A successful surprise--The importance of traffic control in
maintaining the advance--The "show" in the air--How the engineers
built roads--And traffic blocked them--And colonels showed the
traffic police how.
The veteran accepts his long service as a guarantee of efficiency; the
novice is patient under instruction and open to suggestion. Our desire
to do everything in the book, our painstaking individual industry under
a meticulous discipline, and our willingness as beginners to learn had
served us well before the battle in the concealment of our strength
and plans from the enemy. There were so many of us and we were so
swift in our onset that we gave the enemy the benumbing shock which on
many occasions the newcomer, springing aggressively into the arena,
has inflicted by a rain of blows upon a hardened adversary who has
appraised him too lightly.
If the Germans had made the most of their fortifications with their
customary skill, the dam might have held against the flood; for it
is the touch and go of impulse that decides in the space of a second
between docile hands up begging for succor and a fury of resistance
to the death. Suddenly brought to face overwhelming formations, the
answering sense of self-preservation prevailed in the German trenches
before the German officers and non-commissioned officers, had they been
in the mood, could overcome the mass instinct of their men.
The French on our left had presumably met more resistance than we
in the first-line fortifications. Their attack was doubtless more
professionally skillful than ours. Had they failed, for no other reason
than that they had fewer men to the mile, the cost of a repulse would
have been less for them than it would have been for us. The Germans
knew that the French were massing west of the Argonne, and apparently
accepted their attack as serious, while they thought that we would make
only a demonstration. We had been right in our anticipation that they
would not consider, for one thing, another major offensive by our army
feasible so soon after Saint-Mihiel; or, for another, that Marshal
Foch, while he was carrying on extensive operations in northern France,
would have the temerity or the forces to undertake in addition such an
extensive effort as that of September 26th.
Despite the honor in which open warfare was now held, a first line was
still a first line, with its wire, deep dugouts and strong points, and
all the approaches accurately plotted by the artillery through long
practice in fire. A part of it might be readily taken at any time by
thorough artillery preparation, but the victors in the early offensives
had suffered enormous toll of casualties from shell-fire in organizing
their new positions. Though the short artillery preparation, without
registering, had proved efficacious against the Germans on July 18th
and August 8th, when they were holding shallow trenches in ground
which they had won in their spring offensives, it had not as yet been
tried by the Allies--I may mention again--over any such length of
front against the old trench system as in the Meuse-Argonne. It is
only fair to say that we were not opposed in strong force, but, make
any qualification you choose, by conquering twenty miles of first-line
fortifications we had won a signal triumph which must have been a
distressing augury to the German command.
After our "break through" there was little answering artillery fire. We
had drawn the teeth of immediate artillery resistance by going through
to the guns. We had captured many guns; others were forced to fall
back to escape capture, and they, or any that were hurried forward,
would have had to fire, not at a settled trench line, but at infantry
deployed and on the move. Meanwhile our infantry must be driven to the
utmost of its capacity to make the most of the headway that we had
gained.
We had also to consider the dispersion and the fatigue which bring
loss of momentum in an attack, just as a tidal wave spends itself in
flowing inland. The farther our infantrymen went, the farther our
transport must go to provide them with rations and ammunition. Thus the
ability of our organization to continue the advance after the "break
through" included the indispensable factor of efficient arrangements at
the rear. As a division has twenty-seven thousand men, its daily food
requirements are equal to those of a good-sized town, without including
small arms and artillery ammunition and other material. People at home
who were surprised at the length of time it took a division to march by
on parade, without its artillery or transport, will have some idea of
the road space required for a single division fully equipped for action
and in motion.
Behind the old trench system traffic movement had settled into a
routine, under the direction of policemen at the crossings, resembling
that of a city. In our mobilization for the attack we had brought,
aside from corps and army troops, nine divisions into the Meuse-Argonne
sector. This led to the pressure which would appear in suddenly
trebling the traffic of a city. Though the roads were insufficient,
they were kept systematically in repair; quantities were known; we
were forming up on a definite line of front. After the attack was
begun, the defensive force was falling back upon its established
and dependable arrangements. The offensive force--and this cannot be
too clearly or vividly stated--had to build a city, as it were, by
establishing new depots and camps, repairing old roads and building
new roads, while traffic control in the area of advance was subject
not only to the calculable requirements of a great street parade in a
city, but to the incalculable requirements of a great fire and other
emergencies which switch concentrations from one street to another.
From a ridge in the midst of the old trench system in the center of
our line, the nature of our task appeared as a picture, which my
observation in threading my way through the streams of traffic in the
rear filled in with detail. Ahead, except for occasional groups and
lines appearing and disappearing in the wooded, undulating landscape,
our advancing infantry seemed to have been dissipated into the earth.
Their part after they were through the fortifications I shall describe
in another chapter. The bridge between them and the rear was for
the moment in the air, where Allied and German planes in prodigal
numbers came and went on their errands of combat and observation.
In the jam on the roads back of the trenches, thousands of men, of
waiting machine-gun battalions and of stalled artillery, and drivers
and helpers attached to traffic of all kinds, were looking aloft
at a "show" which was worth the price of being packed in darkened
transports, and almost worth the price of enduring army discipline.
If they might see nothing of the battle going on behind the ridge, they
had grandstand seats for the theatrics of war in the air, staged on the
background of the blue ceiling of heaven. I was not to see the like
of this scene again in such bright sunlight. The most jaded veteran
never failed to look up at the sound of machine-gun firing, which
signaled that the aces might be jousting overhead. Would one be brought
down? There might be only an exchange of bullets between planes in
passing; then one might turn to give chase to the other; or both begin
maneuvering for advantage. In shimmering flashes the sunlight caught
the turning wings of planes that tumbled in a "falling leaf" when at a
disadvantage, caught the wings of planes that were crippled and falling
to their death.
Duels were forgotten when a German plane with no Allied plane across
its path swept down toward the huge inflated prey of an observation
balloon. His telephone told the observer in the basket that it was time
to take to his parachute. The sight of the figure of a man, harnessed
to a huge umbrella, leisurely descending from a height of a thousand
feet, divided attention with watching to see whether or not the gas
within the thin envelope overhead broke into a great ball of flame. If
not, it was brought down to take on its passenger again; and it could
be lowered with incredible rapidity for such an immense object, as
the wire which anchored it was reeled in on the spinning reel on the
motor-truck. There was something very modern and truly American about
a motor-truck in a column of traffic towing a balloon.
Most fortunate of all the spectators were the men with machine-guns for
aërial defense mounted on trucks. They both observed and participated
in the game. Many of them were in action for the first time with a new
toy. They did not propose to miss any opportunity to make up for having
come late into the war.
"Haven't you learned the difference between an Allied and a German
plane? You're shooting at an Allied plane," an officer called to a
machine-gunner.
"Yes, sir," was the reply, and he stopped firing.
"Why didn't you tell him you couldn't hit it anyway?" remarked a
passing wounded man, after the officer had passed on. "But don't worry.
If they miss the plane, the bullets can still hit somebody when they
fall."
Entranced as they were by the spectacle, all the men who had to do
with the moving of the wheels of all the varieties of transport which
overflowed the roads were only the more eager to press forward. The
air was not their business. Their duty was over the ridge toward
the front. The artillerists had particularly appealing reasons for
impatience, as we shall see. They were using rugged language, which
relieved their steam-pressure without changing the fact, which was
being burned into the consciousness of the whole army, that as surely
as a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, a road is no stronger
than any slough which holds up traffic.
The engineers had no time to spare for observing blazing balloons.
Their labors in the old trench system, in contrast to the florid drama
of the air, were a reminder of how completely earth-tied the army was,
and how small a part of its effort was above the earth, even in the
days when communiqués paid much attention to aces. For a mile or more
every road in the immediate rear of the old French trenches had been
in disuse for four years while it was being torn by shell-bursts. For
the distance across No Man's Land, it had become part of the sea of
shell-craters. On the German side of No Man's Land were more trench
chasms, and another stretch which had been blasted in the same fashion
as the French side.
Shoveling would fill many of the holes; but shoveling required labor
when we were short of labor, and time when every minute was precious.
It was increasingly evident every minute, too, that trucks that carry
three tons, and six-inch mortars, and heavy caissons were not meant to
pass over any piece of mended road that had its bottom two or three
feet below the surface. They insisted upon finding the bottom and
remaining there until pulled out by other traction than their own.
The division engineers were supposed to keep on the heels of the
infantry, which they did with a gallantry which made amends for the
inadequacy of their numbers and material. Their efficacy was dependent
upon these two features and upon the prevision of the division command
in mastering the problem beforehand. There were critics who said that
some division staffs evidently expected their artillery and rolling
kitchens to take wing; but the division staffs produced by way of
answer the unfailing list of written orders on the subject, which
could not be carried out. If the infantry were repulsed or checked,
the engineers might share some of the fighting, as they had on more
than one occasion. There seemed to be a universal apprehension, the
engineers said, that an engineer might have a chance to sleep or
rest, which would obviously ruin his morale. If, after the infantry
had passed on, the enemy concentrated the fire of a battery on the
road-builders, they were not supposed to be diverted from their labor,
but to be prompt in filling new shell-craters.
The lack of material ready on wagons for immediate movement to the
front left them to gather what material they could on the spot. They
could not use barbed wire, and in places that seemed the only thing in
sight. They tore out trench timbers, which often proved rotten from
four years in moist earth, they gathered stones where stones could be
found and used these to make something more solid than loose earth
turned by the shovel; and they sent hurry calls to the rear for trucks
of material, which themselves might be stalled on the way forward in
the jam of waiting traffic. The more sticks and stones filled in a bad
spot, the more were needed as the earth underneath continued to yield.
When a truck-driver saw that the truck in front, which belonged to his
convoy, had passed through a rut, he determined that where his leader
could go he could follow, and he drove ahead, cylinders roaring with
all their horse-power. When he was stuck, he spurred them to another
effort. Meanwhile his wheels were probably sinking, and he had delayed
the mending of the break in any satisfactory way while the truck in
front backed up to put out a towline, and all hands in the neighborhood
added their muscular man-power to cylinder horse-power. The Germans had
raised in the shell-torn earth of the trench system another barrier
than that of their fortifications to a swift drive for their lines of
communication.
Their own limited opportunities in "passing the buck" did not exclude
the engineers from easing their own mental, if not physical, burden
by remarking with acid intensity that a little better traffic control
on the part of some of the people who were complaining would help
matters. No one who had been along the roads could deny that this
point was well taken. If not the experience of other offensives, our
traffic demoralization at Saint-Mihiel should have been a warning to
us, though most of the men who had learned their lessons in that sector
were still occupied there. We had the admirable example of the British
transport, which, after confusion in the Somme battle resembling ours
at Saint-Mihiel, had developed in practice under fire a system which
seemed automatic.
The number of guns and ammunition-caissons and the length of a column
of divisional transport were calculable quantities. Their order of
precedence behind the infantry was largely a settled formula. The
number of roads and their state of repair must be known not only on the
map but by practical observation. Some were narrow country roads, which
would accommodate only "one-way" traffic, and others would accommodate
traffic going both ways. Having all these factors in mind, the program
must include the disposition of labor battalions where they would
be needed in making prompt repairs, when heavy trucks cut up roads,
especially one-way dirt country roads.
We had written out extensive instructions for traffic regulation,
which were to be enforced by military police who were new to the task
and insufficient in numbers. The same thing happened to the military
police on September 26th as happened to the New York City police during
the parade of the 27th Division, when the crowd broke through the
police lines into the line of march. In this instance, when aggressive
commanders of artillery and convoys saw an opening, they made for it
without regard to traffic regulations, though their ardor may have
meant only delay in the end.
Thus the military police had paper authority which they could not
enforce. Their minds were kept in confusion by the confusion of
personal directions they received from volunteer experts. They
were overwhelmed in rank; and respect for rank had been drilled
and drilled into them. A colonel is a colonel and a mighty man;
a lieutenant-colonel is a mightier man than a major, who in turn
outranks any captain in charge of a section of road. What was the use
of proclaiming a road "one-way," when a staff officer appeared and
declared it "two-way"? What was there to do when another staff officer
appeared with an outburst against the disobedience of regulations that
had interlocked traffic going both ways on this same one-way road?
This is not saying that the personal initiative of a passing senior
officer was not serviceable, when he confined his effort to breaking
a jam, without reorganizing the system in one locality, and thereby
throwing it out of gear in other localities. With the best of
intentions, colonels fresh from home who had not seen a large operation
before were particularly energetic. Some of their remarks stirred
memories of Philippine days when the transport of an expeditionary
battalion was in difficulties. The burden of the world was on their
shoulders. When they gave an order, they wanted no suggestive "But,
sir----" from any captain or major, though they complained that
reserve officers lacked both initiative and discipline. As each
colonel departed in the blissful consciousness that it had taken a
trained soldier to "straighten things out," the traffic officers, in
the interval before another appeared with contradictory orders, might
indulge their sense of humor with the reflection that numerous "fool
colonels" must be wandering about France with a free hand in impressing
their rank upon juniors.
The biggest "fool colonel" or general was he who, to avoid walking,
took his car in the early part of the day across the freshly made
road over the trench system, thereby delaying the carts of machine-gun
battalions. When his car was stalled, he received about as much
sympathy as the driver of a truck stalled on a road which did not
belong to his division. Not being a colonel, the driver might be made
the public object of language which did not consider rank or human
sensibilities.
In no result was the fact more evident than in our traffic direction
that in making a large army we must crack the mold of a small army. In
time our capacity for organization would make a new mold. Meanwhile,
though it might be applied at cross-purposes, our American energy,
adaptable, tireless, furious, and determined, must bring results.
The many broken-down trucks in ditches beside the road were only the
inevitable casualties of a prodigious effort. Let the infantrymen keep
on advancing; we would force their supplies up to them in one way or
another.