Part 8

A prominent hill was easily recognized. If a village were in the line of your attack, that was a simple guide; but in a region where, unlike our country of scattered farmhouses, the farmers all live in villages, there was a paucity of buildings which might serve as landmarks. One of our men expressed the character of the terrain by saying that with every advance it all looked alike--hills, ridges, woods, and ravines; yet when you came close to the part which you were to attack it seemed "different from any other and a lot worse." We had to cross brooks and swamps as an incident to conquering the other features of the landscape. If we missed any kind of fighting on the first day of the battle, it was in store for us in the later stages.

Oh, that word _liaison_! That linking up of the units of the attack in proper coördination! Is there any man of the combat divisions who does not know its meaning or who wants to hear it again? It never came into slang at home in the same way as camouflage; but it is a thousand times more suggestive of the actualities of war. _Liaison_ between the French and the American armies, between corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions, companies, platoons, squads, and individual soldiers. _Liaison_ between infantry and artillery and trench mortars and planes and tanks! If you did not have it, why, the adjoining commander might be as much to blame as you, at least, and you could say that he was altogether to blame. It may be said that the history of the war will be written in terms of positions taken, and of positions which were not taken because coöperating units failed to keep their _liaison_. They were not up. When I mention that there were difficulties of _liaison_ in writing of any division, I am not saying who was at fault, as no one person was, perhaps, more than another.

Other generals might be promoted and demoted, but General _Liaison_ remained the supreme tactician. "Establishing _liaison_" was fraught with more heartaches and brain-aches than any other military detail. Men prowled through the night in gas-masks under sniping rifle and machine-gun fire and artillery fire, to ascertain if the unit supposed to be on their flank was there: perhaps to receive a greeting from an officer hugging a fox-hole, "Why aren't you fellows keeping up with us?"

_Liaison_ was most difficult in woods, though the fighting was not necessarily always the severest there. Men naturally took to the paths instantly they advanced into woods, and these, if they were not stopped by machine-gun fire, advanced ahead of those in the deep underbrush. A stretch of unseen wire might arrest a part of the line, without the men in _liaison_ on the right and left, as they plunged through the thickets, knowing that it had been stopped. The sheer business of keeping any kind of formation was distracting enough, without the sudden bursts of machine-gun fire, which might be so powerful that there was nothing to do except to take cover and consider a plan for silencing or capturing the gun. Unless the casualties were so serious that it was suicidal not to halt and mark out a plan for capturing the nest, and as advancing was a sure way of locating machine-guns and a prompt way of overwhelming them, we swept on in the spirit of our instructions and impatience. Captured machine-guns littered the paths of our battalions, in tribute to the effect of our impetuous rush upon gunners who continued to forget their orders to stand to the death when they saw the tidal wave of our soldiers about to swamp them.

As the day wore on and the enemy began to recover from the shock of the surprise of our initial onset, we encountered an increasing volume and fury of machine-gun fire from hill to hill across valleys, sweeping down ravines, plunging from crests and by indirect aim over crests, from village houses and from both directions where village streets crossed. At critical points it was supported by concentrations of shell-fire. Along that road, at the edge of this patch of woods, along that stretch of river bottom, the German's artillery laid down barrages over a space already swept by bullets, to hold positions by which he set as much store in his plans as we in ours.

"Why aren't you getting on?" division commanders asked, or tried to ask--as communication did not always permit the message to arrive promptly--when the pencilings on the map were not keeping up to the schedule of progress toward the objectives. It was an easy question; the answer might be in the lack of resolution of a regimental or battalion commander, in the character of the resistance to his troops, or in their disorganization under new and severe trials. After further ineffectual efforts the battalion and regimental commanders might say that progress was impossible without reserves.

Should the division commander send them? Expending his reserves on the first day of a long battle might place him in a dangerous position in face of a later and graver emergency; but he had the word of a subordinate that they were necessary. Had that subordinate in his first serious engagement become too readily discouraged? What was the extent of his losses? They were a criterion for judging his balance of assets for continuing the attacks, though they did not include the exhaustion of the men, their mood of the moment, or the disruption of _liaison_ of their units.

The division commander might sit rigid with the front of Jove, which he thought was the chief item of the military formula, and say: "I want no excuses. Take the position!" Or he might keep on pressing in his reserves, in the determination that his division would be up on time; for Corps Headquarters were depending on him. The pencilings moving toward the corps objective were his record in the battle. If the pencilings were in a V-shape, that was bad. It meant that some of his elements were in a salient, in danger of being "squeezed."

Sometimes the pencilings were farther advanced than the troops. The wish being father to the thought, observers who saw a charge entering a woods took it for granted that it would go through the woods. Aviators sometimes mistook German soldiers in movement for our own; again they misread the maps, and placed our troops on a ridge ahead of their actual position. Company leaders might make the same mistake. The incentive to "get there" involved eagerness to send back word that you were arriving. A little group of gallant men who pushed through a wood or gained a crest might have been swept back by machine-gun fire by the time their proud report had reached division headquarters. Instead of having commanding ground as a "jumping-off place" for the next stage of advance, they might be hugging the reverse slope, exposed to fire from three sides immediately they showed themselves.

Regular as well as reserve officers who had never before been in action were to prove again that no amount of study of the theory of war, invaluable as it is, may teach a man how to keep his head in handling a thousand or three thousand men under fire. West Point cadet drill, Philippine jungle and "paddy" dikes, Leavenworth staff school, army post routine, and border service had no precedent of experience for the problems of maneuver which they now had to solve. It was all very well to say that the men were all right; but another thing was keeping your men together. I saw a regular colonel violating, in a singular reaction to amateurishness, the simplest principle of organization--the same that keeps subordinates informed of the location of a business superior--by having no post of command where he or an adjutant could be found with orders or reports. Some colonels remained steadily at their headquarters, without absenting themselves for personal inspection in any emergency; others moved restlessly about the field, trying to apply to three thousand men the personal direction of a platoon commander. Every subordinate who witnessed such an exhibition by a superior was bound to lose confidence in the command. I am not thinking of a lack of physical bravery when I say that there were instances of colonels and brigadiers voicing pessimism in the presence of subordinates. They might have become good judges or good philosophers, but they were not meant by nature, at least in their lack of battle experience, to drive home an ambitious offensive movement. Others had too much blind initiative; they were the kind that would drive head downward at a stone wall. Others were amazingly cool, determined, and efficient. These the men would follow against any odds.

Being human, our men who symbolized the pencilings on the map had muscles and nerves which were subject to fatigue. They had no visualization of their goals. If they could have been shown a flag on a mountainside, which they must reach before they "knocked off" for the day, the incentive for keeping on would have been more directly applied. All they saw was the slope or woods ahead of them. Their knowledge of the battle plan was limited to their orders to keep on going. After nights when suspense and suppressed excitement had allowed them little sleep, they had been going all day from 5.30 in the morning--going through barbed wire and trenches, over uneven ground, as they fought their way not only under fire but under the strain of that wearing mental concentration of trying to remember and apply all they had learned in their training and in previous actions.

Physically, the task set for our troops had seemed almost superhuman. Many had taken enough steps to cover in a straight line twice the distance they had traveled. To the eye of a hurrying observer, these myriad figures, whether dashing toward a machine-gun nest, or ducking to avoid an outburst of fire, or coming wounded across the fields, had the attraction of the ardor and fearlessness of youth in battle, while they brought many thoughts which were as far from the battlefield as the homes that had sent them forth.

We might say "check!" to the Germans if we had taken Montfaucon at the end of the first day. Montfaucon was the highest point on our way to the Lille-Metz railway except the Buzancy heights. It was visible from the old first-line trench system at Malancourt and from the Mort Homme on the banks of the Meuse, and it looked forward over the ground of the projected second day's advance.

It happened that I knew by travel that day how far it was from Headquarters to the front line. I might feel as well as appreciate the reasons of the officer and the soldier for disappointing Headquarters when I came to the end of my journey, where the tidal wave, expending itself, had left a platoon of infantry, without touch with the units on their right and left, washed up in a sunken road on the reverse slope of a hill in front of Montfaucon. On the bare crest of the hill lay the bodies of comrades who had fallen when the watchful German machine-gunners aimed at the human targets appearing in bold silhouette on the sky-line. It would have been madness for a handful of men without support to continue on against such blasts of cross-fire. They had fallen back, bringing their wounded, to await orders. Apart from the opposition they had met, the irregular landscape over which they had advanced was sufficient explanation of their inability to keep their _liaison_. It made islands of the hills as it diverted the tidal wave into the channels of the ravines. Scattered American soldiers were moving about the neighborhood like hunters, beating up Germans who had taken cover among bushes and in holes.

There was a recess in the battle in the vicinity, with stretches of several seconds when the countryside seemed quite peaceful. Then for another quarter of a minute, only a single machine-gun might be firing with deliberately precise intervals between shots. Suddenly the whole pack broke into full cry at the sight of quarry on the ridge which forms the southwestern approach to the town from the Montfaucon woods. We must have this ridge before we took the town. As I looked in this direction, I saw a line of our men appearing above the crest, each figure sharp against the light blue sky. Their intervals seemed at first as exact as the teeth of a comb; then the teeth began to drop out as figures fell. For a few seconds longer the survivors strove against the blasts before they drew back and faced right and moved along under cover of the slope, apparently seeking a less exposed portion of the crest for another attempt.

The machine-gun fire died down into spiteful irregularity until the line wheeled again toward the crest. Their heads were hardly above it when, with the unity of an orchestra answering the conductor's baton, the diabolical whirring rattle began again with all its previous volume. Evidently quite as many guns had this portion of the ridge under their fire as the other. This time the men did not persist. In proper tactical wisdom they disappeared from the sky-line as quickly as a woodchuck dodges into his hole.

We had now definitely developed the strength of the enemy at this point. Possibly we had located some of his machine-guns. At least, a battalion commander had learned enough to realize that he must undertake a deliberate method adapted to the situation for silencing them, which of course meant delay in pushing forward toward the day's objective the pencilings in one small section of the Headquarters map. Yet it was such details as this, revealed to me in a pantomime of vivid and stark simplicity and brevity, which taken together made the whole for that abstraction to the soldier which is called the High Command.

"Is Montfaucon taken?" was the question of Headquarters when I arrived there in the evening. Some reports indicated that it was. This part of the line was the most extended, and its communications accordingly the most uncertain. There were other pencilings on the map which also had to be erased. If we had not gained all our objectives, this was not saying that we had not been astonishingly successful. Having, as it were, set out ambitiously to take the whole solar system between dawn and darkness, one of the planets still held out, with the fixed star of Buzancy heights in the distance.

There might be many small salients, but none of threatening importance in our new line. Despite the uneven battle experience of our divisions, all had done their part magnificently. Our gains were more than a mile on our flank to four miles in the center, where we had made the bulge toward the summit of the whale-back. How far had we expended our momentum in our initial onset? What was the traffic situation? What of the morrow?

IX

THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN

The call goes back for artillery--And at night for the rolling kitchens--The staff interferes with sleep--Our part meant no stopping--Keeping at the roads during the night--Montfaucon on the second day--Then drive for the whale-back--Enemy resistance holds our exhaustion--Settling down in the rain to slow progress.

Moving on their feet, with each man's course his road through the trench system and across the country beyond, the infantrymen, as they hourly increased their distance ahead of the part of the army moving on wheels, were calling oftener for artillery than for reserves. They needed shells to destroy machine-gun nests, to silence enemy batteries, and to make barrages to support their farther advance as resistance began to develop. There were equally urgent appeals for machine-gun battalions to meet the German machine-gun opposition in kind. Their spray of bullets, in indirect fire over the heads of the men in a charge, was another form of shield, the more desired when the protection of the artillery was lacking.

The machine-gunners, who called themselves the "Suicide Club," were soldiers both of the wheel and the foot. Their light carts did not have to wait on the stout passageway over the trench system which even the light artillery required. Yet some of them had been marooned, to their inexpressible disgust; for it was their part in an emergency to press on to the firing line through the shell-fire which may sweep the roads back of the infantry. The place of the artillery was as near the actual front as orders and traffic jams would permit.

How the artillery chafed on the leash! Not only duty but the gunner's promised land was beyond the barrier of the trench system which stayed his progress. Open warfare called to him from the free sweep of the landscape. The seventy-fives had come into their own again as mobile living units which would unlimber in the fields close behind the moving infantry, instead of playing the part of coast artillery behind fortifications. There would be no need to bother about camouflage. They would move about so rapidly that the enemy could not locate them; or if he did--well, that was all in the game. Their protection and the protection of the infantry would be in the blasts overwhelming the enemy's fire.

"Why in ----" the infantry was calling to the artillery. "Why in ----" the artillery was calling to the engineers. You may fill out the blank space of this cry of mutually dependent units with the kind of language which was not supposed to be, but sometimes was, used in the presence of chaplains. The infantry changed the object of their impatience when night stopped them wherever the end of that long day's work found them. They were not thinking of supporting artillery fire for the moment. The late September air was chill, the ground where they lay was cold. Their appetites were prodigious from their hard marching and fighting. Their hearts and thought were in their stomachs. Wasn't it the business of rolling kitchens to furnish them warm meals? It was past supper-time. Where in ---- were those rolling kitchens? After dark they surely need not be held back in apprehension of being seen by the enemy's artillery.

Night had laid its supreme camouflage over all the area of operations. Under its mantle an activity as intense as that of the day must continue for all who supported the infantry. We might take an account of stock. Regimental, battalion, and company officers might move about freely along the front in familiarizing themselves with the situations of their commands. _Liaison_ which had been broken between different units must be re-established. The ground ahead must be scouted. Platoons and companies which had become mixed with their neighbors, and individual men who had strayed from their units, must be sorted out and returned. Gaps in the line must be filled; groups that had become "bunched" must be deployed; groups whose initiative had carried them forward to exposed points might have to be temporarily withdrawn,--all by feeling their way in the darkness. The sound of machine-gun fire broke the silence at intervals as the watchful enemy detected our movements. A shadowy approaching figure, who the men hoped was the welcome bearer of that warm meal from the rolling kitchens, might turn out to be an officer who directed that they stumble about in woods and ravines to some other point, or creep forward in the clammy dew-moist grass with a view to improving our "tactical dispositions," which does not always improve the human dispositions of those who have to carry out the orders.

Army Headquarters wanted information from the three Corps Headquarters. Each Corps wanted information from its three Division Headquarters, which in turn were not modest in asking questions of the weary fellows at the front. Exactly where was your line? What was the morale of the men? Were they receiving ammunition and food? When would the guns be up? What identifications of the enemy forces in your sector? Had many machine-gun nests been located? Was the enemy fortifying, and where? What was the character of his shell-fire? The high command had to consider the corps summaries of the answers in relation to its own news from other sources, communications from the French staff, reports from Army aviation and artillery, conjectures of the enemy's strength and probable intentions, and the general situation of transport in the Army area and the flow of supplies from the rear.

The lack of information on some points was no more puzzling than the abundance of contradictory information on others. Staff heads must work into the small hours of the morning. They might rest after they had arranged their program for the morrow. The men at the front who were to carry it out were supposed to rest at night to refresh themselves for another effort at dawn. This was a kindly paternal thought, but how, even in the period of daylight saving, they were to find the time for sleep in the midst of re-forming their line and answering all those questions was not indicated. Whether they slept or not, whether their shields and food were up or not, they were supposed to fight from dawn to dusk on the 27th.

Our army, though our situation perhaps warranted it, might not dig in along the new line and hold fast while it recuperated after that long first day. Other double doors from Verdun to the sea were about to be swung open; other armies must be considered. Indeed the decision in this respect was not with our army. In a sense it was not with Marshal Foch, for the forces which he had set in motion to carry out his great plan had already prescribed our part, as we know. On September 28th the Franco-Belgians were to attack in Flanders, and Mangin's army was to move on Malmaison; on the 29th the Anglo-French armies, including our Second Corps, were to storm the Hindenburg line in the Cambrai-St.-Quentin sector; on September 30th Berthelot was to free Rheims from the west; and on October 3rd, Gouraud, with our 2nd Division, was to storm the old trench system east of Rheims. We must hold off reserves from their fronts. The more determined were our attacks, the more ground we gained on the way to the Lille-Metz railroad in this critical stage of Allied strategy, the more perturbed would be the enemy's councils in adjusting his combinations to deal with the other offensives. Though it might have been better for us to have taken two or three days in which to gather and reorganize deliberately our forces for another powerful rush which would have been a corresponding shock to the enemy, this was no more in the psychology than in the calculations of the moment. We were winning; we meant to keep up the winning spirit of our army. What we had done one day we should do the next. We and not the Germans must take possession of the commanding position of Montfaucon as the first great step in gaining the heights of the whale-back, should their resistance require delay in reaching our goal.