New York and the South on the British front--Up the Somme valley in
the wake of the Australians--The Saint-Quentin Canal tunnel--Another
ambitious plan--The simplicity of success in the attack of the 30th
Division--The Pickett's charge of the 27th--A mêlée on the open
slopes--In which the Australians take a hand--The German hinge at
Bony holds--Australia carries on--The western front in movement--The
British again in Le Cateau--Our part in the advance to Valenciennes.
The Scotch thrift of Sir Douglas Haig, in face of the demand for our
divisions in our own sector and at other points along the line, had
been able to retain two of the ten divisions which had been trained
in the British sector: the 27th, or "Orions," National Guard of New
York under command of Major-General John F. O'Ryan; and the 30th, or
"Old Hickory," National Guard of the Southern mountain states, under
command of Major-General Edward M. Lewis. These two, forming our Second
Corps under Major-General George W. Read, were to have a spectacular
part in the attack of September 29th against the Hindenburg line on
the thirty-mile front between Cambrai and Saint-Quentin, which was to
be the next of the thrusts in the development of the general offensive
movement which decided the war.
Second Corps Headquarters had been from the time of its organization
in the British area. Neither division had served anywhere else than
with the British. They had been isolated from the association of the
American army in a world of their own within the British world. It
was well that they should be there; that if we were to have divisions
detached from our army some should be contributing their style of
English to that spoken by English, Scotch, and Irish, by Canadians,
Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans.
On August 30th-September 1st the two fought side by side for the first
time as divisions in the Ypres salient offensive. They advanced for the
depth of a mile, the 27th until its outposts were on the famous Kemmel
Hill which the German attacks had won in the preceding April, and the
30th taking the village of Voormezeele. They were now withdrawn and
sent into training to digest the lessons of their first battle and to
learn in practice maneuvers how to coöperate with tanks. After that
post-graduate course they might be considered "shock" divisions, having
the freshness of new troops plus an instructive experience. When they
received their next order to move, they knew that they were to be used
as such; they were going into a "big fight."
[Illustration: MAP NO. 6
LINES REACHED BY GERMAN AND ALLIED OFFENSIVES 1918.]
Late in September they started across the old Somme battlefield, which
the Germans had devastated in their retreat in the late winter of 1917
in face of the Anglo-French offensives. Here the results of war on the
largest integral area in France were seen at their worst in a dismal,
treeless landscape, pitted by the bursts of the countless shells
fired in the Somme and Cambrai battles and the fighting in the period
between them, and in the tidal wave of the great German offensive of
March, 1918, which overflowed the desert of their making. The subsoil,
having been mixed with the loam that once nourished succulent pasturage
and rich fields of grain, now responded to sun and moisture in a
subtropical growth of weeds and grass in a grizzly carpet, variegated
by the gaping wounds in the earth of crumbling trench walls and great
mine craters. Deserted tanks, and remnants of sheet-iron dugout roofs
and of gun-carriages and caissons recalled as the débris of a dead
world ghostly memories to all British soldiers, for at one time or
another all had fought there, enduring the powers of destruction that
made the wreckage.
Troops marching in this area, where man had at such labor and cost
imitated the forces of earthquakes, volcanoes, and of chaos, found few
billets. The villages were mostly level with the roads. Temporary
buildings, with corrugated iron roofs and tar-paper walls, which would
be called "shacks," had risen as the landmarks of pioneer hospitality.
The two divisions marching toward the sound of guns through the silence
where there was neither woman nor child living could people it with
what reflections they chose on their way to battle.
They were attached to the Australian Corps, which was company to their
taste. There were no better soldiers than the "Aussies." Our men liked
them not only for this but for other qualities which have a man-to-man
appeal when men from the ends of the earth meet. In the coming attack
we were to have more intimate reasons for liking them: the reasons
born of the gratitude which one brave man owes to another who does not
hesitate at hell's door to come to his aid when he is hard pressed.
Beginning with the Anglo-French offensive on August 8th, the five
divisions of the Australians in their "leap-frogging" advance--and
they were very expert at "leap-frogging"--had not been out of line as
a Corps until they had fought their way clear across the devastated
region from the high-water mark of the German tidal wave of March to
the point from which it had started. In the free stride which they had
brought overseas from their island continent thousands of miles away,
now guided by a veteran's wisdom and cunning, they had won back all
they had fought for on these Somme fields with an enemy whose measure
they had always taken--an enemy who they knew now could never fight
on the offensive again. They had suffered for four years the fatigue,
the shell-fire, the machine-gun fire, the gas, which our army was to
know for a brief period of intensity. Long service and army discipline,
accepted as a means to an end, had no more influence in making them
militaristic than a course in boxing changes the anatomy of the
kangaroo. They were ever the Australians.
Though the British had regained what they had lost in the spring, they
were only back before the line to which Hindenburg had given his name,
after he came with his Ludendorff from their victories in the east to
prove that the western front was not necessarily the grave of German
military reputations. German staff experts had chosen the ground which
they had fortified at leisure behind their old Bapaume defenses during
the winter of 1916-1917. German industry was then at its height, and
German material was ample to carry out the plans for that elaborate
system which was advertised by German propaganda as impregnable. In
those days when all offensives in the west had failed, many military
experts were inclined to accept this view.
The portion of the Hindenburg line which the 27th and 30th Divisions
were to attack had a distinctive character which might well relate its
conquest to an action by such an integral force as our Second Corps,
attached to another army. For six thousand yards the Saint-Quentin
Canal, opened in Napoleon's time and used until the beginning of the
war, runs in practically a straight line north and south under a ridge,
whose crest, from the piling of the spoils of excavation, is almost as
regular as an enormous parapet. The open canal being unfordable, this
section, obviously inviting attack, was given particular attention
in preparing the artificial defenses which the ground and the tunnel
itself favored. The thickness of the earth over the stone arch was such
that at no point had the largest caliber shell the slightest chance
of successful penetration. In the tunnel, lighted by electricity,
the number of reserves which could be accommodated was regulated by
the extent of the wooden platforms laid across from wall to wall. It
was said that there was room enough provided for a full division of
infantry, which, while being entertained by moving pictures to while
away idle hours, would be perfectly secure from any bombardment until
such time as their services were required, when they had prompt egress
to their places assigned for a crisis through the openings to the
reverse slope of the higher irregular crest in front. It was a most
comfortable and adaptable arrangement, for which the French a century
ago had done the spading.
On the crest in front of the tunnel, of course, none of the
provisions in dugouts, traverses, strong points, and barbed wire of a
thoroughgoing trench system was lacking. In front of this crest over
which the main Hindenburg line ran, at a distance of a thousand yards,
was another ridge, which formed the first or outpost line. Any troops
who took this forward line must move down an apron in full view of the
trenches of the main system, in range of its machine-guns and rifles,
and under its observation for the direction of artillery fire, which
of course had this apron accurately plotted. Between the two ridges,
utilizing the ravines, sunken roads, and irregularities of ground,
the Germans had deep communication trenches, which, with the passages
out of the tunnel, further connected up the system in facilities for
the swift utilization of their troops in making the most of all the
details of natural and artificial advantage of a position which had on
its flanks the unfordable canal. But the defenses had not been well
kept up, partly as a result of the deterioration of German industry in
digging, and more largely because of Ludendorff's commitment to mobile
warfare by his March offensive.
I recollect that the first news we had at Army Headquarters in the
Meuse-Argonne of the progress of the Second Corps said that our troops
and the Australians had surrounded a division of Germans. In view of
what happened, this report now has a tragic mockery. The plan of the
attack was made by the Australian Corps. The 30th Division was to be
on the right; it went into position on the forward ridge, which in its
sector was not as exposed as in that of the 27th. When the New Yorkers
went into position, they faced the unpleasant fact that the British
whom they relieved had not advanced beyond their own old outpost line.
This meant that they must make a preliminary attack on September 27th
in order to gain their assigned jumping-off place for the main attack
on the 29th. Their daylight charge went home in gallant fashion, but,
exposed, when they reached the crest, to machine-gun fire and to the
blasts of artillery fire from behind the tunnel, they fought all day
on the Knoll and among the ruins of the buildings of Gillemont and
Quennemont farms. In and out of trenches, "mopping up" machine-gun
nests only to have others reappear from sunken roads and subterranean
passages which were said to lead back to the canal tunnel itself, they
paid heavy casualties for a persistence which left them that night and
the next day hugging the slopes with the crest still unmastered.
It was not on the cards that the main attack, which was only one of a
sequence in the general offensive movement, should be delayed on this
account. What was to have been taken in a small bite must now be taken
in a big bite. The first ridge would be rolled under in the mighty wave
which was then to sweep down the apron and through the barbed wire
and trenches up the slopes and over the crest of the main ridge and
of the tunnel and on into the open country beyond. The fighting vigor
of our Second Corps, nursed in training for such a purpose, was to be
expended in one morning's tremendous effort; and at noon the 3rd and
5th Australian Divisions were to pass through our two divisions and to
continue the advance with all possible speed on the heels of the broken
enemy. For the American was not the only ambitious staff when it took
to marking objectives on a map. Most ambitious of all was Marshal Foch.
Our two divisions had all the "Don Acks," or divisional artillery, of
the Australians, a total, with the Corps artillery, of 438 guns, or one
for every forty feet of their front, to make their shields; and beside
an array of British tanks the only American heavy tank unit in France.
With the American divisions' artillery brigades, which had never seen
the British front, supporting other divisions in the Meuse-Argonne
offensive, who shall say that there was not coöperation among the
Allies?
The attack of the 30th Division on the right of the Corps line against
the Hindenburg position, on the morning of September 29th, was a
complete success--a clean drive through for two miles and a half to its
objectives. If the division's flank was not exposed as the 27th's was,
if it had relatively better ground to traverse, without the handicap of
having to take its jumping-off place before it began its real advance,
this in no wise detracts from the honor that these men of the Southern
mountains, ninety-five per cent of whom were of Anglo-Saxon origin,
did their forebears in fighting as a part of the British army. They
won more Congressional Medals of Honor, the highest tribute our nation
can pay any officer or man for gallantry in the field, than any other
division. All that they did was in character with the best traditions
of their grandfathers who had fought under Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
They had named their division "Old Hickory" in honor of another Jackson
who was a Southern hero; and hickory is hard, tough, and springy wood.
Called "poor whites" by the heedless, they were rich in the qualities
that count in battle. There were companies of them which were sixty
per cent illiterate when they came to camp, which calls for thought
on the part of the traveler in the "richest country in the world" who
sees their faces at railroad stations or in their simple houses in the
mountains.
Character and education, as we are not too often reminded, are not the
same; and these men have character, which is sound in the warp and the
woof, though it lacks frills and misses the motion pictures 'round the
corner from the soda fountain. They were capable of education, too,
not only in reading, writing, and arithmetic which they were taught
in the schools established for them, but in military technique. What
they learned they learned well. They did not think that any substitute
"would do just as well" when it would not. If they were told to put out
panels for the planes, they put them out, and in the way that they were
told. Their discipline was in the devotion of the kind which kept the
poorly fed, equipped, and clothed Southern armies resisting Northern
power for four years, and the officers who led them were of a democracy
which has its test in more than mere platitudes.
They believed in their officers, but maintained their attitude of
self-respect, that individualism developed from their surroundings,
which separated them by as wide a gulf from regiments drawn from the
swarming streets of a great city as could well exist in a country
speaking a common tongue. With their drawling voices and romantic
views, and their lean figures and clear eyes, it seemed to me that they
gave a certain atmosphere of simple knightliness even to the processes
of modern war. Their conscientious attention to all the details of
instructions which taken together make the whole of battle efficiency,
their accuracy of thought as accurate as their shooting, the confident
hunter's zest with which they went straight at their foe, were
contributing factors of more importance than any good fortune in their
swift and positively brilliant advance through the defenses of one of
the strongest positions on the western front. With surprisingly small
losses, no day's work of any division of the American army deserves
more praise than the Hickory's, both because of their own character
and of that of their task. They did not think that they had done much.
Their admiration was all for the British veterans on their right who
had adroitly managed a crossing of the canal on rafts and had kept pace
with their own movement.
The story of the 27th on the left, for the very reason that it was not
the kind of success which moves the pencilings on schedule time on the
map in keeping with staff plans, was to exhibit those qualities of the
courage of individuals and groups in distress against odds, of which
we stand in awe as the supreme tribute to men as men in battle. The
reports showed that all was going well at first. Under cover of foggy
mist, which was most friendly in hiding the advance down the slope of
both divisions, the 27th started off in the same admirable fashion as
the 30th, following close behind its barrage. By noon not only was the
30th reported in Nauroy, beyond the canal, but troops of the 27th had
been seen in Gouy and Le Catelet, practically one town, on the far
side of the main ridge. Aviators later saw detachments of the Orions
moving forward and Germans who were not convoys of prisoners moving
in the opposite direction--a most suggestive spectacle. Divisional
communications had been cut. The division staff could only wait on
results, not knowing what orders to give. Such command as remained
was with the leaders of the elements, their _liaison_ broken, which
were fighting their hearts out. There could be no more doubt of the
27th's capability than of the fearful situation in which it was placed.
The New York National Guard had been known as among the best state
troops, having received liberal support, while its commander was a
permanent officer on the state's pay-roll, who gave all his time to the
organization. On the Mexican border it had won high praise. Later, when
the New Yorkers were given an integral division in our army in the war
with Germany, both in their training at home and in France and then in
their fighting in the Ypres salient, they enhanced their reputation.
When I went over the field of the action of the 27th, I was struck
with amazement at the results expected of them, and with awe as I
visualized their effort, which like Pickett's charge owes its place
in history not to the wisdom of generals but to valor--and that the
valor of intelligence. While the British were to advance on the
right of the 30th, they were not to succeed in advancing on the left
of the 27th, where the canal, emerging from the tunnel's northern
end, bends to the west, against the direction of the attack, across
the Macquincourt valley, whose wall opposite the tunnel entrance
has ravines and hillocks for cover. This area, covered with big
shell-craters, sometimes half-filled in by other shell-bursts, included
sections of communication trenches, machine-gun emplacements, dugouts,
snarls of barbed wire, all in a chaotic disorder which had no system
to the casual glance, except that every square yard of it was suited
to desperate resistance by skilful soldiers. The 27th's left was to
sweep across this valley over the ridge, and then throw out forces of
exploitation for protection of its flank in face of the well-intrenched
unfordable canal and the high ground behind it; after the canal tunnel
had been taken, other forces were to swing north, while the British
Third Corps, which had not been sent in a frontal attack against the
open canal positions--over ground infinitely more difficult than at
the other end of the tunnel,--was, with the aid of this support, to
"join up." It could hardly be said of that plan, as of many others
for swinging open the double doors against trench systems, that it
even looked well on paper; but it was the plan adopted after thorough
consideration by practical soldiers.
The Germans, of course, had information that an offensive was in
preparation on this front, and that it would include the ridge over
the canal tunnel. With their reserves in the tunnel ready, they would
wait on its development before sending them to the point where they
would do the most service. Anticipating their prevision, our command
gave instructions that as we reached the openings in the tunnel they
were to be guarded, thus preventing the egress of the Germans except
as prisoners from their great dugout, in the same manner that trench
dugouts were breached in an attack. That this could not be done in face
of the numbers of the enemy emerging after our first wave had passed is
not a criticism of the men who fought all day to do it.
The "get there" spirit which animated all our divisions was supreme in
the men of the 27th. As they descended the slope, after sweeping over
the forward ridge, their figures distinct as the smoke-screen and the
fog lifted, the German artillery sent a curtain of shell-fire, which
kept pace with their progress, through the curtain protecting them.
Machine-guns from the high ground across the open canal were turned on
their flank with increasing fire; and their own tanks, on which they
relied so largely for protection, were to suffer severe casualties
from accurate enemy defense. Each infantry unit had no thought except
to keep on going. Every survivor had his face set toward the goal. The
forces assigned to secure the openings in the tunnel and to "mop up,"
straggling over the uneven ground and raked by machine-gun fire, could
not advance against the stubborn resistance developed by the enemy
emerging from his hiding-places after our barrage had lifted. On the
right the men of the 27th, striving to keep up with the 30th, drove
into the main trench system about the ruined village of Bony, on the
crest in front of the tunnel, and for all the accumulated effort of
the enemy to throw them back from this vital hinge of his resistance,
maintained their footing in a struggle that lasted all day. Passing
over the northern end of the ridge, on the left, a battalion of the
first wave, regardless of fire, reached the Le Catelet-Gouy villages,
their final objective. It was their movement that the aeroplane
observers had seen going in the opposite direction from German reserves
coming into action. That battalion had kept faith with the plan which
required swift action to make the most of the initiative gained, before
the enemy could mobilize for defense after the shock of the attack.
Naturally it had soon been apparent to the German command that there
was no advance by the British Third Corps on the 27th's left up to
the canal. Obviously this was the opening for reserves to frustrate
the offensive. The German soldiers gradually losing morale as a whole
were now to show their old form in one of those flashes of desperate
counter-attack and resistance which was worthy of their regulation
at its fiercest. It had always been characteristic of them that they
fought best when they were winning; when the advantage was theirs.
These veterans swarming out of the openings of the tunnel and up the
Macquincourt valley on our exposed flank had their blood up. This was
their Hindenburg line. They had been told that it was unassailable, and
that any attack against it would break into confusion which would be
their prey, an opportunity which was compensation for their retreats of
the last month, arousing afresh their professional zeal in applying,
in a field of a kind with which they were as familiar as prairie dogs
with their warrens, all their skill in tactics of cunning infiltration
under the support of their machine-guns. They were as old hounds who
had been having hard hunting of late with little success, and whose
appetites were whetted by the sight of a quarry.
The report that we had an enemy division surrounded was probably
founded on the observation of the counter-attacking parties of Germans
observed between the battalion in Gouy and our main force. Wholly
enveloped, the groups of this gallant unit--a Pickett's charge which
had kept going until the remnants were swallowed up in the enemy's
forces--could only surrender, when they saw gray uniforms on all sides,
or, dodging from cover to cover, try to win their way back to their
comrades. Other units, emerging into zones swept by unseen fire, sought
any protection they could find. Others still tried to advance. "Mopping
up" parties had to resist being "mopped up" themselves. The battle
became a mêlée in front of the Hindenburg line; a free-for-all, in and
out of burrows and craters; their general must trust his men to fight
in the spirit in which he had trained them; and thus they did fight.
Plunging machine-gun fire and hand-grenades sought out the wounded
in folds of the ground and pits, while bullets whistled overhead. No
platoon knew to a certainty what its neighbor was doing. Some bold man
sprang out of shell-craters to seek close quarters or to try to reach a
machine-gun, only to fall back dead into his companion's arms. Groups
found that they were being slowly exterminated by scattering bullets,
while any movement in any direction meant instant extermination. Always
the spits of dust showed bullets coming in two directions--as ridge and
valley wall looked down on them. The wonder is that they did not break
into a panic. But that was not in the character of such men. On the
contrary, they continued their efforts to advance. How many deeds of
heroism, unseen by any observer, deserved Medals of Honor will never be
known.
If ever the determined faces of sturdy men coming up in reserve were
welcome, they were those of the Australians, as they appeared for their
part of the program--which was to "leap-frog" our troops and carry
on the advance: to find that they had hot work in prospect from the
moment they passed the tape we had strung for our jumping-off line. Our
battalion in Le Catelet having been effectively cut off, the battalion
which had kept its footing in the Hindenburg line at Bony stayed on,
mingled with the oncoming Australians, for that night and another day
of fighting. The Australians who had passed through the 30th Division,
on its objective at Nauroy, for a farther advance to the next village
of Joncourt, were obliged to relinquish their gains in order to bend
back their line diagonally to join up with the mixed Australians and
New Yorkers at Bony. The German hinge at that point was not to be
broken until the next day; north of Bony the 27th's line that night
slanted back, in order to face as far as possible the murderous fire on
its exposed flank, to the outpost line from which they had been unable
to advance. The 27th had suffered 4,000 casualties since September
27th. Now, as fast as units could be gathered and re-formed, it was
withdrawn for reorganization, as was the 30th, leaving the Australians
to finish the task. The fact that our Meuse-Argonne offensive had
slowed down, and that at other points the progress of the general
Allied movement was being stayed, may account, judging from German
reports I have read, for a return of German staff confidence which was
imparted to the German veterans, who, after their brilliant and savage
use of their amazing opportunities against the 27th, kept up their
resistance point by point for four days before the Australians had
gained the complete objective set for the 27th on September 29th. It
is never a pleasant task for any body of troops to have to do the work
assigned to another; but the Australian staff had made the plan, and
the "Aussies" accepted the legacy we had left with a spirit in keeping
with their comradeship for the Americans. From our staff and our army,
from the state of New York and our country, as well as from the men of
the 27th, ever willing to give it with full hearts, they deserve the
tribute due to their bravery and fellowship.
I may add that this was the Australians' last action. After thirteen
months of continuous fighting they were sent into winter quarters. The
men who had been out from home since 1914--and the Americans who were
homesick after three months in France can imagine what this meant--were
just starting on their first home leave when the armistice came. May
the recollection of how they fought at our side in a war to end war
keep the friendship of the two peoples secure.
On the night of October 5th the 30th Division, which had suffered far
less than the 27th, relieved the Australians. The job was finished;
on this part as on the rest of the British front, the once glorious
Hindenburg line was left behind, suddenly become a somewhat frowsy
irrelevance of deserted trenches, dugouts, shell-craters, and tangles
of barbed wire. With its passing one knew that, for the northern half
of the front, there was no question of stopping; careful, methodical
planning, mindful of the necessary vigorous thrusts at the key
positions of railway centers and canal and river defenses, would
irresistibly sweep the enemy back to the Meuse line, while the slower
movement "down below"--as the French and American fronts seemed from
the north--would question his ability to stand even there.
Not that there was to be any spectacular rush about the movement,
though one looked expectantly at the fitness of the British cavalry,
which was always kept ready; the German staff could be expected to
handle itself in this its most serious emergency. The spectacular and
amazing thing was the steady, unruffled forward movement of millions of
men, glacier-like in its assuredness. The temper of victory revealed
itself in the eyes and bearing of the men who had waited four years,
and who now saw Ypres disengaged, Lille on the point of recovery, Lens,
Cambrai, Saint-Quentin restored to France. Americans might feel out of
place in the midst of rejoicings, the depth of which they could not
measure because they had not known the suffering which had gone before.
The Second Corps was now to take part in the advance of one French
and three British armies which, by November 1st, was to expand until
the whole line from the sea to the Argonne was in motion. From north
of Cambrai to south of Saint-Quentin the line was to reach its apex
before Le Cateau in the attack of October 8th-10th; on the 14th the
Franco-Belgian and British attack north of Lille was to start bringing
the line up to this level; from the 17th to the 25th the southern
British and French armies would again take up the offensive to the
gates of Valenciennes, while the French armies "around the corner"
on the right would have passed over the Saint-Gobain bastion and
straightened out the corner.
The plan of the advances in which the Second Corps took part was
simple. The enemy had none but hastily organized defenses, and if
he were pushed hard enough he would go. So the artillery was to be
moved as far forward as possible to give the necessary protection to
the infantry; the attack would start all along the thirty-mile front
for generous objectives, and could be expected to go fairly well for
two or three days, when stubborn resistance at various points would
make it necessary to halt the advance until supplies were brought up
and the resistance overcome in another general effort. The artillery
declared that this was getting to be too much of an infantry war,
nothing counting except keeping up with their giddy romp across
fields. The infantry might have replied that they were pushing on so
fast in order to keep the Germans from destroying the roads and light
railways which the artillery and transport would be using. Not that
I wish to imply that the infantry found it a giddy romp; there were
always the machine-guns and the front-line artillery batteries, and,
especially on the first day of the attack, a considerable quantity
of "h-vic" shells, as they were called on the British front, from the
large-calibre guns which were protecting the withdrawal of field-guns
and material.
There was no question, however, of the withdrawal. When the 30th
Division, after two days of waiting on the two miles of Corps front
which the Australians had handed over, started forward on October 8th
along the south edge of the Roman Road to Le Cateau, it was able to
cover three miles by noon, taking the fair-sized towns of Brancourt
and Prémont, and a number of solid farmhouses and small copses, on
the way. Enough guns were moved up over virtually undamaged roads
to permit another start at dawn on the 9th; and the end of that day
found the Southerners four miles farther on and in possession of the
important railway center and large town of Busigny, which the enemy had
relinquished practically without a struggle. Another mile was gained
on the 10th, and the division line brought to the Selle river, which
was not much of a river in the eyes of the Americans, but on which
the enemy had obviously intended to call a halt. The railway yards in
front of Le Cateau, in the sector of the Thirteenth British Corps on
the left, gave violent resistance to any further progress on that side;
the rearward movement of enemy field-guns had apparently stopped, to
judge from the quantity of shell-fire and gas which now came over;
and worried intelligence officers were doing their best to decipher
the mystery of prisoners from eleven German divisions who had been
taken on the two-mile front. Incidentally, it should be said that the
Southerners had gathered in 1,900 Germans in three days, which was more
than their share of the total of 12,000 prisoners captured by the three
British armies.
One who knew the dreary waste of the Somme battlefield, or indeed the
level ruins of any part of the old trench line, might well rub his eyes
when he came into this fresh landscape, where the Southerners seemed as
much at home as if they had never seen mountains. One had forgotten,
it seemed as if one had never known, that you could have war in a
country where women and children walked about the streets, and lived in
intact houses, and even went to shop, to school, and to mass. A Corps
officer who had worked with Hoover in Belgium found a familiar task in
distributing food to the four thousand civilians in the sector.
Sterner fighting was to follow from October 17th for the weakened
divisions, which had received no replacements to bring them up from
half strength, and which could therefore, together, take over little
more than a mile of front. Starting from the Selle river south of Le
Cateau, they met a stubborn resistance until the stand made by the
enemy in that town, which had seen a fierce British resistance in
1914 in the retreat from Mons, was overcome by the Thirteenth British
Corps; then our Southerners and New Yorkers, having advanced four miles
in three days, were relieved and sent back to the dreary Somme fields
east of Amiens. Had it been necessary to fight a way into Germany, they
would probably have been called on again for their manly share.
As it was, they were the only American troops, aside from scattered
units, which were not to be gathered into the fold of the main American
forces. That this isolation did not please them is understandable;
but I suspect that it was good for them. There could not be the
exaggeration of their part in the final victory which there might have
been if they had had American food and had seen none but American
activity about them. If officially the British made much of them, they
realized that it was not only for what they had done but in honor of
the country which had sent them forth to fight for the common cause.