The bull-dog 4th--Enfilade shell-fire from a gallery of
heights--Driving and holding a salient--A second try--As far as it
could reasonably go--Reversing Falkenhayn's offensive--The 33rd
builds bridges--To cross and join the Blue and Grey Division in a
surprise attack--A bowl of hills--The Borne de Cornouiller holds out.
On the 80th's left during the advance of October 4th-11th was the
bull-dog 4th Division, under its bull-dog commander, Major-General John
L. Hines, which had been continuously in line since the first day of
the battle. Hines had been trained in the school of the pioneer 1st.
When he was with the 1st, he considered that it was the "best" of the
Regular divisions. Since he had been in command of the 4th, he had
changed his mind as the result of maturer judgment and more experience
in the field. The 4th was now the "best" of the Regular divisions. The
question of whether or not it was the "best" of all our divisions,
including National Guard and National Army, so enlarges the field of
rivalry that it must be left to the decision of divisional historians.
No one on the Army staff considered relieving the 4th before the
attack of October 4th. If any man of the division thought of relief,
he knew that the bull-dogs might not expect it when they were in a
position where the Army could not afford to allow them to loosen their
grip on the enemy. What incoming division could familiarize itself on
short notice with that treacherous front in the trough of the Meuse
river, which the 4th knew by experience?
Its right rested in the woods on the west bank of the Meuse, while the
German front line was four miles back on the east bank on its flank.
Enemy machine-guns had hiding-places on the banks not only of the
river but of the Meuse Canal, which follows the course of the river.
Beyond the river bottoms, on the east bank, were many patches of woods
on the first slopes, which brought field artillery within range of
the 4th's front, while the heavy artillery in the ravines and woods
around the Borne de Cornouiller, or Hill 378, was also in range. To
this quite gratuitous bombardment, entirely out of our own battle zone,
from the eastern gallery upon the pit of the amphitheater of the 4th's
action, we had no means of replying. It must be accepted with the same
philosophy as an earthquake or any other violence of nature. In front
of the 4th's right flank was the town of Brieulles in the river bend,
which held batteries of field guns, its surrounding swamps defended by
machine-gun nests giving it the character of a fortress with a moat. To
the left of it was the Fays Wood, facing more open ground, and back of
that the frontal gallery of heights holding still more artillery, while
on their left was the gallery of the whale-back.
Campaigners who have been for a long time sleeping on doors and
the hard ground, when they try a bed again find, as I found on one
occasion, that it is so unnaturally soft that they lie down on
the floor before they can sleep. The men of the 4th had become so
accustomed to enfilade shell-fire that they would hardly have felt at
home without it. If they had been receiving shells from the rear as
well as from front and flank, I think that General Hines would only
have set his jaw the harder, and his bull-dogs would have said: "We
thought we'd be hearing from you. Now we know the worst. But you can't
make us let go." When they took a piece of woods from the Germans, it
was immediately gassed. Some of them thought little more of putting
on their gas masks than a baseball player of putting on his mitt.
Already a veteran division when they came into line, they had taken
an excoriating course in practical warfare which made their previous
experience comparatively that of a grammar school. There could be
nothing new in store for them in the attack on October 4th; they could
be under none of the illusions of fresh troops in their first plunge
into the cauldron.
Army ambition chose to make them another wedge--we were falling into
the habit of wedges as the only means to progress--which was to take
the Fays Wood; then the Forest Wood (Bois de Forêt), by crossing open
ground under the enfilade of Brieulles and all the guns on the other
side of the Meuse. This may have seemed a reasonable mission for them,
as they were already so hardened to flanking fire. Indeed the flank of
this division was exposed in its drive down the Meuse valley in much
the same way as the 1st's on the Aire wall, with the difference that
its right carried down the slopes falling toward the river in plain
view of the heights on the other side.
The 4th could be trusted to do not only its valorous but its
professional best. In view of the galleries of guns overlooking the
sector, it seems superfluous to say that it had not enough artillery
support. The bull-dogs had given up calling for artillery assistance.
They had been under superior artillery fire so long that they took it
for granted that they would have to attack under support of artillery
inferior to the enemy's when they drove their wedge into tiers of
machine-gun nests; but they had in their favor their amazing capacity
for judging where shells were going to hit and taking cover before
they burst, for slipping out from under barrages without losing their
heads, and thus keeping their formations, and for filtering in between
concentrations. It was amazing how many German shells were required to
make a casualty in the 4th; otherwise there would not have been enough
men of the division left for a charge on the morning of October 4th,
when their waves went forward with that suppleness of adaptability
which is the difference between drill-ground and veteran precision.
Their line of advance in the open plowed by shells, they carried all
the machine-gun nests in the Fays Wood, put the wood behind them, and
reached the Cunel-Brieulles road. So they had driven home their wedge,
a very sharp-pointed one. Their left flank was exposed to the Ogons
Wood, which the 80th could not reach in its repeated charges, and to
the Cunel Wood beyond, which the 3rd had not taken, and to the guns of
the whale-back. On their immediate front they faced the machine-gun
fire from the western portion of the Peut de Faux Wood on their left,
and on their right from a series of trenches on a ridge which supported
the Kriemhilde, while the increasing volume of fire on both flanks
emphasized the German intention to permit no rash American flying
column to slip down the river valley in flank of the whale-back. Thus
the advance was in the narrow angle of a murderously sharp salient on
bad ground. This could not be deepened into the jaws of hell; it could
not be retained except at a futile sacrifice. The bull-dogs could dodge
shells from across the Meuse, but they could not dodge a hose play of
machine-gun bullets coming from both flanks. If they managed protection
in one direction, they could not manage it from the other. Skillfully
making a virtue of necessity, they withdrew in the night to the line of
the Ville-aux-Bois farm, where they were still in a salient, but one
which their craft in taking cover and their tenacity could hold, and
did hold against three determined counter-attacks under strong barrages
against the Fays Wood. On the 9th the tactical plan required that they
mark time until the 80th had reached a given point, as the 80th in turn
waited on the advance of the 3rd. The day was overcast; it was already
dusk at 5.40 P.M., when word was given for the 4th to charge as the
start of three days' fighting more bitter than the division had yet
known.
Draw a line east and west through the 4th's front, and it would now
have passed to the north of the Borne de Cornouiller, whose guns
were throwing their shells into the right rear of the charge. Their
fire was joined by that from all the other galleries, while the
machine-guns from Brieulles swept a field of targets revealed by the
light of bursting shells. Barrages of gas shells were laid across the
path of the charge and into the woods ahead. This was particularly
trying in the gathering darkness, over ground where landmarks could
not be distinguished. The bull-dog did not take hold this time.
There was nothing to grip except the murderous flashes. To go on was
only to court a fearful casualty list and inevitable confusion and
disorganization in the darkness, which could not be readily repaired.
The troops were recalled, while the German gunners continued to shell
the field of their advance, thinking that they were still moving
forward. The next morning, they started early in order to have a
full day before them. In face of the same kind of deluge of gas and
shells, and trench-mortar in addition to machine-gun fire, and under
the support of their own barrage, they made one bite of the tongue of
Martinvaux Wood with its trench line on the right. They passed through
the eastern portion of the Peut de Faux Wood, where the undergrowth was
dense and there was no protecting men with a barrage. Advance elements
charged across the ravine into the larger Forêt Wood; but it was
hopeless to try to consolidate in the midst of gas and machine-gun fire
from the depth of the wood. By this time the line was past Brieulles,
whose guns and machine-guns were of course stabbing the flank at close
quarters.
Brieulles, considering the cost of taking it, was not so important
to immediate Army purpose as thrusting the wedge into the flank of
the whale-back. So Brieulles, which was not to be ours until we won
the whale-back three weeks later, had to be borne; and it was the way
of the 4th to bear such thrusts in the ribs without flinching, as
it prepared for another attack the next day under the plunging fire
from the galleries. Beginning again at 7 A.M., when it had finished
its day's work it was through the gassed Forêt Wood, and had sent its
patrols up on Hill 299 beyond. This was the high-water mark of its
arduous and glorious part in the battle. It had gone as far as anything
but tactical madness would permit, until the heights of the whale-back
and east of the Meuse could be broken. Until October 19th, it held its
gains under continual gassing and cross artillery fire.
Twenty-three days in the welter of the Meuse slopes, it had been able
to remain all that time in gassed woods and ravines in cold autumn
rains, owing to its character that made every ounce of energy answer
a resolute will to well-directed ends; for this bull-dog also had
something of the nature of the opossum and the panther. It knew how to
spring. The depth of the division's advance was eight miles, and the
marvel of this was that every yard since the first day had been gained
in frontal attack against machine-gun nests protected by superior
artillery fire. It had taken 2,731 prisoners and 44 guns, some of them
of large caliber, with a loss of 6,000 officers and men killed and
wounded. A proud division the 4th, with the right to be proud, though
it had no parades in its honor, as its personnel came from all parts of
the country, when it returned home.
During the latter days of its service, it began to realize that our own
artillery fire was increasing. This seemed almost too good to be true,
and of course, as the men remarked, it came after the 4th's offensive
work was over. The fact was that our army was receiving more guns. It
was also noticed that there was less flanking artillery fire. This was
due not only to our attacks on the Romagne positions, which absorbed
more and more of the attention of the German gunners of the whale-back,
but also to the driving of still another wedge, this time on the east
side of the Meuse--the wedge which at one stage of the battle the 1st
was intended to drive before that on the Aire wall became more vital.
[Illustration: MAP NO. 9
DIVISIONS EAST OF THE MEUSE.]
The farther we went, the more bitterly we realized the murderous
handicap of a force advancing on exposed slopes on one bank of a river,
with its flank at right angles to the other bank held by the enemy far
back of its reserves. After the attack of October 4th on the right went
forward naked to this terrible flanking fire, the French Seventeenth
Corps, in support of the forthcoming attack of the 9th, including two
American divisions, the 29th and the 33rd, under its command, was to
make a drive from the old trench system at Samogneux--the start line
of the German Verdun offensive of 1916, and opposite the line from
which our army had started on September 26th--down the east bank of the
Meuse. The French engaged at many points on the Allied front were short
of troops; but despite all the calls from other points the high command
had finally fixed its eye on the Borne de Cornouiller.
Our Illinois men of the 33rd Division had been holding our side of the
river bank, dug in in face of the other bank and the German flank, with
only divisional artillery to answer the long-range artillery from the
heights. Having won attention for its brilliant swinging movement which
brought its front to the river bank on the first day of the battle,
the 33rd was now to undertake a far more difficult, and a spectacular
and daring, maneuver. Every veteran from Cæsar's day on the Rhine
to Grant's and Lee's on the Potomac knows what it means to force a
crossing of an unfordable stream under fire. In this instance it must
be done under frowning heights, in the days when machine-gun bullets
carry three thousand yards, and shells, according to the caliber of the
gun, from three to seven times as far. There were to be two bridges;
one at Brabant, 120 feet long, and one at Consenvoye, 150 feet long.
In building their own exclusive road over the Mort Homme, which
enabled the rolling kitchens to bring up hot meals to the infantry,
the Illinois engineers had shown their capacity for "rustling," which
they now applied in gathering material for their new task. In broad
daylight, in full view of the enemy's guns which forced them to wear
their gas masks, they brought their boards and timbers to the river
bank and did their building. Shells were falling on their labors at
Consenvoye at the rate of ninety an hour; but that did not interrupt
their labors. Men fell, but others kept on the job. Punctuality was a
strong point with the Illinois men. The bridges must be up on time, and
they were.
The time of crossing depended upon the movement of our 29th Division,
coming up on the east bank as the flank of the advance of two French
divisions. At 9 A. M. the 29th passed the word, and the regiment of
the 33rd which had been assembled in the Forges Wood rushed for the
bridges. Night would have been a more favorable time for crossing,
perhaps; but that was not on the cards. All the divisional artillery
was pounding the opposite bank as a shield, while the French artillery
was also busy, and the advance of the infantry on the other bank was
drawing fire. Thoroughly drilled for their part, the Illinois men lost
no time in the crossing, which was effected with slight casualties.
Now under command of the Seventeenth Corps, joining up with the flank
of the 29th, it worked its way for a mile and a half up the river
bank until it dug in at night on the edge of the Chaume Wood after a
faultless day's work.
In the operations east of the Meuse now begun, I shall describe only
the actions of our own divisions. The 29th Division, under command
of Major-General Charles G. Morton, had taken the name of the "Blue
and Grey." Many of its Guardsmen were grandsons of veterans from New
Jersey, Delaware, and Virginia. After nearly two months in the quiet
trench sector at Belfort, it had been marched on the night of the 8th
past the ruins of villages in the Verdun battle area for its initiation
into two weeks of fighting, which showed that one side of the trough of
the Meuse had no preference over the other in the resistance which the
enemy had to offer.
A system of hills extending from the Verdun forts to the Borne de
Cornouiller formed the walls of a bowl, which the French Corps in a
fan-shaped movement was to ascend. Their slopes were wooded and cut by
ravines commanding the bottom of the bowl itself, which was irregular,
but everywhere in view of the heights. The 29th was to drive straight
toward the Borne de Cornouiller. Upon its success on the first day, may
it be repeated, depended largely the success of the 33rd's crossing
of the Meuse. The farther away from the river, the stronger were the
enemy's positions. Advancing without any artillery preparation, the
29th took the enemy completely by surprise. It was twenty minutes
before he brought down his artillery fire. This gave the Blue and
Greys a good start. After hot work at close quarters they captured
Malbrouck Hill, which was a strong point in the German support trench
system of Verdun days. Then passing across the open under increasing
German gun-fire, they overran all the machine-gun nests in the dense
Consenvoye Wood. There they were halted by orders to allow the division
on their right to come up. Combat groups which had reached Molleville
farm and the Grande Montagne Wood were called in, and the position
consolidated during the night. The enemy by this time was fully awake
to the plan of the Seventeenth Corps. He unloosed that torrent of
shells and gas from the heights of the rim of the bowl which was not to
cease for three weeks.
Its right exposed after an advance of three miles on the 8th, digging
in under the bombardment and repulsing counter-attacks, the 29th was
not to attempt to advance on the 9th; but the 33rd had orders to go to
Sivry on the banks of the Meuse, whose possession was most important.
By noon it had fought its way through Chaume Wood, and by dark its
patrols, infiltrating around machine-gun nests and under machine-gun
fire from the slopes were in Sivry. All that night it was under gas and
shell-fire. The next day it must make sure of Sivry. The 29th was to
attack on its right in support. Despite the artillery concentrations on
the whole movement laboring in the bowl, we were still to try to break
through to the Borne de Cornouiller. This was a vain ambition, which
the Illinois men and the Blue and Greys none the less valorously tried
to achieve.
The 33rd had brought more reserves across the river, which had to
pass through powerful artillery barrages to relieve the decimated
battalions at the front. They actually reached the ridge east of
Sivry, right under the guns of that towering Hill 378 of the Borne de
Cornouiller. On their right the 29th again and again charged for the
possession of the Plat-Chêne ravine, which was a corridor swept with
plunging fire from right and left and in front, and saturated with
gas. Casualties were enormous, in keeping with the courage of this new
division inspired by the heritage of both Blue and Grey. It was futile
to persist in the slaughter of such brave and willing men; futile for
the 33rd to try to hold the exposed salient of the Sivry ridge; but
every shell they received was one spared our men on the slopes of the
west bank of the Meuse. Austrian troops which had been holding the line
against them were replaced by veteran Prussians and Wurtemburgers, who
knew how to make the most of their positions, and who answered attacks
with counter-attacks. As the left flank which must not yield the river
bank, the 33rd intrenched in the Dans les Vaux valley through the
Chaume Wood. We were within a mile of the Borne, but what a horrible
mile to traverse. The first stage of that detached battle east of the
Meuse, so important in its relation to the main battle, was over. Its
second stage I shall describe later.