French gunners at home in the landscape--Sleep by regulations in
spite of suspense--"Over the top" not a rush--Difficulty of keeping
to a time-table--Even with a guiding barrage--What barbed wire
means--And the trench mazes beyond--Moving up behind the infantry.
The Pacific Slope, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, and New York thus had the honor of the initial
attack in our greatest battle, in which men from every state in the
Union were to have a part before it was won. In that area of rolling
country from Verdun to the Bar-le-Duc-Clermont road, which had been
stealthily peopled by our soldiers, the swarming of their khaki was
relieved by scattered touches of the blue of the Frenchmen who had come
to assist us. Though ours was the flesh and blood which was to do the
fighting--every infantryman was an American--the French were filling
the gaps in our equipment which we could have filled ourselves, as
I have said, only by delaying the Meuse-Argonne offensive until the
spring of 1919 as we had originally planned.
Under their camouflage curtains in an open field, or in the edge of a
woods, or under the screen of bushes which fringed a gully, the groups
of French gunners seemed at home in a landscape that was native to them
while it was alien to the Americans. When at rest their supple lounging
attitudes had a certain defiance of formal military standards, as if
French democracy were flouting Prussian militarism. When the order for
firing came, the transition was to the alertness of the batter stepping
up to the plate, and their swift movements had the grace and confidence
of professional mastery which had long put behind it the rudimentary
formalities of the drill-ground. They seemed a living part of the
infantry, their pulse-beats answering the infantry's steps. Never were
guests more welcome than they to our army. We could not have too many
French guns--or cannon, as our communiqués called them in recognition
of the unfamiliarity of our public with military terms--playing on the
enemy's trenches and barbed wire in the preliminary bombardment which
blazed a way for the charge.
I have known the suspense preceding many attacks while the darkness
before dawn was slashed by the flashes from nearby gun mouths and
splashed by the broad sheets of flame from distant gun mouths. There is
nothing more contrary to nature than that the quiet hours of the night
should be turned into an inferno of crashes and, at the moment of dawn,
when the world refreshed looks forward to a new day, men should be
sent to their death. The suspense before the Meuse-Argonne attack was
greater than before the Somme attack, when the British new army, after
its months of preparation and nearly two years of training, was sent
against the German line; it was greater than before Saint-Mihiel, our
own first offensive.
At Saint-Mihiel we had hints that the enemy would oppose us with only
a rearguard action. Our mission would be finished with the first
onslaught; we had only to cut the salient; the result was measurably
certain, while in the Meuse-Argonne it was on the knees of the gods.
The Germans could afford to yield at Saint-Mihiel; they could not in
the Meuse-Argonne, where, if informed of the character of our plan,
they might make a firm resistance in the first-line fortifications or
at such points in them as suited their purpose in seeking to draw us
into salients, to be slaughtered by enfilade fire as the French were in
their spring offensive of 1917.
After the preliminary bombardment began at midnight, our American Army
world, as detached in its preoccupation with its own existence, as much
apart from the earth, as if it were on another planet, waited on the
dawn of morning, which was the dawn of battle. The stars which were out
in their distant serenity had a matter-of-fact appeal to generals to
whom a clear day meant no quagmires to impede the advance. It was the
business of all except the gunners and the truck-drivers, or of those
speeding on errands to tie up any loose ends of organization, to try to
force a little sleep. Even the infantry, with the shells screaming over
their heads, were supposed to make the most of their inertia in rest
which would give them reserve strength for the work ahead.
This was in keeping with the formula which had been studied and
worked out through experience. No one not firing shells could be of
any service in smashing in strong points or cutting barbed wire.
Particularly it behooved high staff officers and commanders to lie
down, with minds closed to all thoughts of mistakes already made or
apprehensions of future mistakes, in order to be fortified with steady
nerves, clear vision and stored vitality for the decisions which they
would have to make when they had news of the progress of the action.
The plans for the attack were set; they might not be changed now;
the attack must be precipitated. Aides protected their generals from
interruption, and arranged that they should have food to their liking,
and as comfortable a bed as possible. No genius composing a sonnet or
a sonata could have been more securely protected in his seclusion than
a corps commander. The rigorous drill which had formed the men in the
front line to be the pawns of superior will was applied to keep the
superior will in training for its task.
General Pershing kept faith with the formula, and many others followed
his example, though junior staff officers worked through the night.
They were plentiful, and "expendable," as the army saying goes, as
expendable in nervous prostration as were in wounds and death the
young lieutenants who were to lead their platoons into the hell of
machine-gun fire. Waiting--waiting--waiting while the guns thundered
were the ambulances beside the road, the divisional transport, the
ammunition and engineer trains, the aviators with their planes tuned
up and ready, the doctors and nurses at the dressing-stations and
evacuation hospitals, and the reserve troops in billets. Officially
through his orders everyone concerned knew only his own part, but all
knew without asking that an unprecedented ordeal was coming.
It was easier for French and British veterans, familiarized by other
offensives with the roar and the flashes of artillery, to relax than
for Americans who were having the experience for the first time. With
sufficient practice one may learn to sleep with a six-inch howitzer
battery in an adjoining field shaking the earth. Many times during
the Meuse-Argonne battle I have seen our own veterans giving proof
of such hardihood; but on this night of September 25th it was not in
human nature for all the thousands who were to have no sleep the
next day or the next night to summon oblivion to their surroundings.
Those who fell asleep slept with nerves taut with anticipation and in
the consciousness of a nightmare, in which the rending thunders were
mixed with reflection upon their own arduous efforts and their part
in the future. Everyone was a runner crouched for the pistol-shot,
as he awaited the dawn. The great test for which all had prepared
individually and collectively for two years was coming tomorrow.
With the first flush of thin light the observation balloons had risen
in stately dignity from the earth mist, and the planes had taken to
the sky and swept out over the enemy lines: the combat planes seeking
foes and the observers to watch the progress of the charge or enemy
movements or the location of batteries or of machine-gun nests which
were harassing our infantry. Mobilization by the aviators for the
offensive had not been hampered by the problems of one-way and two-way
roads. They flew over from Saint-Mihiel the afternoon before or on the
morning the battle began.
At 5.30, just as a moving man would be visible a few yards away,
from the Meuse to the western edge of the Argonne, where we had our
_liaison_ with the French who advanced at the same moment, our men
left the old French trenches and started for the German trenches.
Everyone is familiar with the phrase "going over the top," yet despite
the countless descriptions everyone who saw an attack for the first
time remarked, "I didn't know it was like that!" The system of the
advance on the morning of September 26th accorded with the accepted
practice of the time. In their familiarity with the system soldiers
and correspondents have taken it for granted that what was common
knowledge to them was common knowledge to all the world. Only when they
returned home did they realize their error, and learn that ignorance
of fundamentals ingrained in army experience had made their narratives
Greek to all who had not been in action.
The average man is slow to yield his idea that a charge is an impetuous
sweep. It sounds more real to say that "the boys rushed" than to
say that they advanced with the sedateness of a G. A. R. parade on
Decoration Day, which is more like what really happened. Indeed, they
simply walked, unheroic as that may seem; and from high ground, or
better still from a plane flying low, an observer saw to the limit of
vision right and left men proceeding at a set and regular pace. The
more uniform and the more automatic this was, the better. On closer
view every man, except in height and physique, was a duplicate of the
others, in helmet, in pack, in gas mask, in every detail of uniform,
even in the way he carried his rifle with its glistening bayonet,
which was the only relief to khaki on the background of somber-tinted
earth.
Every man, every platoon, and on through the different units to
divisions and corps, was moving on a time schedule. A competition
between companies to "get there" first would have resulted from the
start in a hopeless tangle. If not literally, it may be said broadly
that each company was to be at a given point on the map at a given
hour; and if one company, or battalion or regiment, for that matter,
outdistanced another, it was because it had kept its schedule and the
other had not. In case it became "heady" and was on its objective in
advance of schedule, it ran the risk of "exposing its flanks." At
least that is the theory of the staff in its essence. An ideal army,
according to the staff, would be at a given line on the map at 10.30,
at another at 11.30, and so on. This might be possible if there were
no enemy to consider, although it would require an adept army, as
everyone who has ever drilled recruits well appreciates. He knows
how long it takes to train them, and to learn how to direct a small
force in carrying out satisfactorily a practice skirmish evolution
over slightly uneven ground. The gregarious instinct of itself seems
to break uniformity by drawing men into groups in face of infantry
fire in battle for the first time, as well as eagerness to close with
the enemy and gravitation away from the points of its concentration.
Shell-bursts scatter them, casualties make gaps which lead to further
disorganization.
Could our army have had reproduced for its edification the confusion of
the battle of Bull Run or of Shiloh, it would have realized the purpose
of all the painstaking drill, the monotonous and wearing discipline,
which made the well-ordered movement possible. Its very deliberateness
in maintaining the coördination of all its units gave it a majesty in
its broad and mighty sweep, which was more like the sweep of a great
river than the cataract rush of the small forces of the old days, which
the public still continued to visualize as a charge. I thought of it
too as in keeping with the organization of modern life, in the trains
entering and leaving a great city station or the methodical processes
of a vast manufacturing concern.
How did our men know whether or not they were keeping their schedule?
Did they look at their watches as they counted their steps? They had
a monitor at first in the rolling barrage, that curtain of fire which
preceded them. This was their moving shield which the guns far in rear
provided for their guidance as well as protection. If they came too
close to the barrage, they were exposed no less than their enemies to
death from its hail.
We may have a comparison in marching behind a road sprinkler, with
orders to keep just out of reach of its spray, which will be obeyed if
the spray consist of nitric acid instead of water. The more guns the
stronger the shield. We could never have an excess of guns as Grant had
at the outset of the Wilderness campaign, when he sent many batteries
of the short-range pieces of those days to the rear for want of room
on a narrow front in which to maneuver them. Cæsar applied the first
barrage in France in his tactical use of the shields of his legions,
who owed their success to systematic training no less than we in the
Meuse-Argonne. His men had to carry their own shields; the modern
soldier has enough to carry without carrying his.
Suspense was most taut, it was agonizing, as every soldier knows, in
the waiting hours ticking away into waiting minutes before the charge.
As the final minute approached, the veteran, as a connoisseur in
death's symbols, might find assurance in the strength, and apprehension
in the weakness, of the supporting barrage laid down on the enemy
trenches. Those of our men who had not been in battle before could have
no such prescience. They did know that when they left their trenches
the full length of their bodies would be exposed. They would march,
rifle in hand, without firing, while only the shield of the shells from
friendly guns screaming over their heads--the greater the volume, the
sweeter the music--could silence the fire of rifles and machine-guns
which had them at merciless point-blank range. Instantly they climbed
"over the top," anticipation became realization. One ceased to listen
to his heart-beats. The emotion became that of action. Suspense became
objective, merged in responsibility for every man in watching where
he stepped as he moved toward his goal, and for every captain and
lieutenant in directing his company or platoon.
The most careful maneuvering on fields at home was poor preparation for
No Man's Land, which is like nothing else in the world except No Man's
Land. Millions of soldiers know it through long watches over its dreary
lifeless space, and more vividly through crossing it in a charge. For
four years it had been the zone of death where no soldier from either
side ventured except at night on patrol or in a raid or general attack.
All this time shells had been pummeling it. The rims of craters, of
sizes varying with the calibers of the shells, joined each other; old
craters had been partly filled by later bursts. This continued pestling
of the soil with nothing to press it down but the rain made it the more
spongy in wet weather and the looser in dry weather. The heads of the
men bobbed as they advanced, stepping in and out of craters, and wove
in and out as they passed around craters. The rims often gave way with
their weight, or they slipped on the dew-moist weeds that fringed them
or upon some "dud" shell hidden in the weeds, as their attention was
diverted from the ground under foot by the burst of an enemy shell or
of one from their own guns which fell dangerously short.
As our artillery, in order to preserve the element of surprise, had
not "registered" with practice shots, it was firing strictly by the
map; and, though its accuracy was wonderful, inexperienced gunners
manning guns which had not had the allowances for error recently
tabulated, were bound, in some cases, to send their shells wide of
the mark. The big calibers might fail to destroy "strong points" that
held machine-gun nests, or a battery of seventy-fives fail to cut
the section of wire which was its assignment. For these mistakes the
infantry must suffer. It is the infantry which always pays the price in
blood for all mistakes; and the transfer of an officer to Blois or the
demotion of a general officer would not bring back their dead.
Their immediate concern, as that of every infantryman had been in every
charge throughout the war, as they crossed No Man's Land, was the wire
entanglements. All the original wire, four years' exposure to the
weather making its rusty barbs the more threatening, was still there in
some form or other, though it had been ruptured or further twisted by
previous bombardments whose craters only added to the difficulties of
passage. Breaks had been filled by new wire, which rather supplemented
the old than took its place. Additional stretches had been put out
at intervals to reinforce the defense of vital points. A half-dozen
strands will halt a charge in its tracks; here was a close-woven skein,
from three and four to twenty yards in depth. Where the depth was
greatest, it was most likely to have a continuous uncut stretch which
the enemy had marked as a target for fire upon the arrested attackers.
According to photographs of selected areas, which show a few bits of
wire sticking out of a choppy sea of fresh earth, every square yard of
which has been lashed by shell-fire, it would seem that artillery was
accustomed to do as thorough mowing as a reaper in a field of grain.
Even with treble our volume of artillery fire, taking treble the length
of time of our bombardment, and with every shell perfectly accurate on
its target, we could hardly have accomplished any such blessed result.
The best that could be expected was that lanes would be opened at
frequent intervals.
A break in the uniformity of advance appeared at once when one platoon
or company had a clear space on its front while its neighbors had not.
Suppose that for five hundred yards of distance the guns had completely
failed and for five hundred yards on either side they had succeeded:
then you had two exposed flanks sweeping forward into the trenches
beyond, possibly against the enfilade fire of machine-gun points
especially established for this opportunity.
Where the guns had not done the work for them the men must do it
themselves. If they had the torpedoes at the end of long sticks,
resembling exaggerated skyrockets, they might thrust these into the
meshes and explode them to gain the destructive effect of shell-bursts.
If the artillery had made some breaks, they might, in their impetuosity
to keep up with the rest of the line, try to pick their way. What young
soldiers can accomplish in this respect is past all comprehension
by elders who try to follow in their steps. The first wonder is how
they were able to go through at all, and the second is how they had
any flesh on their leg-bones after they had gone through. Their main
reliance was on the hand wire-cutters, which had not been improved
since Cuba and South Africa.
All the while that the soldier was snipping the strands and bending
them back as he crawled forward, he was usually too near the trench to
have any protection from the barrage, while from the trench he was a
full-size target at short range. War offers no more diabolical suspense
than to this prostrate soldier in his patient groveling effort, when
machine-gun fire is turned in his direction. He is in the position of
a man lashed to a bulls-eye. Bullets sing as they cut strands of wire
around him. He feels a moist warm spot on his leg or arm and knows
that he is hit. Perhaps he tries to apply the dressing to the wound;
but more likely he refuses to expose himself by any movement which
will attract the gunner's attention. He may be hit again and again
before the inevitable final bullet brings the last of his ghastly
counted seconds of existence. The bones of men who were killed in this
way--"hung up" in the wire--are all along the wire of the old trench
line from Switzerland to Flanders. Or perhaps, when that patient
wire-cutter has taken death for granted, the machine-gun suddenly
diverts its spray to other targets, and he is safe.
Such was the nature of the barrier of entanglements which had to be
conquered by these young divisions of ours before they ever began
fighting. Beyond its fiendish and elaborate skeins was a trench system
equally elaborate in all its appointments for the real resistance.
German officers and soldiers in occupation had taken all the interest
in improvements, and the more as it concerned the safety of their
own skins, of the most fastidiously scientific and progressive
superintendent of a manufacturing plant. The latest wrinkles in the
development of defensive warfare were promptly applied. After each
trench raid or enemy attack, weak points that had appeared were
corrected. Generals who came on inspection ordered changes suggested
by their study of the ground. Regiments new to a sector brought fresh
ideas and industry. Work was good for German soldiers, who were kept
digging and building for four years in perfecting the security of these
intricate human warrens.
Any trench system, after allowing for an enemy's success in clearing
the hurdle of the wire and in penetrating the trench system, and even
for his successful occupation of considerable stretches of the front
line, relied upon "strong points" and second lines in the maze of
fortifications to make the gains futile, or only the prelude to a more
costly repulse than if the attack had failed in its first stage. Let it
be repeated that not one out of four of our soldiers had ever before
stormed a first-class fortified line. They and their officers knew
the character of its mazes only through lectures, pictures, maps, and
imagination; but they were perfectly certain of one thing, and that
was that their business was to clean the Germans out, and for this
they were equipped with proper tools. In other words, when you saw a
German emerging from a deep dugout where he had taken refuge from the
bombardment, or appearing round a traverse, either kill him or gather
him in.
The ardor and ferocity of our youth in a furious offensive mood was
never more compelling in its results. Caution was not in our lexicon.
If strong points held out, the thing was to go through them. There
was no time to lose. The first wave must go on according to schedule,
leaving those who followed to do the mopping up of details. Our
faith was in our valor and destiny. In our progress the first-line
fortifications were to be only another hurdle after the wire.
In the course of this famous day, in seeking a personal glimpse
of every aspect of the action, I was at Army, Corps, and Division
Headquarters as the news came in, and I was three miles beyond the
trenches with our advance against the machine-gun nests. Such a
morning sun as is rare in this region eventually dissipated the thick
mist which had been in our favor in concealing our attack from enemy
observation, and against us in preventing our observation of the
movement of our own units. It kept on shining, which was still more
rare, in all the genial pervading warmth which we associate with its
generous habit in this season at home, until midday found the air
singularly luminous--luminous for this region--and the sky a soft blue.
The generals could not have asked more; and to the medical corps it
meant a blessing for the wounded. Judging by the weather that ensued
during the remainder of the battle, the point that the sun of the
Argonne exhausted all its beneficence on the first day and had to
retire behind clouds to recuperate, in order to keep up the reputation
of "sunny France" for future tourist seasons, seems well taken.
Not only was the infantry advancing, but all the rest of the army, no
longer obliged to court concealment under the cover of the night, had
come aggressively into the open, the stealthy processes of preparation
having given place to the thrill of battle joined. Where all efforts on
preceding days had been directed toward a stationary theater, now all
were directed to a traveling theater. A mighty organism of human and
metal machinery, which had been assembling and tuning up its engines,
had thrown in the clutch and was in motion.
Considering the volume of shells being fired at the Germans, the
columns of motor-trucks loaded with ammunition now had an intimate
appeal. The front had become a magnet drawing every thought toward it,
with every waiting ambulance and vehicle expectant of an order to start
forward. At the rear there was less traffic on the roads than during
the period of preparation; but forward, close to the trench lines,
roads that had been empty two days before were crowded. Machine-gun
battalions in reserve and batteries of artillery which had carried
out their assignment in the preliminary bombardment, and were moving
forward to new positions where they could support the advance, were
demanding right of way over divisional transport, which was clear as
to its duty to keep as close to the infantry as orders would permit.
The signal corps, unrolling their wires, also wanted precedence in
order that division headquarters might have information; and the
engineers had taken precedence over everybody with the compelling
argument that unless roads were built no traffic could move forward.
It was a familiar enough picture. To the jaded observer of war every
glimpse only reproduced some scene which was part of a routine of
which he was so weary that it made him desire, if for no other reason,
the realization of the supreme hope that this should be the final
offensive of the war. The great thing, though all the equipment and
all the system seemed age-old because of their associations, was
that the personnel was new. A new knight had slipped into old armor,
and taken up the sword from a tired if experienced hand. D'Artagnan
had arrived from Gascony to add his young blade to the blades of the
three Musketeers. On the part of everybody there was still the boyish
enthusiasm of the beginner in a game.
Hundreds of officers who had been to staff schools, or enduring the
S. O. S. in fractious impatience, now for the first time were at the
front--the front of the Great War; and with them were all the men
of the supply units, motor drivers, ambulance drivers, engineer
battalions, military police, whose one thought was a sight of that "big
show."
The French gunners looked on smiling, as a middle-aged woman smiles
over the enthusiasm of the débutante. Given the hour of attack, they
knew by experience how long it would be before the first wounded and
the first prisoners would come down the road. Soldiers who had never
seen a German at close quarters perhaps had taken the prisoners; a
young intelligence officer might be having his first experience in
questioning them. To the French the prisoners looked like all the
"sales Boches"; but we were discovering their characteristics afresh.
Later came the severely wounded on stretchers which were slipped into
the ambulances which bore them away. By nine o'clock in the morning we
knew that except for a few strong points which could not hold out we
were through the wire and through that elaborate trench system and out
in the open, and still going on.