces and cover. The colonel in command fell mortally wounded by a machine-gun bullet while directing his men. His soldiers avenged him not only by taking and holding Châtel-Chéhéry, but that night they took Hill 244, the ridge following south to the Taille l'Abbé, silencing its galling fire on the river bottoms.

So much for the right. The left regiment was again to attack the Taille l'Abbé. This, being farther south, and toward the rear, than Châtel-Chéhéry, which was in turn south of the 82nd's front, further illustrates the anomalous tactical situation and the interdependence of all the diverse and treacherous elements of ground and dispositions in the problem of supporting the driving of the 1st's wedge. In the course of their arduous ten days' effort to carry out the original plan of "scalloping" the Forest edge to protect the frontal attack of the 77th through the Forest, the Pennsylvanians had developed a sinuous line around the slopes which in places ran at right angles to our battlefront as a whole. It was a line with outposts holding ravines, and groups clinging to vantage points of all kinds, who, in their fox-holes, were the present masters oftheir destiny, isolated from communication by day and approachable only by silent crawling under cover of darkness. This process of infiltration had bent a shepherd's crook around the Taille l'Abbé. All the whittling of ten long days came to a head in the attack of October 7th, whose ax's blow cut deep into the Forest to La Viergette, past the south flank of the Taille l'Abbé, whose defenses must now crumple under the additional pressure from the north.

While we are with the 28th, we shall follow its career through the Aire valley to the end. On the 8th neither the general situation in relation to the neighboring divisions nor its exhaustion warranted a general attack by the 28th; but it did not neglect a little chore, which gave it retributory satisfaction, in cleaning up the last of the machine-gun nests and any vagrant Germans remaining on the hateful Abbé. Its goal won, its honor avenged, it was now to have the rest which it had as fully earned as the name of the "Iron Division," which it was now being called. It was relieved on the night of the 8th-9th by the 82nd. In a marvelous endurance test of twelve days, in which the men had gone without cooked food under continual rains, the Pennsylvanians had suffered 6,149 casualties, while 1,200 officers and men had been sent to hospitals, ill as the result of the terrible strain and exposure. Theyhad advanced over six miles. They had taken 550 prisoners and 8 guns in their plodding gains against fearful odds; and do not forget, as they will tell you, that they had also taken two German locomotives, most useful for bringing up supplies on a captured section of railroad which the engineers had repaired. The engineers particularly, and all the Pennsylvanians, were proud of that railroad—the 28th's own trunk line; but the proudest thought of these emaciated Guardsmen, as they marched away, was that they had not had to leave the conquest of the Taille l'Abbé to a fresh division. They had taken it themselves.

Now Hills 223 and 180, which the 82nd had captured in its first day's fighting on the 7th, were as detached forts, nearer the eastern wall than the western, in a broad stretch of the valley. Their crests looked over a rolling stretch of bottom lands to the bluffs of the Forest's edge, which were so steep that the naked earth broken by landslides held only scattered dwarf trees and shrubs. Torrents dashed down the ravines during heavy rains. Scaling rather than assault was the word to describe an attempt at their mastery. Artillery was hidden on their crests, and machine-guns on their crests and in the favoring intricacies of the slopes.

Northwest from Hill 180 the village of Cornay nestled at the foot of an escarpment flung out fromthe Forest almost to the river's bank. This promontory made of the stretch of bottom a kind of bay. While commanding in rear and flank the farther advance of the 1st on the opposite river wall, it could also turn a flanking fire on any charge across the bay toward the bluffs in addition to the plunging frontal fire from the bluffs. Cornay must be taken in order to gain the valley as far as Fléville. On the way across the bay, either to Cornay or to the bluffs, any charge must cross the Boulasson creek, which was unfordable at points. Thus this bay was acul de sac; but a visible one. The All-Americas knew what to expect on their way to the heights.

With its personnel varying from little men from the tenements to tall lean men of the cotton-fields, the 82nd had in its pride of corps the rivalry of community, region, and state. It was said that one city division had been careful in its sifting when it transferred an excess of its draft men to the 82nd. If so, the result shows how inspectors may err in judging by the measure of a recruit's chest whether or not he will have the heart of a warrior when good food reddens the blood pumped through the valves it strengthens, and drill and comradeship stiffen his fighting temper. The All-Americas might have no state or group of states that claimed them for its own; but the conviction that they were for allthe states—all America—was the fostering spirit of the four days of unceasing attack, that were now to begin.

On the 8th the south regiment, moving down the slope of Hill 223 and crossing the level, had reached the ridge beyond in two hours. By 5P.M.it had fought its way to the possession of a portion of the ridge. Bitterly yielding to the power of the enemy's fire after companies, in characteristic all-America bravery, had lost half their numbers, it retired down the slope during the night to dig itself protection. The north regiment bridged and forded and swam the creek, and fought all day for Cornay and the heights to the westward. The Germans did not depend alone upon fire from the heights. Their machine-gunners were under cover of the bushes and knolls of the bottoms, contesting the passage of the brook, sweeping stretches of its winding course with flanking as well as frontal fire. Their roving field guns attached to battalions fired at point-blank range upon the infantry wave as it appeared on a knoll on the other side of the brook before Cornay, and the men face to face with the gunners bore them down and passed on. By six that afternoon they were in the town and up the slopes of the adjoining heights. There were not enough of them to hold what they had taken. All but forty men of two companies had been killed orwounded in crossing those deadly reaches of the river bottom. As darkness fell, bullets were spattering in every street in Cornay, and pelting down from the crest upon the All-Americas, trying to dig into the slope. Orders had to be given for withdrawal from Cornay and the most exposed ground, for a night of reorganization in the valley of the brook.

A reserve regiment of the 82nd, having taken over the 28th's front, spent the next day under galling fire in swinging its line up level with the other regiments. Again a charge, running the gamut from the bluffs and in face of machine-gun nests in the village itself, entered Cornay at 11A.M.; again we were slowly forcing our way up the heights where in places the men could climb only by drawing themselves up by bushes and dwarf trees. Reduced in number by the incessant drain of casualties, beginning to feel the exhaustion from three days' fighting and nights practically without sleep, they thought that this time they could hold their gains; but at dusk a German counter-attack launched right across the river bottom from Fléville to Cornay under a barrage of shells and machine-gun bullets, and by infiltration from the heights into Cornay, where our men fought from house to house in a confused struggle against odds, forced those of the advanced groups who did not remain to die intheir tracks to fall back upon their reserves, who stood fast. The Germans depended much upon that counter-attack, and they made it at a time when the losses and exhaustion of the 82nd, of which they were fully aware, might well have led them to think that this young division would break under a sharp blow. Far from breaking, the 82nd, having savagely and promptly repulsed the counter-attack, was, despite its casualties, further to extend its front that night by taking over the eastern bank of the river from the 1st Division.

October 10th was to see the culmination of the movement in the trough of the Aire, when the 77th, the pressure on its flank released, was to begin its final sweep through the Forest. It was to be a day of such retribution for the 82nd as the 28th had had in the taking of the Taille l'Abbé; hills and woods are the landmarks of divisional histories in this battle. The dead of the 82nd were intermingled with the dead enemy on the slopes and in Cornay, and in that stretch of the river bottom which in its exposure resembles more closely than the background of any other charge in the Meuse-Argonne battle the open fields which Pickett's men crossed in their rush up the slopes of Seminary Ridge. The gallant officers who led these men knew that they would follow, and Major-General George B. Duncan, who had taken command of the divisionbefore the battle, was serene and resourceful in his confidence.

Along the embankment, along the banks of the creek, in little gullies and dips of thatcul de sacof a bay, they had pegged down their gains as the jumping-off places for their assaults on the gallery of heights overlooking the stage of their indomitable tenacity. They were fighting against better than German veterans—German specialists. The prisoners they took usually yielded not in bodies but as individuals or small groups, wounded, exhausted, surrounded by dead. Two out of three of those in the Cornay region were machine-gunners or chosen non-commissioned officers who were trusted to fight to the death and make the most of their sacrifice by their skill. First and last the 82nd captured 277 machine-guns, as the harvest of its courage at close quarters.

On the morning of the 10th it brought its field guns close up behind the infantry, assigned roving guns to its battalions, and placed its Hotchkiss guns and its little 37's in the front line, which smashed machine-gun nests at point-blank range. Now the All-Americas took Cornay for the last time, clearing its streets and cellars; swept up the valley and over the ridge above Cornay; and sprinting patrols entered Marcq in the plain beyond, while from the conquered higher ground they looked down uponthe bend of the river toward Grandpré, where it passes between the Argonne and the Boult Forests. At last the trough of the Aire with both its walls was ours from Varennes past Cornay. The taking of the gap of Grandpré which brought us in face of the heights beyond may wait upon an account of the action of the 1st and 32nd from October 6th to 11th.

The 1st marking time—A fumble gives one height—Relying on the engineers—The triangle of hills—A tribute from the enemy—The Arrow Division also pointed at the whale-back—Which resists intact—Still the 1st goes on—"As good as the 1st."

As soon as the 82nd's attacks on the river bottoms were well under way, the 1st was to make another rush, driving its wedge ahead of the 82nd's front over the hills of the eastern wall. On the 6th, the day before the All-Americas took Hills 180 and 223, and the day before the Pennsylvanians of the 28th took Châtel-Chéhéry, the 1st was due to mark time; and so also was the 32nd—still holding the block of the Morine and Chêne Sec woods and withdrawn from Gesnes,—which was in turn dependent for further advance upon the movement in the Aire trough. The flanks of the two divisions, left out ofliaisonas a result of the viciously confused fighting of the 5th, must join up.

In the neighborhood of their junction, northwest of the Morine and Chêne Sec woods, the highest point was Hill 269, in the Moncy Wood. To the west 269 looked across all the hilltops to theArgonne Forest, and to the east almost to the Meuse. This distance of vision, it should be explained, did not mean observation of the slopes of the other hills or the low ground at their bases. Each hill which we had conquered or had yet to conquer on the way to the whale-back was only one of an interlocking series. Though none approached the spectacular formidability of an isolated height towering over a surrounding plain, Hill 269 was relatively very important because of its situation and altitude.

The statement that the 1st was marking time on the 6th must be qualified by the activity of its patrols; for it was not in the nature or traditions of the pioneer division ever to dig a hole and sit in it all day, leaving the initiative to the enemy. It was always hugging him close, ready to jump for any opening that offered. A patrol kept on going until it developed enough resistance to warrant its withdrawal with the information it had gained. Also it took responsibility, and did not wait on orders if it found an opportunity of turning a trick. This seems an obvious system; but its application may vary in efficiency from experience to inexperience, from clumsiness to shrewdness, from foolish bravado to courageous and resourceful discretion. One of the 1st's patrols, in the course of linking up with the 32nd on the 6th, kept feeling its waythrough the Moncy Wood without any opposition until it came to the top of Hill 269. This was in the 32nd Division's sector; but veteran divisions do not stand on etiquette on such occasions. They know that in the gamble of battle the division which lends a helping hand one day may need a helping hand the next. In sending out the patrol, the brigade commander had made it small, as he did not want many men killed; for he appreciated what hidden machine-guns could do to the most agile group of scouts when the gunners held their fire for a propitious moment.

We had caught the Germans napping on 269. The advantage we had gained resembled that taken of a fumble at football. Any "kid" lieutenant or any one of his men could see as well as General Pershing himself that this crest was worth holding; and that daring little group held it until relieved by two companies of the 32nd. Meanwhile the fumble had enabled the 1st to take the Ariétal farm, which formed a natural rallying point for enemy machine-gunners in the ravine between the Moncy and the Little woods (le Petit Bois). This was an advantage for the next attack second only to the occupation of 269, with which it had a close tactical relation.

On the 7th the 1st, which had been under the First Corps, was transferred to the Fifth, and itsfront extended to include Hill 269. It was now time for the division engineers, who had been working night and day on the roads, to cease their idling and begin fighting. The battalion which was sent to take over 269 from the 32nd was soon to find what store the Germans set by it, once they realized the blunder that had allowed it to slip out of their hands. The enemy's artillery proceeded to make this sharply defined cone a pillar of hell; but the engineers were used to digging, and they dug with a vengeance. They were also used to sticking on the job. In the face of counter-attacks, supported by a rain of shells and bullets of artillery and machine-gun barrages, they held their ground in the midst of fountains of earth and flying débris and frightful casualties, with that resolution in which every man, no matter how many of his comrades are killed, determines that he will not yield alive.

After the driving of the wedge to Fléville and the taking of Montrefagne, the 1st had been badly shattered. The heavy rains had made the holding of the eastern wall of the Aire under the murderously accurate flanking fire from the western wall all the more horrible. Transport was being regularly shelled; woods, where reserves might take cover, were being gassed. Not only was the doctrine of the 1st never to yield ground taken upheld at every point, but it was continuing to improve its positionon the 7th and 8th while it reorganized its available forces, steadily reduced by casualties, in an undaunted offensive spirit.

The 28th having taken the Châtel-Chéhéry heights of the opposite valley wall, and the 82nd attacking the Cornay heights, the 9th was chosen as the day when the hammer should again begin pounding the wedge into the ramparts ahead. By this time the 1st had had over 5,000 casualties, representing more than one-third of its infantry. There was an old rule that when a third of your men were out of action it was time for retreat. This had ceased to apply in the Great War; it was hardly a view that Summerall would hold. The 1st had not yet finished its task, and he meant that it should be finished. There could be no question of fatigue, or excuses. More engineers were summoned into line; everything that veteran experience could arrange was ready. The ammunition supply and the transport were up; the hospital service was prepared for heavy casualties. Every man's jaw was set for a final triumphant drive which should finally clear the wall of the Aire.

The enemy's jaw was set too. He knew that our next rush would be a desperate effort to reach the main-line defenses of the whale-back. Indeed, this was our plan, which required that the 1st go about a mile and a half over even more formidable groundthan in the drive of the 4th and 5th. On the 1st's right, Hill 269 in the Moncy Wood was safely held, if at a bloody cost. On the center and right the Montrefagne Wood ran northeast in the narrow tongue of the Little Wood. In this wood, about on a line with 269, was Hill 272, the highest of all the hills on the 1st's front, which we knew was strongly held and strongly fortified. The Little Wood, broadening beyond it, extended westward, while the ravine between it and the Moncy Wood (Hill 269) wound in the same direction. Well back in this portion of the Little Wood was Hill 263, which was at the apex of a triangle with 269 and 272 as the base. Our seizure of Ariétal farm in the ravine before it could be fortified enabled our men, thanks to the protection from our seizure of Hill 269, to establish themselves on the 7th and 8th on the slopes of the two other hills. Thus we were saved from a cross-fire in having to pass between the two base angles of the triangle toward the apex. We could take Hill 272, the remaining hill at the base, in flank. It was certainly good generalship which won this advantage for us, and poor generalship which lost it for the enemy. Once we had Hill 263 at the apex, it was downhill through the Romagne woods until we were before the Kriemhilde Stellung, which bent southward on the 1st's right in front of the 32nd's sector. To the west ofLittle and Romagne woods many patches of woods gave cover for machine-guns on the ascents of the Maldah ridge, which ran to the end of the Aire wall where the Aire bent sharply westward to the gap of Grandpré. However, the crux of the problem of the 1st on the 9th was the taking of Hill 272 at the western point of the triangle and 263 at the apex.

Being a gunner, Summerall believed in making the most of gun power. He had trained the artillery of the 1st, and knew its capabilities. This implied anything but penuriousness in the expenditure of ammunition. Throughout the 7th and 8th, day and night, the 1st's artillery had been "softening" the defenses of these two hills and of all the other positions with a concentrated bombardment, and placing ceaseless interdictory fire in their rear to keep them isolated from communication.

If ever infantry needed powerful barrages to protect its swift charges, it was on the morning of the 9th. Any failure to go home at any point might be fatal to the whole movement. As supple as the enemy, the 1st was using roving, or tramp, guns to counter his roving guns. The remainder of the divisional artillery was entirely concentrated in making shields in turn for the right, left, and center, which advanced successively instead of at the same time. The weather as well as the barrages was in ourfavor. A dense fog hid our waves from the enemy's observation. His machine-gunners in some instances could not see to fire until our men were upon them; in others, as the fog lifted on the exposed targets, our losses were ghastly without staying our progress.

Apart from the engineers, the division had only one battalion of fresh infantry in reserve. This battalion was sent against the highest of the hills, 272. Breaking through the fog, in bolt surprise, it took prisoner every man of the garrison of 272 who was not killed. As the curtain of bursting shells of the shield which our men were hugging lifted, the German lieutenant-colonel in command of the hill started out of his dugout, only to see the charge sweeping past its mouth, and, in turn, past all the dugouts where his troops had taken cover from the approaching tornado. He knew that all was lost; and he wept in his humiliation at being captured. It was the first time that the shock division to which he belonged had ever been on the defensive. He paid a soldier's tribute to the power and accuracy of the artillery fire of the 1st, which for two days had marooned him, without food for his men and unable to send them orders or to receive orders from his superior. He had not believed that in five years the Americans would have been able to develop such a division as the 1st; and one's onlycomment on this is that the men of the 1st were the same kind of men as in the other divisions. He had happened to meet the 1st, as any other division will tell you. German officers who met other divisions in the Argonne held the same view about them. Professional opinions from such experts were worth while.

Our attack on Hill 272 on the left and our possession of 269 on the right protecting their flanks, the troops which were making a head-on drive for 263 had an equally brilliant success, thanks to the same thoroughgoing, enterprising, and courageous tactics. Those on the left, with the enemy's plans upset by the loss of 272 and 263, wove their way through the patches of woods, conquering successive machine-gun nests until the Côte de Maldah was theirs in a sweep no less important as a part of the well-arranged whole, though perhaps less sensational. So much for the day's work of the 1st in the high tide of its career on October 9th.

We shall now take up that of the Arrows of the 32nd. On the 7th and 8th the 32nd had been busy sending out patrols and seeking to gain certain vantage points which would be useful in the next day's attack. It had established itself in Gesnes. Its own artillery was now back with the division, taking the place of that of the 30th Division, which, after its exhausting work in forcing its guns through theMontfaucon woods in support of the 37th, had still remained in line in support of the 32nd. In addition the artillery of the 42nd, or Rainbow, Division, which was now coming up in reserve, was placed at the disposal of the 32nd; for it could not have too much gun power if it were to make any headway on the 9th. Nor could it have too much infantry. The 181st Brigade of the 91st, Pacific Coast, Division had not gone into rest when the 91st had been "expended" in the early period of the battle. It was now placed in line between the 1st and the 32nd, and despite their fatigue the Pacific Coast men were relied upon for nothing less than the assault of that Hill 255 whose galling fire had checked the 32nd's advance on the 5th.

The "side-slipping" of the division sector when the 1st relinquished the bank of the Aire and came under the administration of the Fifth Corps had not given the 32nd any easier task. Wasn't it a veteran division? Wasn't it used to being expended? The ambition of the Army command was in the saddle again, expecting the Arrows, with the artillery of two divisions in support, to penetrate immediately the Kriemhilde Stellung, or main defenses of the whale-back.

As the Kriemhilde bent south past the 1st's flank, it was within a mile of the 32nd's front. On the 32nd's left it was established in the Valoup Wood onthe ridge of the Côte Dame Marie, a name of infernal associations in the history of two veteran divisions. In the center it passed in front of the town of Romagne. To the right or east it continued on another ridge in the strong Mamelle trench. The plan was a swing to the left through Valoup Wood to take the Côte Dame Marie, and a swing to the right to take the Mamelle trench, encircling the village of Romagne, while the center on the Gesnes-Romagne road regulated its advance with that of the flanks.

It might have been carried out in one day, as an officer said, if the 32nd had had the artillery of five or six divisions and a score of heavy batteries from the French, while the men had been provided with shell- and bullet-proof armor. This heroic dream is mentioned in passing. More to the point is what the men of the 32nd accomplished; for they almost made the dream come true before darkness fell on the night of October 9th. They were the Arrows indeed—an arrow on the right and on the left—with the bow of determination drawn taut before the attacks were released. That on the left penetrated the Dame Marie, while the right penetrated the Mamelle trench where the meager numbers which formed the very tip of the arrow-head were stopped in a bout of hand-to-hand fighting, while their comrades on the right and left were held upby the wire and the relentlessly increasing machine-gun fire. The center could not advance. Romagne was not encircled.

The 181st Brigade of the 91st had orders to hold during the attack on the 9th; then, as standing still appeared to be poor policy, it had orders to assault Hill 255, whose fire had stayed progress on the 6th. Later orders came that the support was unnecessary, but not until the Pacific Coast men were already started forward, only to have to dig in in face of annihilating fire. The next day, the Germans now evacuating Hill 255 under the flanking pressure of the 1st and 32nd, the Pacific Coast men mopped up the hill, captured the concrete blockhouse on the reverse slope, and then set out to mop up the Tuilerie farm, which was supposed to be taken. Unfortunately it was not taken. Between them and the farm was Hill 288, the highest of all, with an outpost of the Kriemhilde position in the form of a horseshoe organized in a sunken road with walls twenty or thirty feet high. Tunnels from the road allowed the machine-gunners to play hide and seek in going and coming to the slope. Their fire and plentiful gas and high-explosive shells checked the front line about three hundred yards south of the hill. The next day the brigade was to attack again in case there were enough artillery fire forthcoming to "soften" the hill; but there wasnot. The Pacific Coast men were now relieved by units of the 32nd. Shivering for want of woolen underwear, rarely getting hot meals, their long service in the battle was over. Though many were ill, they refused to report on the sick list for fear that they would be transferred from hospital to another division than their own.

It was no less a policy of the Arrows of the 32nd than of the 1st Division never to yield gains. They were at close quarters with the Kriemhilde, and they proposed to remain there. The enemy's fully aroused artillery and machine-gun resistance to protect the points where the Kriemhilde had been entered prevented any headway on the 10th and 11th, while hand-to-hand fighting continued on the Dame Marie ridge. Before the 32nd was to conquer the ridge and take Romagne, it must make preparation equal to the task. This belongs to another stage of the battle. We are presently concerned with the fact that the Arrows had done their part in the costly operation that had conquered the heights into which the 1st had driven its wedge.

The enemy now withdrawing from the front of the 1st across the valley and low ground to the Kriemhilde, which was here farther north than in front of the 32nd, the 1st, in a movement of exploitation, with gratefully few casualties made a mile on the 10th, passing through the RomagneWood and beyond the village of Sommerance. On the next day, feeling out the enemy positions with a knowing hand, the veterans learned that they could be taken only by fresh troops in a thoroughly organized attack. The 1st had accomplished its daring mission; it had won a telling victory. Three-fifths of its infantry was out of action from death and wounds; the remainder had been fully "expended" in exhaustion or sickness. Surely no division in all our history had ever been in finer condition for battle, or fought with more discipline and skillful valor, or suffered more losses in a single action. "To be as good" as the pioneer 1st had been the ambition of all the divisions in the early days of our fighting in France. If some became as good, this is the more honor to them.

The affection of long association creeps in as I think of the 1st's first detachments arriving at Saint-Nazaire, or of its pioneer training on the drill-grounds at Gondrecourt in the days when there was a fear in our hearts that we might yet lose the war. The 1st had confidence without boasting, and dignity without punctiliousness; its pride kept it from dwelling on the excuses of unprotected flanks; it was on good terms with neighboring divisions and with the French: self-reliant, systematic, trying to live up to the fortune that had made it the first to arrive in France and was to make it the last to go home. Ithad expected to pay a heavy price for its crowning success; and paid it with an absence of grumbling which makes the sacrifice of life of a transcendent nobility, however worn and filthy the khaki it wears.

When relieved by the 42nd the 1st withdrew, after casualties of 8,554, in faultlessly good order from the line of the gains which it securely held.

The "Liberty" Division trying to clear the Forest on its own—The battalion which refused to be lost—The "scalloping" succeeds—Out of the Forest—The 82nd across the Aire—The 77th takes Saint-Juvin, though not according to plan—And finally gets across the Aire to Grandpré.

Its line the breadth of the Argonne Forest, no division could have waited more impatiently than the 77th or "Liberty" Division of New York City upon the driving of the wedge on the eastern wall of the Aire and the clearing of the Aire trough, which, to serve its purpose, must be accompanied in turn by the progress of the "scalloping" movement of the French on their left. The "Liberty" men's apprehension lest they might not make the most of any advance on their flanks amounted to an obsession. If they halted, they found that the enemy had time to cut openings in the foliage to give his machine-guns fields of fire, string chicken-wire between trunks of trees, build elements of trenches on the opposite slopes of gullies, and play other tricks in the tangles of underbrush. The best way to keep the German out of mischief was to keep him on the move.

On the 29th and 30th of September the "Liberty" men had made good advances, as we know. In the early days of October, while there was a lull in the offensive on other parts of our front, they were having a very busy time. As the "scalloping" movement against the escarpments at either edge of the Forest was delayed, they would try to do without this elbowing assistance on their flanks. As for being "expended," this was out of consideration while half of the Forest was yet to be taken. No other division had any rights in the Forest. It was theirs, with the understanding that they prove the nine points of the law by taking possession of their estate. They must keep on fighting until they saw the light of the Grandpré gap at the end of its dark reaches. Such a state of mind is conducive to fighting morale. There was a personal property interest at stake.

On the morning of October 2nd, they made a general attack of their own. On the right in the Naza Wood they ran into a system of detached trenches and machine-gun positions which were invisible until the bullets began to sing and hand-grenades began to fly, while their exposed flank left no doubt that the Germans were still in force on the Taille l'Abbé in front of the 28th. The objective of the left was the Apremont-Binarville road. Not only were the "Libertys" a "pushful" division, butthere was never any lack of pushing by their commander. The battalion on the left was told to keep on going until it reached the road, no matter what happened on its flanks. It obeyed orders. After it arrived, it found that there were no Americans on one flank or French on the other. Only Germans. No messages came through from the brigade; messengers sent back disappeared in the woods to the rear, and fell into German hands.

This was the incident of the "Lost Battalion." Technically, the battalion was not lost. It knew where it was on the map. Practically, it was isolated from the rest of the division—surrounded, besieged. Whether they are described as lost or not, the men of the battalion will not soon forget their experience. When they went into action, they had two days' rations. As most of them had eaten one day's on the morning of the 3rd, they had the other day's to last them—they knew not how long. They did not have to expend much energy, except on patrols and outposts. The thing was to avoid drawing fire and wasting their ammunition. If they rose from their fox-holes, where they were dug in among the roots of trees on the northern slope of the ravine below the road, a spray of machine-gun fire, or the burst of a shell, convinced them that sedentary habits are best when you are fasting. At the bottomof the ravine was a swamp which protected them on that side, while the crest of the ridge above the road protected them on the other. Their pleasantest diversion was watching shells which missed their aim, harmlessly throwing up fountains of mud in the swamp.

Some of the shells were supposed to have been fired by the French, who were said to be under the impression that the battalion must have already surrendered. The Germans held the view that it ought to surrender, according to rules. When they sent in a messenger with the suggestion, supported by the gratuitous information that the battalion was hopelessly surrounded, it was received not even politely, let alone sympathetically, by the reserve major in command, who had gone from his law office to a training camp.

The major shaved every morning as usual. He never let the empty feeling in his stomach communicate itself to his head; he was as smiling and confident when he went among his men as if their situation were a part of the routine of war. He had disposed them skillfully; they had learned by experience where to dig in to escape fire; and they were amazingly secure, though they were surrounded. It became bad form to be hungry. When they put out panels to inform our aviators of their location, the panels only drew fire, and seem to have failed intheir object as lamentably as the dropping of rations from American planes, which probably the Germans ate.

Of course, the division was making efforts to reach the battalion, being stopped by machine-gun fire. The 77th was fast held during those five days. Meanwhile the 1st had driven its wedge along the wall of the Aire, and on the morning of the 7th the 82nd had begun its attacks in the valley, while the French were ready to move up on the western edge of the Forest. These successes, and the disposition of the 77th to take advantage of them, started the retirement of the Germans in the Forest. On the night of the 7th the survivors of the lost battalion rose from their fox-holes as the figures of Americans came through the darkness to their relief. Their first thought was food. Then they found that they had become heroes. There had been a compelling appeal to the imagination in the thought of this band of Metropolitans from city streets, stoically holding their ground when surrounded by German veterans in a forest in France. They did a fine thing, but no finer than many other battalions whose deeds attracted less public attention.

Now, with the forest edges being "scalloped" according to the original plan, the 77th might carry out, after two weeks of travail, its mission of "mopping up" as the pressure on its flanks wasrelieved. On the 8th it conquered the Naza positions, its right coming up even with the Taille l'Abbé. The next day, while the 1st was making its second great attack, and the 82nd was again attacking the Cornay heights, while the French were rapidly advancing on the left, the 77th swung ahead for a mile and a half. The Forest was now to be the 77th's for the marching. The retiring enemy offered only rearguard action from machine-guns and concentrations of shell-fire on roads and open spaces, which were mosquito bites after the kind of opposition which they had been facing. All they had to do was to keep up their supplies and ammunition,—and that was a good deal over the miserable roads,—and pick their way through the thickets and in and out among the tree-trunks, across ravines, on to the gap of Grandpré at the Forest's end.

By this time they were at home in woodland maneuvers, or on the 10th they would not have made nearly four miles in formation, combing every yard of the Argonne's breadth as they advanced. That march showed a reserve of vitality in the city men worthy of the day when the 82nd in the valley had overrun the Cornay heights, and the 1st and 32nd had reached the Kriemhilde Stellung. Patrols, encountering no resistance, came out of the Forest to see the promised land. Anotherstride, and the division would be in the open, facing the gap.

On the northern bank of the Aire, about half a mile beyond its sharp turn toward Grandpré, is the village of Saint-Juvin. The river bottoms here are broad and swampy between the slopes which draw together to form the walls of the gap. From the fronts of the 1st and 32nd Divisions the fragmentary trench system of the Kriemhilde ran northeasterly to a point just opposite the bend. Beyond this to the west the Germans depended upon the westward course of the river and upon the naturally strong positions on its northern side, culminating in the heights above Grandpré. The 77th's sector was extended slightly to the east to include Saint-Juvin, in order that the 82nd, which had taken over some of the front of the 1st, might undertake a movement against the Kriemhilde on the 1st's flank east of the river bend, passing Saint-Juvin on the east.

For four days the 82nd had been throwing its men into charges from the river bottom against heights, and wrestling against counter-attacks. Though it had conquered the trough of its northern course, the Aire river was still the nightmare of its evolutions. The left regiment remained facing the westward bend. The center regiment was to cross the northern course of the river, south ofthe bend, at Fléville, and join the right regiment, which was already across. This it did under heavy fire on the morning of the 11th, and, deploying, swung west in protecting the flank of the right regiment from the heights north of Saint-Juvin.

The 82nd had already received enough shocks to be called a "stonewall" division, and had given enough to be called a shock division. It was not surprising, then, though wonderful, that the left regiment made two miles in face of the heights; or that the right regiment made a half mile more and by 8A.M.had reached the Kriemhilde Stellung. Their exhaustion, instead of staying the All-Americas, appeared to give them a delirium of valor. When front lines were riddled by casualties, the second line "leap-frogged," and charged on into the machine-gun fire. One battalion had all its commissioned officers killed or so badly wounded that they could not move; another all but one. Non-commissioned officers continued the attack; but there was no hope at present of taking the Kriemhilde, with its fresh waiting machine-gunners in their interlocking positions supported by artillery, as the 32nd on the 82nd's left had found. The part of it in front of the 82nd was not to be taken in the general attack of October 14th—not until the final drive of November 1st. Exposed in a salient under cross-fire, the survivors of the rightregiment were ordered to withdraw even with those of the center regiment, where, still under flanking fire in face of the heights, they held their ground.

Meanwhile the left regiment was to cross the river westward of the bend, in order to assail the heights north and northeast of Saint-Juvin which commanded the village, and to protect the flanks of the other two regiments. The bridge near Saint-Juvin was down. A soldier going into attack under the weight of his pack and 220 rounds of ammunition cannot swim a river. Patrols searched up and down in the darkness in vain for a ford. When the engineers, who were called in, started building a footbridge, they were greeted by bursts of machine-gun fire which suddenly ceased. Instantly the infantry rushed on to the bridge, which was completed at dawn, the machine-gun fire was renewed with great accuracy and increased volume. Dead and wounded fell into the water; survivors leaped into the water and sprang up the opposite bank, facing the unseen enemy. Parts of two companies got across, and boldly started out to envelop Saint-Juvin. After losses of fifty per cent from annihilating machine-gun fire, the little band had to retreat across the river; but they had found that there was a ford near the ruins of the bridge.

Though worn down until its battalions hardly averaged the size of full companies, the left regimentwas across by the ford early the next day, and charging for the heights northeast of Saint-Juvin, in the first stages of an action which was to carry on through the general attack of the 14th. In order to rid the flank of machine-gun fire, an officer led his men into the edge of Saint-Juvin itself, and took nests and prisoners. The right of the attack reached the Ravine of Stones, joining up with the center regiment in front of the Kriemhilde. There, in a wicked pocket, they stove off counter-attacks, and fought in and out with the Germans in a hide-and-seek in the treacherous folds of the slope.

In the general attack of the 14th the 82nd was once more called upon to show all the speed of a shock division fresh from rest in billets. Supporting the 42nd on its right, which began its three days of terrific storming of the Chatillon Ridge, where the Kriemhilde bends southward in a loop, the 82nd, with its infantry effectives less than half of normal strength, again attacked the Kriemhilde. It actually got through the Kriemhilde, but again was in a salient, and after further heavy casualties had to withdraw. On the left it had swept over Hill 182, the commanding height to the rear of Saint-Juvin, in coöperation with the attack of the 77th which I shall describe. As the All-American division, the 82nd was prolific in personal exploits. The sergeant who brought in 129 prisoners, and becamemore famous than the division commander, had a worthy comrade in the western "bronco buster," who, finding himself in face of a group of Germans on Hill 282, walked up to them, and, suddenly drawing his revolver, "took care" of the group. Then seeing a skirmish line of two hundred Germans forming, he picked up a dead German's rifle and shot the officer leading the charge, before he rushed back and brought up his machine-gun company to repulse the attack with the loss of half its numbers.

Of course, the action of the 82nd was influential in the fall of Saint-Juvin, which the 77th, facing the westward bend of the river along the entire front, was to take by a neat maneuver, as its part in pressing the left flank of the Germans in the general attack of the 14th. It was concluded that the German, being a creature of habit, had probably arranged his barrage to protect Saint-Juvin from attack from the south. This was all the more likely against the heady Americans, who had a way in their exasperating energy of taking the bit in the teeth and driving straight through to an objective. With one battalion making a threat in front, the other, crossing the river—which it managed to do most adroitly—from the east, would encounter little opposition. The event turned out entirely according to anticipation, except that thebattalion which was to make the threat in front got out of hand, though in a manner which was bound to give a thrill to their commander even in his technical reproof.

After fighting two weeks in the Forest, the men of this battalion were feeling their oats, now that they were in the open. They did not see why the battalion on the right should have all the honor and excitement of taking Saint-Juvin, while they were making faces at it on the side lines. Their eagerness, according to the divisional report, turned the threat into an attack, with the result that they suffered from the barrage which the Germans laid down. At all events, they lost eight officers killed and twenty wounded in leading the men, who suffered in proportion, while the flanking battalion, with slight losses, entered the town on the afternoon of the 14th. The garrison tried to escape, but another little detail of prevision in the 77th's plan interfered. Accordingly the retreating Germans ran into our curtain of machine-gun fire which we laid down northwest of the town, and were captured.

After Chevières, a village on the south bank of the river, was also entered, the next nut to crack, the town of Grandpré on the other side of the river, was bound to be a bad one. It was a large town for this region, with a thousand inhabitants, restingagainst the bluff of the tongue of ridge which shoots out from the Bourgogne wood, which is the name for the southern end of the Boult Forest. The character of this bluff and of the "citadel" will be of more concern when we come to the thankless and bitter experience of the 78th Division in their assaults. It is sufficient to say now that the bluffs and the houses of the town command the river bank and the narrow opening of the Aire valley to the southernmost projecting edge of the Argonne Forest. While the German on the defensive had machine-guns to spare for use in this Gibraltar, he would apply the tactics in which he was expert by making an attack on the town pay a heavy price, at small cost to himself. On the nights of the 10th and the 11th, some patrols crossed the river and entered Grandpré, to meet with a reception as hot as it was enlightening. It was evident that Grandpré was not to be taken by a few daring men. We must cross in sufficient force to hold, and then only when at least a portion of the machine-gun nests in the town had been silenced. However, the patrols had found a ford.

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