Part 21

The farther we went, the more bitterly we realized the murderous handicap of a force advancing on exposed slopes on one bank of a river, with its flank at right angles to the other bank held by the enemy far back of its reserves. After the attack of October 4th on the right went forward naked to this terrible flanking fire, the French Seventeenth Corps, in support of the forthcoming attack of the 9th, including two American divisions, the 29th and the 33rd, under its command, was to make a drive from the old trench system at Samogneux--the start line of the German Verdun offensive of 1916, and opposite the line from which our army had started on September 26th--down the east bank of the Meuse. The French engaged at many points on the Allied front were short of troops; but despite all the calls from other points the high command had finally fixed its eye on the Borne de Cornouiller.

Our Illinois men of the 33rd Division had been holding our side of the river bank, dug in in face of the other bank and the German flank, with only divisional artillery to answer the long-range artillery from the heights. Having won attention for its brilliant swinging movement which brought its front to the river bank on the first day of the battle, the 33rd was now to undertake a far more difficult, and a spectacular and daring, maneuver. Every veteran from Cæsar's day on the Rhine to Grant's and Lee's on the Potomac knows what it means to force a crossing of an unfordable stream under fire. In this instance it must be done under frowning heights, in the days when machine-gun bullets carry three thousand yards, and shells, according to the caliber of the gun, from three to seven times as far. There were to be two bridges; one at Brabant, 120 feet long, and one at Consenvoye, 150 feet long.

In building their own exclusive road over the Mort Homme, which enabled the rolling kitchens to bring up hot meals to the infantry, the Illinois engineers had shown their capacity for "rustling," which they now applied in gathering material for their new task. In broad daylight, in full view of the enemy's guns which forced them to wear their gas masks, they brought their boards and timbers to the river bank and did their building. Shells were falling on their labors at Consenvoye at the rate of ninety an hour; but that did not interrupt their labors. Men fell, but others kept on the job. Punctuality was a strong point with the Illinois men. The bridges must be up on time, and they were.

The time of crossing depended upon the movement of our 29th Division, coming up on the east bank as the flank of the advance of two French divisions. At 9 A. M. the 29th passed the word, and the regiment of the 33rd which had been assembled in the Forges Wood rushed for the bridges. Night would have been a more favorable time for crossing, perhaps; but that was not on the cards. All the divisional artillery was pounding the opposite bank as a shield, while the French artillery was also busy, and the advance of the infantry on the other bank was drawing fire. Thoroughly drilled for their part, the Illinois men lost no time in the crossing, which was effected with slight casualties. Now under command of the Seventeenth Corps, joining up with the flank of the 29th, it worked its way for a mile and a half up the river bank until it dug in at night on the edge of the Chaume Wood after a faultless day's work.

In the operations east of the Meuse now begun, I shall describe only the actions of our own divisions. The 29th Division, under command of Major-General Charles G. Morton, had taken the name of the "Blue and Grey." Many of its Guardsmen were grandsons of veterans from New Jersey, Delaware, and Virginia. After nearly two months in the quiet trench sector at Belfort, it had been marched on the night of the 8th past the ruins of villages in the Verdun battle area for its initiation into two weeks of fighting, which showed that one side of the trough of the Meuse had no preference over the other in the resistance which the enemy had to offer.

A system of hills extending from the Verdun forts to the Borne de Cornouiller formed the walls of a bowl, which the French Corps in a fan-shaped movement was to ascend. Their slopes were wooded and cut by ravines commanding the bottom of the bowl itself, which was irregular, but everywhere in view of the heights. The 29th was to drive straight toward the Borne de Cornouiller. Upon its success on the first day, may it be repeated, depended largely the success of the 33rd's crossing of the Meuse. The farther away from the river, the stronger were the enemy's positions. Advancing without any artillery preparation, the 29th took the enemy completely by surprise. It was twenty minutes before he brought down his artillery fire. This gave the Blue and Greys a good start. After hot work at close quarters they captured Malbrouck Hill, which was a strong point in the German support trench system of Verdun days. Then passing across the open under increasing German gun-fire, they overran all the machine-gun nests in the dense Consenvoye Wood. There they were halted by orders to allow the division on their right to come up. Combat groups which had reached Molleville farm and the Grande Montagne Wood were called in, and the position consolidated during the night. The enemy by this time was fully awake to the plan of the Seventeenth Corps. He unloosed that torrent of shells and gas from the heights of the rim of the bowl which was not to cease for three weeks.

Its right exposed after an advance of three miles on the 8th, digging in under the bombardment and repulsing counter-attacks, the 29th was not to attempt to advance on the 9th; but the 33rd had orders to go to Sivry on the banks of the Meuse, whose possession was most important. By noon it had fought its way through Chaume Wood, and by dark its patrols, infiltrating around machine-gun nests and under machine-gun fire from the slopes were in Sivry. All that night it was under gas and shell-fire. The next day it must make sure of Sivry. The 29th was to attack on its right in support. Despite the artillery concentrations on the whole movement laboring in the bowl, we were still to try to break through to the Borne de Cornouiller. This was a vain ambition, which the Illinois men and the Blue and Greys none the less valorously tried to achieve.

The 33rd had brought more reserves across the river, which had to pass through powerful artillery barrages to relieve the decimated battalions at the front. They actually reached the ridge east of Sivry, right under the guns of that towering Hill 378 of the Borne de Cornouiller. On their right the 29th again and again charged for the possession of the Plat-Chêne ravine, which was a corridor swept with plunging fire from right and left and in front, and saturated with gas. Casualties were enormous, in keeping with the courage of this new division inspired by the heritage of both Blue and Grey. It was futile to persist in the slaughter of such brave and willing men; futile for the 33rd to try to hold the exposed salient of the Sivry ridge; but every shell they received was one spared our men on the slopes of the west bank of the Meuse. Austrian troops which had been holding the line against them were replaced by veteran Prussians and Wurtemburgers, who knew how to make the most of their positions, and who answered attacks with counter-attacks. As the left flank which must not yield the river bank, the 33rd intrenched in the Dans les Vaux valley through the Chaume Wood. We were within a mile of the Borne, but what a horrible mile to traverse. The first stage of that detached battle east of the Meuse, so important in its relation to the main battle, was over. Its second stage I shall describe later.

XXI

SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND

John Pershing of Missouri following Pétain and Nivelle--Training his chiefs--The solidity of Liggett--From schoolmaster of theory to Army command--The wiry Bullard--His mark on the pioneer division--The inexorable Summerall, crusader, martinet, and leader of men--The imperturbable Hines.

When from the window of a luxurious office thirty stories above the pavement I looked down upon the human current of Broadway, and over the roof-tops of the tongue of Manhattan, and across the bridges to other roof-tops, and upon the traffic of bay and river, I thought of that little room, first door to the left upstairs, in the town hall of Souilly, where more men than all of service age in all the city of New York had been commanded in two of the greatest battles of history. The "sacred road" to Verdun took the place of Broadway; the volcano of unceasing artillery fire, the place of the city's muffled roar.

In this little room Pétain had said, "They shall not pass," and so wrought that they did not pass; and Nivelle had shown me his maps and plans for the brilliant re-taking of Douaumont and Vaux in the fall of 1916, which was to make him commander-in-chief as the exemplar of a system of attack upon which he staked his reputation in the Allied offensive of 1917. In those days no one dreamed that American khaki would stream along the "sacred road," and American guns again set the hills trembling with their blasts; or that John Pershing of Missouri from this little room would direct the largest force we had ever sent into action in the battle which was to be the final answer to German aggression.

The Chief of Staff's room, its walls hung with maps, was across the hall from the Commanding General's, as it had been in the Verdun days. Then as now it sent across to the General's desk slips of paper with the digested news of the battle, which he could follow by reference to his own maps. Now as then a cloistered quiet pervaded the building which had been the center of a small town. Orderlies stood on guard, and adjutants on guard above them. The lights behind the black-curtained windows burned late, as on the basis of the day's news plans for the next day's action were made--plans for another advance against the Germans, this time, instead of resistance to their advance.

"You never know what is in the C.-in-C.'s mind, and how it is coming out," said his aide. "When it comes, it comes quick and definite--just like the outburst of a bombardment for an offensive which has been weeks in preparation."

He listened to many counselors; but the decisive counsels he held behind the locked doors of his own mind. Those who thought they knew what he was going to do knew least; those who received the most affirmative smile bestowed in silence might receive the most positive of negative decisions when the time came. He was charged with "snap" judgments on some things; and with unduly delaying over others--while he smiled over both criticisms. In all events his word was supreme. Men might contrive to defeat his orders, but no man dared dispute them. He had continued to grow with the growth of his army; his grip of the lever strengthened as the machine became more ponderous. Others might build the parts of the machine; he brought them together in his own way and his own time.

We had started with divisions; then organized corps staffs; then appointed corps commanders; then organized the staff of the First Army, now in the Meuse-Argonne, and afterward the staff of the Second Army, now at Saint-Mihiel. He was still commanding both armies as general in the field. When would he choose their commanders? Professional army gossip had an ear out for rumors. Possibly the Commander-in-Chief did not know himself; possibly he was waiting on the test of battle to find the two most worthy to lead. On the night of October 11th his choice was made; it was announced by his calling up some generals on the telephone. Two learned that they were promoted from corps to army command, two that they were promoted from division to corps command.

It was no surprise to learn that Major-General Hunter Liggett was to have the First Army, and Major-General Robert L. Bullard to have the Second Army. Liggett, who was already a major-general of regulars, had been considered as a possible commander of the A. E. F. when we first decided to send an army to France. If ever a soldier looked as if he could "eat three square meals a day" without indigestion, it was Liggett. Over six feet in height and generously built, his majestic figure would attract attention in any gathering. There was a depth of experience shining out of his frank eyes, and he radiated mellowness, poise, and reserve energy. The army knew him as a thorough student, sound in his views, which he could express with compelling force. No one questioned that he had a mind capable of grasping military problems down to their details, and a resourcefulness in the "war game" as played at the War College which fitted him in theory for the direction of immense forces.

Large bodies move slowly, though with great momentum when they start, and the sceptic's question about Liggett was whether or not he had energy in keeping with his mentality. McDowell made excellent plans for Bull Run, and lost it. McClellan seemed an ideal leader, but lacked convincing power of action, though he built a machine which others were to direct.

A full corps in the plans of the A. E. F. was six divisions; and when, early in 1918, Liggett was assigned to the Command of the First Corps, he had one division which had been in the trenches, and three others about ready to go into the trenches under the direction of the French. All the other corps which were to come would look to his example in pioneer organization. Settling down in the little town of Neufchâteau, he formed his staff and set to work organizing his G's of operations, intelligence, supply, transport, preparatory to taking over our first permanent sector.

Thus far his authority had been little more than paper routine under the French. He was a schoolmaster of theory. Then the March German offensive against the British left him with a corps staff which was a fifth wheel in present plans, just as he was about to have his sector. His best divisions were being sent to the Picardy battlefront while he remained at Neufchâteau, having an internal American authority over any divisions in the trenches in Lorraine, but even these were under the direct command of French corps. He accepted the situation in a manner in keeping with his mental and physical bigness. He kept on working on his "war college" organization at his headquarters while, operating under the French at the other side of France, his divisions were taking Cantigny and making a stand on the Paris road and on the Marne.

The commanders of these divisions, however, were winning distinction for themselves through actual battle experience, and some of them would soon be taking command of our new corps composed of our rapidly arriving divisions, which raised the question if, when the time came to have a commander for the First Army, Liggett would not be passed over from very want of any except theoretical preparation. No one worried less about this than Liggett. He seemed anything but ambitious. Yet, pass over Liggett? That enormous, calm, thoroughgoing Liggett! He loomed tall as his six feet, and broad in proportion, at the thought. I always think of him leaning over a table studying a map, with the intensity of a student who was never mentally fatigued.

When was he to have any battle experience? If we were to have an integral army to attack the Saint-Mihiel salient, our corps commanders must have other than paper training. General Pershing arranged that Liggett take corps command of an American and a French division in the Marne counter-offensive. This brought him into close association with the French army command in the midst of a great movement. Later, in its operations at Saint-Mihiel, everybody said that "Liggett's corps had done well," and said it in the way that took for granted that Liggett was bound to do well. He is not the kind of man, as I see him, who sets people into a contagion of cheers, or the kind of man who makes enthusiastic enemies or equally enthusiastic partisans. Rather he is like some sound office member of a great law firm, who does not make speeches or appear in court, but who, other lawyers say, is the buttress of the firm's strength.

I remember a distinguished civil official from home talking of our generals, and saying, when I suggested Liggett: "Why, he is the one I didn't meet," which was not surprising. A certain isolation that he had was due less to any personal exclusiveness than to the fact that he was a large body well anchored to his maps and his job.

In the Meuse-Argonne battle his corps had the wicked front on the left against the Argonne Forest and the valley of the Aire; and again he did well, leaving no doubt that he had energy as well as capacity, or that he deserved the three stars of a lieutenant-general which General Pershing now placed on his shoulders. Later, in the drive of November 1st, his maneuvering of our corps and divisions, in that swift movement in pursuit and in the crossing of the Meuse which gave us the heights on the other bank, seemed without a tactical fault in its conception and execution, and it warranted the use of the word brilliant in thinking of Liggett, who in the closing days of the war had the opportunity to show the cumulative results of his study of his maps from the days when he began sawing wood in Neufchâteau. He was a modest, sound soldier, an able tactician, and a delightful, simple gentleman, who did his country honor in France both as soldier and as man. His place at the head of the First Corps was taken by Major-General Joseph T. Dickman.

Both he and Major-General Robert Lee Bullard, who received command of the Second Army, then holding our line won in the Saint-Mihiel operation, were broad-minded men of the world who would have made their mark in any profession. Physically you could make two Bullards out of one Liggett. My most distinct picture of him was of his slight figure in his big fur coat in the midst of winter rains and sleet, while his small head, with his close-fitting overseas cap, only made the coat appear the larger. In his command of the 1st in the Toul sector and in our first offensive at Cantigny, he had set his mark on our pioneer division. The French liked him, and he could speak their language with the attractive Southern accent of his boyhood days. He took the French _liaison_ officers into his family and set them to work, and they became so fond of his family that one of them was overheard telling French staff officers what a lot they had to learn from the Americans. If Bullard could not eat three square meals a day, it did not interfere with his belligerent spirit. His brain was just as good a fighting brain as if he had eaten beefsteak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. However bad his neuritis in the winter days, his blue eyes were always twinkling, and when he came into his mess and the officers rose, his smiling request that they dismiss the formality was all in keeping with the atmosphere of that division command.

His dry, pungent wit was not affected when the doctor put him on a diet of an egg and a bit of toast. It always came back to the fact that war was fighting. We had much to learn from the French, from the British, from all veterans, and you could not be too brave or too skillful. If you made up your mind to lick the other fellow, you were going to lick him. When his neuritis was very bad at one time, he told General Pershing that he did not want to stand in the way of a successor. General Pershing replied that he would not forget the reminder; and remarked to someone else: "Bullard's division is doing well. The neuritis hasn't gone to his head." His body seemed to be made of elastic steel wire that always had the spring for any occasion, and the more fighting he had the better his health became. In the Argonne battle his neuritis entirely disappeared.

He never seemed very busy. In the midst of battle you would find him appearing at seeming leisure; and his attitude always was: "What a fine, able lot of men I have around me! They do all the work for me." Thus he developed brigadiers out of his colonels.

When he corrected subordinates, it was with a simple phrase that cut through the fog of discussion. One day, before an operation, one of his colonels who was a little wrought up on the subject told him of a number of young officers in his regiment who might be brave, but who were not up to the mark of leadership. "You think it over coolly and make me a list of those you are sure about," said Bullard. "It's a matter for your judgment. Perhaps these officers will do better in some service that is not combatant, or perhaps they need a little lesson which will make them all right in some other regiment. Make me the list, and I'll have everyone on it relieved right away"--and you may be sure that the colonel made the list with care.

The Third Corps had been tried out in the Marne salient. In the Meuse-Argonne battle it had seized the bank of the Meuse to protect our right flank, and against superior raking artillery fire from the heights of the whale-back and across the river, on the slopes and in the woods of the Meuse trough, gained the Cunel-Brieulles road with an indomitable skill, which proved his contention that, however heavy the odds, if you make up your mind to lick the other fellow you will.

In the instances of Liggett and Bullard, both general officers before the war, high rank had shown its worthiness of higher rank in the swift merciless test of war's opportunities, while the other two officers who received telephone messages from the Commander-in-Chief had both been majors when we entered the war. I had first met Charles P. Summerall as a lieutenant in Riley's battery on the march to the relief of Peking. When I next met him, he had the artillery brigade of the 1st Division. He was given the command of the 1st when Bullard was given a corps. The way in which he sent the veteran division through toward Soissons in the Marne counter-offensive was a precedent for the way in which he sent it as a wedge over the Aire wall, which won him command of the Fifth Corps.

In the last days of the war no one of Pershing's generals was more talked about in the A. E. F. than he. His was a personality of the kind which was bound to make talk. No one ever denied that he was a fighter and that he knew his profession. He could make men follow him, and make men fear him. They called him a "hell-devil of a driver," but won victories under him. If he had started as a private in the French Revolution, and had not been killed too early in his career, I think that he would have had one of the marshal's batons which Napoleon said every private carried in his knapsack. If no general expected more of his soldiers than Summerall, no general expected more of himself. Sturdily built, of average height, he was tireless. He could go about the front all day, and work at headquarters all night; or go about the front all night, and work at headquarters all the next day. When officers and men were numb from fatigue, he gave an example of endurance as a reason for his further demands on their strength. "If you win, your mistakes do not count," he told a group of officers one day. "If you lose, they do. If you win, your men have their reward for their wounds and suffering, and those who have fallen have not died in vain. If you fail, your men feel that all their effort has been wasted. Do not fail. Go through!"