Part 3

Every hour that we kept the enemy ignorant of the strength of our concentration was an hour gained. The one thing that he must not know was the number of divisions which we were marshaling for our effort. They were the sure criterion of the formidability of our intentions. The most delicate task of all was the taking over of the front line from the French. Not until the stage was set with the accessories of the heavy artillery, the new depots, and ammunition dumps did the roads near the front, cleared for their progress, throb under the blanket of night with the scraping rhythm of the doughboys' marching steps, infusing in the preparations the life of a myriad human pulse-beats in unison. Our faith was in them, in the days before the battle and all through the battle to the end. Their faces so many moving white points in the darkness, each figure under its heavy equipment seemed alike in shadowy silhouette. In the mystery of night their disciplined power, suggestive of the tiger creeping stealthily forward for the spring on his prey, was even more significant than by day.

The men were prepared in the red blood that coursed young arteries, in their litheness and their pride and will to "go to it." They had their rifles, their belts full of ammunition, their gas masks, and their rations. It was not for them to ask any questions--not even if the barrages which would cover their charges would be accurate, if the tanks would kill machine-gun nests, if the barbed wire would be cut, and if their generals would make mistakes. Suspense, not of the mind but of the heart, lightened at the sight of their movement, so automatic and yet so stirringly human. The gigantic preparations of dumps, gun positions, and trains of powerful tractors became only a demonstration of the mighty energy of our industrial age beside that subtler endeavor which had formed them for their task and set them down as the pawns of a staff in a gamble with death. Might the big guns that the troops passed, grim hard shadows in ravines and woods, do their work well in order that the empty ambulances at rest in long lines might have little to do!

By battalions and companies the marching columns separated, taking by-roads and paths, as their officers studied their maps and received instructions from French guides who knew the ground. By daylight they were dissipated into the landscape. The hornets were in their hives; they would swarm as dawn broke to the thunders of the artillery. Attacks were always at dawn; and dawn had taken on a new meaning to us since the morning of July 18th, when our 1st and 2nd Divisions, in the company of crack French divisions, had started the first of the counter-offensives.

The success of Saint-Mihiel had developed corps staffs which must now direct the Meuse-Argonne, while others took over the arrangements at Saint-Mihiel. Major-General Hunter Liggett, pioneer of corps commanders, with the First Corps was to be on the left; Major-General George H. Cameron, with the Fifth Corps in the center; and Major-General Robert L. Bullard, with the Third Corps on the right. Groups of officers making a pilgrimage in automobiles to the new sector were to be the "brains" of the coming attack; for our corps command was an administrative unit which took over the direction of a different set of divisions from those under it at Saint-Mihiel.

The corps staffs had only four or five days for their staff preparations for the battle. It was Army Headquarters in the town hall of Souilly which set the army objective, the corps limits, and the tactical direction of the attack as a whole, while the corps set the divisional limits and objectives to accord with the army objective. At our call we had French experience of the sector, and in this war of maps we had maps. Our prevision in this respect was excellent. The French furnished us with millions of maps in the course of the war; we had our own map-printing presses at Langres; and we had movable presses in the field for printing maps which gave the results of the latest observations of the enemy's defenses. A snowstorm of maps descended upon our army, and still the cry was for more. Not only battalion and company, but platoon and even squad commanders needed these large-scale backgrounds marked with their parts.

Yet maps have their limitations. They may show the ground in much detail, but, even when the blue diagrams and symbols are supposed up to date, not the bushes where the enemy's machine-gun nests are hidden, or what the enemy has done overnight in the way of defenses. Nor are maps plummets into human psychology. Even when they have located machine-gun nests they cannot say whether the gunners who man them will yield easily or will fight to the death. If the British on the Somme, after months of preparation and study of the defenses of the sector, had more elaborate directions for their units than we, it does not mean that, considering its inexperience, our staff did not accomplish wonders.

Our corps commanders may have known their division commanders in time of peace, but they had never been their superiors in action of any kind. Their artillery groupings and aviation arrangements included French units as well as their own. There was no time for considering niceties in dispositions. Division commanders who had to arrange the details of their coöperation had never served together. They had scores of problems, due to the haste of their mobilization, to consider; for the burden of apprehension that pressed them close was of apprehension lest they should not be up on time. They and their officers went over the ground at the front, but they had not the time to make the thorough observation that any painstaking and energetic division commander would have preferred.

A division with all its artillery, machine-guns, and transport is a ponderous column in movement, with every part having its regulation place. One day in one set of villages and the next in another, the communication of orders and requirements down through all the branches is difficult, and the more so when you are short of dispatch riders, and there is a limit to what can be done over the field telephone. The unexpected demand for wires for our second great offensive must not find the signal corps unprepared; or a people as dependent on telephones and telegraph as we are, and so accustomed to having them materialize on request, would have been helpless in making war. The deepest tactical concern was, of course, the coördination of the artillery with the infantry advance. It is only a difference of a hundred yards' range, as we all know, between putting your shells among your own men instead of the enemy's.

Reliable communication from the infantry to the aviator and his reliable report of his observations to the artillery and infantry is one of the complicated features in that team-play, which, in the game of death, needs all the finesse of professional baseball, a secret service, and a political machine, plus the requisite poise, despite poor food and short hours of sleep, for worthily leading men in battle. Some divisions that went into this action had not yet received their artillery; or again their artillery arrived from the training camp, where the guns had just been received, barely in time to go into position, so that an inexperienced artillery commander reported to an inexperienced division commander with whom he had never served. There were batteries without horses, which the horses of other batteries pulled into position after they had brought up their own. Battery commanders received their table of barrages and their objectives of fire, and, without registering, had to trust to observation by men untried in battle or by aviators who had never before observed in a big operation. Aviators had been trained to expect the infantry to put out panels, and they might say that the infantry did not show their panels, while the infantry would deny the charge. Such things had happened before. They would happen this time. They happen to the most veteran of armies, whose long experience, however, may have an excellent substitute in other qualities which we had in plenitude, as we shall see.

All our own guns were of French make, with the exception of a few howitzers. The gun-producing power of the French arsenals supplying us with our artillery and our machine-guns--the Brownings were only just beginning to arrive--in addition to supplying all their own forces over the long front of their offensive was one of the marvels of the war and an important factor in victory. The majority of our planes were also of French make: not until August had the Liberty motors begun to arrive. The French had supplied us with additional aviation and tanks, as well as artillery, from their own army; but much of this was new. All the Allies, indeed, were robbing their training camps for the supreme effort that was about to be made from the Meuse to the Channel.

While the public, which thinks of aviation in terms of combat, admired the exploits of the aces in bringing down enemy planes, which they looked for in the communiqués, the army was thinking of the value of the work of the observers, whose heroism in running the gamut of fire from air and earth in order to bring back information might change the fate of battles. Training for combat, perhaps, more nearly approximated service conditions than training for observation. A fighting aviator, with natural born courage, audacity, and coolness, who goes out determinedly to bring down his man, makes the ace. These qualities were never lacking in our fliers. They went after their men and got them, in a record of successes which was not the least of the honors which our army won in France. The observer had no public praise; he was always the butt of the complaint that he did not bring enough information, or that he brought inaccurate information. His complex responsibilities were singularly dependent upon that experience which comes only from practice.

Instead of applying the lessons of Saint-Mihiel at leisure, as we had hoped, to the whole army, we had to apply them on the run in the rapid concentration of divisions which had not been at Saint-Mihiel. Yet the supreme thing was not schooling. It was a seemingly superhuman task in speed. It was to have the infantry up on time even if the other units were limping. In this we succeeded. On the night of September 24th, from the Meuse to the Forest's western edge every division was in position. We had kept faith with Marshal Foch's orders. We were ready to go "over the top."

The Marshal postponed the attack for another day. Rumor gave the reason that the French Fourth Army was not ready; possibly the real reason, or at least a contributory reason, was in the canniness of such an old hand at offensives as Marshal Foch. Ours was a new army under enormous pressure. Veteran armies were always asking, at the last moment, for more time in which to complete their preparations before attacking. Possibly the Marshal had set the 25th as the date with a view to forcing our effort under spur of the calendar, while he looked forward to granting the inevitable request for delay. At all events the respite was most welcome. Our staff had time for further conferences and attention to their arrangements for supplies, and our combat troops a breathing spell which gave their officers another day in which to study the positions they were to storm.

When I considered all the digging necessary for making the gun positions, or had even a cursory view of the parks of divisional transport, of the reserves crowded in villages and woods, of the ammunition trains, and of the busy corps and division headquarters, I wondered if it were possible that the Germans could not have been apprised that a concentration was in progress. Not only did pocket lamps flash like fireflies from the hands of those who used them thoughtlessly, but despite precautions careless drivers turned on motor lights, and some rolling kitchen was bound to let out a flare of sparks, while the locomotives running in and out at railheads showed streams of flames from their stacks, and here and there fires were unwittingly started. An aviator riding the night, as he surveyed the shadowy landscape, could not miss these manifestations of activity. If he shut off his engine he might hear above the low thunder of transport the roar of the tanks advancing into position, of the heavy caterpillar tractors drawing big guns. When the air was clear and the wind favorable, the increasing volume of sound directed toward the front must have been borne to sharp ears on the other side of No Man's Land. All this I may mention again, without reference to observations by spies within our lines.

On our side, we might try to learn if the enemy knew of our coming, and how much he knew. A thin fringe of French had remained in the front-line trenches, with our men in place behind them. Thus our voices of different timbre, speaking the English tongue in regions where only French had been spoken, might not be heard if we forgot the rules of silence, which were as mandatory by custom as in a church or a library; and besides, if the Germans made a raid for information they would not take American prisoners. They did make some minor raids, capturing Frenchmen who, perhaps unwittingly when wounded or in the reaction from danger, and subject to an intelligence system skilled in humoring and indirect catechism, told more than they thought they were telling. Information that we had from German prisoners left no doubt that the Germans knew at least that the Americans were moving into the sector, but did not expect a powerful offensive. This, as we had anticipated, was discounted as being out of the question on the heels of the Saint-Mihiel offensive. Our new army, the Germans thought, had not the skill or the material for such a concentration, even if we had the troops.

In our demonstration that we did have the skill and the energy, and that in one way and another we were able to secure the material even though it were inadequate, we were peculiarly American; and we were most significantly American in the adaptable exercise of the reserve nervous force of our restless, dynamic natures, which makes us wonderful in a race against time. We strengthen our optimism with the pessimism which spurs our ambition to accomplishment by its self-criticism that is never satisfied.

On all hands I heard complaints by officers concerning lack of equipment, of personnel, of training, and of time. But no one could spare the breath for more than objurgations, uttered in exclamatory emphasis, which eased the mind. I could make a chapter out of these railings. Yet if I implied that the unit, whether salvage or aviation, hospital or front-line battalion, tanks or signal corps, or any other, would not be able to carry out its part, I was assailed with a burst of outraged and flaming optimism. And optimism is the very basis of the psychologic formula of war. Americans have it by nature. We lean forward on our oars. Optimism comes to us from the conquest of a continent. It presides at the birth of every infant, who may one day be president of the United States.

Confidence was rock-ribbed in a commander-in-chief's square jaw; it rang out in voices over the telephone; it was in the very pulse-beats of the waiting infantry; it shone in every face, however weary. We had won at Château-Thierry; we had won at Saint-Mihiel; we should win again. The infantry might not conceive the nature of the defenses or of the fire they might have to encounter. So much the better. They would have the more vim in "driving through," said the staff.

The objectives which we had set ourselves on that first day, after the conquest of the first-line fortifications, which we took for granted, were a tribute to our faith in Marshal Foch's own optimism. On the first day we were striking for the planets. In our second and third days' objectives we did not hesitate to strike for the stars. This plan would give us the more momentum, and if we were to be stopped it would carry us the farther before we were. Of course we did not admit that we might be stopped. If we were not, the German military machine would be broken; and any doubts on the part of generals were locked fast in their inner consciousness, for uttered word of scepticism was treason.

On the night of the 25th, when all the guns began the preliminary bombardment, stretching an aurora from the hills of Verdun into Champagne, our secret was out. From the whirlwind of shells into his positions the enemy knew that we were coming at dawn. With thousands of flashes saluting the heavens it no longer mattered if a rolling kitchen sent up a shower of sparks or an officer inadvertently turned the gleam of his pocket flash skyward. Along the front our infantry slipped forward into the place of the French veterans, who came marching back down the roads.

"Gentlemen," said the French, "the sector is yours. A pleasant morning to you!"

III

NEW AND OLD DIVISIONS

A military machine impossible in human nature--Regular traditions--National Guard sentiment--National Army solidarity--Divisional pride--Our first six divisions unavailable to start in the Meuse-Argonne--British-trained divisions--What veteran divisions would have known.

The Leavenworth plan was to harmonize regulars, National Guard, and National Army into a force so homogeneous that flesh and blood became machinery, with every soldier, squad, platoon, brigade, and division as much like all the others as peas in a pod; but human elements older than the Leavenworth School, which had given soldiers cheer on the march and fire in battle from the days of the spear to the days of the quick-firer, hampered the practical application of the cold professional idea worked out in conscientious logic in the academic cloister. It may be whispered confidentially that all unconsciously their own training and associations sometimes made the inbred and most natural affection of the Leavenworth graduates for the regulars subversive of the very principle which they had set out to practise with such resolutely expressed impartiality. A regular felt that he was a little more of a regular if he were serving with a regular division.

"We're not having any of this good-as-you-are nonsense in this regiment," said its Colonel, talking to a fellow-classman who was on the staff. "We're filled up with reserve officers and rookies,--but we're regulars nevertheless. We've started right with the regular idea--the way we did in the old --th"--in which the officers had served together as lieutenants.

By the same token of sentiment and association the National Guardsmen remained National Guardsmen. They also had a tradition. If they were not proud of it they would be unnatural fighters. While the average citizen had taken no interest in preparedness, except in the abstraction that national defense was an excellent thing, they had drilled on armory floors and attended annual encampments. Sometimes the average citizen had spoken of them as "tin soldiers"; and they were conscious perhaps of a certain superciliousness toward them on the part of regular officers. Drawn from the same communities, members of the same military club that met at the armory, they already had their pride of regiment and of company: a feeling held in common with Guardsmen from other parts of the country, who belonged to the same service from the same motives. Should that old Connecticut or Alabama or any other regiment with a Civil War record, and, perhaps, with a record dating from the Revolution, forget its old number because it was given a new number, or its own armory, because it went to a training camp? Relatives and friends, who bowed to the edict of military uniformity and anonymity, would still think of it as their home regiment. If Minneapolis mixed its sons with St. Paul's, they would still be sons of Minneapolis.

While all volunteers felt that they were entitled to the credit of offering their services without waiting on the call, the draft men, who had awaited the call, had their own conviction about their duty, which, from the hour when they walked over from the railway stations to the camp, gave them a sense of comradeship: while they might argue that it was more honor to found than to follow a tradition. Their parents, sisters, and sweethearts were just as fond, and their friends just as proud, of them as they had been in the Guard. Aside from a few regular superiors, their officers were graduates of the Officers' Training Camps, who, as the regulars said, had nothing to unlearn and were subject to no political associations. Yes, the draft men considered themselves as the national army; and they would set a standard which should be in keeping with this distinction.

All the men assembled in any home cantonment, with the exception of the regulars, were almost invariably from the same part of the country, which gave them a neighborhood feeling. The doings of that cantonment became the intimate concern of the surrounding region. Its chronicles were carried in the local newspapers. There was a division to each cantonment; and in France the fighting unit was the division, complete in all its branches,--artillery, machine-guns, trench mortars, engineers, hospital, signal corps, transport, and other units. As a division it had its training area; as a division it traveled, went into battle, and was relieved.

Before a division was sent to France its men were already thinking in terms of their division; they met the men of no other division unless on leave, and met them in France only in passing, or on the left or right in battle. In the cantonment the division had its own camp newspaper, its own sports, its separate life on the background of the community interest, without the maneuvering of many divisions together on the European plan until they were sent into action in the Saint-Mihiel or Meuse-Argonne offensive. Each division commander and his staff, who were regular officers, conspired to develop a divisional pride, thereby, in a sense, humanly defeating the regular idea of making out of American citizens a machine which could be anything but humanly American. Within the division, pride of company, of battalion, of regiment, was instilled, and the different units developed rivalries which were amalgamated in a sense of rivalry with other divisions.

Every cantonment had the "best" division in the United States before it went to France, where rivalry expressed itself on the battlefield. The record of the war is by divisions. Men might know their division, but not their corps commander. Divisions might not vary in their courage, but they must in the amount of their experience and in the quality of their leaders. A division that had been in three or four actions might be better than one that had been in ten; but a division that had not been in a single action hardly had the advantage over one that had been in several. Our four pioneer divisions, which had been in the trenches during the winter of 1917-18 and later in the Château-Thierry operations, the 1st (regulars), and the 2nd (regulars and marines), and the 26th and the 42nd (both National Guard), were all at Saint-Mihiel. Their units were complete; their artillery had had long practice with their infantry; they had had long training-ground experience in France, had known every kind of action in modern war, and had kept touch under fire, rather than in school instruction, with the progress of tactics. If they were not our "best" divisions, it was their fault.