CHAPTER XX

THE FIRST TWO BATTLES

While Generalissimo Foch was strengthening his long line, with American troops as flying buttresses, those sectors delegated to the Americans in their own right saw two battles, within a few weeks of each other, which attained to the dignity of names. The battle of Seicheprey, the first big American defensive action, and the battle of Cantigny, the first big offensive, the one in the Toul sector, the other in Picardy, were the occasions of the American baptism of fire. The one was so valiant, the other so brilliant, and both were so reassuring to the high commands of the Allies, that they would deserve a special emphasis even if they had not the distinction of being America's first battles.

On the night of April 20-21 the German bombardment of Seicheprey, a village east of the Renners wood, and just northwest of Toul, grew to monstrous proportions. Frenchmen who had seen the great Verdun offensive, in which the German Crown Prince had made a new record for artillery preparation, said that the heavy firing on the American sector eclipsed any of the action at Verdun.

The firing covered a front of a mile and a quarter. The bombardment was of high explosive shells and gas, apparently an effort to disable the return fire from American artillery. But all through the night the artillerymen sent their shells, encasing themselves in gas-masks.

Toward dawn the attack began. A full regiment of German soldiers, preceded by 1,200 shock troops, advanced under a barrage. Halfway across No Man's Land the American artillery laid down a counter-barrage, and many of the Germans dropped under it, but still the great waves of them came on, focussing on the village of Seicheprey.

The impact of their terrific numbers was too powerful to be withstood at once. The American troops fell back from some of their first-line trenches, which the first bombardment had caused them to hold loosely, and part of the forces fell back even from the village. The Germans marched into the village, evidently believing it to have been totally abandoned, carrying their flame-throwers and grenades, but making no use of them. Suddenly they discovered that certain American troops had been left to defend the village, while the main force reformed at the rear, and hand-to-hand fighting in the street became necessary. An American commander sent word back that the troops were giving ground by inches, and that they could hold for a few hours.

Seicheprey, the first big American battle, had every element of the World War in little. Before the loss of the village, which occurred about noon, the troops defending it had fought from ambush and in the open, had fought with gas and liquid fire, with grenades, rifles, and machine-guns. In the inferno the new troops were giving proof of valor that was to come out later and be scattered broadcast, as a measure of what America would bring.

In and out of the streets of Seicheprey, in its little public square, from the yards of its houses, hundreds of American soldiers were fighting for their lives. France lay behind them, trusting to be saved. Other Americans were behind them, racing into formation with French troops for the counter-attack. The defenders of Seicheprey, "giving by inches," had a battle-cry of their own, brief and racy, of the football-fields: "Hold 'em."

After a while the Germans took Seicheprey. The hideously pressed, slow-giving outpost moved back. Before the day had finished the shell-stripped streets of Seicheprey, sheltering the invaders, weltered again under the first American shells of the counter-attack. By nightfall the troops were creeping forward under the counter-barrage. The army, reformed, refreshed, and replenished, was on its way to take its own back again. The counter-battle lacked the monstrous gruelling of the first attack. It took less time. The superiority of numbers had shifted to the other side, and the white heat of determination did its share.

The Germans held Seicheprey about four hours.

The main positions of the army, which were threatened, were untouched because of the stoutness of the resistance at the village, and most of the first-line positions were retaken with the rush of the counter-attack.

The German prisoners who were captured had many days' rations in their kits and extra loads of trench-tools on their backs. They had intended to hold the American trenches for several days, facing them the other way, before they commenced the new attack, which, in the plan of the German high command, was to break apart the French and American lines where they joined, above Toul. Once this wedge was into the Allied vitals the rest was to be easy.

Though Seicheprey did not count as a big battle in point of numbers engaged or numbers lost, it loomed large enough in the importance it had strategically. The German high command obviously expected little or nothing from the "green American troops." The shock troops had been rehearsed for weeks to take the American lines and hold them till the Allied line should be broken apart. In fact, it was nobly planned. The only compliment the Americans could squeeze out of it was that the Germans were sent over in many places eight to their one. But the capture of Seicheprey lasted just four hours, and the disruption of the Franco-American line remained a mere brain-child of the Wilhelmstrasse.

The French soldiers who joined the counter-attack told thrilling stories of the Americans. They told that in one place north of Seicheprey, an American detachment was separated into small groups, and was cut off from the company to which it belonged through 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 stay and fight, so there they stayed, notwithstanding incessant enemy bombardment.

In the town of Seicheprey a squad of Americans found a few cases of hand-grenades. With these they put up a tremendous fight through the whole day, holding to a strip at the northern end of the village. They refused to surrender when they were ordered to, and at the end of the fighting only nine of the original twenty-three were left. By the grace of these nine men Seicheprey was never wholly German, even for the four hours.

One New England boy passed through the enemy barrage seven times to carry ammunition to his comrades. A courier who was twice blown off the road by shell explosions carried his message through and dropped as he reported. A lieutenant with only six men patrolled six hundred yards of the front throughout the day, holding communications open between the battalions to the right and left of him. A sanitary-squad runner captured by the Germans, escaped them and made his way into Seicheprey, tending the wounded there till help came. A machine-gunner found himself alone with his gun, and on being asked by a superior officer if he could hold the line there, replied that he could if he were not killed. He