Wet misery—"Penetratin'er and penetratin'er"—The men behind the lines—Back to "rest"—Replacements as bundles of man-power—Reliefs in the fox-holes—Before and during an attack—Dodging shells—A struggle to keep awake—And "on the job"—Will, endurance, and drive—The wedge of pressure.
Wet misery—"Penetratin'er and penetratin'er"—The men behind the lines—Back to "rest"—Replacements as bundles of man-power—Reliefs in the fox-holes—Before and during an attack—Dodging shells—A struggle to keep awake—And "on the job"—Will, endurance, and drive—The wedge of pressure.
As the processes of the Argonne battle became more systematic, they became more horrible. They would have been unendurable if emotion had not exhausted itself, death become familiar, and suffering a commonplace. The shambles were at the worst during the driving of our wedges in the second and third weeks of October. The capacity to retain vitality and will-power in the face of cold and fatigue, and not to become sodden flesh indifferent to what happened, was even more important than courage, which was never wanting. The thought of ever again knowing home comforts became a mirage; a quiet trench sector, with its capacious dugouts and occasional shell-bursts, became a reminiscence of good old days. Paradise for the moment would be warmth—just warmth—and a dry board whereon to lay one's head until nature, sleep finished, urged you to rise.
We were learning what our Allies, and the enemy too, suffered in the winter fighting of Verdun and the Ypres salient. The Europeans, we must not forget, were fighting in their own climate. They were used to having their oxygen served in the humidity of a clammy sponge pressed close to their nostrils; we to having our oxygen served in dry air. We suffered less at home when ice covered lakes and streams than in mists and rains in France at forty and fifty degrees. There is sunshine on snow-drifts and frosty window-panes in our northern States in midwinter, as well as on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico; but we never saw sunshine, as we know sunshine, in the Meuse-Argonne, though there were days which the natives called fair, when the sun was visible as through a moist roof of cheese-cloth.
"I'd charge a machine-gun nest single handed, if I could first sit on a steam radiator for half an hour," one of our soldiers said.
It was summer during the Château-Thierry fighting; a kindly summer, resembling our June in the northern, or our April in the southern States. The enthusiasm of our first important action gave hardships a certain glamour. Men could sleep on the ground without blankets; the wounded did not suffer greatly from cold, if they remained out over night. Cold rations were tolerable. Clothes and earth dried soon after a rain. Fox-holes did not become wellson the levels, and cisterns on the slopes. Guns and trucks did not cut deep ruts beside the roads or in crossing the fields. Summer was ever the time for war in temperate climates; winter the time of rest. It was so in our Civil War.
The battlefield was a sombre brown, splashed by liquid grays. No bright colors varied the monotony of the landscape except the hot flashes from gun-mouths; there were none overhead against the leaden and weeping sky except the red and blue of the bull's-eye of an aeroplane, and the gossamer sheen of its wings. Khaki uniforms and equipment, and the tint of trucks, automobiles, caissons, and ambulances were all in the protective coloration of the surrounding mud. A horse with a dappled coat, or with dark bay or black coat, shining in the mist, was a relief. The sounds were the grating of marching hobnailed shoes, the rumble of motor-trucks and other transport, the roar of the guns, the strident gas alarm, the bursts of shells, the staccato of machine-guns: all in an orchestrated efficiency which wasted not even noise in conserving all energy to the end of destruction—if we except the song of marching companies at the rear, and the badinage with which men diverted one another and themselves from their real thoughts.
There were the one-way roads where all the traffic was going in one direction, either to or from thefront, all day and all night in orderly procession. Along the roads our negro laborers, who all seemed to be giants, kept filling in stones and shoveling in earth to mend broken places. They were in a marvelous world, whose diversions tempted a holiday spirit. They rested on their spades as they watched a general's car, or a big gun, or a tank, or one of a dozen other wonders on wheels pass by; or, the whites of their eyes showing, looked around at the sound of the burst of a shell or an aviator's bomb; or aloft at the balloons and passing aeroplanes and duels in the air.
"How do you like this weather?" I asked one.
"It's ve'y penetratin' and ve'y cold, seh," he replied. "They say it keeps on getting colder and colder, and penetratin'er and penetratin'er, and spring nevah comes."
"It will not, if you don't work hard and win the war."
"I'm goin' to work ve'y hard. We've gotta win this war, seh; or we'll all freeze to death—only it's pow'ful hard keeping yo' mind on work, seh, when so much is goin' on."
Thus at the front the colored man kept open the passageway for the supplies which the colored man had unloaded at the ports. He was truly the Hercules of physical labor for us.
In the zone of battle, back of the infantry andartillery lines, many men had many parts, all under shell-fire and hardships; the rolling kitchen men, the ammunition train and ambulance drivers; the salvage men gathering up the overcoats, blankets, rifles, gas masks, and other equipment discarded in the course of an attack; and the much-abused military policemen, who made drivers keep their lights turned off, and insisted, in the latter days of their high authority, upon colonels' automobiles obeying orders, with the same impartiality that policemen at street crossings show in "stop" and "go" to the "flivver" delivery wagon and the limousine of the man who groans over the size of his income tax.
Out of the shelled zone in the early morning the shattered companies of expended divisions came marching back from the front. Sometimes they broke into song. Usually they were too tired to sing; the recollection of what they had seen was too near for rollicking gayety, at least. They were going into "rest" in some ruined village or series of dugouts, or possibly into a village that had not been shelled; to be "Y. M. C. A.'d" and deloused, to receive fresh clean clothing and warm meals. There were no beds or cots for them, with rare exceptions, but floors and lofts, as we know. Of course, they were not rested in one day, or two or three, or even ten. They had given an amount of their store of reserve energy which it would take them a longtime to renew. Drill began as soon as they had had their first long round of sleep. New officers took the place of the fallen: officers who often did not know their men or the battle. Replacements came to fill the gaps in the ranks, and share all the drills and the lectures which applied the latest battle lessons. Tired brains reeled with instruction.
There was a plan to return convalescent wounded to their original divisions, but in the pressure to hurry all available man-power forward to fill the greedy maw of the front it could be carried out only in a limited way. Thus, whether convalescent or newcomers, the replacements might come from a part of the country widely separated from that of the division which they were joining, and upon the division's welcome home to the locality of its origin by relatives and friends find themselves still far from their own homes. Maine was fighting in the ranks of a battalion from Chicago; New York in the ranks of a battalion from Kansas. The longer a division had fought, the less regional its character. The fortune of war never fell more unkindly than upon the National Army divisions which arrived late in France and were broken up for replacements, or, even in those final days when victory beckoned us to our utmost endeavor, turned into labor troops in the S. O. S. In that vital juncture, they went where they were most needed, which is a soldier's duty. Ihave seen groups of replacements, who had had so little training that they hardly knew how to use their rifles, moving up through the shelled area to find the battalion in reserve to which they were assigned. Only two or three weeks from American training camps, shot across France, strangers indeed on that grim field, they were man-power which could take the place of the fallen.
In the late afternoon on the roads near the front one might see the troops of rested divisions marching forward to relieve expended troops. At Château-Thierry, our men, I know, went singing toward the line of shell-bursts. I am told that many put flowers in their rifle barrels and their button-holes. No doubt they did. So did the French and British in the early days of the war. There were no flowers on the Meuse-Argonne field, only withering grass and foliage. To sing was to attract the enemy's attention. The first enthusiasm had passed; our spring of war was over; our winter of war had come. Most of the men whom I watched going forward looked as if they appreciated that there was wicked, nasty business ahead, and they meant to see it through.
It was dark when they came into the zone where the transport had its dead line. The length of their march was often in darkness if we were making concentrations for an attack. Some went to theirappointed places as reserves in the warrens dug on reverse slopes; others in cautious files, led by guides from the troops in position who knew the ground, went on until they came to the little pits where the outposts were lying, or to machine-gun posts which faced the enemy under the whipping of bullets and the bursts of shell-fire and gas. They were the very point of the wedge which all the strength of our nation was driving. Wet to the skin, filthy, hollow-eyed, the occupants gave up their places to the newcomers, whose officers located their positions on the map, and received local information from their predecessors about the character and direction of fire and many details. It was like a change of shift in a factory—all as businesslike as possible.
How different this front from the days of stationary warfare, with the deep trenches with parapets of sand-bags! Individualism here returned to its own. Patrols must be sent out to keep watch of the enemy; machine-guns and riflemen must be ready for a counter-attack,—which were variations from that deadly monotony of lying in a wet hole in the ground, whether on a bare crest or among the roots of trees in a wood. Blood-stains, torn bits of uniform, meat tins, and hard bread boxes formed the litter around the fox-holes, which marked the stages of progress where we had dug in. The young officershad to creep from fox-hole to fox-hole, keeping touch with their platoons, and bearing in mind all the instructions, regardless of exposure to cold and fire. The men must not forget anything they were told. Their gas masks must always be ready; they must "stick to the death" when that served the purpose of their superiors. Nothing except war's demands could have won them to such willing submission to such a hideous existence.
If there were to be an attack the next morning, then stealthily the men of the first wave came up to the line of the fox-holes and hugged the clammy moist earth, while they were to keep their spirits hot for their charge. Their officers had to study the ground over which they were to advance; consider the speed of the barrage which they were to follow; carry out amazingly intricate maneuvers,—not knowing what volume of shell and machine-gun fire would meet them as they rose to the charge in the chilliest hour of the day, at dawn, when the ground reeked in slipperiness from the mist. The night before an attack always had the same oppressive suspense, the same urgency on the part of all hands in trying to be definite under the camouflage of darkness—hazard omnipotent in its grip on every man's thought.
After the attack came the hurry call for artillery fire on points which had checked our advance; thesummoning of reserves to add more pressure; the eagerness for exact reports from out of the woods and ravines where our men were struggling; the hurried flight of messengers running the gamut of machine-gun bullets; the glad news of gallant charges going home; the sad news of companies "shot to pieces"; the filtering back of the walking wounded, and the stretcher-bearers carrying those who could not walk; prostrate forms waiting on ambulances, and busy doctors at thetriages; all so habitual that its wonder had ceased even for our young army.
If you were wary, studying your ground, eyes and ears alert, you might travel far in that region beyond the dead line of transport; or you might invite a burst of machine-gun fire at the outset of your journey. When it came, or the scream of a shell announced that it would burst in close proximity, as you sought the nearest protection with an alacrity that increased with experience, you indulged in that second of prayer, blasphemy, or fatalistic philosophy which suited your mood. Some men laughed and smiled; I do not think, however, that they were really amused. The farther you went, the more deadly the monotony. When you had seen the front once, you had seen it all, in one sense; in another, little. After that, going under fire was in answer to duty or the desire to be nearer the realities.Every man was subjective at intervals. The less time he had to think of anything but his work, the more objective he was. One man might be killed when he left the parapet the first time he was under fire; another might go through showers of missiles again and again, and never receive a scratch. I have marveled, considering the number of men whom I have seen fall, how chance had favored me. The high-explosive shell I always found the most hateful with its suggestion of maiming for life. Bullets were merciful. They meant death, or a wound from which, except in rare cases, you would recover. Fighting in the open as our men did in the Meuse-Argonne, all their bodies exposed to machine-gun nests, the percentage of dead was often only one in six or seven, and in some cases only one in ten, to the wounded. In the Ypres salient, conspicuously, and elsewhere in the old days of trench warfare, when only heads were exposed above the parapet, and shells mashed in dugouts and struck in groups of men, the percentage was one in three, and even one in two.
Those who saw our returned veterans parading in clean uniforms have little idea of their appearance in battle, their clothes matted with mud, their faces grey as the shell-gashed earth from exhaustion, when they had given the last ounce of their strength against the enemy. This picture of them makes amarch over pavements, between banks of people rewarding them with cheers for what they had endured, seem exotic pageantry. No one can know except by feeling it the physical and mental fatigue of this siege battle. There was always the contrast of effort at high nervous pitch and the utter relaxation of moments of inaction. Memories of weary men prone on the earth, or lying on caissons or gun limbers, go hand in hand with memories of our bursts of "speed" when orders summoned weariness to another impulse of effort. Nature compelled sleep at times, even in the cold; and men awoke to find that they had pneumonia or "flu." It was not only the wounded, but the sick, who were dripping, painfully hobbling shadows along the muddy roads. The medical corps accomplished a wonder I do not understand in the low percentage of mortality.
The battle was a treadmill. If there were men of faint hearts or dazed by fatigue, they had to keep on going. The number with an inclination to straggle was infinitely fewer than in the Civil War. Not only battle police but something stronger held them in their places in the machine: public opinion. We were all in it; we must all do our share. The spirit of the draft was applied by the common feeling. A soldier who might sham illness or shell-shock—which was rare indeed—if his malingering were not understood at a glance, must pass the test of a searchingdiagnosis. I have in mind such a case, of a soldier who came into atriage.
"Well, what's the matter with you?" asked the medico, looking at him in gimlet intensity as their eyes met.
"Nothing, except tired, I guess. I'm feeling better. I'm going back to the front," was the reply.
The wonder is that there were not more men who succumbed, not to fear or fire but to the strain. There were instances of insanity, of temporary illusion, of mind losing control over body—shell-shock, or whatever you choose to call it—which sent a soldier back through sifting processes for specific treatment; but no soldier well enough to fight might escape his duty. Never, I repeat, were there so few who had any such thought; and this under conditions worse than Valley Forge. Where heroes of that day only knew want and cold in camp, they did not have to fight at the same time. The lack of warm food was alone enough to weaken initiative in men used to comforts and to being well fed. We tried to force the rolling kitchens up to the front, but it was impossible on many occasions. Division staffs might say they were up—and they were, in some parts of the line, but not in all. The men growled, of course. They had a right to growl. They growled about many things. The lack of artillery fire, the failure of our planes to stop enemyplanes from flying low with bursts of machine-guns, orders that made them march and counter-march without apparent reason. They growled, but they kept on the job.
I always think of three words to characterize the battle. Will, endurance, and drive: the will to win, the endurance which could bear the misery necessary to win, and the drive which by repeated attacks would break the enemy's will. It was the old accepted system; but its application is the test of the soldier in every cell of brain and body. The high command could supply the orders, but the men must supply the qualities which could carry out the orders.
"It's drive, drive, drive!" as one of the soldiers said. "All the way down from Washington, through Pershing, to the lieutenants, to us—and there's nobody for us to drive except the Boche"—an enemy who was a mighty soldier. We tried our steel against no inferior metal. To say otherwise is not to allow just tribute to ourselves.
All our national energy, our pride, came to a head in the fields of the Argonne. We can be ruthless with ourselves and with one another. We consumed man-power like wood in a furnace. Some men and divisions gave their all in the first period of the battle; others in a later period; others in the final period. The thing was to give your all. For officersthere was always the fear of Blois; of being sent to the rear. I know of an officer who staggered at the door of division headquarters; and then stiffened and drew in his chin as he entered.
"How are you?" asked his division chief of staff.
"All right. Never felt better."
Then his hand went out to the wall to keep him from falling. This was the right spirit. Yet he must have rest. He could no longer command three thousand men.
One day an officer might seem fully master of himself and his task; the next day he "cracked." Superiors, breaking under the strain, were unjust to subordinates who could not carry out orders to take a series of machine-gun nests. Personal fortunes were subject to the "break in luck."
Favoring circumstances honored officers who perhaps had not done as well as those who were considered to have failed. Success was success; failure was failure. Time was precious.
"Finding that X— was not close enough up to his battalion, I immediately relieved him," was the matter-of-fact report of a colonel on a major, which meant tragedy to the major; the next day the colonel himself might "crack." The young lieutenants of platoons and companies, burdened with their instructions and maps, were the object of the accumulated pressure from senior officers. Theycould always charge. There was one sufficing answer to criticism—death. It came to many against impossible positions: yet not in vain. Every man who dared machine-gun fire added to the enemy's conviction of our determination to keep on driving until we had "gone through."
From tambourine to doughnut—The "Y" and the canteen—Too much on its hands—Other ministrants—Manifold activity of the Red Cross—But not at the front—Honor to the army nurses—The chaplain's label immaterial.
From tambourine to doughnut—The "Y" and the canteen—Too much on its hands—Other ministrants—Manifold activity of the Red Cross—But not at the front—Honor to the army nurses—The chaplain's label immaterial.
Of the auxiliary organizations serving with the army the Salvation Army was nearest to the soldier's heart, and the Y. M. C. A., or the "Y," as the soldiers knew it, the most in evidence. When the pioneer Salvationists appeared in our training camps early in the winter of 1917-1918, some wits asked if they were to beat the tambourine and hold experience meetings in the trenches. Soon they were winning their way by their smiling humility. They were not bothered by relative rank, which gave some of the personnel of the other auxiliaries much concern.
"If there's anything that anybody else is too busy to do, won't you let us try to do it?" seemed to express their attitude.
After the fighting began, it was evident that on campaign their emblem was not the tambourine but the doughnut. When our soldiers came out of thebattle, whom should they see standing in the mud of the shelled zone but the khaki-clad Salvation lassies, smilingly passing out doughnuts and hot coffee—free. The tired fighter did not have to search his pockets for money. All he had to do was to eat the doughnuts, and drink the coffee. That made a "hit" with him.
The men workers of other auxiliaries went up under fire, and distributed chocolate and cigarettes. Yet nothing in their gallantry or devotion could have the appeal of the smiling lassies offering free doughnuts and hot coffee to a man just out of the shambles, when his emotions were gelatine to the impressions that would endure. The Salvationists were ready night and day to bear hardships and do cheerfully any kind of drudgery. There were relatively few of them; they filled in gaps, depending upon the personal human touch, which they exerted with admirable "tactics," as the map experts of the staff would say.
Possibly the soldier was a little unfair to the "Y"; possibly, too, the "Y" was the object of critical propaganda, while it neglected propaganda on its own account among our soldiers, though not at home. Where nothing was expected of the Salvation Army, everything was expected of the "Y." It must have motion pictures, singers, and vaudeville artists, and huts wherever American soldiers congregatedfrom end to end of France; this was a part of the ambitious plan, although it could not get the tonnage allowance from home, or the supplies in France, to carry it out. Another part was that of really taking the place of a company exchange. Here the "Y" put its head in a noose; but not unwittingly. When the proposition came from the army to the "Y," its answer was in the negative.
"Aren't you here to serve?" was the army's question. To this the "Y" could only say, "Yes, sir." At that time the army authorities—not foreseeing conditions which later developed—were applying the theory that gifts to the soldiers meant charity: as a self-respecting man he would want to pay for his tobacco, candy, or other luxuries.
The "Y" had no such generous fund as the Red Cross; it could not build huts and theaters, sell cigarettes, chocolate, sandwiches, pie, or furnish meals below cost. In the early days when our soldiers were hungry for chocolate, and none was arriving from home, the "Y" bought it at exorbitant prices in the local market, charging what it had paid. Later it had supplies from the quartermaster. As soon as a soldier appeared in a town, he asked, "Where is that blankety-blank 'Y'?" If there were no "Y" hut, canteen, or motion picture show, his conclusions were inevitable, and his remarks sometimes unprintable, especially if he could not buy his home brandof cigarettes. It was the "Y's" business to be on hand, no less than that of the quartermaster department to see that he was given his daily rations.
He did not receive his pay more regularly than his mail. If he had no money, though he might go to the "Y" motion picture show, he could not get cigarettes, chewing gum, or pie. On one occasion when a "Y" truck loaded with cigarettes came to the rescue of the tobacco-famished at the front, the besieging purchasers, when they opened the packages, found a slip inside, saying that they were from a newspaper's free tobacco fund. The fat was in the fire. The "Y" might give away all that truck load of cigarettes as it did, return the money of the deceived purchasers, and it might give away a dozen trucks of sales cigarettes; but the explanation that the quartermaster department had mixed the free cigarettes with sales cigarettes, the "Y" being officially credited for payment for all, could never overtake the circumstantial report of the "Y's" profiteering, which grew as it was helped on its travels, perhaps, by the "Y's" enemies.
If a division commander wanted an errand done in Paris, a check cashed, or any comfort or entertainment for his men, he called on the "Y," which was not "volunteer," but "drafted." No one ever stopped to think what the army would havedone without the "Y" huts, motion pictures, theatricals, and canteens.
After the armistice, when a large number of returned British and American prisoners arrived at Nancy, I recollect how the local head of another auxiliary organization called up the "Y" on the telephone, saying: "We're helpless. Can you do anything?"
"Send them on!" was the answer.
"There are eight hundred, all hungry. Have you food for them?"
"No, but we'll find it—" which was the spirit of the S. O. S. that kept us supplied in the Meuse-Argonne battle. Another type of "Y" man might, however, have thrown up his hands in despair.
The "Y" was an enormous and mixed force, criticized, reasonably I think, for lack of organization to keep pace with its ambitions. Its home administration seemed disinclined to take the advice of men experienced at the front in the choice of personnel. A novelist, a college professor, a lawyer, or even a regular "Y" secretary is not as good at running a lunch counter or a hut as a man who regularly runs a lunch counter or a hotel. A young woman who stood high at college might not be as useful in the kind of work the "Y" had to do as a practical housewife who might not have heard ofEuclid, but who did know how to bake, sew, and cook. The soldier judged personnel by the way they came down to earth, as he had a very earthly job in his fox-holes and charges. I have gone into this detail because it became the fashion to give the "Y" a bad name, which was hardly deserved considering the large contract it had undertaken to fill.
The Knights of Columbus also had huts and theaters, but did not attempt to cover the whole field. When K. of C. workers opened a counter or appeared with a truck at the front, the supplies while they lasted were free to all comers. The soldier who had no change was always looking for the K. of C. When he passed the "Y," which required money for the sweets or the tobacco he craved, the contrast in his mind was that between generosity and commercialism. He was allotting a large portion of his pay to his family in a time of war, when according to all he read everybody at home was subscribing liberally in order that the men who faced hardship and death might not go without comforts. As the K. of C. appeared in force with the army later than the "Y" and could profit by example, its workers were seemingly a little more practical than those of the "Y."
"Boys, we'll give you all we have. Never mind the money!" was their attitude. The Jewish Welfare Board seems to have been admirably forehandedand generous in its special attention to the soldiers of the Jewish race.
We must not overlook the American Library Association, which had a free library in Paris. It circulated books throughout the army zone by a system which enabled the reader, if he were traveling, to return a book to any "Y" hut. If a book were lost, no matter. The thing was that our fighters should be served.
The Red Cross, having elaborate headquarters in Paris, was an enormous organization, managed with able statecraft, which covered a broad field of various activity. Its duties with the army never seemed as specific as those of the other auxiliaries. The old established Samaritan of our modern world, with immense funds and resources ready to meet any emergency when the call came, it opened free dispensaries and succored refugees; assisted civil populations as well as soldiers; ran some auxiliary hospitals, convalescent hotels, and hotels for officers; never selling, always giving, supplied hot coffee and lunches to soldiers en route across France; and "filled in" on a huge scale in the same way as the Salvation Army on a smaller scale. More of its workers were well-to-do and unpaid than in the K. of C. and the Y. M. C. A. Some of these—for the A. R. C., too, had its difficulties with personnel—were far more expensive, the practical comrades said,than if they had received large salaries. The Red Cross doctors and nurses were ready to supplement the regular army forces when occasion demanded.
The popular idea that the Red Cross had anything to do with bringing in the wounded from the field, or with the dressing stations or ambulances, was quite erroneous. All the doctors and medical men in the front line, and all the stretcher-bearers who endured their share of gas, shells, and machine-gun blasts, of rains and mud, with heavy casualties; all the drivers of the ambulances along shell-infested roads; all the hospital corps men, on their feet twenty-four hours at a stretch at thetriages; all the teams of surgeons and their helpers, whose skill and tireless endurance saved lives—these were of the army.
There is no heroism finer than that of the stretcher-bearer; or of the surgeon and medical corps man in the front line. Their blood is not hot in pursuit or combat. They see the red bandages and gaping wounds, and hear the gasps for breath of the dying. Your medical corps man "took on for the war"; he was of the army machine. The work of our doctors is attested by the record of how successfully they patched up the wounded to return to the battle; of how they kept the stream of wounded flowing back to the hospitals in amazing smoothness, considering the unexpected demands of the battle.
There were not enough medical officers, hospitalcorps men, or nurses; but they made up for their lack of numbers under the most appealing of calls by giving the limit of their strength, no less than the soldiers. The honors to the womanhood which served in France go to our trained nurses in the army service. They did not report to a Paris headquarters when they arrived from home, but were hurried to their destinations on army travel orders; they knew none of the diversions of working in canteens or of automobile rides about the front. For weeks on end they were restricted to hospital areas; they were soldiers under army discipline, in every sense of the word. They had not only kindness in their hearts, but they knew how to be kind; they not only wanted to do, but knew how to do.
How their competency shone beside the frittering superficiality of volunteers who had not even been taught by their mothers to sew, or cook, or look misery in any form in the face, but who felt that they must reach France in some way in order to help, or rather to be helped! It was the difference between the sturdy workhorse drawing a load upgrade, and a rosette of ribbons on the bridle; between the cloth that keeps out the cold, and the flounce on the skirt; between knowing how to bathe a sick man, put a fresh bandage on his wound, move him gently, and what to say to cheer him; and knowing how to take a chocolate out of a box daintily. There was notime for ribbons or flounces during our greatest battle. We rarely had candy from the commissary, which fact however did require self-abnegation on the part of a few of the least serviceable of auxiliary workers, which might lead them to think that they were doing their bit.
Hollow-eyed nurses, driving into bodies aching with fatigue no less energy of will than the exhausted battalions in their charges, kept the faith with smiles, which were their camouflage for cheeks pale from want of sleep. They often worked double the time that they would in hospitals at home, where they had their home comforts and diversions. When a soldier, with drawn, ashen face from loss of blood, reeking still with the grime of the battlefield, came into a ward, an American woman, who knew his ways and his tongue, was waiting to attend upon such cases as his. When he was bathed and shaved and his wound dressed, and he lay back glowing in cleanliness on his cot, his gratitude gave the nurse renewed strength.
After I had returned home, I heard one day on an elevated train a young woman telling, in radiant importance, of her "wonderful experience" as an auxiliary worker of the type to which I have referred, and of all the officers she had met. Seated near her were two nurses in uniform, furtively watching her between glances at each other. Therewere lines in their faces, though not in hers—lines left by their service. What she was saying went very well with her friends, but not with us who know something of who won the war in France. Many of these nurses—working double shifts in a calling which is short-lived for those who pursue it for any length of time—will not recover from the strain on mind and body of the generous giving of the only capital that most of them had. If you were not in France—in case you were and were wounded, you need no reminder—when you meet a woman who was in France, ask if she were an army nurse. If she says that she was, then you may have met a person who deserves to outrank some gentlemen I know who have stars on their shoulders.
Then there were the chaplains. General Pershing had his own ideas on the subject. The chaplain was simply to be the man of God, the ministrant of religion, the moral companion without regard to theological faith, who might show, under fire, his greater faith in the souls of men fighting for a cause.
Bishop Brent, the chief chaplain, was not a militant churchman, but a man of the gospel militant; and so was Father Doherty, on his right hand, and all the other chiefs. You ceased to ask whether a man was Catholic or Protestant, Baptist or Methodist, Christian or Jewish. Clergymen at home might wonder about this, but they would not after theyhad served for a while as our chaplains served, close to the blood-stained gas-saturated earth, with the eternal mystery of the sky overhead. The chief chaplains were hard disciplinarians. The punishment which they meted out to one chaplain who strayed from the straight and narrow path was not comprised in army regulations. "Wasn't he a chaplain?" the chaplains argued. Hardest of all on him were the men of his own church. He had disgraced his church as well as his fellows.
Yet despite the chaplains the men developed the habit of swearing; soldiers always have. War requires emphatic expressions. It destroys flexibility of expression—and "damn" and "hell" do seem the fittest description of a soldier's occupation.
"It's an innocent kind of swearing, though," said a chaplain. "It does not really blaspheme. It may help them in fighting the battle of the Lord against the German."
In the assignment of chaplains, of course, the plan was to place a Catholic with a regiment which was preponderantly Catholic; a Protestant with a regiment that was preponderantly Protestant; a rabbi with a regiment that had many Jews. When it was reported that the majority of the men of a certain regiment were not of the same church as their chaplain, a transfer was recommended. The colonel wanted to keep his chaplain, and suggested thathe put the question to a vote, which he did: with the result that all the men of the regiment declared themselves of the same faith as their chaplain. This chaplain's religion, as it worked out in the daily association of the drudgery of drill and the savage ruck of battle, was quite good enough for them, without regard to the theological label he bore. He had faith, simply faith, and he gave them faith through his own work.
Division commanders who were not religious men, but hard-hitting fighters, thinking only of battle efficiency, used always to be asking for more chaplains. I recollect during the Meuse-Argonne battle a division commander exclaiming: "Why don't we get more chaplain replacements? I'm right up against it in my division. I've had one killed and one wounded in the last two days. I'm going to recommend both for the Cross, but there's nobody come to take their places. You stir them up on this question at Headquarters."
The chaplain stoutened the hearts of the fighters against hardship, cheered the wounded, administered to the dying, wrote letters home to relatives, went over the fields after the battle with the men of the Graves Registration Service, which had the pitiful and reverent task of gathering and burying the dead.
Our soldiers who knew religion at home as repeating "Now I lay me down" in childhood andthe Lord's Prayer when they were older, as grace before meals, going to Sunday school, sitting in pews listening to sermons, and as calls from the clergyman, now knew it as the infinite in their souls in face of death, exemplified by the man of God who was wearing the uniform they wore, who was suffering what they suffered, who kept faith with the old thought that "the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church."
No thought of peace at Souilly—The third attack—The Rainbow Division before Chatillon ridge—Three days of confused combat—Over the ridge—The Arrows sweep through Romagne—Outflanking the Dame Marie ridge—The new Ace of Diamonds Division—In and out—A corridor of fire—Knitting through the Pultière Wood—A fumble in the Rappes Wood—Which is finally "riveted"—The long-enduring Marne Division—Knits further progress.
No thought of peace at Souilly—The third attack—The Rainbow Division before Chatillon ridge—Three days of confused combat—Over the ridge—The Arrows sweep through Romagne—Outflanking the Dame Marie ridge—The new Ace of Diamonds Division—In and out—A corridor of fire—Knitting through the Pultière Wood—A fumble in the Rappes Wood—Which is finally "riveted"—The long-enduring Marne Division—Knits further progress.
On the late afternoon of October 13th I happened to be in the stuffy little ante-room at Souilly, when, his great figure filling the doorway, Liggett came out from a conference with Pershing. His face was glowing, his eyes were sparkling as if he had seen a vision come true. We were planning to have four million men in France in the summer of 1919. Its new commander might think of his First Army, after three weeks of battle in the Meuse-Argonne, as only the nucleus of our growing strength.
A few minutes after he had left the ante-room General Pershing's aide received an item of news over the telephone from Paris. This announced that the Germans had provisionally accepted President Wilson's Fourteen Points. Thought turned fromour own to other battlefields. Austria had practically thrown up her hands. Turkey was isolated and demoralized. Bulgaria had surrendered; the Serbs and Allied troops were marching to Belgrade; the Belgians were at the gates of Bruges, the British four days later were to enter Lille, and the French had taken Laon in the sweep across the open country. Was the end in sight? So long and so stubbornly had the German armies held out, so habitual had war became, that we who were close to the front saw vaguely as yet the handwriting on the wall which was so distinct to the German command. We knew that the Germans had many times dallied with peace proposals in the hope of weakening Allied morale.
When I went in to see General Pershing, he turned to his big map on the wall, and ran his finger over the Romagne positions. "Liggett is losing no time. He's attacking tomorrow," he said. After he had referred to the plan, he fell to talking of the young reserve officers, their courage, the rapidity with which they had learned their lessons, of the fortitude and initiative of the men, who produced leaders among themselves when their officers fell in action. He had had to drive them very hard; this was the only way to hasten the end of the war. His voice trembled and his eyes grew moist as he dwelt on the sacrifice of life. For the moment he was not a commander under control of an iron purpose, butan individual allowing himself an individual's emotion. Then his aide came in and laid a little slip of paper on his desk, remarking that it contained the news of the German acceptance. I asked the general what he thought of the chance of peace.
"I know nothing about it," he said. "Our business is to go on fighting until I receive orders to cease fire. We must have no other thought, as soldiers."
The only negotiations in his province and in that of the Allied armies were of the kind they had been using for four years: the kind which had brought the Germans to their present state of mind. The prospect of peace should make us fight all the harder, as a further argument for the enemy to yield speedily. Not until the day of the armistice did our preparations diminish, at home or in France, for carrying on the war on an increasing scale of force. Throughout October and the first ten days of November our cablegrams to Washington continued to call for all the material required for four million men in the summer of 1919. Indiscreet as it would have been to encourage the enemy by confessing to our paucity of numbers and lack of material in the summer of 1917, we might lay all our cards on the table in the autumn of 1918.
Liggett's attack of October 14th was our last effort which could be called a general attack beforethe final drive beginning November 1st, which broke the German line. The general attack of September 26th had broken through the old trench system for deep gains; that of October 4th, with the driving of two wedges on either side of the whale-back, had taken the Aire valley and the gap of Grandpré, and brought us up to the Kriemhilde Stellung, or main line of resistance of the whale-back; that of October 14th aimed to drive a wedge on either side of the Romagne heights, taking the Kriemhilde, the two wedges meeting at Grand Carré farm in their converging movement to deliver the heights into our hands. Thus Army ambition was soaring again. If it had succeeded, we should have been up to the Freya Stellung, another fragmentary trench system, the second and inferior line of resistance of the whale-back, and we might not have had to wait another two weeks for victory. The progress of the other armies summoned us, as it had at every stage of the battle, to a superhuman effort to reach the German line of communications, which might now mean a complete military disaster for the enemy.
The 32nd was still facing the Côte Dame Marie and the town of Romagne in front of the loop in the Kriemhilde. On its left was the 42nd, which had just relieved the exhausted 1st and was to drive the western wedge through the trench system of theChatillon ridge and on through the Romagne Wood and the large Bantheville Wood.
I have written so much in my first book about the 42nd, in its Baccarat sector, in its "stone-walling" against the fifth German offensive, in the Château-Thierry counter-offensive, that it seems necessary to say only that it was the Rainbow Division, the second of National Guard divisions to arrive in France, which had shown such mettle, immediately it was sent to the trenches, that it was given every test which a toughened division might be asked to undergo. Major-General Charles T. Menoher, who had been in command throughout its battle service, had the poise requisite to handling the infantry regiments from Alabama, Iowa, New York, and Ohio, and all the other units from many States, in their proud rivalry.
The Arrows of the 32nd, from Michigan and Wisconsin, now on the Rainbows' right, had been on their right when both divisions crossed the Ourcq and stormed the heights with a courage that disregarded appalling casualties. Neither the 42nd nor the 32nd would admit that it had any equals among National Guard divisions. After their weeks of fighting in the Marne region, the Rainbows had come out with staggeringly numerous gaps in their ranks as a result of their victory, which had been filled by replacements who were not even now fully trained.They had been in line for the Saint-Mihiel attack, but were brought to the Argonne to be ready in reserve when a veteran division should be required for a vital thrust. No sooner had they gone into line than they found that the enemy, taking a lesson from the success of the 1st and the 32nd and the 3rd, which had entered the Kriemhilde, had been improving his Kriemhilde line, concentrating more artillery and establishing machine-gun posts to cover any points where experience had developed weakness. The Kriemhilde had thus far resisted all our attacks. It combined many of the defensive advantages of the old trench system with the latest methods of open war defense upon chosen and very formidable ground. The 42nd was to storm one of its key points, the Chatillon ridge.
Will any officer or man of the division forget the days of October 14th, 15th, and 16th? At the very start they were at close quarters, their units intermingling with the Germans in rush and counter-rush, in the midst of machine-gun nests, trenches, and wire entanglements, where man met man in a free-for-all grapple to the death. The rains were at their worst. Every fighter was sopping wet. It was impossible to know where units were in that fiendish battle royal, isolated by curtains of fire.
Summerall was now in command of the Fifth Corps. "Per schedule" and "go through" Summerall,who had driven a human wedge as a division commander, was to drive another as a corps commander. His restless personal observation kept touch with the work of brigade and regiment; his iron will was never more determined.
The 42nd did not keep to the impossible objective beyond, but it did "go through" the formidable Kriemhilde, which had been our nightmare for three weeks, in one of the most terrifically concentrated actions of the battle. There was hard-won progress on the first day on the bloody slopes of Hill 288, while patrols, pushing ahead, found themselves under cross-fire which could not be withstood. When night came, the units in front were already exhausted in a day of fighting of the most wearing kind. "Attack again!" Wire which was not on artillery maps, swept by machine-gun fire, meant delay, but no repulse. The German resistance was unusually brave and skillful in making the most of positions as vital and well-prepared as they were naturally strong. The right, its units rushing here and crawling there to avoid the blasts of machine-gun fire, had put Hill 242 and Hill 288 well behind it on the second day, and had reached the gassed Romagne Wood. The center was held up on the slippery and tricky ascents of the Chatillon ridge, where the German machine-gunners stood until they were killed or so badly wounded that they could not serve their guns; andthe German infantry, literally in a fortress stronghold, became more desperate with every hour throughout the afternoon, while dusk found the shivering and tenacious Rainbows dug into the sodden earth and holding their ground. Shattered units were reorganized, and fresh units sent forward for the attack of the next day, which took the ridge. The Kriemhilde Stellung was won.
Those three days had been more horrible than even the Rainbows had known: days which have either to be told in infinite detail, or expressed as a savage wrestle for mastery. Few prisoners might be taken in such confused fighting, when the Germans stuck to the last to their fox-holes and their fragments of trenches. The path of the advance was strewn with German dead. Army ambition had gained much, if not its extreme goal. It had a jumping-off place for a final and decisive general attack. There remained nothing further for the 42nd during the next two weeks except to make sure that its gains were not lost. This required constant patrols and costly vigils under gas, artillery, and machine-gun fire, which were very wearing. On October 30th the division was relieved by the 2nd, which passed through it for the great advance of November 1st. The 42nd had suffered 2,895 casualties in this operation. It could retire after its victory, in full confidence that it had kept faith with the high expectationsof its future from the day of its organization. It had brought great honor to itself as a division, to the whole National Guard, and to the replacement officers and men who had served in it.
The 32nd's attack on October 14th was of course intimately connected with that of the 42nd. Having assisted the 1st to drive the wedge over the wall of the Aire, the Arrows had still enough vitality left to carry out their eager desire to complete the conquest of the section of the Kriemhilde on their front. They knew that they had a hard nut to crack, and they began its cracking by turning all the power of their artillery on to the German positions from noon of the 13th until 5.30 on the morning of the 14th, when, under as deep a barrage as the tireless artillery could make, they started for the entrenchments on the Dame Marie ridge, and the town of Romagne. Their left struggled up the slopes of the ridge, but had to halt and dig in, waiting for more artillery preparation to silence the array of machine-guns and guns which, despite the eighteen hours of bombardment, began firing almost as soon as the charge began.
On the right success was more prompt. By noon a battalion was past the village which had resisted so many attempts to capture it. Knowing Romagne of old, the right had executed a clever flanking movement, under the special protection of a flexible barrage,which outwitted the enemy. By 11.30 the village was in the hands of the swiftly moving Arrows, and entirely mopped up. Its name might now be inscribed on the division banners with those of Fismes and Juvigny. The Germans had arranged many bloody traps in the streets, but the men of the 32nd had taken too many positions from the enemy to be fooled by such tricks.
The left meanwhile was burrowing into the steep and slippery sides of the Dame Marie ridge, with a blast of machine-gun fire grilling every head that showed itself. There are occasions when officer and soldier know that the odds are too great against them; when they halt and dig, from the same instinct that makes a man step back from a passing train. This was such an occasion. It looked as if the ridge could not possibly be taken in front, when the men on the extreme flank, quick to press forward instantly there was any opening in the wall of fire, saw their opportunity. The 42nd, with their first onrush halted, had kept on pushing, and they were driving the Germans off Hill 288, which had been pouring its fire into the ranks of the 32nd men facing the Dame Marie. This gave a purchase for a tactical stroke, which was improved before the German realized that he had fumbled, and could retrieve himself. A reserve battalion which was hastened forward slipped around to the left of theDame Marie. With its pressure on the flank, and that of the center regiment, which had lostliaisonon the left but had no thought of stopping while it could keep up with the right, the enemy was forced completely off the ridge by dark, and the advance pressed on into the woods beyond. The Arrows had now not only penetrated the Kriemhilde, but had gone clear through it. Too much gold can not be used in State capitals in inscribing the Dame Marie beside the heights of the Ourcq to glorify the deeds of the 32nd for the admiration of future generations. Despite its two weeks' hard service, it was to remain in line,—or rather to continue advancing for four days longer, as it grappled with the machine-gun nests in Bantheville Wood.
On the night of the 19th-20th it was relieved by the 89th. All the survivors among numerous replacements which it had received after Juvigny could claim to belong to that fraternity of veterans, which, from the hour they marched down the apron of the Ourcq in parade formation in the face of the enemy's guns, had shown the qualities which make armies unconquerable. No division ever stuck to its knitting more consistently, or had been readier to take the brunt of any action. Its part in the Meuse-Argonne battle had been vital and prolonged. The number of its prisoners, all taken in small groups in desperate fighting, was 1,095, its casualties were5,019, and it had identified the elements of nine German divisions on its front.
On its right in the attack of October 14th a division new to the great battle had come into line—the regular 5th, under command of Major-General John E. McMahon. Its emblem was the ace of diamonds. The 5th was just as regular as the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th, and it had no inkling of a doubt that it could prove as ably as the other four that it was the "best" regular division. As a basis for its confidence was its record in Lorraine, where it had preparation for a larger role in its faultless taking of the village of Frapelle, when for the first time in two years the Vosges mountains had resounded with the bombardment of an offensive action. Officers and men had been thoroughly drilled. Uniformity had not suffered from the injection of inexperienced replacements. The 5th had both the ardor of the fresh divisions which had gone in on September 26th without having previously been under fire, and long trench service, which made the Aces the more eager to be in the "big show."
The command took them at their own estimate in a characteristic—an aggravatedly characteristic—fashion. If ever a division were warranted in losing heart on the ground that their superiors were "not playing the game" with them, it was the 5th, which was submitted to everything in the way of changingorders that is ruinous to morale. It was moved about without any regard to the chessboard rules of war. Doubtless this was necessary; but it was hard on the 5th, though it was only to confirm other people, including the Germans, in the opinion that the 5th was a great division.
On the night of October 11th-12th a brigade of the 5th was ordered to take over the line of the 80th and a part of the line of the 4th. The sector was on the Cunel-Brieulles road, where the 80th had been checked, and under the flanking fire of the galleries of guns, on the right from east of the Meuse, on the left from the whale-back, as well as in front, which I have described fully in my account of the 4th division. Relief was not completed until after daylight, at 6.30 in the morning. Patrols were sent forward into the Pultière Wood when word came that the Germans were massing for a counter-attack. The 5th was preparing to receive them, and establishing itself in its sector, when orders came that it was to withdraw. Nothing irritates a soldier of spirit more than to be sent into position for action, and then to turn his back upon the enemy. Withdraw! The aces of diamonds to withdraw! They were willing to play the game, but they were filled with disgust at such an order. After long marches from the rear, after spending the whole night in effecting a most difficult relief under continuous fire, after aday full of annoyances in organizing an uncertain line swept by shell-bursts, they were to march back, through the night in the gamut of the enemy artillery, which became increasingly active in evident knowledge of their exposure. Units had as much reason for becoming confused as they would have in a night attack.
Disheartened at having to retreat—for that was the word for the maneuver—some showed less alacrity than in going to the front, while the filtering process of withdrawal under the cross-fire was bound to separate men from their commands. The language they used of course was against the German artillery, not against high commanders. A part of the relief had to be carried out in broad daylight in sight of the German artillery observers; indeed, it was not finished until noon. Without having made a single charge, the brigade had been exhausted and suffered many casualties.
The change of plan considered using the 5th as a fresh division, which it would not long remain if this kind of maneuvering were continued. Army ambition had decided that it was to be the eastern wedge in the converging attack to Grand Carré farm, of which the 42nd was to be the western. Hence a change of sectors for the 5th, which, after marching into hell's jaws and out again, was to be "side-slipped" into the sector of the amazingly tenacious3rd, which, though it might well be considered "expended" by its severe casualties and long exertions, was to take over the wicked sector from which the 5th had been withdrawn. "Side-slipping" was almost as common and hateful a word in the battle asliaison. Consider a battalion as a bit of paper fastened by a pin to a map, and moving it right or left was a simple matter; but moving men under shell- and machine-gun fire, in the darkness, from one series of fox-holes to another with which they were not familiar, you may be assured on the word of any soldier, who lost a night's sleep, while soaked to the skin by the chill rain, and had his comrades killed in the process, was anything but a simple matter.
Naturally the three divisions, the 5th, 32nd, and 42nd, were interdependent for success in this converging attack. As the veterans of the 42nd, doing all that veterans could do, were three days in taking the Chatillon ridge, and the regulars of the 5th could not bring to life their dead in the Rappes Wood to continue charging, either division had another reason than the unconquerable resistance on its own front for not keeping the schedule of high ambition.
According to the original plan, the Aces of the 5th, passing through the 3rd, were to advance across open ground in a corridor between the artillery fireof the Romagne heights and the flanking machine-gun nests of the Pultière and Rappes Woods, over which flanking artillery fire would pass from the heights east of the Meuse. The 5th's commander was to change the plan—another change with additional maneuvers, though a wise one—by attacking the Pultière Wood, which would save the Aces from some flanking machine-gun fire on the right.
It should have been no surprise, after the commotion due to the "side-slipping," double reliefs, and counter-marching, that the enemy knew that an attack was coming. Only if he had lost all tactical sense would he have failed to foresee its nature. He was ready with all his galleries of guns, and with his machine-guns regrouped to meet the emergency, when the wave of the 5th, including troops which had been up two nights in making a relief, being relieved, and taking over again, began the attack, under insufficient artillery support, in all the ardor of their first charge in the great battle.
Our barrage had not silenced the machine-gun nests, which began firing immediately. The enemy's ample artillery shelled our echelons in support, causing losses and a certain amount of inevitable confusion, as they were forced to take cover and deploy. It also laid down a barrage in front of our first wave; but the Aces passed through the swath of the bursts in steady progress up the bare slopes underincreasing machine-gun fire, and reached the crests of Hills 260 and 271. There they were exposed to all the guns of the galleries, and to machine-gun fire from the direction of Bantheville in front, from Romagne on the left, and the Pultière and Rappes woods on the right. To pass over the crest and down the slopes into the valley beyond was literally to open their arms to receive the bullets and shells. What use was it for the 5th's batteries to face around due east from the line of attack toward the enemy batteries behind the Borne de Cornouiller, which were out of their reach?
The Pultière, the southern of the two woods, was about half the size of the Rappes, which was a mile long and separated from it by a narrow open space. The ground was uneven, sloping upward to hills which made the defense of their depths the easier. Our exploiting force sent into the Pultière to protect the flank of the main advance had not been strong enough for its purpose. After passing through flanking fire from the direction of Cunel, it was checked in the woods by the machine-guns concealed in the thickets, which also gave cover for machine-guns firing not only into the flank but into the right rear of the main advance. The next step was to take the Pultière by a concentrated attack during the afternoon, which drove forward until we had dug in face to face with the remaining machine-gunners inan irregularity of line which was always the result of determined units fighting machine-gun nests in a forest. The Aces who had won this much, their fighting blood fully aroused, proceeded to carry out their mission the next day, the 15th, of further relieving the flank of the advance on the hills, which was being sorely punished as it held to its gains under storms of shells.
Now imperishable valor was to lead to a tragedy of misunderstanding. On through the northern edge of Pultière Wood, across the open space between the two woods in face of the machine-gun fire from the edge of the Rappes Wood, then through the dense growth of the Rappes, infiltrating around machine-gun nests, and springing upon their gunners in surprise, again charging them full tilt in front, passing by many which were "playing possum," these Aces of American infantrymen, numbers thinning from death and wounds, but having no thought except to "get there," kept on until a handful of survivors reached the northern edge of the Rappes. This was their destination. They had gone where they were told to go. They dug in among the tree roots in the inky darkness, without the remotest idea of falling back, as they waited for support to come.
Now on the morning of that day, the 15th—after casualties had been streaming back all night under shell-fire from the bare hills which were being resolutelyheld with rapidly diminishing numbers,—it was found that the total remaining effectives of three regiments were only eleven hundred men, a hundred more than one battalion. Having asked the Corps for reserves, the division commander had attacked for the Rappes Wood as we have seen. The reports that came in to Division Headquarters from the morning's effort showed that we were making little progress in the wood, and were having very hard fighting still in the Pultière. The brigade commander ordered another attack on Rappes for the afternoon. This the division commander countermanded. In view of lack of support on his flank, the continuing drain of casualties and the situation of the division as a whole, he felt warranted in indicating that any units which might have made an entry into Rappes withdraw to the Pultière.
The next morning patrols which reached the men who were in the northern edge of Rappes passed on the word that they were to fall back. The gallant little band, surrounded by German snipers, had not been able to send back any message. Weren't they of the 5th? Hadn't they been told to "go through" the wood? Was it not the regulation in the 5th to obey orders? Withdraw! Very well; this was orders, too. From their fox-holes where, so far at least, they had held their own in a sniping contest with the enemy, they retraced their steps over theground they had won past the bodies of their dead comrades. Before Division Headquarters knew of their success, the evacuation of Rappes was completed.
The night of the 16th the total rifle strength of the division was reported as 3,316, or a little more than one-fourth of normal. On the 17th Major-General Hanson E. Ely took command of the 5th. He was of the school of the 1st, long in France; a blue-eyed man of massive physique, who met all situations smilingly and with a firm jaw. The Pultière Wood was definitely mopped up during the day.
The brigade which had been in the 3rd Division's sector and suffered the most casualties and exhaustion was relieved. At least the 5th, weakened as it was by a battle in which the Aces fought as if they were the whole pack of cards, must hold the Pultière, and Hills 260 and 271. On the night of the 16th-17th the divisional engineers did a remarkable piece of work, even for engineers. They brought up under shell-fire and gas, and laid under shell- and machine-gun fire, two thousand yards of double wire to protect the tired infantry, which was busily digging in, against counter-attacks.
By this time, of course, the prospect of taking Grand Carré farm by the converging movement seemed out of the question. The farm was morethan a mile beyond Bantheville, which was nearly a mile beyond the southern edge of the Rappes Wood. But when the 32nd reported progress in the Bantheville Wood on the 18th, and its patrols had seen no one in Bantheville, the 5th was sent to the attack again. Its patrols, which reached the edge of the town, found it well populated with machine-gunners, who might have only recently arrived. As for the Rappes Wood, all the cunning and daring we could exert in infiltration could take us only four hundred yards into its depths, where the Germans had been forewarned to preparedness by their previous experience.
On the 19th the 5th held fast under the welter of shell-fire from the heights and across the Meuse, while General Ely straightened out his organization, and applied remedies for a betterliaisonbetween the artillery and the infantry. On the 20th, the idea of "pushing" still dominant, under a heavy barrage the 5th concentrated all its available numbers of exhausted men in a hastily formed plan for another attempt for the Rappes Wood. It made some two hundred yards' progress against the sprays of bullets ripping through the thickets. The 5th was "expended" in vitality and numbers after these grueling six days; but it was not to give up while the Germans were in the Rappes Wood. The Aces made swift work of its taking on the next day. Their artilleryand that of the 3rd on their left gave the men a good rolling barrage. The enemy artillery replied in a storm immediately; but the Aces, assisted by the men of the 3rd Division attacking from their side, drove through the shell-fire and all the machine-gun nests with what one of the men called a "four of a kind" sweep. At 5P.M.the reports said that the wood was not only occupied but "riveted." At 6P.M.the enemy answered this success with a counter-attack, which the 5th's artillery met, in three minutes after it had started, with a barrage which was its undoing. Having consolidated Rappes and avenged the pioneers who had first traversed it, the 5th was now relieved by the 90th, and sent to corps reserve. The exposure had brought on much sickness, which increased the gaps due to casualties. Absorbing three thousand replacements, General Ely, reflecting in his personality the spirit of his men, was now to prepare them for their brilliant part in the drive of November 1st.
The 3rd Division, on the right of the 5th, had had of course to submit to the same annoyance of "side-slipping" as the 5th in the interchange of sectors. Having assisted in driving one of the wedges of October 4th, it was now to continue under the shell-fire from the neighborhood of the Borne de Cornouiller across the Meuse in forcing its way still farther. It made slow and difficult progress inthe eastern edge of the Pultière Wood and the Forêt Wood on the 14th, and, the division sector being swung east, as the 5th, in turn dependent upon the other divisions, had a misfortune in the Rappes Wood, not even the dependable infantry of the 3rd could make headway under flanking fire against the Clairs Chênes Wood and Hill 299.
On the 16th Brigadier-General Preston Brown, one of the younger brigadiers, a well-known Leavenworth man who had been chief of staff of the 2nd Division in its stand on the Paris-Château-Thierry road, took command of the 3rd. His appointment was significant of how youth will always be served under the test of war. On the 17th nothing was expected of the division by the Corps; on the 18th it advanced inliaisonwith the 5th in the attack on the Rappes Wood, which only partially succeeded. Now that tough and dependable 3rd took over the front of the 4th Division, which had been in since September 26th, and with all four regiments in line its front reached to the bank of the Meuse from Cunel.
On the 20th, the day that the 5th was to take Rappes, General Brown now having made his preparations, the 3rd went for Clairs Chênes Wood and Hill 299 in deadly earnest, which meant that something would have to "break." It was characteristic of the handicaps under which every division labored that in crossing the open spaces on their way toClairs Chênes the 3rd had flanking machine-gun fire from the machine-guns in the Rappes Wood, which had not yet been taken. The 3rd took Clairs Chênes, but the flanking movement planned for the taking of 299 could not go through. The next day General Brown converged two attacks upon 299 and 297. Two of the highest hills in the region, which had long been a vantage point for observers, were won, and the 3rd's line straightened out with veteran precision.
The 3rd had been going too fast these last two days to suit the enemy's plans of defense. He concentrated his artillery in a violent bombardment on Clairs Chênes, and under a barrage worthy of German gunners in their most prodigal days the German infantry, in one of those spasmodic counter-attacks which showed all their former spirit, forced our machine-gunners and engineers to withdraw. A regimental commander repeated an incident of the 3rd's defense of Mézy and the railroad track along the Marne, when he gathered runners and all the men he could find in the vicinity, and led them in a charge which drove the Germans out of the wood, and re-established the line. The Germans found what compensation they could by pounding Hill 299 all night with their guns; but that hill was too high and too valuable to be yielded by such stalwart dependables as the men of the 3rd. During the next fivedays, while our whole line was preparing for the drive of November 1st, the 3rd's active patrols even entered the village of Brieulles on the river bank, which for over four weeks had been a sore point with us; but they were told that it was too dangerous a position to hold, and withdrew.