"We may be attacked from one moment to another. You all feel that a defensive battle was never engaged in under more favourable conditions. We are warned, and we are on our guard. Wehave received strong reinforcements of infantry and artillery. You will fight on ground, which, by your assiduous labour, you have transformed into a formidable fortress, into a fortress which is invincible if the passages are well guarded."The bombardment will be terrible. You will endure it without weakness. The attack in a cloud of dust and gas will be fierce but your positions and your armament are formidable."The strong and brave hearts of free men beat in your breast. None will look behind, none will give way. Every man will have but one thought—'Kill them, kill them in abundance, until they have had enough.' And therefore your General tells you it will be a glorious day."
"We may be attacked from one moment to another. You all feel that a defensive battle was never engaged in under more favourable conditions. We are warned, and we are on our guard. Wehave received strong reinforcements of infantry and artillery. You will fight on ground, which, by your assiduous labour, you have transformed into a formidable fortress, into a fortress which is invincible if the passages are well guarded.
"The bombardment will be terrible. You will endure it without weakness. The attack in a cloud of dust and gas will be fierce but your positions and your armament are formidable.
"The strong and brave hearts of free men beat in your breast. None will look behind, none will give way. Every man will have but one thought—'Kill them, kill them in abundance, until they have had enough.' And therefore your General tells you it will be a glorious day."
And so the line held, although the French General had in preparation the plans for withdrawal. When, at the end of the third day, the American line still occupied the same position, the French General found that his labour in preparing the plans for withdrawal had been for nothing. He is reported to have thrown his hands up in the air and remarked, "There doesn't seem to be anything to do but to let the war be fought out where the New York Irish and the Alabamans want to fight it."
There was one humorous incident worthy of record in that fighting. Great rivalry existed between the New York regiment and the Alabama regiment, both of which happened to be units of the same brigade. Both the New Yorkers and the Alabamans had a mutual hatred for the German but, in addition to that, each of them was possessed with a mutual dislike for the other. There had been frequent clashes of a more or less sportsmanlikeand fistic nature between men from both of the regiments.
On the second day of the fighting, the Germans had sent over low-flying airplanes which skimmed the tops of our trenches and sprayed them with machine gun fire. A man from Alabama, who had grown up from childhood with a squirrel rifle under his arm, accomplished something that had never been done before in the war. From his position in a trench, he took careful aim with his rifle and brought down one of the German planes. It was the first time in the history of the Western Front that a rifleman on the ground had done this.
When the colonel of the New York regiment heard this, he was wild with envy and let it be known that there would be trouble brewing unless his regiment at least equalled the feat. So, on the following day, an Irishman in the ranks stood up and brought one German plane down to the credit of the old Sixty-ninth.
To the southwest of Rheims, Germans, who succeeded in breaking through the lines at one place on the south banks of the Marne, encountered American reinforcements and were annihilated to the number of five thousand. At no place did the enemy meet with the success desired.
The Germans had launched their attack at six o'clock on the morning of July 15th. At Vaux their demonstration was considered a feint, but along the Marne to the east of Château-Thierry, between Fossy and Mezy, the assaulting waves advanced with fury and determination. At one place, twenty-five thousand of the enemy crossed the river, and the small American forces in front of them at that place were forced to retire on Conde-en-Bire. In a counter attack, we succeeded in driving fifteenthousand of them back to the north bank, the remaining ten thousand representing casualties with the exception of fifteen hundred, who were captured.
Further eastward, the Germans established bridgehead positions on the south bank of the river at Dormas. The enemy enjoyed a minor success in an attack on the line near Bligny to the southwest of Rheims, where Italian troops fought with remarkable valour. Everywhere else the lines held solid and upon the close of that first night, Marshal Foch said, "I am satisfied—Je suis content."
At dawn the following day, the enemy's futile efforts were resumed along the river east of Château-Thierry. The Germans suffered appalling losses in their efforts to place pontoon bridges at Gland and at Mareuil-le-Port. St. Agnan and La Chapelle Monthodon fell into the hands of Americans on the same day.
On the 17th, the enemy's endeavours to reach Festigny on both banks of the river came to naught, but to the southeast of Rheims, his assaulting waves reached the northern limits of Montagne Forest. The Germans were trying to pinch out the Rheims salient. This was the condition of the opposing lines on the night of July 17th,—the night that preceded the day on which the tide of victory turned for the Allies.
Foch was now ready to strike. The Allied Commander-in-Chief had decided to deliver his blow on the right flank of the German salient. The line chosen for the Allied assault was located between a point south of Soissons and Château-Thierry. It represented a front of some twenty-five miles extending southward from the valley of the Aisne to the Marne. Villers-Cotterets Forest was the key position for the Allies.
It was from out that forest that the full strength ofthe blow was to be delivered. To make the blow effective at that most vital point, Marshal Foch needed a strong and dependable assaulting force. He needed three divisions of the hardest fighting soldiers that he could get. He had a considerable army to select from. As Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied armies, he was in command of all of the British army, all of the French army, all of the American army, the Italian, the Belgian,—all of the military forces of the Allied nations of the world. Marshal Foch's command numbered eleven million bayonets.
The Commander-in-Chief had all of these veteran fighting men from which he could select the three divisions necessary to deliver this blow upon which the civilisation of the world depended.
The first division he chose was the Foreign Legion of the French army. In four years of bloody fighting, the Foreign Legion, composed of soldiers of fortune from every country in the world, had never been absent in an attack. It had lived up thoroughly to its reputation as the most fearless unit of shock troops in the French army.
And then for the other two divisions that were needed, Marshal Foch selected, from all the eleven million men under his command, the First and the Second Regular United States Army Divisions. The Second Division included the immortal Brigade of United States Marines, that had covered themselves with glory in the Bois de Belleau.
It was a great distinction for those two American divisions to have thus been selected to play such a vital part in the entire war. It was an honour that every officer and man in both divisions felt keenly.
I have in my map case a torn and much folded littlepiece of paper. I received it that night of July 17th in Villers-Cotterets Forest. A similar piece of paper was received by every officer in those two American divisions. To me this piece of paper represents the order which resulted in victory for the Allied world. It reads:
Headquarters Third Army Corps American Expeditionary Forces,France, July 17, 1918Memorandum:The Third Corps of the American Expeditionary Forces has been created and consists of the 1st. and 2nd. Divisions, two divisions that are known throughout France.Officers and men of the Third Corps, you have been deemed worthy to be placed beside the best veteran French troops. See that you prove worthy. Remember that in what is now coming you represent the whole American nation.R. L. Bullard,Major General,Commanding 3rd. Corps.
Headquarters Third Army Corps American Expeditionary Forces,
France, July 17, 1918
Memorandum:
The Third Corps of the American Expeditionary Forces has been created and consists of the 1st. and 2nd. Divisions, two divisions that are known throughout France.
Officers and men of the Third Corps, you have been deemed worthy to be placed beside the best veteran French troops. See that you prove worthy. Remember that in what is now coming you represent the whole American nation.
R. L. Bullard,Major General,Commanding 3rd. Corps.
The German planes flying high over Villers-Cotterets Forest all day during the 17th, had seen nothing. The appearance of all the myriad roads that cross and recross the forest in all directions was normal. But that night things began to happen in the forest.
For once at least, the elements were favourable to our cause. There was no moon. The night was very dark and under the trees the blackness seemed impenetrable. A heavy downpour of rain began and although it turned most of the roads into mud, the leafy roof of the forest held much of the moisture and offered someprotection to the thousands of men who spent the night beneath it. Thunder rolled as I had never heard it roll in France before. The sound drowned the occasional boom of distant cannon. At intervals, terrific crashes would be followed by blinding flashes of lightning as nature's bolts cut jagged crevices in the sombre sky and vented their fury upon some splintered giant of the forest.
The immediate front was silent—comparatively silent if one considered the din of the belligerent elements. In the opposing front lines in the northern and eastern limits of the forest, German and Frenchmen alike huddled in their rude shelters to escape the rain.
Then, along every road leading through the forest to the north and to the east, streams of traffic began to pour. All of it was moving forward toward the front. No traffic bound for the rear was permitted. Every inch of available road space was vitally necessary for the forces in movement. The roads that usually accommodated one line of vehicles moving forward and one line moving to the rear, now represented two streams—solid streams—moving forward. In those streams were gun carriages, caissons, limbers, ammunition carts and grunting tractors hauling large field pieces.
In the gutters on either side of the road, long lines of American infantry plodded forward through the mud and darkness. In the occasional flash of a light, I could see that they were equipped for heavy fighting. Many of them had their coats off, their sleeves rolled up, while beads of sweat stood out on the young faces that shown eager beneath the helmets. On their backs they carried, in addition to their cumbersome packs, extra shoes and extra bandoliers of cartridges.
From their shoulders were suspended gas masks andhaversacks. Their waists were girded with loaded ammunition belts, with bayonet hanging at the left side. Some of them wore grenade aprons full of explosives. Nearly all of them carried their rifles or machine gun parts slung across their backs as they leaned forward under their burdens and plunged wearily on into the mud and darkness, the thunder and lightning, the world destiny that was before them. Their lines were interspersed with long files of plodding mules dragging small, two-wheeled, narrow gauge carts loaded down with machine gun ammunition.
Under the trees to either side of the road, there was more movement. American engineers struggled forward through the underbrush carrying, in addition to their rifles and belts, rolls of barbed wire, steel posts, picks and shovels and axes and saws. Beside them marched the swarthy, undersized, bearded veterans of the Foreign Legion. Further still under the trees, French cavalry, with their lances slung slantwise across their shoulders, rode their horses in and out between the giant trunks.
At road intersections, I saw mighty metal monsters with steel plated sides splotched with green and brown and red paint. These were the French tanks that were to take part in the attack. They groaned and grunted on their grinding gears as they manœuvred about for safer progress. In front of each tank there walked a man who bore suspended from his shoulders on his back, a white towel so that the unseen directing genius in the tank's turret could steer his way through the underbrush and crackling saplings that were crushed down under the tread of this modern Juggernaut.
There was no confusion, no outward manifestations of excitement. There was no rattle of musketry, shoutingof commands or waving of swords. Officers addressed their men in whispers. There was order and quiet save for the roll of thunder and the eternal dripping of water from the wet leaves, punctuated now and then by the ear-splitting crashes that followed each nearby flash of lightning.
Through it all, everything moved. It was a mighty mobilisation in the dark. Everything was moving in one direction—forward—all with the same goal, all with the same urging, all with the same determination, all with the same hope. The forest was ghostly with their forms. It seemed to me that night in the damp darkness of Villers-Cotterets Forest that every tree gave birth to a man for France.
All night long the gathering of that sinister synod continued. All night long those furtive forces moved through the forest. They passed by every road, by every lane, through every avenue of trees. I heard the whispered commands of the officers. I heard the sloshing of the mud under foot and the occasional muffled curse of some weary marcher who would slip to the ground under the weight of his burden; and I knew, all of us knew, that at the zero hour, 4:35 o'clock in the morning, all hell would land on the German line, and these men from the trees would move forward with the fate of the world in their hands.
There was some suspense. We knew that if the Germans had had the slightest advance knowledge about that mobilisation of Foch's reserves that night, they would have responded with a downpour of gas shells, which spreading their poisonous fumes under the wet roof of the forest, might have spelt slaughter for 70,000 men.
But the enemy never knew. They never even suspected. And at the tick of 4:35 A.M., the heavensseemed to crash asunder, as tons and tons of hot metal sailed over the forest, bound for the German line.
That mighty artillery eruption came from a concentration of all the guns of all calibres of all the Allies that Foch could muster. It was a withering blast and where it landed in that edge of the forest occupied by the Germans, the quiet of the dripping black night was suddenly turned into a roaring inferno of death.
Giant tree trunks were blown high into the air and splintered into match-wood. Heavy projectiles bearing delayed action fuses, penetrated the ground to great depth before exploding and then, with the expansion of their powerful gases, crushed the enemy dugouts as if they were egg shells.
Then young America—your sons and your brothers and your husbands, shoulder to shoulder with the French—went over the top to victory.
The preliminary barrage moved forward crashing the forest down about it. Behind it went the tanks ambling awkwardly but irresistibly over all obstructions. Those Germans that had not been killed in the first terrific blast, came up out of their holes only to face French and American bayonets, and the "Kamerad" chorus began at once.
Our assaulting waves moved forward, never hesitating, never faltering. Ahead of them were the tanks giving special attention to enemy machine gun nests that manifested stubbornness. We did not have to charge those death-dealing nests that morning as we did in the Bois de Belleau. The tanks were there to take care of them. One of these would move toward a nest, flirt around it several minutes and then politely sit on it. It would never be heard from thereafter.
It was an American whirlwind of fighting fury thatswept the Germans in front of it early that morning. Aeroplanes had been assigned to hover over the advance and make reports on all progress. A dense mist hanging over the forest made it impossible for the aviators to locate the Divisional Headquarters to which they were supposed to make the reports. These dense clouds of vapour obscured the earth from the eyes of the airmen, but with the rising sun the mists lifted.
Being but a month out of the hospital and having spent a rather strenuous night, I was receiving medical attention at daybreak in front of a dressing station not far from the headquarters of Major General Harbord commanding the Second Division. As I lay there looking up through the trees, I saw a dark speck diving from the sky. Almost immediately I could hear the hum of its motors growing momentarily louder as it neared the earth. I thought the plane was out of control and expected to see it crash to the ground near me.
Several hundred feet above the tree tops, it flattened its wings and went into an easy swoop so that its under-gear seemed barely to skim the uppermost branches. The machine pursued a course immediately above one of the roads. Something dropped from it. It was a metal cylinder that glistened in the rays of the morning sun. Attached to it was a long streamer of fluttering white material. It dropped easily to the ground nearby. I saw an American signalman, who had been following its descent, pick it up. He opened the metal container and extracted the message containing the first aerial observations of the advance of the American lines. It stated that large numbers of prisoners had been captured and were bound for the rear.
Upon receipt of this information, Division Headquarters moved forward on the jump. Long before noonGeneral Harbord, close behind his advancing troops, opened headquarters in the shattered farm buildings of Verte Feuille, the first community centre that had been taken by our men that morning. Prisoners were coming back in droves.
I encountered one column of disarmed Germans marching four abreast with the typical attitude of a "Kamerad" procession. The first eight of the prisoners carried on their shoulders two rudely constructed litters made from logs and blankets. A wounded American was on one litter and a wounded Frenchman on the other.
A number of German knapsacks had been used to elevate the shoulders of both of the wounded men so that they occupied positions half sitting and half reclining. Both of them were smoking cigarettes and chatting gaily as they rode high and mighty on the shoulders of their captives, while behind them stretched a regal retinue of eight hundred more.
As this column proceeded along one side of the road, the rest of the roadway was filled with men, guns and equipment all moving forward. Scottish troops in kilts swung by and returned the taunts which our men laughingly directed at their kilts and bare knees.
Slightly wounded Americans came back guarding convoys of prisoners. They returned loaded with relics of the fighting. It was said that day that German prisoners had explained that in their opinion, the British were in the war because they hated Germany and that the French were in the war because the war was in France, but that Americans seemed to be fighting to collect souveniers.
I saw one of these American souvenier collectors bound for the rear. In stature he was one of the shortestmen I had ever seen in our uniform. He must have spent long years in the cavalry, because he was frightfully bowlegged. He was herding in front of him two enormous German prisoners who towered head and shoulders above him.
He manifested a confidence in his knowledge of all prisoners and things German. Germans were "foreigners." "Foreigners" spoke a foreign language. Therefore to make a German understand you, it was only necessary to speak with them in a foreign language. French was a foreign language so the bowlegged American guard made use of his limited knowledge.
"Allay! Allay! Allay veet t'ell outer here," he urged his charges.
He was wearing his helmet back on his head so that there was exposed a shock of black, blood-matted hair on his forehead. A white bandage ran around his forehead and on the right side of his face a strip of cotton gauze connected with another white bandage around his neck. There was a red stain on the white gauze over the right cheek.
His face was rinsed with sweat and very dirty. In one hand he carried a large chunk of the black German war bread—once the property of his two prisoners. With his disengaged hand he conveyed masses of the food to his lips which were circled with a fresco of crumbs.
His face was wreathed in a remarkable smile—a smile of satisfaction that caused the corners of his mouth to turn upward toward his eyes. I also smiled when I made a casual inventory of the battlefield loot with which he had decorated his person. Dangling by straps from his right hip were five holsters containing as many German automatic pistols of the Lueger make, worth about$35 apiece. Suspended from his right shoulder by straps to his left hip, were six pairs of highly prized German field glasses, worth about $100 apiece. I acquired a better understanding of his contagious smile of property possession when I inquired his name and his rank. He replied:
"Sergeant Harry Silverstein."
Later, attracted by a blast of extraordinary profanity, I approached one of our men who was seated by the roadside. A bullet had left a red crease across his cheek but this was not what had stopped him. The hobnail sole of his shoe had been torn off and he was trying to fasten it back on with a combination of straps. His profane denunciations included the U. S. Quartermaster Department, French roads, barbed wire, hot weather and, occasionally, the Germans.
"This sure is a hell of a mess," he said, "for a fellow to find himself in this fix just when I was beginning to catch sight of 'em. I enlisted in the army to come to France to kill Germans but I never thought for one minute they'd bring me over here and try to make me run 'em to death. What we need is greyhounds. And as usual the Q. M. fell down again. Why, there wasn't a lassoe in our whole company."
The prisoners came back so fast that the Intelligence Department was flooded. The divisional intelligence officer asked me to assist in the interrogation of the captives. I questioned some three hundred of them.
An American sergeant who spoke excellent German, interrogated. I sat behind a small table in a field and the sergeant would call the prisoners forward one by one. In German he asked one captive what branch of the service he belonged to. The prisoner wishing to display hisknowledge of English and at the same time give vent to some pride, replied in English.
"I am of the storm troop," he said.
"Storm troop?" replied the American sergeant, "do you know what we are? We are from Kansas. We are Cycloners."
Another German student of English among the prisoners was represented in the person of a pompous German major, who, in spite of being a captive, maintained all the dignity of his rank. He stood proudly erect and held his head high. He wore a disgusted look on his face, as though the surroundings were painful. His uniform was well pressed, his linen was clean, his boots were well polished, he was clean shaven. There was not a speck of dust upon him and he did not look like a man who had gone through the hell of battle that morning. The American sergeant asked him in German to place the contents of his pockets on the table.
"I understand English," he replied superciliously, with a strong accent, as he complied with the request. I noticed, however, that he neglected to divest himself of one certain thing that caught my interest. It was a leather thong that extended around his neck and disappeared between the first and second buttons of his tunic. Curiosity forced me to reach across the table and extract the hidden terminal of that thong. I found suspended on it the one thing in all the world that exactly fitted me and that I wanted. It was a one-eyed field glass. I thanked him.
He told me that he had once been an interne in a hospital in New York but happening to be in Germany at the outbreak of the war, he had immediately entered the army and had risen to the rank of a major in the MedicalCorps. I was anxious for his opinion, obvious as it might have seemed.
"What do you think of the fighting capacity of the American soldier?" I asked him.
"I do not know," he replied in the accented but dignified tones of a superior who painfully finds himself in the hands of one considered inferior. "I have never seen him fight. He is persuasive—yes.
"I was in a dugout with forty German wounded in the cellar under the Beaurepaire Farm, when the terrible bombardment landed. I presume my gallant comrades defending the position died at their posts, because soon the barrage lifted and I walked across the cellar to the bottom of the stairs and looked up.
"There in the little patch of white light on the level of the ground above me, I saw the first American soldier I have seen in the war. But he did not impress me much as a soldier. I did not like his carriage or his bearing.
"He wore his helmet far back on his head. And he did not have his coat on. His collar was not buttoned; it was rolled back and his throat was bare. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. And he had a grenade in each hand.
"Just then he looked down the stairs and saw me—saw me standing there—saw me, a major—and he shouted roughly, 'Come out of there, you big Dutch B——d, or I'll spill a basketful of these on you.'"
All through that glorious day of the 18th, our lines swept forward victoriously. The First Division fought it out on the left, the Foreign Legion in the centre and the Second Division with the Marines pushed forward on the right. Village after village fell into our hands.We captured batteries of guns and thousands of prisoners.
On through the night the Allied assault continued. Our men fought without water or food. All road space behind the lines was devoted to the forwarding of reserves, artillery and munitions. By the morning of the 19th, we had so far penetrated the enemy's lines that we had crossed the road running southward from Soissons to Château-Thierry, thereby disrupting the enemy's communications between his newly established base and the peak of his salient. Thus exposed to an enveloping movement that might have surrounded large numbers, there was nothing left for the Germans to do but to withdraw.
The Allied army commander, who directed the Americans on that glorious day, was General Joseph Mangin. His opinion of the immortal part played on that day by those two American divisions may be seen in the following order which he caused to be published:
Officers, Noncommissioned Officers, and Soldiers of the American Army:
Shoulder to shoulder with your French comrades, you threw yourselves into the counter-offensive begun on July 18th. You ran to it as if going to a feast. Your magnificent dash upset and surprised the enemy, and your indomitable tenacity stopped counter attacks by his fresh divisions. You have shown yourselves to be worthy sons of your great country and have gained the admiration of your brothers in arms.Ninety-one cannon, 7,200 prisoners, immense booty, and ten kilometres of reconquered territory are your share of the trophies of this victory. Besides this, you have acquired a feeling of your superiority over the barbarianenemy against whom the children of liberty are fighting. To attack him is to vanquish him.American comrades, I am grateful to you for the blood you generously spilled on the soil of my country. I am proud of having commanded you during such splendid days and to have fought with you for the deliverance of the world.
Shoulder to shoulder with your French comrades, you threw yourselves into the counter-offensive begun on July 18th. You ran to it as if going to a feast. Your magnificent dash upset and surprised the enemy, and your indomitable tenacity stopped counter attacks by his fresh divisions. You have shown yourselves to be worthy sons of your great country and have gained the admiration of your brothers in arms.
Ninety-one cannon, 7,200 prisoners, immense booty, and ten kilometres of reconquered territory are your share of the trophies of this victory. Besides this, you have acquired a feeling of your superiority over the barbarianenemy against whom the children of liberty are fighting. To attack him is to vanquish him.
American comrades, I am grateful to you for the blood you generously spilled on the soil of my country. I am proud of having commanded you during such splendid days and to have fought with you for the deliverance of the world.
The Germans began backing off the Marne. From that day on, their movement to date has continued backward. It began July 18th. Two American Divisions played glorious parts in the crisis. It was their day. It was America's day. It was the turn of the tide.
The waited hour had come. The forced retreat of the German hordes had begun. Hard on their heels, the American lines started their northward push, backing the Boche off the Marne.
On the morning of July 21st I rode into Château-Thierry with the first American soldiers to enter the town. The Germans had evacuated hurriedly. Château-Thierry was reoccupied jointly by our forces and those of the French.
Here was the grave of German hopes. Insolent, imperialistic longings for the great prize, Paris, ended here. The dream of the Kultur conquest of the world had become a nightmare of horrible realisation that America was in the war. Pompously flaunted strategy crumpled at historic Château-Thierry.
That day of the occupation, the wrecked city was comparatively quiet. Only an occasional German shell—a final parting spite shell—whined disconsolately overhead and landed in a cloud of dust and débris in some vacant ruin that had once been a home.
For seven long weeks the enemy had been in occupation of that part of the city on the north bank of the river. Now the streets were littered with débris. Although the walls of most of the buildings seemed to be in good shape, the scene was one of utter devastation.
The Germans had built barricades across the streets—particularly the streets that led down to the river—because it was those streets that were swept with theterrific fire of American machine guns. At the intersections of those streets the Germans under cover of night had taken up the cobblestones and built parapets to protect them from the hail of lead.
Wrecked furniture was hip deep on the Rue Carnot. Along the north bank of the river on the Quai de la Poterne and the Promenade de la Levée, the invader had left his characteristic mark. Shop after shop had been looted of its contents and the fronts of the pretty sidewalk cafés along this business thoroughfare had been reduced to shells of their former selves.
Not a single living being was in sight as we marched in. Some of the old townsfolk and some young children had remained but they were still under cover. Among these French people who had lived for seven weeks through the hell of battle that had raged about the town, was Madame de Prey, who was eighty-seven years old. To her, home meant more than life. She had spent the time in her cellar, caring for German wounded.
The town had been systematically pillaged. The German soldiers had looted from the shops much material which they had made up into packages to be mailed back to home folks in the Fatherland. The church, strangely enough, was picked out as a depository for their larcenies. Nothing from the robes of the priests down to the copper faucet of a water pipe had escaped their greed.
The advancing Americans did not linger in the town—save for small squads of engineers that busied themselves with the removal of the street obstructions and the supply organisations that perfected communication for the advancing lines. These Americans were Yankeesall—they comprised the 26th U. S. Division, representing the National Guard of New England.
Our lines kept pushing to the north. The Germans continued their withdrawal and the Allied necessity was to keep contact with them. This, the Yankee Division succeeded in doing. The first obstacle encountered to the north of Château-Thierry was the stand that the Germans made at the town of Epieds.
On July 23rd, our infantry had proceeded up a ravine that paralleled the road into Epieds. German machine guns placed on the hills about the village, swept them with a terrible fire. Our men succeeded in reaching the village, but the Germans responded with such a terrific downpour of shell that our weakened ranks were forced to withdraw and the Germans re-entered the town.
On the following day we renewed the attack with the advantage of positions which we had won during the night in the Bois de Trugny and the Bois de Châtelet. We advanced from three sides and forced the Germans to evacuate. Trugny, the small village on the edge of the woods, was the scene of more bloody fighting which resulted in our favour.
Further north of Epieds, the Germans having entrenched themselves along the roadway, had fortified the same with a number of machine guns which commanded the flat terrain in such a way as to make a frontal attack by infantry waves most costly. The security of the Germans in this position received a severe shock when ten light automobiles, each one mounting one or two machine guns, started up the road toward the enemy, firing as they sped. It was something new. The Germans wanted to surrender, but the speed of the cars obviated such a possibility. So the enemy fled before our gasoline cavalry.
The Germans were withdrawing across the river Ourcq, whose valley is parallel to that of the Marne and just to the north. The enemy's intentions of making a stand here were frustrated by violent attacks, which succeeded in carrying our forces into positions on the north side of the Ourcq. These engagements straightened out the Allied line from the Ourcq on the west to Fère-en-Tardenois on the east, which had been taken the same day by French and American troops.
By this time the German withdrawal was becoming speedier. Such strong pressure was maintained by our men against the enemy's rear guards that hundreds of tons of German ammunition had to be abandoned and fell into our hands. Still the retreat bore no evidences of a rout.
The enemy retired in orderly fashion. He bitterly contested every foot of ground he was forced to give. The American troops engaged in those actions had to fight hard for every advance. The German backed out of the Marne salient as a Western "bad man" would back out of a saloon with an automatic pistol in each hand.
Those charges that our men made across the muddy flats of the Ourcq deserve a place in the martial history of America. They faced a veritable hell of machine gun fire. They went through barrages of shrapnel and high explosive shell. They invaded small forests that the enemy had flooded with poison gas. No specific objectives were assigned. The principal order was "Up and at 'em" and this was reinforced by every man's determination to keep the enemy on the run now that they had been started.
Even the enemy's advantage of high positions north of the river failed to hold back the men from New York,from Iowa, Alabama, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana, who had relieved the hard fighting Yankees. These new American organisations went up against fresh German divisions that had been left behind with orders to hold at all cost. But nothing the enemy could do could prevent our crossing of the Ourcq.
On July 30th the fighting had become most intense in character. The fact that the town of Sergy was captured, lost and recaptured nine times within twenty-four hours, is some criterion of the bitterness of the struggle. This performance of our men can be better understood when it is stated that the enemy opposing them there consisted of two fresh divisions of the Kaiser's finest—his Prussian Guard.
After that engagement with our forces, the Fourth Prussian Guard Division went into an enforced retirement. When our men captured Sergy the last time, they did so in sufficient strength to withhold it against repeated fierce counter attacks by a Bavarian Guard division that had replaced the wearied Prussians.
But before the crack Guard Division was withdrawn from the line, it had suffered terrible losses at our hands. Several prisoners captured said that their company had gone into the fight one hundred and fifty strong and only seven had survived. That seven were captured by our men in hand to hand fighting.
While our engineer forces repaired the roads and constructed bridges in the wake of our advancing lines, the enemy brought to that part of the front new squadrons of air fighters which were sent over our lines for the purpose of observation and interference with communications. They continually bombed our supply depots and ammunition dumps.
After the crossing of the Ourcq the American advancereached the next German line of resistance, which rested on two terminal strongholds. One was in the Forêt de Nesles and the other was in the Bois de Meunière.
The fighting about these two strong points was particularly fierce. In the Bois de Meunière and around the town of Cièrges, the German resistance was most determined. About three hundred Jaegers held Hill 200, which was located in the centre of Cièrges Forest, just to the south of the village of the same name. They were well provided with machine guns and ammunition. They were under explicit orders to hold and they did.
Our men finally captured the position at the point of the bayonet. Most of its defenders fought to the death. The capture of the hill was the signal for a renewal of our attacks against the seemingly impregnable Meunière woods. Six times our advancing waves reached the German positions in the southern edge of the woods and six times we were driven back.
There were some American Indians in the ranks of our units attacking there—there were lumber jacks and farmer boys and bookkeepers, and they made heroic rushes against terrific barriers of hidden machine guns. But after a day of gallant fighting they had been unable to progress.
Our efforts had by no means been exhausted. The following night our artillery concentrated on the southern end of the woods and literally turned it into an inferno with high explosive shells. Early in the morning we moved to the attack again. Two of the Kaiser's most reputable divisions, the 200th Jaegers and the 216th Reserve, occupied the wood. The fighting in the wood was fierce and bloody, but it was more to the liking of our men than the rushes across fire-swept fields. Ourmen went to work with the bayonet. And for six hours they literally carved their way through four kilometres of the forest. Before ten o'clock the next morning, our lines lay to the north of the woods.
In consolidating the gains in the woods, our men surrounded in a small clearing some three hundred of the enemy who refused to surrender. American squads advanced with the bayonet from all sides. The Germans were fighting for their lives. Only three remained to accept the ignominy of capture.
Our forward progress continued and by August 4th the Germans were withdrawing across the Vesle River. The immediate objective that presented itself to the Americans was the important German supply depot at Fismes. It was in and around Fismes that some of the bloodiest fighting in the second battle of the Marne took place. The capture of Fismes was the crowning achievement of one American division that so distinguished itself as to be made the subject of a special report to the French General Headquarters by the French army in which the Americans fought. In part, the report read:
"On Aug. 4th the infantry combats were localized with terrible fury. The outskirts of Fismes were solidly held by the Germans, where their advance groups were difficult to take. The Americans stormed them and reduced them with light mortars and thirty-sevens. They succeeded, though not without loss, and at the end of the day, thanks to this slow but sure tenacity, they were within one kilometre of Fismes and masters of Villes, Savoye and Chezelle Farm. All night long rains hindered their movements and rendered their following day's task more arduous. On their right theFrench had, by similar stages, conquered a series of woods and swamps of Meunière Woods, to the east of St. Gilles, and were on the plateau of Bonne Maison Farm. To the left another American unit had been able to advance upon the Vesle to the east of St. Thiébault."On Aug. 5th the artillery prepared for the attack on Fismes by a bombardment, well regulated, and the final assault was launched. The Americans penetrated into the village and then began the mean task of clearing the last point of resistance. That evening this task was almost completed. We held all the northern part of the village as far as Rheims road, and patrols were sent into the northern end of the village. Some even succeeded in crossing the Vesle, but were satisfied with making a reconnaissance, as the Germans still occupied the right bank of the river in great strength. All that was left to be accomplished was to complete the mopping up of Fismes and the strengthening of our positions to withstand an enemy counter attack."Such was the advance of one American division, which pushed the enemy forward from Roncheres on July 30th a distance of eighteen kilometres and crowned its successful advance with the capture of Fismes on Aug. 5th."
"On Aug. 4th the infantry combats were localized with terrible fury. The outskirts of Fismes were solidly held by the Germans, where their advance groups were difficult to take. The Americans stormed them and reduced them with light mortars and thirty-sevens. They succeeded, though not without loss, and at the end of the day, thanks to this slow but sure tenacity, they were within one kilometre of Fismes and masters of Villes, Savoye and Chezelle Farm. All night long rains hindered their movements and rendered their following day's task more arduous. On their right theFrench had, by similar stages, conquered a series of woods and swamps of Meunière Woods, to the east of St. Gilles, and were on the plateau of Bonne Maison Farm. To the left another American unit had been able to advance upon the Vesle to the east of St. Thiébault.
"On Aug. 5th the artillery prepared for the attack on Fismes by a bombardment, well regulated, and the final assault was launched. The Americans penetrated into the village and then began the mean task of clearing the last point of resistance. That evening this task was almost completed. We held all the northern part of the village as far as Rheims road, and patrols were sent into the northern end of the village. Some even succeeded in crossing the Vesle, but were satisfied with making a reconnaissance, as the Germans still occupied the right bank of the river in great strength. All that was left to be accomplished was to complete the mopping up of Fismes and the strengthening of our positions to withstand an enemy counter attack.
"Such was the advance of one American division, which pushed the enemy forward from Roncheres on July 30th a distance of eighteen kilometres and crowned its successful advance with the capture of Fismes on Aug. 5th."
The German line on the Vesle river fell shortly after the capture of Fismes. The enemy was forced to fall back to his next natural line of defence on the Aisne. Between the Vesle and the Aisne, the Americans assisted the French in the application of such persistent pressure that the enemy's stubborn resistance was overcome and in many places he was forced to withdraw before he had time to destroy his depots of supply.
On August 9th, General Degoutte, commanding the Sixth French Army, issued the following order:
"Before the great offensive of July 18th, the American troops, forming part of the 6th French Army, distinguished themselves by clearing the 'Brigade de Marine' Woods and the village of Vaux of the enemy and arresting his offensive on the Marne and at Fossoy."Since then they have taken the most glorious part in the second battle of the Marne, rivalling the French troops in ardour and valour."During twenty days of constant fighting they have freed numerous French villages and made, across a difficult country, an advance of forty kilometres, which has brought them to the Vesle."Their glorious marches are marked by names which will shine in future in the military history of the United States: Torcy, Belleau, Plateau d'Etrepilly, Epieds, Le Charmel, l'Ourcq, Seringeset Nesles, Sergy, La Vesle and Fismes."These young divisions, who saw fire for the first time, have shown themselves worthy of the old war traditions of the regular army. They have had the same burning desire to fight the Boche, the same discipline which sees that the order given by their commander is always executed, whatever the difficulties to be overcome and the sacrifices to be suffered."The magnificent results obtained are due to the energy and the skill of the commanders, to the bravery of the soldiers."I am proud to have commanded such troops."
"Before the great offensive of July 18th, the American troops, forming part of the 6th French Army, distinguished themselves by clearing the 'Brigade de Marine' Woods and the village of Vaux of the enemy and arresting his offensive on the Marne and at Fossoy.
"Since then they have taken the most glorious part in the second battle of the Marne, rivalling the French troops in ardour and valour.
"During twenty days of constant fighting they have freed numerous French villages and made, across a difficult country, an advance of forty kilometres, which has brought them to the Vesle.
"Their glorious marches are marked by names which will shine in future in the military history of the United States: Torcy, Belleau, Plateau d'Etrepilly, Epieds, Le Charmel, l'Ourcq, Seringeset Nesles, Sergy, La Vesle and Fismes.
"These young divisions, who saw fire for the first time, have shown themselves worthy of the old war traditions of the regular army. They have had the same burning desire to fight the Boche, the same discipline which sees that the order given by their commander is always executed, whatever the difficulties to be overcome and the sacrifices to be suffered.
"The magnificent results obtained are due to the energy and the skill of the commanders, to the bravery of the soldiers.
"I am proud to have commanded such troops."
Through the month of August and up to the first days of September, the Americans participated in the importantoperations to the north of Soissons, where on August 29th they played a big part in the capture of the Juvigny Plateau.
In this fighting, which was marked by the desperate resistance of the enemy, the Americans were incorporated in the 10th French Army under the command of General Mangin. Violent counter attacks by German shock divisions failed to stem the persistent advances of our forces.
A large hill to the north of Juvigny constituted a key and supporting position for the enemy. In spite of the large number of machine guns concealed on its slopes, the Americans succeeded in establishing a line between the hill and the town. At the same time the American line extended itself around the other side of the hill. With the consummation of this enveloping movement, the hill was taken by assault.
On Labor Day, September 2nd, after bitterly engaging four German divisions for five days, the Americans advanced their lines to Terny-Sorny and the road running between Soissons and St. Quentin. This achievement, which was accomplished by driving the Germans back a depth of four miles on a two mile front, gave our forces a good position on the important plateau running to the north of the Aisne.
Our observation stations now commanded a view across the valley toward the famous Chemin des Dames which at one time had been a part of the Hindenburg line. Before the invasion of the German hordes, France possessed no fairer countryside than the valley of the Aisne. But the Germans, retreating, left behind them only wreckage and ashes and ruin. The valley spread out before our lines was scarred with the shattered remains of what had once been peaceful farming communities.To the northwest there could be seen the spires above the city of Laon.
The American units which took part in this bitter fighting that had continued without a day's cessation since July 18th, were mentioned specifically in an order issued on August 27th by General Pershing. The order read: