German comfort in the Forest retreats--The 77th see-sawing
through--The 28th plowing down the trough of the Aire--Scaling
the escarpments of the Chêne Tondu and Taille l'Abbé--An enemy
counter-attack--The 35th pushing four miles down the east wall of
the Aire--Pushing through an alley to the untenable position of
Exermont--Unjust reflections on the persistence of the 35th.
On the left flank the First Corps, composed of the 77th, 28th, and
35th Divisions, was having quite as hard fighting as the Third Corps
on the right flank. The regiment of the 92nd Division (colored),
National Army, forming the link with the French on the western edge of
the Argonne Forest, buffeted in its inexperience by the intricacies of
attack through the maze of trenches, was withdrawn after its initial
service. It was better that the 77th should take its place in meeting
the baffling requirements of _liaison_ between two Allied armies.
In the trench system before the Forest, the "Liberty" men of the 77th
met comparatively slight resistance, their chief trouble being to
maintain the uniformity of their advance through the fortifications
and across the shell-craters, over the tricky ground of sharp ridges
and gullies littered with torn tree-trunks and limbs. The division
staff had in vain sought opportunities for flanking maneuvers. A
straight frontal attack must be made. "There's the Forest. Go through
it!" paraphrases the simple orders of the division commander. This put
the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the young platoon and
company commanders. They knew that they could depend upon one thing.
There was nothing but forest ahead of them. They need not concern
themselves with any open fields, though they would have their share of
swamps and ravines, which would not lessen the difficulty of keeping
their units in line through the thickets.
If the French "scalloping" on the left of the Forest, and the 28th
Division "scalloping" on the right of the Forest, did not drive in
their protecting wedges, a cross-fire would hold the 77th's flanks back
while its center, driving ahead, would be caught between the infantry
and machine-gun fire from the Germans on either flank. If the French
and the 28th fully succeeded in their mission, then, as we already
know, all the 77th would have to do would be to "mop up" any Germans
who failed to withdraw in time from the pressure on either side.
According to this plan the 77th was to have an easy time. The plan
failing to work out, the 77th had anything but an easy time.
The Forest was held, as it frequently had been, I understand, by
Landwehr troops. Some of the old fellows, who were not sturdy
enough for real warfare, had spent months and even years there.
They considered that they had the squatter right of occupation to
the Argonne. There were theaters, rest camps, and well-appointed
hospitals, with enough _verboten_ signs along the paths to alleviate
homesickness in a foreign land. Isolated in their peaceful solitude,
where they could be cool in summer and comfortable in winter, they took
the interest in adding to the comforts of their sylvan surroundings
of a city man in his new place in the country. Positive artistry was
achieved in the camp of the German commanding general. The walls of
his office and sitting-room were wainscoted, with a snug ante-room
where orderlies might attend and messengers might wait. The heating
arrangements literally afforded hot water at all hours. A spacious
dining-room was supplied from a commodious kitchen. If the French began
putting over heavy shells, interrupting the German officers at their
chess game or in reading the Cologne _Gazette_, it was only a few
steps to a stairway that led to an electric-lighted chamber so deep in
the earth that it was perfectly safe from a direct hit by the largest
calibers.
All the headquarters and camps were under canopies of foliage which
screened them from aërial detection. Battalions come here from the
death and filth and misery of violent sectors settled down to a holiday
existence in an environment associated with a vacation woods. Of course
there was a war in progress, but they knew it only through sending
out detachments to keep watch and maintain the trenches in repair.
The Landwehr men saw enough shell-bursts to say that they had been
under fire. Indeed, one was occasionally wounded. There was no need
of trench raids for information in a mutually accepted stalemate. To
fire more than enough shells to keep up the postures of war might bring
retaliation which would interfere with smoking your pipe and drinking
your beer at leisure.
After this pacific routine had been long established and so much effort
and pains had been spent in improvements, appeared these outsiders of
the Liberty Division in the rude haste that they might show in a subway
station at home. They had no respect for the traditional privacy of
a gentleman's country estate. However, the irritated occupants were
no passive resistants. They had thought out in precise terms how they
would defend their fastness against any such outrageous lawlessness.
They knew every road and path, and how to make use of their ideal
woodland cover. They might not be strong in the front line, but as the
military men say they were "echelonned deep."
There was no line of resistance in the first stages of the advance,
but many successive points of resistance, ready to receive the invader
in turn, punishing him severely in his slow progress if he were not
repulsed. But even they in their chosen positions, covering avenues
where the foliage was not dense, could not see far. This developed
close-quarters fighting from the start.
As the Germans had particularly depended upon light railways in the
Argonne, the roads, except transversal ones, had been neglected. This
did not matter, so far as it concerned bringing up the artillery.
There was no maneuvering artillery in the thick woods. Even if
there had been, it could not get any angle of fire for shells which
would burst short of their targets against tree-trunks. It was
exclusively an infantry fight except for the machine-guns and the baby
_soixante-quinze_ or 37-millimeter guns, in which the heads of the
Americans bobbed through the thickets in search of the hidden heads of
the defenders. A platoon commander might not keep watch of his own men
in the maze--let alone see what the platoons on his flank were doing.
On the first day the 77th had practically reached its objectives,
on the second it was to suffer the same loss of momentum as other
divisions. The "scalloping" on the edges of the Forest, however
valorous, could not keep up to schedule. If the Forest boundaries had
been straight lines on a plain, the result might have been different.
_Liaison_ over the escarpments in the valley of the Aire and the hills
and ravines on the left became a nightmare. Still the orders were
"Push ahead!" to battalions or companies which were not up. If under
this spur they advanced beyond their flanks, then the flanks were to
"push ahead!" Thus in a process of see-sawing platoons and companies
continued to make progress. The units in the middle of the Forest saw
nothing but trees and underbrush. All the world was forest to them.
Those who found themselves on the edge looked out on stretches of the
great battlefield under puffs of shell smoke, and to the going and
coming of aeroplanes in another world, and possibly were forced to seek
shelter in the Forest by bursts of machine-gun fire to which they were
exposed from other divisional sectors.
So it was not surprising that the men of the 77th, immersed in the
Forest depths, should think that they were fighting the whole battle.
They knew nothing of the "scalloping" tactics. Their horizon was
confined to a few square yards. To them the Argonne had no appeal of
a holiday woods. Sylvan glades, which the poet might admire, meant
stumbling down one side and crawling up the other, with ears keen for
the whipping sound which might signify that they were in an ambush.
They might not stop in for a nap at the rest-camps. They were not
sleeping in those beautiful wainscoted quarters, but on the dank ground
in the deep shadow of the trees which kept the sunlight from slaking
moisture after the rains. The rolling kitchens were held up in the rear
where the trucks cut deep in the saturated woodland earth, and hurdled
over tree-trunks between sloughs, while the Forest made the darkness
all the more trying as the weary engineers endeavored to hold up their
end.
The infantry continued its valiant and persistent see-sawing. On the
29th they made a big swing on the right, and on the left took a _dépôt
de machines_, or roundhouse, and the treacherous ravine south of
Binarville in which it was situated, by hard and audacious fighting. On
the 30th the whole line again made progress, against machine-gunners
who had cunningly prepared paths to give them visibility for a greater
distance, and to draw the attackers into the line of their fire. They
charged down the slopes of the Charlevaux ravine and its irregular
branches, across the streams and swamps at their bottoms, and up
the slopes on the other side--all this through woods and thickets,
of course. The next day an even deeper advance was made over very
irregular ground, while the right in triumphant ardor pressed forward,
ahead of the left and center, across the Fontaine-aux-Charmes ravine
and its branches and their streams until it was past the heights
of the Chêne Tondu. As the Chêne Tondu was not yet wholly in the
possession of the division on the right, the gallant victors deserved
something better in their weariness than to be forced to retire by
overwhelming fire in flank and rear from the commanding heights. The
night of October 1st the "Liberty" men, after six days in which they
had steadily advanced for a depth of six miles, held the line from
the Chêne Tondu across the Forest to a point north of Binarville, its
supporting flanks on either edge of the Forest in a deadlock.
There was forest and still more forest ahead of the 77th. After it had
conquered the Argonne, it might have a chance to take the Bourgogne
Wood beyond on the way to the Lille-Metz railway. After this experience
the New Yorkers ought not to be afraid to go into Central Park after
dark when they returned home.
They may have thought that the 28th on their right was not keeping
up to program, and the 28th may have thought that they were not; but
neither had the advantage that I had of seeing the other in action
during those terrible days. Astride the Aire river, having the trough
as its very own, the 28th put a heart of iron into its first impact,
and tempered it to steel in its succeeding attacks. The "scalloping"
process which was its mission looked just as simple on a flat map as
the swing toward the Meuse of the 33rd; but then, everything looked
simple on the map, and everything for all the divisions might have
been as simple as it looked if it had not been for the enemy. He was
always interfering with our staff plans. If the Aire's course had been
straight, and the valley walls had come down symmetrically to the river
bottom, the 28th would have had straight open fighting, which is a
satisfaction to brave men whatever the cost. A direct frontal attack
was as out of the question for the Pennsylvanians as it was mandatory
for the 77th. They must exhibit suppleness and cunning, or bull-dog
grit was of no service.
In full realization that the true defense of the Forest was on its
flanks, the enemy developed strong resistance in front of the 28th
on the first day. The Perrières Hill, a bastion in the first line of
defense, honeycombed with machine-gun emplacements, held up the attack
on the left as it swept its fire over the trench system on either
side, covering the steep approaches for its capture which were studded
with shell-craters and festooned with tangles of wire. The enemy also
set store by the ruins of the town of Varennes in the valley, which
were to become so familiar to all the soldiers who ever passed along
the Aire road. At Varennes the road crosses the river in sight of the
surrounding congeries of hills. Under cover of the ruins and the river
banks the Germans had both seventy-sevens and machine-guns, which,
well-placed as they were, failed of their purpose. It was now evident
that the enemy would strive to hold every height on either side of the
Aire with the object of grinding our attacks between the molars of two
powerful jaws.
For the German map plan was as simple as ours. It invited our
initiative into the open throat of the valley and into blind alleys
between the heights blazing with fire. The 28th was to interfere
with the German plan just as the Germans were to interfere with the
American. Plans did not seem to count. Nothing counted except tactical
resource and courage in the face of shells which came screaming and
bullets whistling from crests in sight and crests out of sight. Woods
fighting was only an incident of the problem for the 28th, which
took La Forge on the edge of Montblainville, only to find that the
machine-guns in the Bouzon Wood on the west wall had an open field for
their fire from three quarters of the compass.
The disadvantage of the 28th's sector from the start was that there
was no screen of foliage to cover a deployment before a charge.
On the night of the 26th the battalion which had been held up by
the Perrières Hill was marched round, to carry out the plan of
"scalloping," for an attack on the Chêne Tondu, which was an escarpment
projecting out of the Forest into the valley of the Aire north of
Montblainville, like a wood-covered promontory into a strait. It
commanded the whole river valley and the Forest edge on its front. Its
slopes were irregular, with every irregularity seeming to favor the
defender, who at every point looked down-hill upon the attacker. Behind
it was another escarpment, even stronger, the Taille l'Abbé. Between
the two the enemy had ample wooded space for moving his reserves and
artillery free from observation. Should the Chêne Tondu be lost, the
enemy had only to withdraw with punishing rearguard fire to this second
bastion. On the reverse slope of the Taille l'Abbé were hospitals,
comfortable officers' quarters, and dugouts, while the artillery in
position there could shoot over the Chêne Tondu with plunging fire upon
its approaches. Along the heights of the Forest edge and other heights
to the rear, other guns, as many as the Germans could spare for the
sector, might find perfect camouflage and security.
There were also the heights of the east bank of the Aire to consider.
With the river winding past their feet they interlocked across the
valley. Thus advancing down the valley meant advancing against heights
in front as well as on the flanks. Stretching back to the whale-back
itself beyond the heights of the east bank were other heights, even
more commanding, whose reverse slopes offered the same kind of inviting
cover for long-range artillery as the reverse slopes on the west
bank. If a height on one bank were not taken at the same time as the
corresponding height on the other, this meant murderous exposure for
the men in the attack that succeeded. Therefore, thrifty and fruitful
success required a uniformity of movement by the three divisions of the
First Corps in conquering the heights of both banks of the Aire and of
the Forest's edge.
For the 28th the taking of the Chêne Tondu was the keystone of the
advance. Until it had this height, the 28th could not support the
movement of the 77th in the Forest or of the 35th on the east bank of
the Aire. The Germans had concentrated their immediate reserves on the
Chêne Tondu, and their guns on its supporting heights.
If the German staff had planned the woods in front of the main slopes
of Chêne Tondu, they could hardly have been in a better location
for affording invisibility to machine-gun nests against a visible
foe. To have taken the Chêne Tondu by one fell rush, as our staff
desired, might have been possible through sheer weight of man-power
by the mustering of all the division's infantry against one sector
of its front, supported by the artillery of two or three divisions
with unlimited ammunition. The artillery of the 28th was not up. It
was having the same trouble about roads as the artillery of other
divisions. When the officers of the 28th scouted the avenues of
approach in order to maneuver their infantry units economically, they
found none which would not require that we charge across open and
rising ground against an enemy whose strength our men were to learn by
"feeling it" in an attack without adequate shields into concentrations
of shell- and machine-gun fire which became the more powerful the more
ground they gained.
Availing themselves of every possible opening where the enemy's fire
was relatively weak, they forced their way into the village of Apremont
in the valley. As soon as this success was known to him, the enemy made
up for any neglect in prevision by bringing guns and machine-guns into
position to command the village. Wherever the Pennsylvanians made a
thrust, if a savage reception were not primed awaiting them, one was
soon arranged. Their maneuvers were further hampered by the bends of
an unfordable river, which a direct attack for any great depth would
have to cross and recross under the interlocking fire. Troops on the
narrow river bottom were visible as flies on a wall. Every hour German
resistance was strengthening in the Aire sector as in other vital
sectors along the front.
Their guns up, the division attacked the Chêne Tondu a second time in
the vigor of renewed confidence and in the light of the knowledge they
had gained of the enemy's dispositions. They won a footing; and then
attacked again. Their effort now became incessant in trying to make
more bites at close quarters, as they struggled for complete mastery.
The Germans infiltrated back between our units, and we infiltrated
forward between theirs. We might think that we had possession of ground
over a certain portion of front, only to find that our efforts to "mop
up" were thwarted. With Chêne Tondu partly conquered in the search
for advantage in maneuver, we moved on the Taille l'Abbé in flank;
and there we found the Germans, thanks to their fresh reserves, in
irresistible force. They were firing prodigal quantities of gas-shells
wherever our men took cover in any stretch of woods they had conquered.
The 35th on the east bank of the Aire was meeting with deadly
opposition which held it back, as we shall see when its story is told.
Maintaining _liaison_ on the heights of the east bank with the 28th
astride the river was fraught with the same elements of confusion as
with the 77th in the monstrous irregularity of the escarpments on the
Forest's edge. To which division belonged the khaki figures breaking
out of a ravine in an effort to rush a machine-gun nest which held
them at its mercy? One thing was certain: they must either advance or
retreat. Under the whip of impulse as well as orders they tried to
advance. Messages exchanged between neighboring division headquarters,
under the pressure of the Corps command to get ahead, were dependent
upon reports long in coming out of the recesses of the woods. Each
division staff in its faith in the courage of its men, who were
fighting on their nerves after sleepless nights, insisted that it was
doing its part and would be up--and that, by God! it was up.
The possession of the Aire heights was all important to the Army
command, still undaunted in its ambition for the immediate conquest
of the whale-back in those fateful days at the end of September. On
the 29th two Leavenworth men from Grand Headquarters itself--while
two regular colonels were sent to regiments--were put in command of
the brigades of the 28th. One of the colonels was killed before he
took over his command, and the other later in leading a charge. On the
30th the division was to make another general attack, supported by all
available artillery and tanks; but a few minutes before the infantry
were to charge, the Germans developed a counter-attack in force. Their
troops were middle-aged Landwehr men, who made up in spirit what they
lacked in youth. They had been told that theirs was the opportunity
to help the Fatherland in a critical moment against these untrained
Americans. The courage with which they persisted in their charge was
worthy of a better cause. It recalled the freshness and abandon of
German volunteers in the first battle of Ypres. Our infantry, already
in line to advance over the same ground as the counter-attack, received
it with a merciless fire which its ranks kept breasting in fruitless
sacrifice. Our tanks, waiting to move forward with our infantry at the
moment set for our own attack, carried out their program and literally
rolled over many of the survivors of the charge in which our youth
had learned some respect for age. Our attack was countermanded, and
the next day was October 1st, which was to mark another period of the
battle, as I have said.
It had been a good policy in more senses than one to send regulars to
take command of the brigades of the 28th. Assigned for the purpose of
seeing that the division "pushed ahead," when they looked over the
situation their conclusions were a supreme professional tribute to the
magnificent persistence of the Pennsylvanians, who had already earned
the sobriquet of the Iron Division in place of that of the Keystone
Division. Short of food, without sleep, saturated by rain and gas,
the men of the 28th had won their gains with superb and tireless
initiative, and held them with grim tenacity. In a burning fever of
loyal effort, their vitality had been ungrudgingly expended. They
staggered from fatigue when they rose to charge. Not only was all the
area of advance under shell-fire, but that road through Varennes which
both the 28th and the 35th were using was exposed to ruthless and
well-calculated blasts from many guns, disrupting communications and
further delaying the congested transport. The new brigade commanders,
with staff school education and staff experience, as became practical
men when face to face with nerve and physical strain which put
limitations of human endurance upon the will of the high command,
accepted their lesson, which they applied by withdrawing units to give
them rest, and having the units remaining in front "dig in," while
processes of reorganization accompanied a phase of recuperation during
the coming lull in the battle.
The same devoted offering of strong and willing men in the flush of
aggressive manhood by the Kansans and Missourians of the 35th, on the
left of the 28th, which had the heaviest casualty list of any division
from September 26th to October 1st, was not to have the good fortune of
such understanding direction. Kansas and Missouri took all their pride
as well as their natural courage and hardihood into this battle. Their
left flank was from the first on the heights to the east of the Aire
in full view of the Forest edge and its escarpments. On the right they
were swinging toward the heights west of Montfaucon. The particularly
dense fog hugging the ground on their front in the first hour of their
advance made the _liaison_ between the battalions difficult from the
start. The two formidable heights of Vauquois hill and the Rossignol
Wood were masked by troops sweeping speedily by them on either side in
brilliant fashion, and left to the battalions detailed for the purpose,
which cleaned them up with thoroughgoing alacrity. Meanwhile the
frontal line drove ahead against machine-gun fire in front and flanking
artillery fire from the right until it was in the vicinity of Cheppy.
As we already know, there had been trouble immediately in Varennes,
where the 35th was linked with the 28th. The 35th received both shells
and machine-gun fire from the high ground of the town and from the
heights which were firing down on the 28th. Both division reports speak
of having taken Varennes, which is well spread on the river banks.
There was room enough for the troops of both to operate, with plenty
of work for both to do before their common efforts had cleared the
ruins of their infestuous occupants. The tanks also had a part in this
success. Wherever there was anything like favorable ground in that
irregular landscape, they did valuable service; and they tried to pass
through woods and across ravines which only sublime audacity would have
attempted--and sometimes they succeeded. Their visibility at short
range to the numerous enemy batteries made any part in the battle by
them seem suicidal.
The formation for the attack was by brigades in column: that is, one
of the two brigades in reserve behind the other that took the lead. On
that first day, when a regiment of the frontal brigade was stopped by
casualties, another was sent through it. The plan was to crowd in the
eager men. It was their first big fight. They had impatiently trained
for this chance. The individualism of these stalwart high-strung
Middle Westerners was allowed full rein. To them a fight meant that
you did not give the enemy any time to think; you forced the issue
with smashing rights and vicious uppercuts at the start, a robust
constitution receiving cheerfully and stoically any punishment
inflicted as you sought a knockout.
Therefore flanking fire was only a call to pressing the enemy harder
and having the business the sooner finished. There was no waiting for
guns to come up, as Cheppy on the right was taken soon after Varennes
on the left. Losses, particularly of senior officers, were becoming
serious by this time; units, though scattered and intermingled in the
fog, only wanted direction to go on. Having been reorganized and
being supported by fresh battalions, the advance continued. By night
the 35th's left was well north of Varennes, its right near Véry, and
the approaches to Charpentry had been gained. On that first day the
35th, fighting against flanking and frontal artillery and machine-gun
fire, had made four miles in mastering the east bank of the trough
of the Aire; but it had paid a price which was a tragic if splendid
tribute to the courageous initiative of its men. The artillerists were
working hectically to bridge the little streams for their pieces; that
one-way bridge which two divisions were trying to use through Varennes
congested the other traffic. According to the division report, instead
of proper rations for the troops, there was an issue of fresh meat and
vegetables with no means for cooking.
The divisional artillery was expected to be up by eight o'clock on the
morning of the 27th to renew the attack, but higher authority could not
wait on its support. In full realization of the strength of the enemy's
artillery, Corps orders to advance at 5 A.M. must be obeyed, with only
one battalion of light guns to protect the men in an endeavor that
must be far more costly than yesterday's. The Kansans and Missourians
were of the stock that can fight to a finish; and they were expected
to fight to a finish. The 70th Brigade, whose units had already been
engaged and had been all day under more or less fire and advancing
behind the 69th, was put in front, with the 69th in close reserve,
ready to take up the battle when the 70th had suffered too heavily.
Overnight the enemy had reinforced the commanding position of
Charpentry, which was the keypoint of his line of defense against
the 35th. It sent down gusts of machine-gun fire while the increased
enemy artillery on both flanks played on the open fields of advance,
where, after the attack slowed down, the men continued to spring up and
charge, in the hope that they had found an opening, only to be met with
machine-gun fire from unexpected quarters. Tanks having been brought
up and reorganization effected, another general rush was made, which
aroused such a torrent of fire that the infantry, without their shields
for advance, could only seek what protection they could dig or find in
gullies behind banks or in shell-holes.
The artillery, which had worked ceaselessly all night and day to get
forward, was now arriving, and with its support a new advance, which
crowded in more troops, was undertaken at 5.30 in the afternoon. The
artillery silenced some of the machine-gun nests, though it could not
reach the enemy battery positions; but by the grace of their undaunted
determination and energy the Kansans and Missourians took both
Charpentry and the town of Baulny. In the darkness some daring units
pressed through the Montrebeau Wood, while the main line dug in near
Baulny to secure what protection it could from the shells whose flashes
illumined vigorous spading, which had an incentive in the vicious
singing of the fragments.
It had been another costly day, and the night that followed was ghastly
for the wounded. They were gathered from the field under incessant
bursts of machine-gun fire; and when they were brought in, the crowded
roads made their evacuation horribly slow. The struggle to force
ammunition and supplies forward over the main road did not relax in
the area behind the troops, where all through the night the German
artillery, which had the approaches to Charpentry and Baulny perfectly
registered, kept up a fire shrewdly calculated to block a movement
every time it started.
All the artillery was now up to support the troops being re-formed for
another attack at daybreak, which was preceded by a counter-attack of
the enemy which was promptly repulsed. More open spaces than yesterday
must be crossed in full view of the enfilading batteries, particularly
those firing from the west bank of the Aire. Ground was gained all
along the front: ground important for the terrible day's work that was
to follow. While the wounded, suffering from exposure, were walking
back or being carried back across the shelled fields and along the
shelled roads, the survivors must spend the night in leaving nothing
undone to insure the success of the next morning's attack, which was
to capitalize every atom of vitality remaining in this hard-driven
division. Again the men were short of regular rations; and the fresh
beef and vegetables which were again forced upon them could not be
cooked. It was raw fighting, indeed, on raw meat and raw potatoes which
was expected of the 35th. Incidentally the divisional transport was
short fourteen hundred horses.
The loss of officers in their gallant exposure to keep up the _liaison_
of the units had continued severe. For this reason alone the 35th,
which was having its first battle experience, was unprepared for a
far less onerous task than that now assigned it. With nerve strength
in place of physical strength, with will in place of adequate
organization, the division was sent into a veritable alley, which could
be swept by artillery fire from the Forest edge across the Aire as well
as from the other flank and in front. The instant the attack began, the
enemy guns concentrated with a pitiless accuracy and a volume of fire
completely surpassing that of the other days. In places the advance was
literally blasted to a standstill.
The village of Exermont which was the main goal was mercilessly exposed
in that ravine where the enemy shell-fire had the play of a cataract
through a gorge. Some men actually reached the village, but they could
not remain there alive. Groups charging for what seemed cover only ran
into more shell-bursts. The dead and wounded lay in "bunches" under
the continuing blasts which disrupted organization, while officers
in trying to restore it sacrificed themselves. There was no want of
courage; but the division was undertaking the impossible. Every spurt
of initiative was as futile as thrusting a finger into a stove door.
Confused orders were further confused in transmission.
When night of the 29th came, there was nothing to do but for the 35th
to withdraw, for lack of any means of supporting them, its exposed
units from Montrebeau Wood and Exermont. The ravine could not be held
until the guns commanding it were silenced and fresh troops in numbers
were summoned. A willing horse had been driven to its death. The 35th's
units had been crowded into the front line until the only reserves
it had were men too exhausted from fighting to move. On the 30th a
defensive position was organized. A battalion of the 82nd Division,
brought up with a view to renewing the attack, met a killing barrage
which warned commanders that advancing one fresh battalion was only
throwing more cannon-fodder into the ravine.
Throughout the 30th the men of the 35th held their ground under
continuous artillery fire, which could not keep many from falling
asleep in their exhaustion; but they were awakened to retributive zeal
by two German counter-attacks, their marksmanship being a warning to
the enemy that though they had not the strength to advance they still
knew how to shoot. On the night of the 30th the 35th was relieved by
the veteran 1st Division. Gaunt and staggering, shadows of the sturdy
figures which had advanced on the 26th, the survivors plodded back to
rest billets, to find that in some quarters the view was held that the
division had done badly. No more inconsiderate reflection upon brave
men was ever engendered in the impulses of battle emotion, with its
hasty judgment.
In an advance of over six miles the 35th had suffered 6,312 casualties.
Nearly half of its infantry was dead on the field or in hospital. The
other half was in a coma from fatigue. Every rod gained had been won by
fighting against fire as baffling as it was powerful. To say that the
35th fought for five days as a division is hardly doing it justice. A
division may be said to be fighting when only one brigade is in line
while the other is resting. All the men of the 35th were fighting.
There were soldiers who did not have five hours' sleep in that period
of unbroken battle strain in the midst of the dead and dying. Only
the powerful physique of the men, with their store of reserve energy
which they drew on to the last fraction, enabled them to bear it as
long as they did. Their courage and endurance and dash performed a
mighty service in a most critical sector. Instead of being the object
of any ungenerous reflections by captious pedants or commanders who
did not know how to command, after they had given their generous all
they should have been welcomed with a warmth of praise in keeping with
their proud and justifiable consciousness that they had done their
red-blooded best.