But meanwhile great and portentous things had been happening elsewhere on the long battle line. Up in Flanders, the British troops, with American brigades fighting shoulder to shoulder with them, were driving the Germans eastward. Farther south, the French were hounding the fleeing Germans. And American forces around Soissons were pounding away in such a fashion as to make the positions along the Vesle untenable for their stubborn defenders.
The enlisted men knew little or nothing of this and even the junior officers were surprised when word came back from patrols on the north of the river on September 4th, that they met almost no opposition from the enemy. Even his artillery fire had fallen off to a little desultory shelling, so at once a general advance was ordered.
Roads in the rear instantly became alive with motor trucks, big guns, columns ofmen, wagon trains and all the countless activities of an army on the march. The sight of the main forces crossing the river was a wonderful one to the officers standing on the hills overlooking the scene, and one that they never will forget.
The long columns debouched from the wooded shelters, deployed into wide, thin lines and moved off down the slope into the narrow river valley. Below them lay the villages and towns of the Vesle, pounded almost to dust by the thousands of shells which had fallen upon them during the weeks the two armies contended for their possession. The men went down the hill exactly as they had done so often in war maneuvers and sham battles at training camps. Only an occasional burst of black smoke and a spouting geyser of earth and stones showed it was real warfare, although even that had been so well simulated in the training that, except that now and then a man or two dropped and either lay still or got up and limped slowly back up the hill, the whole thing might have been merely a drama of mimic warfare. Many of the officers who watched did, in fact, compare it with scenes they had witnessed in motion pictures.
Despite the occasional casualty, the line moved steadily forward. On reaching the river, there was little effort to converge at the hastily constructed bridges. Men who were close enough veered over to them, but the rest plunged into the water and either waded or swam across, according to the depth where they happened to be and the individual's ability to swim.
Once on the north side, they started up the long slope as imperturbably as they had come down the other side, although every man knew that when they reached the crest of the rise they would face the German machine gun fire from positions on the next ridge to the north.
Without faltering an instant, the thin lines topped the rise and disappeared from the watchers to the south, and the fight was on again. The German machine gunners resisted and retired foot by foot, but the American advance was unfaltering. It had been freely predicted that the enemy would make a stand on the high plateau between the Vesle and the Aisne, but the pressure elsewhere on his line to the west and north precluded the possibility of this and he plunged on northward.
The 109th Infantry made its crossing of the Vesle about two and a half miles east of Fismes, the regiment's position on the south of the river having been at Magneux. Its next objective point was Muscourt. The Germans confronting it had not retired so precipitately as those at Fismette and the regiment fought its way across the river and on northward, losing its third commander in the action.
Colonel Samuel V. Ham, regular army officer, who had succeeded Colonel Coulter when he was wounded, led the firing line of the regiment across the river. He was so severely wounded that he was unable to move, but remained ten hours on the field looking after the welfare of his men. So conspicuous was his action that he was cited and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the official citation reading as follows:
"For extraordinary heroism in action near Magneux, France, September 6, 1918. By courageously leading his firing line in the advance across the Vesle River from Magneux toward Muscourt, Colonel Ham exemplified the greatest heroism and truest leadership, instilling in his men confidencein their undertaking. Having been severely wounded and unable to move, he remained ten hours on the field of battle, directing the attack, and refused to leave or receive medical attention until his men had been cared for."
The Pennsylvania regiments came onto the high ground, from which the lowlands to the north were spread out before them like a panorama, and in the misty distance, fifteen miles away, they could descry the towers of the Cathedral at Laon. This was, in a sense, the Allied promised land. It was defiled and invaded France and, furthermore, Laon, since 1914 had been the pivot of the German line, the bastion upon which the great front made its turn from north and south to east and west.
The five miles of hill, plateau and valley lying between the Vesle and the Aisne were not crossed with impunity. It was on the Aisne plateau that another company of the 109th wrote its name high on the scroll of honor.
A small wood below the village of Villers-en-Prayeres obstructed the advance of the regiment. It had been strongly organized by the Germans and was fairly alive withBoche machine gunners and snipers. Company G, of the old First, was ordered to dispose of it. The orders were carried out in what the official communique of the next day referred to as a "small but brilliant operation." Considering the small extent of the action and the fact that it was but an incident of the whole battle, the fact that it was mentioned at all in the official reports speaks volumes for the men who carried it out.
The glory and distinction were won at a bitter cost. Company G, after the fight was over, ranked side by side with Companies L and M of the same regiment and B and C of the 110th for their splendid stand and heavy losses south of the Marne. There were 125 casualties in the company of 260 men. Included among them were Sergeant Frederick E. Bauer, Sergeant Graham McConnell, Corporal Thomas S. B. Horn, Private Charles A. Knapp, all of Philadelphia, and Sergeant John H. Winthrop, D. S. C., of Bryn Mawr, killed, and Lieutenant Harold A. Fahr and Sergeant Earl Prentzel, both of Willow Grove, Pa.; Corporal Theodore G. Smythe, Bugler Howard W. Munder, Privates Gus A. Faulkner,Charles Quenzer, Thomas Biddle, Robert C. Dilks, Frederick C. Glenn, Charles Lohmiller and Bernard Horan, all of Philadelphia, wounded.
Private Paul Helsel, of Doylestown, Pa., a member of the same company, came out of the battle with six bullet holes through his shirt, two through his breeches, the bayonet of his rifle shot away and a bullet embedded in the first aid packet carried on his hip, but without a scratch on his person.
The Americans were subjected at times to a heavy artillery fire, especially while crossing the plateau. For about two miles it was necessary for them to advance in the open on high ground, plainly visible to German observers. There was little cover, and both heavy and light artillery swept the zone, but with slight effect and without checking to any degree the forward movement.
The advance of the Americans over the plateau was effected without material loss because, instead of advancing in regular formations, they were filtered into and through the zone, never presenting a satisfactory target.
The German stand on the Vesle hadenabled them to remove the bulk of the supplies they had accumulated there and what they could not remove they burned. Vast fires, sending up clouds of smoke in the distance, marked where ammunition dumps and other stocks of supplies were being destroyed that they might not fall into the hands of the Americans. Thus it was that the progress from the Vesle presented a different aspect from that between the Marne and the Vesle, where the way had been impeded in places by the unimaginable quantities of supplies of every conceivable kind the Hun had abandoned in his flight.
By September 10th, the pursuit had come to an end, as far as the Iron Division was concerned. The Americans and French were on the Aisne and the enemy again was snarling defiance across a water barrier.
The artillery regiments followed the infantry as far as the high ground between the rivers and there took position to blast the Huns away from the Aisne and send them rolling along to their next line, the ancient and historic Chemin-des-Dames, or Road of Women.
Battery C, 107th Artillery, ofPh[oe]nixville, commanded by Captain Samuel A. Whitaker, of that town, a nephew of former Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker, was the first of the Pennsylvania big gun units to cross the Vesle.
On the night of September 10th, the 107th was relieved by the 221st French Artillery Regiment, near the town of Blanzy-les-Fismes. The French used the Americans' horses in moving into positions. They discovered they had taken a wrong road in moving up and just as they turned back the Germans, who apparently had learned the hour of the relief, laid down a heavy barrage. A terrible toll was taken of the French regiment.
Lieutenant John Muckel, of the Ph[oe]nixville battery, with a detail of men, had remained with the French regiment to show them the battery position and bring back the horses. When the barrage fell, Lieutenant Muckel was thrown twenty-five feet by the explosion of a high-explosive shell, and landed plump in the mangled remains of two horses. All about him were the moans and cries of the wounded and dying Frenchmen. He had been so shocked by the shell explosion close to him that hecould move only with difficulty and extreme pain. He was barely conscious, alone in the dark and lost, for the regiment had gone on and his detachment of Americans was scattered.
Lieutenant Muckel, realizing he must do something, dragged himself until he came to the outskirts of a village he learned later was Villet. Half dazed, he crawled to the wall of a building and pulled himself to his feet. He was leaning against the wall, trying to collect his scattered senses, when a shell struck the building and demolished it.
The Lieutenant was half buried in the débris. While he lay there, fully expecting never again to rejoin his battery, Sergeant Nunner, of the battery, came along on horseback and heard the officer call. The Sergeant wanted the Lieutenant to take his horse and get away. The Lieutenant refused and ordered the Sergeant to go and save himself. The Sergeant defied the Lieutenant, refusing to obey and announcing that he would remain with the officer if the latter would not get away on the horse. At last they compromised, when the Lieutenant had recovered somewhat, by the Sergeant's riding the horse and theLieutenant's assisting himself by holding to the animal's tail. In this way they caught up with the battery.
Having reached the Aisne, the Twenty-eight Division now was relieved and ordered back to a rest camp, which they sadly needed, after about sixty days of almost unremitting night and day fighting for the infantry and approximately a month of stirring action for the artillery.
Thoroughly exhausted, but serene in the knowledge of a task well and gloriously performed, their laurels thick upon them and securely in possession of the manfully earned title, "The Iron Division," what was left of our Pennsylvania men turned their backs upon the scene of action and prepared to enjoy a well-earned period of repose and recreation.
It was not to be, however. Disappointments, of which they had been the prey for more than a year, dogged their footsteps. While on the road, moving toward a rest camp as fast as they could travel, orders reached the division to proceed eastward to where General Pershing had begun to assemble the American forces into the First American Army. Theemergency which had led to the use of American brigades under French and British higher command had passed and America at last was to have its own army under its own high command, subject only to the supreme Allied commander, Marshal Ferdinand Foch.
The men in the ranks were keenly alive to the fact that they were headed for a rest camp, and when their route and general direction were changed overnight and they set off the next day at right angles to the course they had been traveling, they knew something else was in store for the division. Not an officer or man, however, had an inkling of what time only brought forth—that the thing they were about to do was immeasurably greater, more glorious and more difficult than that which they had accomplished.
Grumbling among themselves, after the true soldier fashion when not too busily engaged otherwise, the men found some compensation in the knowledge that their herculean efforts of the past weeks were understood and acknowledged by the higher authorities. They cherished with open pride a general order issued byMajor-General Charles H. Muir, the division commander. It was of special significance because he is a regular army officer, not a Pennsylvanian, and therefore not imbued with local or state pride, and also because before the war the National Guard was held in huge contempt by the average regular army officer. Here is what General Muir's general order told the men:
"The division commander is authorized to inform all, from the lowest to the highest, that their efforts are known and appreciated. A new division, by force of circumstances, took its place in the front line in one of the greatest battles of the greatest war in history.
"The division has acquitted itself in a creditable manner. It has stormed and taken points that were regarded as proof against assault. It has taken numerous prisoners from a vaunted Guards division of the enemy.
"It has inflicted on the enemy far more loss than it has suffered from him. In a single gas application, it inflicted more damage than the enemy inflicted on it by gas since its entry into battle.
"It is desired that these facts be broughtto the attention of all, in order that the tendency of new troops to allow their minds to dwell on their own losses, to the exclusion of what they have done to the enemy, may be reduced to the minimum.
"Let all be of good heart! We have inflicted more loss than we have suffered; we are better men individually than our enemies. A little more grit, a little more effort, a little more determination to keep our enemies down, and the division will have the right to look upon itself as an organization of veterans."
So away they went to the southeast and came to a halt in the vicinity of Revigny, just south of the Argonne Forest and about a mile and a half north of the Rhine-Marne Canal. Here they found replacement detachments awaiting them and once more the sadly depleted ranks were filled.
The division was under orders to put in ten days at hard drilling there. This is the military idea of rest for soldiers, and experience has proved it a pretty good system, although it never will meet the approval of the man in the ranks. It has the advantage of keeping his mind off what he has passed through, keeping him occupied and maintaining his discipline and morale. The best troops will go stale through neglect of drill during a campaign, and drill and discipline are almost synonymous. As undisciplined troops are worse than useless in battle, the necessity of occasional periodsof drill, distasteful though they may be to the soldier, is obvious.
"A day in a rest camp is about as bad as a day in battle," is not an uncommon expression from the men, although, as is always the case with soldiers, they appreciate a change of any kind.
This rest camp and its drills were not destined to become monotonous, however, for instead of ten days they had but one day. Orders came from "G. H. Q.," which is soldier parlance for General Headquarters, for the division to proceed almost directly north, into the Argonne. This meant more hard hiking and more rough traveling for horses and motor trucks until the units again were "bedded down" temporarily, with division headquarters at Les Islettes, twenty miles due north from Revigny, and eight miles south of what was then, and had been for many weary months, the front line.
The doughboys knew that something big was impending. They had come to believe that "Pershing wouldn't have the Twenty-eighth Division around unless he was going to pull off something big." They felt more at home than they had sinceleaving America. All about them they saw nothing but American soldiers, and thousands upon thousands of them. The country seemed teeming with them. Every branch of the service was in American hands, the first time the Pennsylvanians had seen such an organization of their very own—the first time anybody ever did, in fact, for it was the biggest American army ever assembled.
Infantry, artillery, engineers, the supply services, tanks, the air service, medical service, the high command and the staff, all were American. It was a proud day for the doughboys when showers of leaflets dropped from a squadron of airplanes flying over one day and they read on the printed pages a pledge from American airmen to co-operate with the American fighting men on the ground to the limit of their ability and asked similar co-operation from the foot soldiers.
"Your signals enable us to take the news of your location to the rear," read the communication, "to report if the attack is successful, to call for help if needed, to enable the artillery to put their shells over your heads into the enemy. If you areout of ammunition and tell us, we will report and have it sent up. If you are surrounded, we will deliver the ammunition by airplane. We do not hike through the mud with you, but there are discomforts in our work as bad as mud, but we won't let rain, storms, Archies (anti-aircraft guns) nor Boche planes prevent our getting there with the goods. Use us to the limit. After reading this, hand it to your buddie and remember to show your signals." It was signed: "Your Aviators."
"You bet we will, all of that," was the heartfelt comment of the soldiers. Such was the splendid spirit of co-operation built up by General Pershing among the branches of the service.
To this great American army was assigned the tremendous task of striking at the enemy's vitals, striking where it was known he would defend himself most passionately. The German defensive lines converged toward a point in the east like the ribs of a fan, drawing close to protect the Mezieres-Longuyon railroad shuttle, which was the vital artery of Germany in occupied territory. If the Americans could force a break through in the Argonne, thewhole tottering German machine in France would crumble. Whether they broke through or not, the smallest possible result of an advance there would be the narrowing of the bottle-neck of the German transport lines into Germany and a slow strangling of the invading forces.
After the first tempestuous rush, there was no swift movement. The Yanks gnawed their way to the vaunted Kriemhilde line, hacked and hewed their way through it, overcoming thousands of machine guns, beset by every form of Hun pestilence. Even conquered ground they found treacherous. The Germans had planted huge mines of which the fuses were acid, timed to eat through a container days after the Germans had gone and touch off the explosive charge to send scores of Americans to hospitals or to soldiers' graves.
To the Americans, not bursting fresh into battle as they had done at Château-Thierry, but sated and seasoned by a long summer of campaigning, fell the tough, unspectacular problem of the whole western front. While the world hung spellbound on the Franco-British successes in the west and north, with their great bounds forwardafter the retreating Germans, relatively little attention was paid to the action northwest of Verdun, and not until the close of hostilities did America begin to awaken to the fact that it was precisely this slow, solid pounding, this bulldog pertinacity of the Americans that had made possible that startling withdrawal in the north.
So vital was this action in the Argonne that the best divisions the German high command could muster were sent there and, once there, were chewed to bits by the American machine, thus making possible the rapid advances of the Allies on other parts of the long front.
The Pennsylvania men looked back almost longingly to what they had regarded at the time as hard, rough days along the Marne, the Ourcq and the Vesle. In perspective, and from the midst of the Argonne fighting, it looked almost like child's play. Back home over the cables came the simple announcement that a certain position had been taken. Followers of the war news got out their maps and observed that this marked an advance of but a mile or so in three or four days and more than oneasked: "What is wrong with Pershing's men?" It was difficult to understand why the men who had leaped forward so magnificently from the Marne to the Aisne, traveling many miles in a day, should now be so slow, while their co-belligerents of the other nations were advancing steadily and rapidly.
A very few minutes spent with any man who was in the Argonne ought to suffice as an answer. Soldiers who were in the St. Mihiel thrust and also in the Argonne coined an epigram. It was: "A meter in the Argonne is worth a mile at St. Mihiel." The cable message of a few words nearly always covered many hours, sometimes days, of heroic endeavor, hard, backbreaking labor, heart-straining hardship and the expenditure of boundless nervous energy with lavish hand, to say nothing of what it meant to the hospital forces behind the lines and to the burial details.
September 24th, division headquarters of the Twenty-eighth moved up to a point less than two miles back of the front lines, occupying old, long-abandoned French dugouts. That evening Major-General Charles H. Muir, the division commander, appeared unexpectedly in the lines and walked aboutfor some time, observing the disposition of the troops. He was watched with wide-eyed but respectful curiosity by many of the men, for the average soldier in the ranks knows as little of a division commander as of the Grand Llama of Tibet. Frequently he cares as little, too.
The General cast a contemplative eye aloft, to where countless squirrels frolicked among the foliage of the great old trees, chattering in wild indignation at the disturbers of their peace, and birds sang their evensong upon the branches.
Briefly at Rest in the Argonne Forest©International Film Service.Briefly at Rest in the Argonne ForestPeriods of rest in the inferno of fighting in the Argonne were not frequent, but this group of Iron Division doughboys was snapped by the camera during a lull, while they were grouped about the entrance to an old German dugout.
©International Film Service.
Briefly at Rest in the Argonne Forest
Periods of rest in the inferno of fighting in the Argonne were not frequent, but this group of Iron Division doughboys was snapped by the camera during a lull, while they were grouped about the entrance to an old German dugout.
The Iron Division now was completely assembled, functioning smoothly and efficiently, every unit working as a cog in the one great wheel. The artillery brigade, which had made its bow to modern warfare in the Vesle region, was established on the line well to the rear of the infantry. It had rushed at top speed from the Aisne plateau, making some record hikes. The guns were moved only by night and each day the weapons were camouflaged, usually in a friendly patch of woods. One night they made thirty miles, which is covering ground rapidly, even under the most favorable circumstances, for an organizationwith the impedimenta of an artillery brigade.
There were times, in those long night marches, when the little natural light from a moonless sky was blotted out by woods through which the roads passed, and the artillerymen moved forward in absolute blackness. To have a light of any kind was dangerous, because of the frequent night forays by enemy flyers, and therefore forbidden. Patrols went along in advance to "feel" the road, and the men with the guns and caissons followed by keeping their eyes on the ghostly radiance from illuminated wrist watches worn by officers with the advance patrols.
When it came to the work of placing the guns for the preparatory bombardment of the offensive, the position assigned the Pennsylvania regiments was in a forest so dense that to get an area of fire at all, they had to fell the trees before them. But concealment of battery positions in a surprise attack is a vital consideration, and to have cut down hundreds of trees would have been an open advertisement to enemy observation planes of the location of the batteries.
To overcome this difficulty, the trees which it was necessary to remove were sawed almost through and wired up to others, which were untouched, in order to keep them standing to the last moment. In order to get their field of fire, it was necessary for the men of some batteries to cut and wire as many as a hundred trees. In this way everything was prepared for the opening of the bombardment save the actual felling of the trees, and not the keenest eye nor the finest camera among the Boche aviators could detect a change in the character of the forest.
At dusk on the night of Wednesday, September 25th, the artillerymen cut the wires holding the trees with axes and pulled the monarchs of the forest crashing to the ground to left and right of the path thus opened up, leaving the way clear for the artillery fire. A total of more than a thousand trees were felled in this way for the three regiments.
At eleven o'clock that night, September 25th, a signal gun barked far down the line. The gunners of every battery were at their posts, lanyards in hand, and on the instant they pulled.
That has become known in the army as "the million dollar barrage," because enlisted men figured it must have cost at least that much. Whatever it cost, no man in that great army ever had heard the like. It ranged from the smaller field pieces up to great naval guns firing shells sixteen inches in diameter, with every variety and size of big gun in the American army in between. There had been talk in the war of a bombardment "reaching the intensity of drum fire." No drums the world ever has heard could have provided a name for that bombardment. It was overwhelming in the immensity of its sound, as well as in its effect. There were 3,000 guns on the whole front.
Toward morning, the twelve ugly, snub-nosed weapons of the 103d Trench Mortar Battery, under Captain Ralph W. Knowles, of Philadelphia, added their heavy coughing to the monstrous serenade which rent the night. They were in position well up to the front, and their great bombs were designed to cut paths through the enemy barbed wire and other barriers so the infantry could go forward with as little trouble as possible.
Zero hour for the infantry was 5.30 o'clock on that morning of September 26th. Watches of officers and non-commissioned officers had been carefully adjusted to the second the night before and when the moment arrived, the long lines went over the top without further notice.
The former National Guard of Pennsylvania was but one division among a great many in that attack, which covered a front of fifty-four miles from the Meuse clear over into the Champagne and which linked up there with the rest of the whole flaming western front. The American army alone covered twenty miles of attacking front, and beyond them extended General Gourard's French army to the west.
The full effect and result of the artillery preparation was realized only when the infantry went over the top. The early stages of the advance were described by observers as being more like a football game than a battle. The route was virtually clear of prepared obstructions, although there was hardly a stretch of six feet of level ground, and the German opposition was almost paralyzed.
The whole field of the forward movement was so pitted with shell craters as to make the going almost like mountain climbing. Over this field a part of the great battle of Verdun in 1916 had been fought and the pits scooped out by the artillery of that time, added to those due to the constant minor fire since, lay so close together that it was utterly impossible for all the men to make their way between. The craters left from the Verdun battle could be distinguished by the fact that their sides were covered with grass and that once in a while a few bones were to be seen, melancholy reminder of the brave men who died there.
Seen from observation posts in the rear, the advancing soldiers presented an oddpicture, dropping suddenly from view as they went into a hole, then reappearing, clambering up the far side. They jumped over the edges, often into a pool of stagnant water with a bottom of slimy mud, and the climbing out was no easy task, burdened as they were with equipment.
It was now the season of the year when the days are still fairly warm, but the nights are keen and frosty. The men started out in the chill of the morning with their slickers, but as the day advanced they began to feel these an unbearable impediment in the heat and rush of battle and they discarded them. When night came they bitterly cursed their folly, for they were wretched with the cold.
The early morning was gray and forbidding. A heavy mist covered the land, hampering the air force in their work of observation, but overhead the sky was clear, giving promise of better visibility when the sun should heat the atmosphere and drive the mists away.
The infantry, with machine gunners in close support, went forward rapidly. They came to the first German trench line and crossed it almost without opposition. Asurprising number of Germans emerged from dugouts, hands up, and inquired directions to the prison cages in the American rear. The Pennsylvanians were just beginning to feel the effect of the loss of morale in the enemy army.
To the surprise of our doughboys, the artillery opposing them was weak and ineffectual. To this fact is attributed the great number of what are known as "clean" wounds in the Argonne fight—bullet wounds which make a clean hole and heal quickly. In view of the great number of men struck during this campaign, it is extremely fortunate that this was so. Had the German artillery been anything like what it had been in other battles, our casualty lists would have been much more terrible, for it is the shrapnel and big shells that tear men to pieces.
Beyond the first German line, which was just south of Grand Boureuilles and Petite Boureuilles, on opposite sides of the Aire river, the German defenses had not been so thoroughly destroyed and the resistance began to stiffen. Out from their shelters, as soon as the American barrage had passed them, came hordes of Germans to man theirconcealed machine gun nests. The lessons of the Marne-Aisne drive had been well learned by the Pennsylvanians, and there were few frontal assaults on these strong points, many of which were the famous concrete "pill boxes"—holes in the earth roofed over with rounded concrete and concealed by foliage and branches, with narrow slits a few inches above the surface of the earth to permit the guns to be sighted and fired.
When the infantry came to one of these that spat flame and steel in such volume that a direct attack threatened to be extremely costly, they passed around it through the woods on either flank and left it to be handled by the forces coming up immediately in their rear, with trench mortars and one-pounder cannon, capable of demolishing the concrete structures.
The infantry passed beyond the area in which the artillery and trench mortars had wiped out the barbed wire and ran into much difficulty with the astounding network of this defensive material woven through the trees. The Germans had boasted that the Argonne forest was a wooded fortress that never could be taken.American troops proved the vanity of that boast, but they went through an inferno to do it. The wire was a maze, laced through the forest from tree to tree, so that hours were consumed in covering ground which, but for the wire, could have been covered in almost as many minutes. The men had literally to cut and hack their way through yard after yard.
The towns of Boureuilles, great and small, were cleaned up after smart fighting, and the advance was continued up the beautiful Aire River valley in the direction of Varennes.
The Pennsylvania infantry was advancing in two columns. The 55th Brigade, including the 109th and 110th Infantry regiments, was right along the river, and the 56th Brigade, made up of the 111th and 112th, went through the forest on the left, or west of the river. On the right of the Twenty-eighth Division was the Thirtieth Division, consisting of National Guard troops of North and South Carolina and Tennessee, and on the left was the Seventy-seventh Division, selected men from New York State.
The town of Varennes stands in abowl-shaped valley, rich in historic significance and, at the time our men reached there, gorgeous in the autumnal colorings of the trees. It was at Varennes that Louis XVI was captured when he attempted to escape from France.
Coming up from the south to the high ground surrounding Varennes, the Iron Division forged ahead faster than the troops on their right could move through the forest. Before the officers and men of the liaison service could apprise the Pennsylvania commanders of this fact, they discovered it for themselves when a hot fire was poured in on their flank from German "pill boxes" and other strong points.
It was decided, since the troops were rolling onward in fine style, not to halt the division while the other division caught up, so Major Thompson was sent off to the east with a battalion of the 110th to look after that flanking fire. The battalion disappeared into the woods, and in a little while a sharp increase in the sound of the firing from that direction indicated that it was hard at work. After some time it came back into its position in the line. The other division had easier going for a timeas a result of the efforts of the four companies of Pennsylvanians, and the embarrassing fire from the right flank was silenced.
After a number of the German "pill boxes" had been reduced and entered by the Pennsylvania troops, it was discovered that they were, like so many other German contrivances and devices of the war, largely bluff. In instance after instance, where the intensity of the fire from these places had led our men to expect a garrison of a dozen men they found only one. The retreating Germans had left a single soldier with a large supply of rifles to give the impression of a considerable force manning the fort. Prisoners said their instructions had been to fire as rapidly as possible and as long as possible and to die fighting, without thought of surrender.
When the Pennsylvanians forced their way to the lower crest of the ridge looking down into the valley where Varennes lies, the edge of the Argonne forest to the westward still was occupied by enemy machine gunners. Officers of the division stepped out from the shelter of trees and looked over the ground with their glasses to plan thenext phase of the attack. German snipers promptly sighted them and in a moment bullets were singing through the trees above their heads and to both sides, but they remained unperturbed.
"Get me an idea of what is over in that wood," said General Muir to his aides, and Lieutenant Raymond A. Brown, of Meadville, Pa., and Captain William B. Morgan, of Beverly, Mass., started out on the risky mission. Lieutenant Brown's pistol was packed in his blanket roll. He borrowed a rifle and a cartridge belt from a private soldier. Three hours later they returned and made reports upon which were based the next actions of the troops. They told nothing of their experiences, but Lieutenant Brown had added a German wrist watch to his equipment and Captain Morgan showed a pair of shoulder straps which indicated that the troops opposing them were Brandenburgers.
As they went down the far side of the hill toward Varennes, the Pennsylvania soldiers saw an amazing evidence of German industry. The whole slope was painstakingly terraced and furnished with dugouts in tiers, leading off the terraces. Theshelters of the officers were fitted out with attractive porticos and arbors.
As evidence of the hurried retreat of the Huns, who apparently had not dreamed the Americans could advance so swiftly through their leafy fortress, a luncheon, untouched, lay upon a table in an officer's dugout. At the head of the table was an unopened letter.
In another dugout was an upright piano, which must have been looted from the town and lugged up the hill at the cost of great labor. But, most astonishing of all, upon the piano was sheet music published in New York, as shown by the publisher's name, long after America entered the war. Our officers puzzled long over how the music could have got there, but found no solution.
Varennes itself was virtually a wreck by the time our men reached it. Most of the buildings were cut off about the second story by shell fire. An electric plant, installed by the Germans and which they had attempted to wreck before leaving, was repaired by Pennsylvania mechanics and soon was ready to furnish illumination for the Americans.
Crates of live rabbits, left behind by the Germans in their flight, were found by the Pennsylvanians and turned over to the supply officers, and in the evening an officers' mess sat down to a stewed rabbit dinner in the open square of the ruined town, in the shadow of the gaping sides of the wrecked church. In addition to the army ration issue, the meal and others for some days were helped out by a plentiful supply of cabbage, radishes, potatoes, cauliflower, turnips and other vegetables, taken from the pretty little gardens which theGermans had planted and carefully nurtured.
While the Pennsylvanians were at Varennes, a great automobile came roaring down the hill from the south and slithered to a halt where a group of our soldiers had been lolling on the ground resting. They were not there by the time the car stopped. Instead, they were erect and soldierly, every man at attention and hands jerked up to the salute with sharp precision. For the flag upon the car bore four stars and it was all the men could do to keep from rude "gaping" at the tall, handsome man inside, who called to them pleasantly:
"What division is this?"
Most of the men were tongue-tied with surprise and embarrassment, but one responded:
"The Twenty-eighth, sir."
"Ah! You have an enviable reputation," was the reply from the man in the car. "I should like to lunch with your division today."
Which he thereupon proceeded to do. As the car passed on, a group of very red-faced private soldiers looked each otherin the eye in a startled way and one voiced the thought of all when he said:
"And that was General Pershing! And he spoke to us! Gee!"
The 103d Engineers again were covering themselves with glory in this Argonne drive. Time after time they were sent out to repair existing roads and construct new ones, often working right on the heels of the infantry, for only after they had performed their work could supplies be brought up to the fighting troops and the artillery maintain position to continue the barrage in advance of the infantry and machine gunners.
The 103d Supply Train, too, performed its work under incredible difficulties. Doughboys rarely thought to give a word of praise to the men of the big camions. More often their comment was: "Gee! Pretty soft for you fellows, riding around in a high-powered truck while we slog through the mud!"
But to those who knew of the trying night drives in utter darkness over roads which not only were torn to tatters already by shells, but which were subject at any time to renewed shelling; of the long stretches without sleep or food or drink;of the struggles with motors and other parts of the trucks which fell heir to every kind of trouble such things are liable to under great stress—only to that understanding few, and to the supply chaps themselves, were their activities regarded as subject for praiseful comment. Had the supply train "fallen down on the job" and "chow" not been ready at every opportunity—which truly were few and far enough between—Oh, then the doughboys would have howled in execration at their brothers of the big lorries.
The same kind of credit was due as much and given as rarely to the 103d Ammunition Train, which kept all the fighting men supplied without stint and without break with the necessary powder and steel to keep the Hun on the run.
Even the men of the four field hospitals found themselves nearer the front than such organizations usually go. So well had the plans been laid for that opening assault that it was realized the hospitals would have to be well forward to avoid too long a carry for the wounded after the first rush had carried our men well beyond their "jumping-off-place."
The hospitals took position during the night and erected their tents, so they would not be subject to air bombing before the attack and so their presence would not betray the concentration of forces. French officers who passed along the American front inspecting it the night before the assault were amazed at this concentration, and so were the field hospital men when the bombardment was started and they found themselves far ahead of the big guns. In the morning they discovered, to their astonishment, that they had been thrust in between the first line of infantry and the support.
Throughout the Argonne fighting, as they had done from the beginning of the division's activities, they performed their work in as thorough and capable a manner as did any of the organizations in the division, and found their chief recompense in the gratitude of the wounded and suffering who passed through their hands.
As the two Pennsylvania columns battered their way forward, a double liaison service was maintained between them, first by patrols of men and second by telephone communication. The service ofcommunication was presided over by Colonel Walter C. Sweeney, chief of the divisional staff, originally a Philadelphian, but now hailing from Virginia.
The circuit of communication was not broken once, largely because of the alertness and ability of Lieutenant-Colonel Sydney A. Hagerling, of Pittsburgh, the divisional signal officer, and the staunch, untiring and efficient work of the 103d Field Signal Battalion. Each brigade commander knew always precisely how far the other had advanced. Both regular army men, they united in giving full credit for the remarkably successful advance to the high quality of the troops, the superb handling of the artillery by Brigadier-General Price and the unexcelled teamwork of officers and men of each branch of the service and of branch with branch.
At one time, emphasizing this remarkable spirit within the division, Major-General Muir appeared in the front lines one morning, just as the first wave of infantrymen was about to go over in a charge against a machine gun nest. Standing talking to the regimental commander, General Muir fidgeted for a few moments and then said:
"I think I'll command one of those companies myself."
To the amazement and great glee of officers and men, he did, the commander of the chosen company acting as second in command. Enemy shells landed all about the General, who manifested as much agility and energy as the youngest private. A shell fell within twenty-five feet of him, but fortunately it was a "dud," or one which failed to explode. There was vicious machine gun fire all about, but the nest was cleaned out and prisoners and guns were captured. General Muir rejoined the Colonel. He was breathing hardly faster than usual as he remarked:
"That was fine! It took me back to the old days in the Philippines."
A few days later, the General was out again among the troops, accompanied by Colonel Sweeney, Captain Theodore D. Boal, of Boalsburg, Pa., Lieutenant Edward Hoopes, of West Chester, and Corporal Olin McDonald, of Sunbury, all of his staff.
German planes were hovering overhead and suddenly one of them dropped like a plummet to a few hundred feet above theground and began to spit machine gun bullets at the group. A wounded soldier had just come out of the woods, stood his rifle against a tree and started back to a first aid station. General Muir seized the rifle, took careful aim at the flyer, about three hundred feet above, and fired twice. Whether he scored a hit could not be determined, but the airman fled after the second shot.
In the course of the advance, the artillery went forward in echelons. That is, batteries from the rear moved up and took position in advance of other batteries which maintained the fire, passing between the guns on their way. After they were in position to fire, the one farther back ceased fire and the process was repeated.
The Pennsylvania artillery cut a swath two miles wide through the forest, doing their work so thoroughly that beautiful green hills which could be descried by powerful glasses in the distance were, by the time the beholders reached them, nothing but shell-pitted, blackened mounds, ragged with beards of shattered and splintered trees, looking for all the world, as men from the Pennsylvania mountain countryobserved, like the hills at home after a forest fire.
When the artillery reached Varennes, which was, of course, not until after the infantry had gone far beyond, they ran into a severe enemy shelling. On October 2d, First Sergeant T. O. Mader, of Audenried, Luzerne county, a member of Battery A, 109th Artillery, performed the deeds which won for him official citation and the Distinguished Service Cross.
He helped to guide sections of the battery over a shell-swept road, when the fire was so severe that eight men were wounded and ten horses killed. The horse that Sergeant Mader rode was killed under him. The driver of a swing team had difficulty in controlling the horses of a section and Sergeant Mader sent him to another section and himself took charge of the fractious team. He continued with the section until he was so badly wounded he was unable to control the frantic horses. He refused to have his wounds treated, however, and continued to direct the gun carriages to places of safety. Then, disregarding his own condition, he requested the medical officers to give first attentionto other wounded men. The official citation declared that "Sergeant Mader's conduct was an inspiration to the men of his battery."
Another "second in command" was put out of action at this time, Lieutenant-Colonel Olin F. Harvey, of the 109th Artillery, being severely wounded in the leg by a shell fragment.
Beyond Varennes, the infantry found the going harder than before—much harder than anything they had encountered since going to France. The Germans had their backs to their boasted Brunnhilde line and fought with the desperation of despair to hold off the advancing Americans until their vast armies in the north could extricate themselves from the net Marshal Foch had spread for them with such consummate skill.
Montblaineville and Baulny presented but temporary problems to troops flushed with victory, and they pushed on toward Apremont, below which they suffered the first serious check of the drive. Once more there was need for tremendous effort and heroic endeavor and once more the Pennsylvania troops measured up to the need.Men who had distinguished themselves on the Marne, the Ourcq, the Vesle and Aisne lived nobly up to the reputations for bravery they had already established, and they were emulated in inspiring style by men whose names had not before figured in the division's record of honor.
The trench mortar battery of the artillery brigade was rivaled by men of the trench mortar platoons attached to the headquarters companies of the various infantry regiments, who carried their heavy weapons through the almost fathomless mud, in and out of shell craters, exhausted by the heat of the days and the bone-chilling cold of the nights. In spite of their heavy burdens, the mortar platoons always were close at hand when the infantry stopped, baffled by the mazes of wire, and called for the "flying pigs" to open a path.
Men of every regiment filled stellar rôles in this smashing advance. Lieutenant Godfrey Smith, of Gwynedd Valley, Pa., overcame innumerable obstacles and passed through many dangers to establish and maintain telephone communication between the advance posts and the rear areas of the 112th Infantry. Color-Sergeant MilesShoup, of Braddock, had charge of the runners and liaison work and displayed great personal bravery.
Shoup had the reputation among the other men of bearing a charmed life and he was termed "a remarkable soldier" by more than one officer. In the advance of the morning of September 28th, Colonel Dubb became separated and Shoup volunteered to search for him. He located the Colonel after passing unscathed through a terrific artillery and machine gun fire, then returned the same way and organized additional runners to keep the communications intact.
At night the Germans suddenly opened a smart barrage with big guns and men of the 112th became scattered. Lieutenant Smith assembled the men while the fire was going on, finding them in various shelters. It was necessary to wear masks because the Boche was mixing an occasional gas shell with his shrapnel and high explosives, but Lieutenant Smith persisted until he had returned the men to their various battalion positions and reorganized the companies.
On another occasion, Lieutenant Smith was laying telephone wire with a detail ofheadquarters company men. When the supply of wire ran out, he crawled through the woods to a German telephone line, within a short distance of German positions, cut the wire and brought back enough to continue laying his own line.
An officer of the 112th noticed that every time he called for a runner from any one of three companies, it was always the same man who responded. The man was Private Charles J. Ryan, of Harrisburg, a member of Company I. When a lull came in the activity, the officer investigated in person, because the men assigned to act as runners should have taken turns and he suspected the others were imposing on Ryan, which is subversive of discipline. To his amazement, he learned from the unanimous accounts of all the men, including Ryan, that the latter had insisted that the other runners should let him take all the assignments to duty. The officer put a stop to the method.
France puts her clergymen into the army as fighting men, on the same basis as any other men. America exempts men of the cloth from military service, but offers them an opportunity to serve their countryand humanity, as well as their calling, by acting as chaplains to the fighting men. As such, they are supposed to have nothing to do with the fighting. But there come times, in the heat and rush of battle, when quick action by the nearest man of ability and judgment points the way to victory.
Such an occasion arose on the second day of the Argonne drive, when all the officers of a battalion of the 111th Infantry were incapacitated. Lieutenant Charles G. Conaty, of Boston, a Catholic priest who was a chaplain in the 111th, was the only commissioned officer remaining with the battalion. He promptly jumped into the breach and led the men in a victorious charge. Lieutenant Conaty had not long recovered at that time from the effects of gas which he inhaled while working close to the lines in the Marne-Vesle drive.
A German sniper wounded the "bunkie" of Thomas Corry, of Pittsburgh, a member of Company I, 111th Infantry. Corry started out to stalk the sniper in revenge. He spent the whole day at it and returned with half a dozen prisoners, all the snipers he had found except the ones who showed fight and had to be killed.
A major of the 111th at one time sent a runner to the 109th machine gun battalion to ask for immediate assistance. Company B of the gunners, under Captain Daniel Burke Strickler, of Columbia, Pa., set out at once with a guide. They followed the guide over one hill, but saw no sign either of the enemy or a hard-pressed battalion of their own men. At the bottom of the next hill, Captain Strickler called a halt and asked the guide if he were sure the battalion was at the top.
The guide replied that they were hardly 100 yards away and started up the hill alone to make sure. He had gone not more than twenty feet when a masked machine gun battery opened up and the guide was shot to ribbons. Captain Strickler ascertained the location of the infantry lines from a wounded man who happened along on his way to the rear and started for them.
The infantry, however, had been having a hard time and had been directed to retire while the artillery laid down a barrage. Unaware of this, Captain Strickler led his men up the hill and walked into the edge of our own barrage, but the company escaped without the loss of a man.
The effect of the American pressure now was being felt far behind the German front lines, as was evidenced by the sheets of flame by night and clouds of smoke by day which signaled the burning of heaps of stores and the explosion of ammunition dumps far to the north.
Advancing around Apremont, the 111th ran into difficulties and was delayed. Runners carried the word to the 55th Brigade and Captain Meehan and a battalion of the 109th were detached and sent over to help. They cleaned out the Bois de la T'Aibbe, which was strongly garrisoned and offered a next to impregnable front, so that when the 111th disposed of its immediate difficulties it was able to move up to the same front as the rest of the regiments.