The "Liberty" Division trying to clear the Forest on its own--The
battalion which refused to be lost--The "scalloping" succeeds--Out
of the Forest--The 82nd across the Aire--The 77th takes Saint-Juvin,
though not according to plan--And finally gets across the Aire to
Grandpré.
Its line the breadth of the Argonne Forest, no division could have
waited more impatiently than the 77th or "Liberty" Division of New York
City upon the driving of the wedge on the eastern wall of the Aire and
the clearing of the Aire trough, which, to serve its purpose, must be
accompanied in turn by the progress of the "scalloping" movement of
the French on their left. The "Liberty" men's apprehension lest they
might not make the most of any advance on their flanks amounted to an
obsession. If they halted, they found that the enemy had time to cut
openings in the foliage to give his machine-guns fields of fire, string
chicken-wire between trunks of trees, build elements of trenches on the
opposite slopes of gullies, and play other tricks in the tangles of
underbrush. The best way to keep the German out of mischief was to keep
him on the move.
On the 29th and 30th of September the "Liberty" men had made good
advances, as we know. In the early days of October, while there was a
lull in the offensive on other parts of our front, they were having a
very busy time. As the "scalloping" movement against the escarpments
at either edge of the Forest was delayed, they would try to do without
this elbowing assistance on their flanks. As for being "expended," this
was out of consideration while half of the Forest was yet to be taken.
No other division had any rights in the Forest. It was theirs, with
the understanding that they prove the nine points of the law by taking
possession of their estate. They must keep on fighting until they saw
the light of the Grandpré gap at the end of its dark reaches. Such a
state of mind is conducive to fighting morale. There was a personal
property interest at stake.
On the morning of October 2nd, they made a general attack of their
own. On the right in the Naza Wood they ran into a system of detached
trenches and machine-gun positions which were invisible until the
bullets began to sing and hand-grenades began to fly, while their
exposed flank left no doubt that the Germans were still in force on
the Taille l'Abbé in front of the 28th. The objective of the left was
the Apremont-Binarville road. Not only were the "Libertys" a "pushful"
division, but there was never any lack of pushing by their commander.
The battalion on the left was told to keep on going until it reached
the road, no matter what happened on its flanks. It obeyed orders.
After it arrived, it found that there were no Americans on one flank or
French on the other. Only Germans. No messages came through from the
brigade; messengers sent back disappeared in the woods to the rear, and
fell into German hands.
This was the incident of the "Lost Battalion." Technically, the
battalion was not lost. It knew where it was on the map. Practically,
it was isolated from the rest of the division--surrounded, besieged.
Whether they are described as lost or not, the men of the battalion
will not soon forget their experience. When they went into action,
they had two days' rations. As most of them had eaten one day's on
the morning of the 3rd, they had the other day's to last them--they
knew not how long. They did not have to expend much energy, except on
patrols and outposts. The thing was to avoid drawing fire and wasting
their ammunition. If they rose from their fox-holes, where they were
dug in among the roots of trees on the northern slope of the ravine
below the road, a spray of machine-gun fire, or the burst of a shell,
convinced them that sedentary habits are best when you are fasting.
At the bottom of the ravine was a swamp which protected them on that
side, while the crest of the ridge above the road protected them on the
other. Their pleasantest diversion was watching shells which missed
their aim, harmlessly throwing up fountains of mud in the swamp.
Some of the shells were supposed to have been fired by the French,
who were said to be under the impression that the battalion must
have already surrendered. The Germans held the view that it ought to
surrender, according to rules. When they sent in a messenger with the
suggestion, supported by the gratuitous information that the battalion
was hopelessly surrounded, it was received not even politely, let alone
sympathetically, by the reserve major in command, who had gone from his
law office to a training camp.
The major shaved every morning as usual. He never let the empty feeling
in his stomach communicate itself to his head; he was as smiling and
confident when he went among his men as if their situation were a
part of the routine of war. He had disposed them skillfully; they had
learned by experience where to dig in to escape fire; and they were
amazingly secure, though they were surrounded. It became bad form to
be hungry. When they put out panels to inform our aviators of their
location, the panels only drew fire, and seem to have failed in their
object as lamentably as the dropping of rations from American planes,
which probably the Germans ate.
Of course, the division was making efforts to reach the battalion,
being stopped by machine-gun fire. The 77th was fast held during those
five days. Meanwhile the 1st had driven its wedge along the wall of
the Aire, and on the morning of the 7th the 82nd had begun its attacks
in the valley, while the French were ready to move up on the western
edge of the Forest. These successes, and the disposition of the 77th to
take advantage of them, started the retirement of the Germans in the
Forest. On the night of the 7th the survivors of the lost battalion
rose from their fox-holes as the figures of Americans came through
the darkness to their relief. Their first thought was food. Then they
found that they had become heroes. There had been a compelling appeal
to the imagination in the thought of this band of Metropolitans from
city streets, stoically holding their ground when surrounded by German
veterans in a forest in France. They did a fine thing, but no finer
than many other battalions whose deeds attracted less public attention.
Now, with the forest edges being "scalloped" according to the original
plan, the 77th might carry out, after two weeks of travail, its mission
of "mopping up" as the pressure on its flanks was relieved. On the
8th it conquered the Naza positions, its right coming up even with the
Taille l'Abbé. The next day, while the 1st was making its second great
attack, and the 82nd was again attacking the Cornay heights, while the
French were rapidly advancing on the left, the 77th swung ahead for a
mile and a half. The Forest was now to be the 77th's for the marching.
The retiring enemy offered only rearguard action from machine-guns
and concentrations of shell-fire on roads and open spaces, which were
mosquito bites after the kind of opposition which they had been facing.
All they had to do was to keep up their supplies and ammunition,--and
that was a good deal over the miserable roads,--and pick their way
through the thickets and in and out among the tree-trunks, across
ravines, on to the gap of Grandpré at the Forest's end.
By this time they were at home in woodland maneuvers, or on the 10th
they would not have made nearly four miles in formation, combing every
yard of the Argonne's breadth as they advanced. That march showed a
reserve of vitality in the city men worthy of the day when the 82nd in
the valley had overrun the Cornay heights, and the 1st and 32nd had
reached the Kriemhilde Stellung. Patrols, encountering no resistance,
came out of the Forest to see the promised land. Another stride, and
the division would be in the open, facing the gap.
On the northern bank of the Aire, about half a mile beyond its sharp
turn toward Grandpré, is the village of Saint-Juvin. The river
bottoms here are broad and swampy between the slopes which draw
together to form the walls of the gap. From the fronts of the 1st and
32nd Divisions the fragmentary trench system of the Kriemhilde ran
northeasterly to a point just opposite the bend. Beyond this to the
west the Germans depended upon the westward course of the river and
upon the naturally strong positions on its northern side, culminating
in the heights above Grandpré. The 77th's sector was extended slightly
to the east to include Saint-Juvin, in order that the 82nd, which had
taken over some of the front of the 1st, might undertake a movement
against the Kriemhilde on the 1st's flank east of the river bend,
passing Saint-Juvin on the east.
For four days the 82nd had been throwing its men into charges from the
river bottom against heights, and wrestling against counter-attacks.
Though it had conquered the trough of its northern course, the Aire
river was still the nightmare of its evolutions. The left regiment
remained facing the westward bend. The center regiment was to cross
the northern course of the river, south of the bend, at Fléville, and
join the right regiment, which was already across. This it did under
heavy fire on the morning of the 11th, and, deploying, swung west in
protecting the flank of the right regiment from the heights north of
Saint-Juvin.
The 82nd had already received enough shocks to be called a "stonewall"
division, and had given enough to be called a shock division. It was
not surprising, then, though wonderful, that the left regiment made
two miles in face of the heights; or that the right regiment made a
half mile more and by 8 A.M. had reached the Kriemhilde Stellung. Their
exhaustion, instead of staying the All-Americas, appeared to give them
a delirium of valor. When front lines were riddled by casualties, the
second line "leap-frogged," and charged on into the machine-gun fire.
One battalion had all its commissioned officers killed or so badly
wounded that they could not move; another all but one. Non-commissioned
officers continued the attack; but there was no hope at present of
taking the Kriemhilde, with its fresh waiting machine-gunners in their
interlocking positions supported by artillery, as the 32nd on the
82nd's left had found. The part of it in front of the 82nd was not to
be taken in the general attack of October 14th--not until the final
drive of November 1st. Exposed in a salient under cross-fire, the
survivors of the right regiment were ordered to withdraw even with
those of the center regiment, where, still under flanking fire in face
of the heights, they held their ground.
Meanwhile the left regiment was to cross the river westward of the
bend, in order to assail the heights north and northeast of Saint-Juvin
which commanded the village, and to protect the flanks of the other
two regiments. The bridge near Saint-Juvin was down. A soldier going
into attack under the weight of his pack and 220 rounds of ammunition
cannot swim a river. Patrols searched up and down in the darkness
in vain for a ford. When the engineers, who were called in, started
building a footbridge, they were greeted by bursts of machine-gun fire
which suddenly ceased. Instantly the infantry rushed on to the bridge,
which was completed at dawn, the machine-gun fire was renewed with
great accuracy and increased volume. Dead and wounded fell into the
water; survivors leaped into the water and sprang up the opposite bank,
facing the unseen enemy. Parts of two companies got across, and boldly
started out to envelop Saint-Juvin. After losses of fifty per cent from
annihilating machine-gun fire, the little band had to retreat across
the river; but they had found that there was a ford near the ruins of
the bridge.
Though worn down until its battalions hardly averaged the size of full
companies, the left regiment was across by the ford early the next
day, and charging for the heights northeast of Saint-Juvin, in the
first stages of an action which was to carry on through the general
attack of the 14th. In order to rid the flank of machine-gun fire, an
officer led his men into the edge of Saint-Juvin itself, and took nests
and prisoners. The right of the attack reached the Ravine of Stones,
joining up with the center regiment in front of the Kriemhilde. There,
in a wicked pocket, they stove off counter-attacks, and fought in and
out with the Germans in a hide-and-seek in the treacherous folds of the
slope.
In the general attack of the 14th the 82nd was once more called upon
to show all the speed of a shock division fresh from rest in billets.
Supporting the 42nd on its right, which began its three days of
terrific storming of the Chatillon Ridge, where the Kriemhilde bends
southward in a loop, the 82nd, with its infantry effectives less than
half of normal strength, again attacked the Kriemhilde. It actually got
through the Kriemhilde, but again was in a salient, and after further
heavy casualties had to withdraw. On the left it had swept over Hill
182, the commanding height to the rear of Saint-Juvin, in coöperation
with the attack of the 77th which I shall describe. As the All-American
division, the 82nd was prolific in personal exploits. The sergeant who
brought in 129 prisoners, and became more famous than the division
commander, had a worthy comrade in the western "bronco buster," who,
finding himself in face of a group of Germans on Hill 282, walked up
to them, and, suddenly drawing his revolver, "took care" of the group.
Then seeing a skirmish line of two hundred Germans forming, he picked
up a dead German's rifle and shot the officer leading the charge,
before he rushed back and brought up his machine-gun company to repulse
the attack with the loss of half its numbers.
Of course, the action of the 82nd was influential in the fall of
Saint-Juvin, which the 77th, facing the westward bend of the river
along the entire front, was to take by a neat maneuver, as its part in
pressing the left flank of the Germans in the general attack of the
14th. It was concluded that the German, being a creature of habit, had
probably arranged his barrage to protect Saint-Juvin from attack from
the south. This was all the more likely against the heady Americans,
who had a way in their exasperating energy of taking the bit in the
teeth and driving straight through to an objective. With one battalion
making a threat in front, the other, crossing the river--which it
managed to do most adroitly--from the east, would encounter little
opposition. The event turned out entirely according to anticipation,
except that the battalion which was to make the threat in front got
out of hand, though in a manner which was bound to give a thrill to
their commander even in his technical reproof.
After fighting two weeks in the Forest, the men of this battalion were
feeling their oats, now that they were in the open. They did not see
why the battalion on the right should have all the honor and excitement
of taking Saint-Juvin, while they were making faces at it on the side
lines. Their eagerness, according to the divisional report, turned the
threat into an attack, with the result that they suffered from the
barrage which the Germans laid down. At all events, they lost eight
officers killed and twenty wounded in leading the men, who suffered in
proportion, while the flanking battalion, with slight losses, entered
the town on the afternoon of the 14th. The garrison tried to escape,
but another little detail of prevision in the 77th's plan interfered.
Accordingly the retreating Germans ran into our curtain of machine-gun
fire which we laid down northwest of the town, and were captured.
After Chevières, a village on the south bank of the river, was also
entered, the next nut to crack, the town of Grandpré on the other side
of the river, was bound to be a bad one. It was a large town for this
region, with a thousand inhabitants, resting against the bluff of the
tongue of ridge which shoots out from the Bourgogne wood, which is the
name for the southern end of the Boult Forest. The character of this
bluff and of the "citadel" will be of more concern when we come to the
thankless and bitter experience of the 78th Division in their assaults.
It is sufficient to say now that the bluffs and the houses of the town
command the river bank and the narrow opening of the Aire valley to the
southernmost projecting edge of the Argonne Forest. While the German
on the defensive had machine-guns to spare for use in this Gibraltar,
he would apply the tactics in which he was expert by making an attack
on the town pay a heavy price, at small cost to himself. On the nights
of the 10th and the 11th, some patrols crossed the river and entered
Grandpré, to meet with a reception as hot as it was enlightening. It
was evident that Grandpré was not to be taken by a few daring men. We
must cross in sufficient force to hold, and then only when at least
a portion of the machine-gun nests in the town had been silenced.
However, the patrols had found a ford.
From their heights on the north bank of the river the Germans were
covering all the approaches to the town with artillery, trench-mortar,
and machine-gun fire clear to the edge of the Argonne. Where we
appeared in obvious avenues of approach, they brought down heavy
barrages. The "Libertys" could not make a move in the open without
being seen; but they kept on infiltrating forward with the rare
canniness they had learned in fighting machine-gun nests through
underbrush. By the morning of the 15th they were ready for the final
attack. All day their artillery was pounding the town and approaches.
All day they were maneuvering and advancing as they held the enemy's
attention, until at dusk a detachment rushed the ford and entered
the town. Other detachments built boat-bridges, and swam the river
in the dark to add their numbers in making sure that we held what we
had gained. All night plunging fire from the bluffs continued, and
raking fire from the houses swept the streets, while the western and
northern edges of the town were being organized to turn over to the
78th Division.
Both river banks were ours; we had the gap, if not the citadel or the
bluffs or all the buildings in the town, on the same day, it happened,
that the British were at the gates of Lille. For nearly three weeks the
"Libertys" had been in action. For all but five days of that time, they
had been in the damp woods out of sight of the sun. In its taking of
the Forest and of Grandpré and Saint-Juvin, and its subsequent advance
to the Meuse after it came into line for a second time, the 77th had
4,832 casualties, and captured 720 prisoners, 3,200 rifles, and pieces
of heavy and 16 of light artillery. Even now, when they were to have a
holiday, they were not to leave the Forest which their valor had won,
but to settle down in the comfortable rest camps in its recesses--much
better than the roofless and torn walls of villages--which the enemy
had built in the days when he thought that he had permanently occupied
this part of France, and when no Prussian of the Landwehr or a shock
division ever dreamed of being dispossessed by draft men of New York
City, who at that time had never had a rifle in their hands.