THE AMERICAN LEGIONS
When the German spring offensive of 1918 came and hewed a great dent in the western front, the cry went up from the Allied capitals for American aid. "Hurry!" entreated Lloyd-George. "Hurry!" came the echo from Paris. Then, almost like an answering echo, was heard the tramp of American legions on the soil of France. Week after week, through the spring and summer, United States troops spread their columns fanwise from their ports of debarkation, until their multiplying presence was felt, where not seen, along the entire fighting line from the Belgian coast to the Swiss frontier.
Another army had preceded them, armed with picks and shovels, trowels and axes. It was an army of tool chests, building gear and rails. More than one western port of France, slumbering in its ancient ways, had to be transformed, to give proper entrance to the shiploads of soldiers from the New World, with their mountainous equipment, and new roads had to be cut through France to convey them to the front. One regiment was of foresters, with knocked-down sawmills, who went into the woods of France to cut down trees and shape them into timbers for building large docks. Another corps of advance guards were the American engineers, later organized intofive regiments and nineteen battalions, all engaged in railroad construction and operation to facilitate the movement of American troops. So with new and spacious gateways, which transformed the restricted port facilities of the French coast towns, and with huge warehouses, ordnance depots and barracks neighboring the new docks, the American troops found an ingress on French soil and accommodation for themselves and their leviathan equipment in keeping with the vast scheme of warfare that represented American belligerency.
From the French ports ran a double line of railroad which was extended by American army engineers to the battle front. The use of these preexisting lines for American troops called for the additional construction of hundreds of miles of trackage for yards, sidings, and switches. Thus was called into being the United States Military Railroad in France. It started from the seaport terminals, with their new docks verdant with the rawness of fresh-cut timber, with their tipples and cranes and wharf houses and warehouses, and spread over a mass of tracks that meandered and forked into division yards, curved on to divergent lines or connected with light railways at the fighting front some 600 miles distant.
With new ports and new railroad systems virtually constructed for their passage, the American troops moved to their allotted places at the front under conditions that gave their journey an uncommon éclat. They were sorely needed, for one thing, and, for another, preexisting port and transit facilities did not suffice to bear them to their destination. A new path had to be blazed for the armed entrée of the New World into the Old World.
Military establishments in the United States.
Military establishments in the United States.
The gateways widened as each shipload grew in numbers and frequency. The beginning of the overseas movement was slow; the United States stumbled through weary-dragging months before its awakened militancy got into its stride in spanning the ocean. In May, 1917, the month following the American declaration of war, only 1,718 officers and men landed; in June, 12,261; July, 12,988; August, 18,323; September, 32,523; October, 38,259; November, 23,016; December, 48,840. The beginning of1918 brought no perceptible expansion, the number of troops sent in January and February, 1918, being only 46,776 and 48,027, respectively. But with the spring came indications of the accumulating force of American preparations. In March the number sent across was 83,811; in April, 117,212; in May, 244,345; in June, 276,372, and in July, 300,000. Marines numbering 14,644 were also dispatched. So by July 31, 1918, American forces in France had reached the impressive figure of 1,319,115.
Meantime the troops were vaguely heard of as fighting in five different sectors along the western front, one detachment as far east as the Swiss border. Later they had spread to eight sectors, namely, near Montdidier, northwest of Château-Thierry, immediately east of Château-Thierry, at Toul, in Lorraine, and three in Alsace, one near the border line, another south of that, and one in front of Belfort.
The German spring offensive had sensibly stimulated the shipment of troops, as the figures showed. That offense had its critical stages toward the close of March, which made the help of American troops more and more urgent. General Pershing interposed with an offer to the British and French Governments to place all the American troops and facilities then in France at their disposal to help stay the German advance. The proposal deeply stirred the Anglo-French ranks—and the inactive American troops no less—and evoked grateful acknowledgments from London and Paris.
Presently American troops were heard of further afield—in Italy, for service under General Diaz against the Austrians. Tidings of their presence at a still more remote corner of the battle area came in the announcement that American marines, cooperating with British forces, had occupied a part of the Murman coast of the White Sea in European Russia.
The Stars and Stripes fluttered over Europe at far-flung points. On the western front an American army had grown up, and was rated as competent to perform the hardest work of war—to stand an intensive bombardment, to repel the assaults of massed infantry, or to launch counterattacks. Its achievements will be subsequently related; but even if they did not rankin numbers with those of the British and French, the mere presence of American soldiers at the forefront of one of the world's greatest battles stood out as a transcendent historical event. The forces of the New World had appeared to save liberty in Europe. They were there to establish a reorganization of the world on the American plan—not for the glory of the Stars and Stripes, but for a vindication of the ideas which the flag represented.
RAIDING THE NEW FOE
American activities had hitherto been confined to what became known as the original American front, facing Lorraine beyond St. Mihiel. This was apparently an irregular line, in the vicinity of the Rhine-Marne canal, and fronting Nancy, Lunéville, Toul, and other towns whose existence became known by General Pershing's reports.
It was their "breaking in" ground. American troops there obtained an intimate acquaintance with modern warfare. The numerous trench raids that marked their operations apparently had no strategical relations to the movements on the battle line elsewhere, nor even disclosed any local tactical object. Americans and Germans seemed merely to be watching each other with lynx eyes, each on the alert to catch the other napping and steal a march for the glory of the achievement.
The casualties in these skirmishes were usually slight, and a few prisoners now and then would fall to one or the other side. But few raids took place without losses, which gradually became impressive as the engagements increased in frequency and scope. A trench raid is a trivial thing, with an inconsequential outcome when it has any outcome at all; but repeated daily, the casualties such raids produce, added to the fatalities resulting from random artillery fire, assume the dimensions of those of an extensive battle. They do not stand out as distinctive operations;proceeding upon established methods, there was a general sameness in their repetition, and they only became noticeable for the outstanding incidents that were bound to arise in each undertaking.
An early attack by the Germans was made behind a dense fog after daybreak, through which came a violent artillery barrage as a forerunner. The fog was of a density that blotted out everything but the nearest enemy positions. Through it enemy projectiles exploded on three sides of an American listening post just outside the wire, within forty-five feet of an enemy listening post. In a few minutes hundreds of high-explosive shells had dropped round the post and the surrounding ground, cutting off the men there. American artillery replied; but all traces of German dead and wounded were removed by the time the Americans had emerged from their dugouts after their barrage was raised.
The Germans followed their sortie against the listening post by a heavy bombardment of the American lines a few days later. American guns responded, shell for shell, wrecking several of the enemy's dugouts, and badly damaging some of his first-line positions. They were caved in by the American 75's, and the Germans spent several days in repairing them and patching up gaps in the barbed wire before the wrecked trenches could be reoccupied. A number of the men who were wounded slightly by shell splinters were treated in the lines with their first-aid packets and insisted on remaining at their posts until the fight was finished.
The enemy's next artillery exercise was a concentrated fire on one of the American positions with the object of obliterating it. Americans guns at once punished the German batteries with a retaliatory fire of double force, and then swept the enemy lines with a vicious barrage. Whereupon the German guns ceased firing.
The enemy presently resorted to the use of gas to harass the American positions. Aimed at a wood, a rain of shells, largely composed of gas and high explosives, came from the German minenwerfers. They burst in the air, the high explosives detonatingwhen they came in contact with the earth, and broke into fragments among a number of men before they could adjust their masks. Other troops were overcome by the fumes while asleep in their dugouts. The fumes lingered in the gassed area long after the shells had exploded, filling shell holes and other depressions, and incapacitating men who ventured to work in the vicinity. But the American guns exacted swift retribution. They leveled a heavy fire on the German minenwerfers, and in half an hour had razed the position. Timbers were thrown high in the air, and explosions, probably of enemy ammunition, testified to American marksmanship. The ground about the German batteries was churned upside down, and there was no doubt of the fate of any German soldiers who were on the spot.
The beginning of March, 1918, saw the first pitched battle between Americans and Germans in the St. Mihiel salient north of Toul. The enemy started it by a morning raid in a driving wet snow, preceded by heavy gunfire, intermixed with poison gas. The latter was discharged on the trenches in a generous hail of shells, the Germans evidently thinking that this second cloud of gas would daunt the American troops after their previous foretaste. The Americans were not daunted; their masks quickly covered them, and few troops were affected.
The woods behind the salient were shot to pieces by the German fire. As soon as the barrage was raised on the trenches to the right of the salient, some 300 Germans swept forward under the protection of their fire. They jumped into what was left of the trenches, expecting to make a haul of prisoners; but they found the Americans ready for them.
A fierce hand-to-hand fight followed in front of wire entanglements and in shell holes. Meantime American barrage fire swept no-man's-land, catching many running Germans who had turned tail from fighting at close quarters.
The Germans were thrown back, leaving ten dead in the American trenches. Two were officers, entangled in the wire. The ground was littered with enemy hand grenades, boxes of explosives for destroying dugouts, and incendiary bombs theenemy had no opportunity of using. The enemy had paid dearly for his enterprise, but the Americans also suffered in proportion. Berlin claimed that twelve had been captured.
They had cut the American wire with caution, making no noise, but the sentry was watching their performance all the time, and let them proceed until he was sure of routing them.
Another American patrol experienced, for the first time, a German attack of liquid fire. Enemy troops were about to throw flame projectors into the American trenches when an American patrol near by opened fire on them. The Germans fled precipitately, pursued by the Americans, and dropped four projectors, two of which were flaming. All the projectors had been punctured by American shots.
The foregoing series of engagements shows that in every case the Germans were the aggressors. The Americans, in fact, were merely holding the Lorraine sector without aspiring to take the field until they were better acquainted with trench warfare. The Germans, believing they had green troops before them, were accordingly venturesome, and disposed to put them on their mettle, which they accordingly did, only to find that the supposedly raw American troops were no longer raw. The Germans themselves had contributed to ridding them of any greenness with which they credited them. The Americans had occupied the Lorraine sector as substitutes for the French, and the Germans were accordingly eager to know the quality of their new antagonists. Hence these series of raids made on the American front. Soon the tables were to be turned by the Americans conducting raids of their own.
AMERICA OVER THE TOP
The first direct attack on the German lines made by American forces in the Lorraine sector took place on the night of March 9, 1918, with the cooperation of the French. Two raids were made. The troops engaged were ordered to cut off the two ends of a salient in the German line, flatten out the salient by artillery fire, enter the trenches, bomb the dugouts, sweep the trenches generally, and return.
Intense artillery fire, lasting four hours, leveled the German positions before the Franco-American troops advanced. They were divided into two forces, with small French detachments flanking each, and went forward at midnight behind a creeping barrage, each on a front of six hundred yards. Starting simultaneously, one advanced northwest of the salient, the other to the northeast. On the German first lines being reached, the barrage was lifted so as to box in the enemy positions at both points.
The troops dropped into the trenches, expecting a hand-to-hand fight, but found that the Germans had fled. Continuing, they reached the second German line six hundred yards farther on while American machine guns fired on each flank of the two parties to check flanking operations by the enemy.
The yield in prisoners was poor, the Germans having decamped. One French flanking party found two wounded Germans. The Americans found none. But they blew up a number of excellent concrete dugouts and returned with large quantities of material and valuable papers. While they were in the vacated German lines, enemy artillery began a vigorous counterbarrage, but it was quickly silenced by gas shells hurled by American heavy and light guns.
The raid was followed by a second on another part of the line, undertaken without the aid of the French. A preliminary bombardment swept the Germans' front trenches, tearing gaps intheir barbed-wire entanglements, and wrought other destruction. The German batteries came into action, but accomplished nothing to halt the American progress. Entering the German trenches behind one side of a "box" barrage, which moved forward in front of them, they found numerous Germans hiding in the dugouts. Hand-to-hand fighting followed, the Americans using their automatic pistols and rifles. They penetrated 300 yards of the enemy line, going beyond their objective. More fighting developed, but the Germans were not equal to the assault and fled, leaving a number of dead and wounded in their trenches. The Americans fought so fast in effecting their object that the army doctors who accompanied them had little to do. They returned to their own lines without being impeded by a single German shell, and without fatalities. It was all over so quickly that the German batteries had no chance to get into real action. It was just a fifteen-minute adventure undertaken by way of feeling their way in testing their capacity to give the Germans a taste of their own medicine.
Following these engagements, the actual locality of which was not disclosed, American forces were reported to be very active in aggressive operations in the neighborhood of Lunéville, a town east of the Toul sector. This information revealed an extension of the American positions in Lorraine and an augmentation of forces that made the new sector one of the most active on the front. It appeared that the two simultaneous raids mentioned took place in this vicinity, northwest and northeast of Badonviller. The trenches evacuated by the Germans were occupied by the Americans, who consolidated them with their own lines. This forward movement, though a small one, marked the first permanent advance by the American army in France, and enabled the Americans and French to operate from higher ground than heretofore. The Germans made only feeble attempts to retake the position, and each time were repulsed. The parapets were turned toward the enemy, dugout entrances were changed, and new dugouts built to protect the troops. An exploring patrol examined the trenches, proceeding laterally until they established contact with the enemy. They came uponsnipers' posts, listening posts, and nests from which machine guns had been firing into the American lines. These ambushes of the enemy were turned over to the tender mercies of the American batteries, which wiped them out. The positions of the Germans were made so uncomfortable at various points that they tried to regain their lost foothold by connecting shell holes. Their guns pounded the new American positions with heavy shells, some of the twelve-inch type, without affecting the Franco-American consolidation.
A German battery of mine throwers, one of which had made a direct hit on a dugout occupied by American soldiers, next received the earnest attention of American guns in the Lunéville sector. The battery had been causing considerable trouble. It was finally located, and upon it high-explosive shells were concentrated. It was blown up.
More German trenches in the Lunéville sector were destroyed. The enemy vacated them. When a patrol, without assistance from the artillery, crossed no-man's-land, they found the first and second positions wiped out. The patrol obtained further information and returned without casualties, the Germans apparently not daring to molest them. The indications behind the German lines were that they saw the need of constructing stronger earthworks to withstand the American fire. A patrol ascertained that the enemy had constructed trenches built of concrete half way up the side, and was using rock crushers and concrete mixers for building a number of "pill-boxes" opposite the American front.
Meantime the foe gave renewed attention to the Toul sector. One new form of attack came from a German aeroplane, which dropped rubber balls filled with liquefied "mustard" gas. The effect of these novel air missiles was not serious. The gas merely infuriated the troops, and when the Germans heavily attacked the American positions with shell fire, gas shells were hurled at the enemy from American batteries. Four gas attacks ware launched at the Germans, whose guns were presently silenced.
The Germans later responded by concentrating a heavy gas attack on a town behind the American lines. No wind was blowingand the fumes of the "mustard" gas from the shells hung low over the lines for a long time. The batteries firing the gas shells were located and the American gunners retaliated with doses of gas twice as large as the American positions received. In fact, two towns held by the Germans were so heavily gassed that one of them, Réchicourt, north of Xivray, one of the American targets, was abandoned.
German snipers in this sector were also a constant worry to the Americans. As fast as one nest was silenced, another was found, and the task of wiping out the nuisance had to be repeated. In one instance, a group of American snipers discovered an enemy nest close by and promptly opened fire on it. The Germans replied with their rifles, and then fired about three dozen or so of grenades. Apparently the Germans had come to stay and did not intend to be chased out. One of the American 37-millimeter gun teams then got into action against the nest, and owing to its accurate fire no more Germans were seen at this particular point. The Germans were frequently presented with examples of the accuracy of the fire of these 37-millimeter guns. An enemy machine-gun emplacement which had been annoying the Americans was located and then the battery of "little fellows," as the guns were known along the front, got into action, firing rapidly. They secured a number of direct hits and destroyed the emplacement guns.
These small guns, which are about the size of a one-pounder, were easily moved from place to place even in the trenches. They also secured direct hits on the junction of communication trenches as men were passing, and into the entrance of the dugout which a number of the enemy were seen to enter and from which smoke was issuing. None of the enemy was seen to come out.
In April the Germans attempted an ambitious local operation against the Americans northwest of Toul. They planned to enter the third line positions, it was subsequently learned, and for this purpose they sent a special battalion of 800 shock troops equipped with wire, dynamite, intrenching tools and other implements for adapting trenches to their own use. The attack waspreceded by a violent bombardment of the American positions, lasting three days. Hundreds of shells fell, many of them charged with gas. At sunrise on April 10 the German infantrymen signaled their batteries for a barrage, and under it they started out for the American line. They were selected from the best men of three regiments and were preceded by shock platoons. The American gunners did not wait for any rocket signal from their own side before getting into action. They immediately started a counterbarrage, which caught the advancing Germans before they could reach the American wire entanglements. The German officers sent their troops through the answering barrage, with the result that fewer than 200 of the 800 troops succeeded in making any advance. Only two reached the American line; both were captured and one died immediately after from wounds.
The fighting developed on no-man's-land. American outposts moved to the first line and with other infantrymen and machine gunners waited for those of the attackers who survived the American barrage. As the raiders neared the Americans poured a deadly fire into them, then climbed out of the trenches and engaged them with grenades and in hand-to-hand fighting. The enemy was driven back to his own lines, suffering serious casualties from American heavy machine-gun and rifle fire rained on his men as they fled. No-man's-land was strewn with German dead; several bodies hung on the barbed wire after the enemy retired; and numbers were killed by American guns before they could leave the German trenches. The fight lasted two hours in a heavy morning mist; but the American gunners found their aim despite the poor visibility.
It was a crushing defeat, and two days later the Germans, smarting under it, sought to avenge it by reorganizing the 800 shock troops, which were filled out by picked men from other units, and ordering them to take the American positions. As before a violent bombardment, accompanied by gas shells, signalized the attack. The German guns kept up a harassing fire all night, and with dawn came the infantry attack, directed against French troops who flanked the American forces on the left in theforest of Apremont. While this engagement was proceeding the Americans launched a counterattack on the German line, moving forward behind a perfect curtain fire. The enemy, driven out of his trenches, was forced to fight in the open. A deadly machine-gun and automatic-rifle fire was poured into the Germans, who offered stubborn resistance at first, but latter retreated to their second line, hotly pursued by the American troops.
After an interim the Germans resumed the attack at a point farther to the right. The American barrage fire cut them off, but the German officers drove their men through the exploding shells until a few succeeded in penetrating the American front line. A counterattack by the Americans ejected the enemy, driving him back to his positions.
The struggle lasted throughout the day, and was the first all-day battle in which the Americans had been engaged. Their loss was slight. They lost no prisoners, but gained thirty-four of the enemy. The prisoners taken belonged to six different organizations. Five were Uhlans, and all were carrying haversacks well filled, as if in preparation for a protracted stay in the American trenches, corroborating the stories told by prisoners previously taken, who said that the Germans had been ordered to penetrate the American third line at all costs.
Several deeds of individual heroism marked the engagement. In one case a young lieutenant, with three men, attacked nineteen Germans who had penetrated into one of the American trenches. The lieutenant called on the Germans to surrender. One of them raised his pistol, as if to shoot, but the lieutenant shot him through the head, upon which the others lifted their hands high in the air and yelled "Kamerad." The lieutenant marched the prisoners in to the rear and then returned to the front and resumed the command of his platoon.
Five other Americans penetrated into a German dugout where twelve of the enemy were slightly wounded. The Germans resisted surrender, but our men threw grenades into the dugout, killing four of the foe. The others quickly gave themselves up.
Despite their failure, the Germans the next day continued their efforts to drive through to the American third line. Anincessant artillery fire blended with gas shells prefaced two bitter attacks both of which the Americans withstood. In all, the enemy spent four days in trying to take the Apremont position.
German activities against American forces were next heard of north of St. Mihiel, where a new American sector, located on the right bank of the Meuse, south of Verdun, was disclosed. The enemy's raid had the usual characteristics. It was made by a force of 400 picked troops brought from the Russian front, who outnumbered the Americans by more than two to one. The Germans leaped from their trenches under their barrage; the Americans did likewise; and there was a hand-to-hand affray with grenade and bayonet. The upshot was a German casualty list of sixty-four dead, many wounded, and twelve prisoners, and the hurling back of the survivors to their own lines.
While these scattered local operations enlivened the various American sectors, the great German spring offensive was proceeding against the British and French well out of the established American zones. As that offensive developed in its scope, less attention was paid to the American lines east of Verdun, and save for the Seicheprey raid and the clash at Xivray, both to be presently described, the operations there were of little moment.
The usual little amenities of war went on between isolated groups of combatants, mostly local scrimmages in which not more than a dozen or twenty men participated. These took the customary form of patrol actions, clashes between scouts, the uprooting of enemy's snipers' nests and the occasional invasion of trenches by one or the other side. There were ceaseless artillery duels, accompanied by clouds of gas, and daily fatalities, not all of them due to actual warfare.
Here and there small engagements, by reason of a swinging, thoroughgoing effectiveness on the part of the bands of Americans who shared in them, stand out of the daily routine of the trench warfare. In one that took place near Bremenil, east of Lunéville, in May, 1918, when a body of Germans essayed to attack the American positions, solely to take prisoners to ascertain the American strength, not a single German got back who succeededin entering the American trenches. A gas bombardment led the attack, followed by a heavy barrage fire, under which fifty German soldiers attempted to reach the American line; nine of the fourteen raiders were killed outright, four were captured, and one died of wounds. No American was captured.
While comparative quiet reigned in the St. Mihiel, Toul, and Lunéville sectors, as the summer advanced, a further extension of American sectors, eastward of these positions, running almost to the Swiss border, became revealed in General Pershing's reports. American forces were heard of at St. Dié, Mulhouse, Colmar, and near Belfort. With the main German forces busily—and unsuccessfully—engaged on other parts of the front, the Americans hereabout appear to pass uneventful days. The German forces before them, barring their occasional liquid fire, artillery outbreaks, air reconnoissances, and machine-gun activity, were disposed to let well enough alone.
By July, 1918, Americans practically occupied the whole of the Lorraine-Alsace front. Their positions gradually became disclosed and may now be stated with some particularity as follows: First, east of St. Mihiel; second, north of Lunéville; third, east and a little south of Lunéville or north of Badonviller; fourth, near St. Dié; fifth, just west of Gebweiler, which is just east of the battle line, and, sixth, east of Belfort, near Altkirch. Roughly speaking, these positions were about equally distant from one another and divided the entire front from St. Mihiel to the Swiss border into sections averaging about twenty-five miles each, over a front of approximately 150 miles. This became now the distinctly American front, and extended approximately one-third of the entire western front.
The United States, to all intents and purposes, had created an "Eastern front" of her own in taking over the southeastern portion of what was known as the western front. Here General Pershing's legions could drive directly into Germany by the shortest route with the least cost in men and material, and with the least delay.
AT SEICHEPREY AND XIVRAY
The Germans had reached the conclusion that the Americans must be taught a lesson. The latter were making a disquieting impression elsewhere on the western front in cooperating with Anglo-French forces who were resisting the German advance. Moreover, the Americans in their own sectors showed an unseemly enterprise and eagerness to meet the kaiser's hosts at close quarters, and even to hold them in small esteem. Besides, the people at home must be persuaded that the hordes of untrained and raw Americans who were spreading along the western front were negligible and despised factors as belligerents, and the best way to drive this conclusion home to the German people was to give the Americans a sound thrashing. Such a disciplinary measure, the German mind reasoned, would also have the effect of discouraging the Americans from continuing to come to the rescue of their sorely pressed Allies.
The American sector running eastward of the famous salient of St. Mihiel was chosen as the location of the castigation. In this sector lay the village of Seicheprey among rolling hills, overlooking a winding valley that runs to the northeast. The German positions were on high ground, commanding the Allied trenches, and directly opposite them, behind the American line, Seicheprey nestled on the southwestern slope of a steep hill some 900 feet high. On the right, the hill was approachable on a gradual incline, the greater part of which is covered by a small rectangular grove called the Wood of Remières. Here the American line joined the French.
The front of the attack made by the Germans ran something under two miles from Seicheprey to the Remières Wood. Their object appeared to be threefold, apart from the ultimate aim to discourage the Americans and convince the German people that the United States was a poor antagonist. One was to test the American strength and determine whether the Americans, stillunseasoned, as measured by the hardened condition of the other Allied troops, after their four years of war, would brave heavy shell fire, followed by strong infantry attacks. The second was to widen the base of the St. Mihiel salient, which was too narrow to hold with security. The third was to drive a wedge between the American and French lines.
The assault came at sunrise on April 20. An all—night bombardment, which sent a deluge of shells, many of them of poison gas, into the American positions, preceded it. A German barrage was launched; the Americans met it by a counterbarrage. In short, the regulation artillery curtains were swept across the battle zone, under which the opposing forces tried conclusions.
On a front extending for a mile and three-quarters the enemy sent a force of 3,000 men, preceded by picked storm troops, who advanced in three columns. They had been specially trained for the operation and greatly outnumbered the resisting Americans; they carried rations and intrenching tools, indicating that the aim was to occupy the American trenches—if taken—for a long period. On the left and in the center the assault was repelled, but on the right the assailants succeeded in occupying Remières Wood, whose eastern edge was a short distance behind the American line. The Germans pursued their customary tactics of "infiltration," that is, of gradual progress in small groups, supported by quick-firers along the line of entry made in the Allied position with the object of taking the American center in the rear. Protected by trees and favored by the character of the terrain, the Germans were so far successful that by night they had reached the crest of the hill flanked by Remières Wood, and delivered a heavy attack on Seicheprey.
The Germans carried the village, but only after furious hand-to-hand fighting. They entered it in the belief that the Americans had gone, and with good reason, since liquid fire, gas, and other devices of frightfulness had been used to clear the village. But some Americans had remained, and they attacked the Germans with hand grenades, killing many of them. The Americans only fell back when they were greatly outnumbered, after making a stubborn defense. German airmen poured machine-gunfire upon them; but the antiaircraft batteries came into play and American airmen took the air, bringing down two of the enemy planes and dispersing the others. Before retiring the Americans fought for every inch of the way, yielding slowly, and pouring a deadly machine-gun, rifle, and automatic fire into the advancing enemy.
The Germans were not permitted to hold either Seicheprey or the Remières Wood. Without a moment's delay the Americans and French organized a counterattack and drove them out of the village.
It was found that the retreating Germans had set traps there in the form of boxes containing high explosives to which they had attached wires stretched across the streets. Some of the advancing troops stepped on the wire, causing explosions and the traps had to be removed. Before dawn of the next day the Franco-American forces had not only recovered the village but forced the enemy back to the hilltop above it.
The battle circled about the brow and slope of the hill on which Seicheprey stood and the wood of Remières at its foot. The Germans returned to the charge with forces estimated at three battalions, led by storm troops. Two hours' hard fighting followed. Finally, the Americans, supported, as before by the French from an adjoining sector, now drove the Germans down the slope into Remières Wood, already held by the foe, and fought them among the trees all the morning. Toward noon the Allies swept forward irresistibly and retook the wood completely. Fighting stubbornly, the Germans were pushed back beyond the wood's eastern fringe to their own trenches, where they endeavored to maintain themselves. But a new Franco-American advance, combined with pressure from the flank, forced them to retreat, and by evening they had retired to the original starting point, and the American line was completely reestablished.
It was the first time the Germans had met the Americans in serious fighting on a scale which removed the engagement from the category of small skirmishes in local operations, and apart from the ultimate result, which was a defeat for the Germans,they learned something of the quality of Americans, both as massed and individual fighters.
North of Seicheprey an American detachment was separated into small groups and was cut off from the company to which it belonged throughout the entire fight. Behind the Americans and on their left flank were German units, but they could have retired on the right. They decided to fight, which they did notwithstanding the incessant enemy bombardment and rifle fire. Numerous hand-to-hand combats were fought in the course of this long struggle, from which the Americans found themselves obliged to retire toward nightfall, but only after destroying their machine guns.
In Seicheprey a squad of Americans found several cases of grenades, with which they made a determined fight, holding out the entire day on the northern extremity of the village. They refused to surrender when summoned to do so, and at the end of the fighting only nine out of the original twenty-three were left. A cook surprised by the Germans, and half stunned by a blow from a grenade, seized a rifle and continued firing until he fell dead.
Toward evening a hospital which had been established in Seicheprey was blown up, along with the doctors and ambulance men. The chief surgeon of the American regiment engaged hurried to the spot with French and American ambulance cars. The rescue party passed through a severe barrage fire, but eventually reached the village, where they tended to the wounded for many hours under a heavy enemy fire.
The American losses were never clearly known. They were estimated at 200. The Germans claimed 183 prisoners, which would leave only seventeen dead and wounded on the American estimate. The scope of the battle showed that the American losses in dead and wounded were much more than that, hence the number of prisoners the Germans claimed was discredited.
As to the German casualties, a German prisoner put them at 600 killed, wounded and missing, of these, more than 300 German dead were found in the American trenches and in no-man's-land. The defeat of the Germans was sufficiently proved by theomission of the German official bulletins and the German press to mention the successful counterattack.
The Xivray affair (June 16, 1918) in the Toul sector furnished another example of American alertness and vigor in an emergency. Xivray was originally behind the German lines, but they had been penetrated by the Americans, and the town was in American hands. As was the case in other engagements, German prisoners betrayed that the enemy's purpose in raiding the town was to carry off as many Americans as possible with a view to extracting information from them. The enemy's design, as thus revealed, was to send a large party without preparatory artillery fire. They were to take up a position near the American barbed wire, and send a signal rocket for a box barrage to cover Xivray and the approaching communication trenches, while heavy artillery bombarded the villages in the rear.
The American fire apparently precipitated a violent bombardment. It came at 3 o'clock in the morning and was directed at the American first line before Xivray, the American batteries, and at villages far in the rear. An Associated Press correspondent thus described what follows:
"Six hundred men advanced to the attack in no less than a dozen different columns, led by 200 picked Bavarian storming troops. They came up on the right flank, on the left, and on the center under cover of smoke, making a dark night still darker. They crept up the ravines and slipped through the hollows. The sharp ears of sentries alone prevented a total surprise.
"Their guns laid down a heavy box barrage that prevented the reenforcing of the front line. One platoon, led by Lieutenant Doan, got through the first curtain of fire. Doan even went through the second with some volunteers, but that was all the help that could be sent to the 225 men that were holding the line attacked. They were only one to three, but they fought in a way to surprise and dismay the 600 Germans.
"One machine-gun section in the village was reduced to two men—Monfort Wyckoff and John Flynn. Their gun jammed and Flynn kept the Germans off with his revolver while Wyckoffgot the quick-firer going again. They held their ground to the end. Two other men, unable to get a sight at the Germans from their trench, climbed the parapet and stood there erect, firing their automatics from the shoulder.
"Two companies of infantry, without dugouts to shelter them, held their ground on the right of the position through a heavy artillery preparation and kept the enemy from bringing up reenforcements throughout the fight. Meanwhile, in the center at Xivray and on the left, the machine gunners did the rest.
"The enemy's plan, according to prisoners, was to force the village, destroy the defense works, make the place untenable, and take prisoners. The effort was well organized and might have succeeded but for the work of the quick-firers.
"The Germans had lost a third of their 600 men when growing daylight impaired the effectiveness of their smoke screen, and they began to retire. The fifty-odd unwounded Americans left out of 225 went over the top after them.
"Two hundred is a conservative estimate of the German losses, for our men buried forty-seven of them on the field, and there were more corpses in the tall grass facing the position out of reach. Thus the Germans lost nearly as many men as they had facing them during the fight."
ON THE CHEMIN-DES-DAMES
As early as February, 1918, American batteries were heard on the French lines east of Rheims, where American gunners were apparently under training by the French before going into action on their own front. An opportunity came to them to show their quality when the French determined to suppress a German salient which dipped into the French position between Tahure and Butte du Mesnil, in the Champagne. It was a difficult operation owing to the nature of the ground, which formed a basinlikedepression, into which the Germans could pour the fire of their concentrated guns from the surrounding heights.
Artillery did the main work. American gunners took part in a six-hour bombardment of the salient on a front of a mile, and so thoroughly were the German defenses demolished that it took the French assaulting troops only an hour to gain all the objectives in view. Afterward the American gunners, with their French comrades, extended their range, developing an effective barrage to prevent counterattacks on the newly won ground. "American batteries gave very effective support," said the French communiqué in reporting this successful raid.
About the same time American units appeared on the Aisne fighting front in the vicinity of the famous Chemin-des-Dames. They had been detailed there for training purposes; but their location was not revealed by General Pershing until the Germans themselves knew of their presence. They had been there weeks before their presence became known. Suddenly ordered from their billets, they entrained to the railhead, and passed through mile after mile of shell-scarred, desolate ground and through several great piles of stones and débris which once were villages but now had not a single house standing. They took up their positions without a hitch to the music of roaring guns, both friendly and hostile, their flashes stabbing the blackness of the night, first here and then there, as far as the eye could see.
Many of them were quartered in quarries twenty feet underground, one quarry having room for sheltering 3,000 men. Other recesses beneath the surface occupied by them were partly natural in formation and improved through blasting operations by the Germans, who occupied them for three years. But most of the American troops were above ground, having established themselves in trenches and dugouts which they had cleaned, strengthened, and improved and protected by barbed-wire entanglements.
The cave dwellers' chief barracks was seventy-two feet underground. This cave ran in long galleries with cement ceilings, and was lighted by electricity, acetylene lamps, and oil lanterns. The troops slept on low, double-tiered wooden bunks providedwith straw. Here the troops usually remained from four to six days each, a company being assigned to a certain portion of the cavern. Being new to active field service, they were not permitted to roam about at will, lest they be lost, nor to leave the cavern at all except on duty, lest they be detected by enemy airmen.
The appearance of Americans on this sector was greeted by the Germans with a sign reading: "Welcome, Yankees." It was promptly riddled with bullets till it looked like a sieve.
The French and Americans responded to this little pleasantry by an attack on the German lines at Chevregny on February 23, 1918. The French organized a little raid on the German lines, aided by twenty-six picked Americans, and rehearsed the operation the day before. An hour's barrage at dawn brought the Americans moving forward eagerly with their French comrades. They moved so fast, indeed, that they came within thirty yards of the dropping shells on reaching the enemy lines. It was the first time American troops had essayed an attack under such a curtain of fire, and their ardor actually took them beyond their objectives.
In the German trenches officers were making the rounds after morning relief when the Americans and French burst in. The Germans rushed to shelter in a dugout roofed with rails and sandbags; but this refuge was immediately shattered by a French shell.
Deprived of this cover, the Germans scattered about the trench. The entire party at this point was captured after some hand-to-hand fighting. Other shelters and communicating trenches were cleared without yielding any prisoners. A German counterbarrage caught the raiders and their captives on returning across no-man's-land, wounding five Germans and six Frenchmen, but no Americans.