The race-horse division in another spearhead action--Regulars and
Marines--A division that had learned coördination--Trying for
Blanc-Mont--One attack that cost nothing--An exhausted division
reinforced by the new Southwestern division--Which keeps up with the
Marines--The 36th learns fast--And pursues the enemy to the Aisne.
Ever the demand from all parts of the Allied line was for American
troops. Their speed in attack had become a recognized factor in
the plans of the unified command, which moved them about with an
inconsiderate rapidity which was hard on shoe-leather and most
uncomfortable. The very sight of the soldiers of our young army moving
into a sector of their line before an action quickened the spirits of
the veterans of the old armies.
If Sir Douglas Haig had two American divisions for storming the
Hindenburg line, then General Gouraud, whose Fourth Army had broken
the trench line for gains west of the Argonne Forest, in conjunction
with our advance between the Forest and the Meuse, must have two
divisions for the next step in the general offensive movement which
was to disengage Rheims, in a drive northward from Somme-Py to the
Aisne. These two included the 2nd, Marines and Regulars, the race-horse
division, which had the longest experience in France of any regular
division except the pioneers of the 1st. Our sore need of its veteran
skill in the Meuse-Argonne had to yield to an urgent request, which
amounted to a command, from higher authority. Naturally, the 2nd would
have preferred being with our own army; but wherever it was it would
fight well. It was to add to its laurels now in the rolling country
of Champagne, where the deep strata of chalk under the light subsoil
formed solid walls for defenses, accrued through four years of digging,
as distinct on the background of the landscape as the white tape on a
tennis court or the base-lines on a baseball diamond. Soldiers in blue
or khaki, after fighting in this region in rainy weather, looked like
men who had just come from work in a flour-mill, where they had been
wrestling with the splashing mill-wheel. It was a custom to rub helmets
with the chalk of parapets for the sake of invisibility.
The action in which the 2nd was again, as on July 18th, to play the
part of the spearhead was to cut the Rheims salient by thrusts on the
sides, much as one would push in the roofless walls of a house on a man
within, which is much more reasonable than trying to break up through
the floor to get at him. The third German offensive of May had all but
encircled Rheims from the west; had the last and unsuccessful offensive
attained its end of a deep advance east of the city, Rheims would
have been far behind the enemy's line. As it was, heroic resistance
had saved the city, at the price of leaving it for four months in a
salient as pronounced and as dangerous as the Ypres salient, which
must be reversed and then broken. The reversal which would put the
enemy in turn into a salient was started west of Rheims, on September
30th, by General Berthelot's Fifth Army; in a three days' advance his
line, pivoting on the city, swung up from an east-west direction to a
northwest-southeast direction, effectively turning the salient inside
out. The line now ran for some twenty miles southeast past the edge
of Rheims, turned east through Champagne for another fifteen miles to
Aubérive, and then, as a result of General Gouraud's advances from
September 26th, turned northeast to the northern end of the Argonne.
A simultaneous attack by Berthelot, on the west face of this flat arc
with a thirty-mile chord, and by Gouraud on the east face, would send
the enemy scurrying back to a maximum depth of twenty-five miles to the
line of the Aisne river, which here runs roughly east and west.
From just north of Somme-Py, in the center of the up-slanting east face
of the salient, the 2nd Division, attached with French divisions to
the Twenty-first Corps, was to strike over chalk ridges and through
woods northwest toward Machault. The attack was first set for October
2nd, but was postponed while the division spent this day in cleaning
German recalcitrants out of a portion of the trench system taken over
from a French division which had captured it. The Corps orders for the
attack were then issued so late that there was not time to have them
translated and written out, as the custom was, for the sake of accuracy
which was considered indispensable to the team-play of units; but they
had to be sent orally to our two brigades.
In the center of the field of attack was the Vipère Wood, which was
known to hold many machine-gun nests. By a converging movement the
Marine brigade was to pass this wood on the left, and the Regular
brigade to pass it on the right in flank, and form line beyond
it,--which was not a mission a general would assign to tyros who had
not yet learned to maintain the _liaison_ of their units in difficult
fighting. In order to go into position, the Regular brigade had a
night march around the rear of the line. Happily the men of the 2nd
Division had had experience of this sort of thing. They had gone in on
the run at Château-Thierry, and again in the crucial drive at Soissons
on July 18th. It had been said that they did things best in a hurry,
which may have led to their being relied on as "hit-and-run"-experts;
nevertheless they had an idea of their own that if they might have
moved into line and looked over the ground a few hours before going
into an attack, instead of charging when they were breathless from
sprinting, they might have done equally well with slightly less nerve
strain.
As the French guides who were to meet the Regular brigade at dark and
show it the way did not appear, which was a common failing with guides,
the brigade had to grope about among shell-craters and communication
trenches to find its jumping-off place, which was still partly occupied
by the enemy. By 5 A.M. only six companies were in position; but by
5.50, the hour for attack, thanks to the owl's eyes and instinct of
direction which seemed to be a part of the equipment of the 2nd, every
company was up in order, ready for the charge. With tanks assisting
against its machine-gun nests, they swept past the Vipère Wood. A loss
of twenty per cent of their infantry did not interfere with their
reaching their two-mile objective on schedule time at 8.30.
The race-horse proclivities of the 2nd, having been developed on no
level speedway but over all the hurdles of modern defense against
all arms of fire, were accentuated by the rivalry of the Regular and
Marine brigades. The Marine was the better brigade of the two. All the
Marines say so. I agree with them. The Regular brigade was also the
better. All the Regulars say so. I agree with them. If the Marines
were up to their objective, the Regulars must be; and if the Regulars
were up the Marines must be, or die in the attempt. No ifs, or buts,
or excuses of any kind except casualties were ever accepted in the
2nd for not advancing. And you must not lose life unskillfully, or
your brigade might be convicted of not being as professional as the
other,--and that would be a disgrace. The 2nd had been fortunate in
its commanders. Major-General Harbord, a Regular, had leaned backward
toward the Marines; and Major-General Lejeune, a Marine officer, who
was now in command, leaned backward toward the Regulars. They were wise
men, occupied with making the 2nd the "best" division in the army.
Despite the trouble it met on the way from cross-fire and machine-gun
nests in the Somme-Py Wood, the Marine brigade was also up on schedule
time at 8.30. The two brigades had not been thinking much of their
flanks; they were concerned in racing each other. While either
considered the other incapable of its own stride, neither thought that
any brigade in the world except itself could keep pace with the other.
They were not surprised to find that the French were not up on their
flanks; and the fact that the French were not, interfered with the
success of another advance planned for 11 A.M., unless the 2nd were
to drive into a salient which increasing machine-gun fire indicated as
an unprofessional effort,--suicide not being professional with the 2nd
unless one brigade should make it a custom which the other would have
to follow.
Though the French on the right might hold up their end in a further
attack before noon, there was no chance that the French on the left
could: with the Marine front line more than two miles in advance, the
French were still occupied in trying to conquer the sinuous warrens
of the Essen trench, which was acting an assassin's part in the rear
of the Marines. Indeed, the Germans were counter-attacking, further
intensifying the seriousness of the situation. The reserve regiment of
Marines had other work to do than assisting the front-line regiment in
a further advance. While its men, in helping the French division, were
breaching dugouts, using their bayonets, throwing and dodging bombs
as they rushed around traverses and met counter-rushes in an infernal
hand-to-hand wrestle, and sending out chalk-plastered Germans in torn
uniforms to join the groups of prisoners and wounded coming from the
front, Marshal Foch sent a telegram of congratulation to the Corps,
with word to press the advance.
At 4 P.M., when the reserve regiment of the Marines had finished its
task in applying in savage hand-to-hand fighting, characteristic of
the old days before open warfare became the rule, all its training in
trench warfare, an order was given to obey that of the Marshal; but
it hardly concerned the front regiment of Marines, which was without
the support of the reserve regiment, while the retarded French on the
flank, still fighting hard for their gains, were well to the rear. The
reserve regiment of the Regulars, passing through the front regiment,
made three-quarters of a mile, where it met machine-gun fire from both
flanks. At 7.30, the French on the left having made progress, the
reserve regiment of Marines, passing through the front regiment, made
another hard-won gain against flanking fire, and in the darkness had to
repulse two counter-attacks.
It had been a great day even for the 2nd Division, with four miles
of advance and a toll of two thousand prisoners; a day of systematic
and masterly fighting which had added to its list of honors that of
forcing the Germans forever out of the deep maze of the Champagne
trenches. The trucks and the rolling kitchens as well as the artillery,
which had never been far behind the infantry, were up that night;
and the ambulances, in keeping with the race-horse spirit, running
close up to the front, had made a record in their expeditious care of
the wounded, who had been gathered with a promptness, in the fields
under fire, worthy of a show drill at maneuvers. For if we had any
division which knew how, and had reasons of long service for knowing
how, to coördinate all its branches in action, it was the division
which had learned its lessons in the taking of Belleau Wood, Vaux, and
Vauxcastille.
It need not be said that the program was to continue the advance the
next day; but the Germans had been preparing overnight to impede its
fulfillment with something of the same ferocity they had shown in the
Essen trench. As usual in these days, after the Allied attack had spent
its initial momentum in breaking them out of their fortifications, the
Germans reacted by applying open warfare tactics on a second line of
resistance. While the French were striving to come up on both flanks,
the whole line was being deluged with shells and machine-gun fire.
On the afternoon of the first day, the Marines by their customarily
swift tactics had taken a portion of Blanc-Mont--the adjective being
used before the name, contrary to modern French fashion--a hill which
ran back in an irregular shelf covered by patches of sparse woods.
Well-made trenches, dugouts, and communicating trenches so easily
dug and kept up in the firm chalk, were evidence of the German's
appreciation of the hill's importance in the defense of their positions
east of Rheims.
A congeries of machine-gun nests on its west slope, which was still
untaken, by its enfilade fire from our sector had stopped the advance
of the French on the left. Without waiting for them, and with a view
to clearing the way for them, the Marines on the afternoon of the 4th,
supported by their artillery, attacked this position. They tested out
its strength well enough, in face of withering blasts, to learn that
they must devise another plan of assault. This was a wise precaution,
as the event was to prove. They spent the night in tireless and
canny preparations for the next day's effort. Early in the morning a
battalion started over the ridge. They did not want for shields; and
their confidence in the accuracy of their veteran artillery led them to
keep close behind the smothering fire of the barrage with a speed and
agility in the systematic advance of their units which made a record
even for the race-horse division. The German machine-gunners, as they
saw that hurricane of bursting shells approaching, rushed to cover,
which they hugged in desperate and prayerful intimacy as it passed over
them. They rose, to find that a human whirlwind in its train was upon
them. Without a single casualty the battalion had taken 213 prisoners
and 75 machine-guns. The thing seemed miraculous; but there were the
machine-guns, and there were the startled Germans who had thrown
up their hands. When I went over the ground, still littered with
equipment and scattered cartridge cases, that commanded every avenue
of approach, I had an example which might well be quoted in all future
text-books of how speed and skill may get "the jump" on an enemy. Here
was certainly something, not to tell the Marines, but for the Marines
to tell those Regulars, who, holding a large section of the line, could
respond that though they had no theatrical exhibits to please the
gallery gods they were having an affair of their own which might make
any Marine thankful for his health's sake that he was climbing hills.
On the right of the Regular brigade the French had not yet taken
Médéah farm, which was a perfect haven for machine-guns bearing on
the Regulars' flank. The Germans, in this section, were fighting
hard enough to atone for the easy surrender of their comrades on
Blanc-Mont in their defense of the ridges in front of the village of
Saint-Etienne-à-Arnes, the next landmark in the path of the 2nd's
progress. The Marines found a thorn in the flesh in a strong point near
Blanc-Mont, whose defenders refused to be stampeded. Enemy artillery
fire was furious throughout the 5th. On the morning of the 6th, at
6.30, under another hurricane barrage, a regiment of Regulars and
one of Marines side by side set out to take the last ridge before
Saint-Etienne. This meant that something had to break. It was one of
the occasions when professional spirit did not consider the folly of
suicide, as the rival units charged side by side. They took the ridge
with a loss that was estimated at thirty per cent, and dug in. The
French on the left had forged ahead. Meanwhile, with the French on
the right valiantly struggling against Médéah farm, and our Regulars
checked, our line was at a sharp angle.
It had been a grueling day for a division which notably never spared
itself in its high-strung intensity; and four or five days seem to
have been the limit of endurance for soldiers who were continuously
fighting. Relief for the 2nd was due. On the night of the 6th the
36th Division, National Guard of Texas and Oklahoma, under command
of Major-General William R. Smith, which was lately from home and
had never been under fire before, began arriving. Its fresh and
inexperienced battalions were now mixed with the tired battalions of
the 2nd to learn the art of war at first hand from old masters, who
included not only their comrades of the Regulars and Marines but the
Germans in a very ugly mood. After a day of reorganizing and digging,
while the French were in the outskirts of Saint-Etienne, the Marines on
the left and a regiment of the 36th on the right charged Saint-Etienne
on the morning of the 8th. The French were reported to have patrols
in the town, but a portion of it at least seemed to be very much in
the hands of the enemy. At least his machine-gunners, in the course of
their supple infiltrations, had established themselves in the adjoining
cemetery, which gave them a free sweep of fire across the ground of
our advance, which was open fields without any more cover than a house
floor. For half a kilometer the men of the 36th kept their line even
with the veterans. The Marines entered the town while the men of the
36th were still in the open.
It was the Southwesterners' first taste of machine-gun nests. They had
no standards of previous experience for judgment as to the density of
fire which would warrant a halt. Their orders were to keep on going;
and they kept on. In front of them, as they crossed the open, was a
wooded ravine. Our guns could not bombard it with any appreciable
effect upon its nests, which were sending a tornado of bullets into
the 36th's charge in addition to the shower of shells from the German
guns. The Southwesterners who were meeting both bullets and shells
for the first time did not fall back before this deadly combination
of artillery and machine-gun fire, which would have dismayed hardened
veterans at their best, until they had kept faith with Alamo traditions
by losing a third of their numbers.
The 2nd's engineers now came up for a fighting part in protecting our
hard-pressed flanks. We withdrew our front to the town, which we held.
Meanwhile, though the French had taken Médéah farm, the division's
right was still well back of the line of Saint-Etienne. All day of the
9th was spent in re-forming our position after the see-sawing conflict
of the 8th; but the Germans, far from showing any signs of withdrawal,
made a counter-attack on the French beyond Médéah farm and on our
Regulars, who repulsed it with their rifle fire.
The race-horse division, which had been hurried from the mud of
the Saint-Mihiel sector without time to rest, had been doing a
steeple-chase for nine days. Physical exhaustion claimed it for its
own. As it withdrew, with casualties of 4,771 and the capture of 1,963
prisoners from eight German divisions, the Regulars and Marines and the
French of the Twenty-first Corps had the satisfaction of knowing that
German guns had fired their last shot at the cathedral and the ruins of
the city of Rheims.
The Texans and Oklahomans who now took up the battle were assigned the
tired artillery of the 2nd, as they had no guns of their own. They
lacked horses, transport, and nearly everything a division should have,
except rifles, which were in the hands of men who knew how to use them.
On the morning of the 10th their reconnaissance in force showed that
the enemy artillery and machine-gun fire was as powerful as ever. It
was hardly in the books that an inexperienced division should begin
a movement in the dark; but the French being ready to advance on the
left, the 36th began an attack that evening.
The Germans, already preparing for retreat, still had large forces
of field artillery in range. Evidently they were determined to take
revenge on these new troops by expending in the rapid fire of a
prolonged bombardment all they could of their ammunition, instead of
leaving it behind to be captured. The accurate and moving sheet of
death which was laid down upon the advancing infantry of the 36th
was the kind from which men will withdraw in the sheer instinct of
self-preservation. Indeed, a panic would have been excusable. But the
lean tall Texans and Oklahomans had not come all the way from home
to be in a battle at last with any idea of celebrating the occasion,
or gratifying the Germans, by a retreat, because of a display of
fireworks. Among the leaping flashes in the dark, with voices unheard
and men revealed for an instant in shadowy outline, with officers who
had the direction of units being killed and wounded, with gaps being
torn in the line, there was bound to be some disorganization. But
there was no faltering. The Texans and Oklahomans are not by nature
panicky. They accepted stoically this screaming tumult of destruction.
Particularly it was not the nature of the Indians among them to be
distracted by a "heap big noise." Officers agreed that there was no
problem except that of keeping units together. All the men wanted was
to "get back" at the German, straight into his barrage. Pressing on as
they closed up their gaps, the charging groups with the bit in their
teeth took the village of Machault.
The enemy resistance had suddenly broken. After this final spasm of
splenetic reprisal, all the German guns were moving fast toward the
Aisne. The Texans and Oklahomans did not waste much time over the
machine-gunners who attempted a rearguard action, but "hiked" ahead
for fifteen miles in a single day, as a reminder to the 2nd, which
had considered them "tenderfeet," that in the matter of long-distance
racing they yielded the honor to nobody. Bridges destroyed, machine-gun
nests established on the north of the river, the German served notice
that he was to make another stand. The Texans and Oklahomans enjoyed
themselves in swimming across on scouting trips and in a period of
active sniping gratifying to ranger inheritance. The last day they
were in line they completed their brief service by cleaning up Forest
farm, east of Attigny, in an uninterrupted rush which gave them the
opportunity to make the most of their qualities, and in ejecting the
enemy from a bend in the river which he still held. Their casualties
were 2,651, and they had taken 813 prisoners and an engineer depot
worth ten millions of dollars, which had supplied that section of the
German line for four years. It was their only battle, but they had
fought it in a way to make the most of it, in attest to the enemy of
what might be expected of such a new division, if, fully equipped, it
should take to the war-path again.