Part 13

When rain began to fall, it made the woodland earth soft, hampering the efforts of the engineers, who themselves labored without food all the day and all through the night and all the next day without pause, as they dug and chopped away roots and cut saplings for corduroys in making a passage through that four-mile stretch of forest---and _forêt_ it was though called a _bois_--which separated the fighters from their beleaguered supplies. Signal corps carts, so necessary to lay the wire for the communications which would enable the infantry to send in reports and receive orders promptly, and the small arms ammunition carts, which would keep soldiers who were without their shields from being without cartridges as well, were forced through by dint of an arduous persistence in answer to the urgency of the call. Rolling kitchens with warm meals could do no more rolling than if they were hotel kitchens. Ambulances had to wait at the edge of the forest for wounded brought three and four miles on stretchers or plodding on foot or hobbling on canes and crutches made from tree limbs.

Was this division, with its artillery, its ammunition trucks, and all its supplies waiting upon a road through four miles of the forest whose time of completion was uncertain, to attack the next day after all the exertion of working its way through the forest? Of course. The Fifth Corps was supposed to take Montfaucon on the night of the 26th. Montfaucon must be taken on the 27th, and early, too, or the pencilings on the maps would be fatally behind ambitious objectives in the center. To the west of Montfaucon in small patches of woods and on crests were the positions of the Völker Stellung, which the Germans had plotted, though they had done no digging, for the defense of Montfaucon; but the lines where trenches were to be dug and the points machine-guns were to occupy had been carefully assigned. Therefore units of reserves as they arrived would know exactly where to go without loss of time. Naturally, we wanted to attack this position while it was still weakly held. For all the Ohio men knew, the enemy might have already concentrated there in force, when without their artillery, machine-guns, or trench mortars, uncertain even of a constant supply of small arms ammunition, they began their second day's action at the break of dawn. In swift charges the right overran the ridges, overwhelming German reserves, who were arriving too late, on their way forward. By 11 it had patrols in Montfaucon, and by 1.30 in the afternoon it had cleared the enemy from the cellars as well as from the steep and winding streets of the town, which were littered with the débris of buildings that had crumbled under shell-fire.

Against the left brigade the Germans did not depend upon defensive tactics alone. Their reserves, more prompt in arriving than on the right, counter-attacked at 9 A.M. to stem the brigade's advance. There was a pitched battle, a conflict of charges, for a fierce half-hour; but the brigade, putting in the last of its reserves, won the mastery, and at 9.30 was in pursuit of the enemy. An hour later its advance elements, running a gamut of artillery and machine-gun fire, were in the village of Ivoiry. Now turning their attention to the conquest of Hill 256 beyond the town, which was lashing them with plunging machine-gun fire, storming parties finally swept over the crest; but their exposure to the blasts which the enemy promptly concentrated made their position untenable. With the left holding its gains after this slight withdrawal, the center advanced at 5.45 and took a strong and threatening position which made the victory of the day more secure. The line at dark was along the Ivoiry-Montfaucon road.

After the exhaustion of fighting its way through the forest on the first day, the 37th had used every available man on the second day. The engineers had now made a road through the forest. This, being unequal to caring for all the transport in a steady flow, was the more inadequate owing to the delays due to the repair of sloughs, which were always appearing at some point in its four-mile length. Hungry infantrymen lying on the moist ground were wondering if they would ever have the strength to rise again. The prodigal, hasty crowding in of reserves which necessity required had exposed all the troops to the widespread artillery fire and the long-range sweep of bullets, which caused many casualties.

On the next day, the 28th, the Army command, as we know, was to call for a supreme effort all along the line. Despite the tireless labor of the gunners with their snatch ropes, most of the 37th's artillery was still stalled where it could be of no service. Without their shields the Ohio men again rose to the attack at seven on the morning of the 28th. In half an hour they had entered the Emont Wood on their left and the Beuge Wood on their right. They continued on toward the village of Cierges until the blasts of fire from the heights and woods of the whale-back, not only upon the elements in advance but upon those in support, forced them to take cover. They were now within a quarter of a mile of the Cierges-Nantillois road. Meanwhile the Germans had been filling Emont Wood with phosgene gas to such an extent that it became untenable. In another attack at 5.45 P.M. the Ohio men encircled the wood. By dark their outposts were just south of Cierges.

Gettysburg did not last three full days, but any veterans who fought throughout that battle will have some idea of what the 37th Division as a whole had endured on September 26th, 27th, and 28th. The division commander reported lack of food and a "condition of almost collapse" among his men, which did not weaken the determination of Corps or Army to expend any energy remaining in the 37th in another effort on the next day to "crack" the chain of heights between the Aire and the whale-back. How fruitless this proved only makes the final effort of the 37th the more appealing. The Ohio men were willing; they were willing, after shivering on wet earth all night without blankets, as long as they had strength enough to stagger to their feet,--and they might have had more strength if they had had more food. There was only one relieving feature of their situation, so unfavorable from the first. A German water-point equal to supplying the whole division had been captured. There was enough to drink, if not enough to eat: that is, for such units as the water-carts could reach.

Yet Corps and Army thought the 37th ought to be very cheerful. Hadn't they been assigned, on the morning of the 28th, ten small tanks to assist them in taking Cierges? The tanks were moving gallantly along the western edge of Emont Wood until the German artillery, from the heights which had them in plain view, concluded that they had gone far enough, and put them out of action. Then the German artillery turned its undivided attention to assisting the German infantry, concentrating its volume upon any attempt of the Ohioans, whose brains and legs were numb from fatigue, to storm particularly murderous flanking machine-gun nests. Patrols, creeping up ravines and dodging bursts of shells, succeeded in entering Cierges. They could not be supported by the artillery, which was now up, as it had run out of ammunition. Thus our guns were silent when the enemy started a counter-attack beyond Cierges; but the vengeful and accurate fire of the infantry soon sent the survivors of the advancing German wave to cover. Later the artillery, having received some ammunition, when it had an aeroplane signal of the Germans massing for another counter-attack, scotched it promptly. If the Germans could not budge us, we could not budge them. Every time we showed our heads in any effort for another gain, we stirred up a hornet's nest of bullets and offered a fresh target for a storm of shell-bursts.

Late in the afternoon word came from the 91st, asking coöperation from the 37th in a further advance to relieve pressure on the wedge it had driven past the fronts of its neighbors. The fact that the message was two hours in transit was sufficient comment on the state of communication between divisions which had extended themselves to the limit of their power. The Ohio men who were already intrenching might still be willing to charge, but it was the willingness of the spirit rather than of the flesh. Had every gun and machine-gun on their front there on the threshold of the whale-back been silenced, and had they been ordered to march another two miles over that rough ground, a majority would have dropped in their tracks from exhaustion. There was nothing to do but stick where they were. This was as easy as for logs of wood to lie in their places. They fell asleep over their spades, and the bursts of high-explosive shells which shook the earth did not waken them. All they asked of the world was rest and food.

Remaining in a stationary line all the next day, they had recovered enough strength to march back when the 32nd Division relieved them on the night of the 30th. At the cost of 3,460 casualties their rushing tactics, keeping the jump on the enemy, had taken 1,120 prisoners and 23 guns. Fatigue and sickness from exposure, as well as casualties, had worn them down. If they had fought with less abandon of energy, with less resolute and vivid spirit, their casualties would have been much larger. From the first they had thrown in all their reserves; and to the end they had fought with all their numbers in order to overcome the handicaps of their mission.

On the right of the Fifth Corps the 79th Division, National Army from the Atlantic Coast--Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the District of Columbia--was to have its baptism of fire at the same time as the Pacific Coast men on the Corps left,--a baptism preparing it for its memorable service later in taking Hill 378, or the Borne de Cornouiller, on the east bank of the Meuse. In place of its own artillery brigade, which had not yet received its guns, it had three regiments, less six batteries, of the veteran artillery of the 32nd Division, and one regiment of that of the 41st Division, National Guard from the Pacific Coast.

As one of the two divisions which had never been under fire before, the 79th had been given the farthest objective of any division. The German trenches on its front were everywhere in the open, crowning a gentle ridge. The wire had been badly cut, but the Eastern Coast men made no more fuss over that handicap than their neighbors. When they came to the top of the ridge, they might see the field of their action, in its relation to the Army plan, spread before them. There was the route of their advance, following a valley with the ribbon of the Esnes-Montfaucon road at its bottom, and the distant ruins of Montfaucon on their high hill as distinct a goal as the stone column of a lighthouse on a shore. They were not only to take this on the first day, but to pass on down the slopes beyond, and, conquering patches of woods and ravines, carry their flying wedge to the foot of the heights of the whale-back. On the second day Army ambition designed to assail the whale-back itself, as we know. Well might these inexperienced troops have asked in irony: "Is that all you expect of us? Don't you think we can do it in the forenoon, and take the whale-back in the afternoon, so that we can get on to the Lille-Metz railway tomorrow?"

As the 79th had open country to traverse, it ought to go fast. With adjoining divisions clearing the walls of the valley leading up to Montfaucon, it was supposed to be marching over a boulevard compared to the route which the 37th had in the Montfaucon forest. Indeed every division was given the idea that all it had to do was to keep deployed and moving according to schedule. As for the distance itself which the 79th had to travel, any golfer may measure it as two and a half times that of an eighteen-hole round, with a quarter of the distance through traps and bunkers, and the rest altogether in the rough of a surpassingly hilly course, while he carries a rifle and a soldier's pack and ammunition. In the immediate foreground was a belt of weed-grown shell-craters, their edges joining, the passage being further complicated by the ruins of two villages--Haucourt and Malancourt--within the area of the trench system. On the left, over the moist slippery weeds of the shell-craters, the men could not keep pace in the mist with the barrage, which had been made specially rapid in order to urge them to the rapid movement required; but this delay did not prove important.

From Montfaucon the German observers could see the wave of khaki figures distinctly as they came down the slope toward the valley. It was a sight to thrill any veteran with professional admiration of the drill-ground precision of these young soldiers in dipping and rising with the folds of the ground. There seemed not enough superfluous fat among the division's privates to have given a single war profiteer that rotundity with which we associate the corpulency of a parvenu's fortune. They were pantherishly lean, trained down to elastic sinews and supple muscles. In every eye there was a direct and eager glance, quick in response to any order. Looking at these thousands of athletes, with their clean-cut and intelligent faces, one was not surprised that the Army command thought that to such men nothing was impossible.

For the first three hours they made a parade of their daring mission as a flying wedge. They had only to continue to march, each man guiding by the man on his right and left, while the sun shone genially, and war, once they were through the trench system, was little more than a stroll across country in excellent company. The observers on Montfaucon might not gratify the appetite of their eyes by sending over barrages of shell-fire into such a distinct target. All the Germans' available artillery force, which was slight at that time, must be concentrated elsewhere. Let those American amateurs come on! There was trouble in store for them.

When the 79th came down into the valley, a hill in front of Montfaucon was now on the sky-line, instead of the ruins of the town. There were hills all around them, while they were exposed in the valley bottom. To the right in the 4th Division's sector was the hill and village of Cuisy, high points in a series of irregular commanding slopes. On the left was the Cuisy Wood, as the eastern end of the Montfaucon woods was called. So they were between the two Cuisys. The Cuisy Wood was in the 79th's sector. The machine-gun nests there served notice of one of the disadvantages of open country when they began firing from the cover on the visible foe. Checked by this fire, and forced to take cover in shell-craters and any dead spaces available, the Eastern Coast men found that whenever they showed themselves the air cracked and sung with bullets. This was the trouble that the Germans had in pickle for them; this was war in earnest. They were now without barrages. They could not close with the enemy in an abandoned rush through a screen of woodland: the enemy had all the woodland to himself. Moreover, they had to advance uphill over very treacherous ground.

With the help of tanks and of the 37th exerting its pressure on the left, Cuisy Wood was taken after three hours' fighting; but valuable time had been lost. The center, striving to pass over the crest of Hill 294 in front of Montfaucon, was blown back by converging blasts from machine-guns. Cuisy and the ridges on the right, as threatening as those on the left, were not yet taken. The 79th was in an open area of interlocking fire, though in a lesser degree than the 28th in the valley of the Aire. There was confusion owing to errors which were not always those of the young officers and the men, only waiting in their willingness to go where they were told against any kind of resistance. One of the young officers, finding himself alone, as the morning mist lifted, in the midst of machine-gun nests, forced the gunners to surrender and to point out the location of sixteen other nests.

In ratio to the importance of the thrust of the 79th was the responsibility of its senior officers, regimental and brigade. They had come to test in the field their ability as professional soldiers; when the amount of fat they had accumulated on their bodies and in their minds would have its influence on their endurance and judgment. There was contradiction in commands; uncertainty in decisions; higher orders were not carried out. In one case the natural military initiative of a tank commander gave the word to advance, which was all that the men wanted. Instead of reserves being sent in to keep the jump on the enemy by swift taking of positions, he was allowed time to recover his morale and bring reinforcements and machine-guns into position.

Corps was displeased with this hesitation; Army equally so. They still had their eyes on the distant goal that they had set for the day's end. The 79th was told to press on at dusk and that it was expected to reach Nantillois and its full objective during the night. This, of course, required only the writing of a message. Without artillery support a regiment made a brave and fruitless attempt against a deluge of hand-grenades and interlocking machine-gun fire. During the night the division commander relieved a senior officer who had failed to carry out his orders, read lessons to others, and reorganized his command. The road across the two miles of trench system and of shell-craters, being used by two divisions, despite the work of the engineers was wholly unequal to demands. As it passed over a ridge the trucks, sinking into sloughs which seemed to have no bottom, were frequently blocked in the ascent.

The 79th had two battalions of artillery up when it attacked the next morning. Now it had its "second wind." The men were given rein. Practically without shields, neither shells nor hand-grenades nor bullets could stay their progress. On the right they began driving ahead under the flanking machine-guns of Cuisy before dawn at 4 A.M. On the left they started at 7 A.M. Their only _liaison_ with their flanks was by mounted messenger, as their motorcycles were of no service until Montfaucon was reached. Their units intermingled with those of adjoining divisions, and advanced with them in that determined rush to "get there." By 11 A.M. the 79th had men in Montfaucon with those of the 37th. A regiment was re-formed and ordered to flank Nantillois on the right, but now, going down the north slopes, it was in full view of the artillery from the whale-back. The left was stopped in the Beuge Wood. It had been a day of incessant and wearing effort of the same kind that the 37th had suffered. The road was in better condition, the troops received some though not sufficient food. A hundred burros were invaluable in bringing up ammunition.

The next day being the critical 28th, the orders were for the 79th to exert itself to the utmost. It was still advancing in country perfectly open to view from the whale-back and its covering positions. In the morning the regiments which had been in reserve, now being in front, proved that woods fighting was no monopoly by cleaning up all the machine-gun nests in the Beuge Wood and storming the ridge beyond Hill 268, and taking Nantillois before noon. Then they were re-formed and given a little time for rest,--if rest was the word for hugging cover under incessant shell-fire. With the aid of tanks two attacks were made on the Ogons Wood beyond Nantillois under the German artillery fire from the whale-back, which was at close quarters and as accurate as the plunging machine-gun fire which accompanied it.

The two tanks, so inadequate for their task, did not go far before both were hit. The infantry came near enough to the Ogons to realize that at the ratio of the increasing resistance our survivors who reached it would be hopelessly unequal to taking the machine-guns firing from its edge. Withdrawal was necessary to the south slopes of the crest in the rear, Hill 274, if the troops in their present position were not to be offered as sacrifice to the nests of artillery the enemy now had in position. Undaunted by the shell-fire on the road, the transport was able that night to reach Montfaucon, which was kept under such a heavy bombardment that there was no going farther without blocking the road with wreckage. Though in a trance of weariness, carrying parties brought the food and other supplies three miles through the zone of shell-fire to the front.

A willing horse was still to be driven for another day. The 79th was to be sent against the slopes of the whale-back. Morning revealed the enemy's artillery in still greater force; and there was mockery for the men as they breasted it in the sight of a German observation balloon, lazily floating above the whale-back and directing the guns in firing on any parties who might have found ravines or slopes out of sight of observers from the heights. All day the left strove for gains in fitful attacks, and gained some three hundred yards. The right, in a determination that shell-fire could not balk, reached the edge of the Ogons Wood. That was something; courage's final defiance in its exhaustion, before the thin line, which had looked into the recesses where the hidden machine-guns opened upon them, withdrew to their former position. The 79th was "expended," to use the military phrase; and the meaning of that was in the hollow eyes of pasty faces and in dragging footsteps. On the 30th its part was that of the other divisions from the Meuse to the Forest, hugging the pits it had dug under shell-fire. In the afternoon it was relieved by the veteran 3rd Division.

Having brought the account of the battle down to the standstill which closed the first stage, we may now turn our attention to the American divisions which were engaged with Allied armies in other decisive attacks of this crucial period.

XIII

OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE

New York and the South on the British front--Up the Somme valley in the wake of the Australians--The Saint-Quentin Canal tunnel--Another ambitious plan--The simplicity of success in the attack of the 30th Division--The Pickett's charge of the 27th--A mêlée on the open slopes--In which the Australians take a hand--The German hinge at Bony holds--Australia carries on--The western front in movement--The British again in Le Cateau--Our part in the advance to Valenciennes.

The Scotch thrift of Sir Douglas Haig, in face of the demand for our divisions in our own sector and at other points along the line, had been able to retain two of the ten divisions which had been trained in the British sector: the 27th, or "Orions," National Guard of New York under command of Major-General John F. O'Ryan; and the 30th, or "Old Hickory," National Guard of the Southern mountain states, under command of Major-General Edward M. Lewis. These two, forming our Second Corps under Major-General George W. Read, were to have a spectacular part in the attack of September 29th against the Hindenburg line on the thirty-mile front between Cambrai and Saint-Quentin, which was to be the next of the thrusts in the development of the general offensive movement which decided the war.

Second Corps Headquarters had been from the time of its organization in the British area. Neither division had served anywhere else than with the British. They had been isolated from the association of the American army in a world of their own within the British world. It was well that they should be there; that if we were to have divisions detached from our army some should be contributing their style of English to that spoken by English, Scotch, and Irish, by Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans.