Hopeless stabbing at the flanks--The Lightning Division at
Grandpré--Vertical warfare--Scaling walls to the citadel--Stumbling
toward Loges Wood--The All-Americas still doing their part--A bowl
east of the Meuse--Approached through Death Valley--The Blue and
Greys crawling toward the rim--The rough end of the stick for the
Yankee Division--Belleau Wood a key point--General Edwards and the
staff--Desperate grappling.
The enemy must make sure of holding our left in front of Grandpré gap,
or we would swing toward the whale-back from that direction; he must
not lose the heights east of the Meuse, or we would cut off his line of
retreat across the river. This naturally called for violent pressure on
his flanks in order to draw forces from his center, where we were going
through the Kriemhilde Stellung. During the third week of October there
was just as intense fighting for the "citadel" of Grandpré and for
the heights east of the Meuse as for Chatillon and Dame Marie ridges,
and for the Loges and the Ormont woods as for the Bantheville, Clairs
Chênes, Rappes, and Pultière woods.
We shall first tell the story of our left, where the 78th Division not
only drew the arrows to its breast but charged them in their flight,
after, as we have seen in Chapter XVIII, the 77th, on the 14th and
15th, had accompanied the general attack in fighting to master the
northern bank of the Aire. Sacrifice is the only word for the 78th's
action. Without expecting that the division could gain ground, the Army
command set it the thankless task of repeated attacks to consume the
enemy's strength, which it carried out with superb ardor and fortitude.
The 78th, originally drawn from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and parts
of New York State, took its name of the "Lightning" Division from an
obvious local source. Under Major-General James H. McRae, a skillful
and modest commander, both in its training at the British front and
in its occupation of the Limey sector north of Toul, where it made
remarkably successful raids, it had shown that although it was not
one of the best advertised of National Army divisions it was one of
the most promising. Where other new divisions had had their first
experience in the intoxicating drive for three and four miles in the
first stage of the battle, the 78th was to have no open field for its
bolts of lightning, but must use them as hammer-heads against granite,
when it took over from the 77th after the latter had made its lodgment
in Grandpré.
Though we had the Aire trough, we were not yet through with the
westward bend of the Aire river, where the bottoms are broad and
swampy. A wedge-like escarpment projects down to the town of Grandpré
from the heights of the Bourgogne Wood. This escarpment afforded
machine-guns cover for firing east and west and into the town.
Eastward, high ground sloping up from the river bottoms continues
to the Loges Wood, which averages about three-quarters of a mile
in breadth and depth, covering an eminence. In this sector, about
two miles in length, the 78th on the river bottom faced commanding
positions at every point on its front. To the Germans the Bourgogne
Wood was a bastion against the right flank of the French Fourth Army in
its movement toward Sedan, a barrier between our flank and the French,
and the flanking outpost of the Loges Wood, as I have indicated, in
holding us back from swinging northward toward Buzancy and cutting into
the flank of the whale-back.
Conditions in the relief of the 77th in the intense darkness on the
night of the 15th were very mixed. Saint-Juvin on the north side of the
river, to the right or east, was securely held. In Chevières on the
south side of the river the Lightnings of the 78th report that they
still had mopping up to do before they crossed. East of Grandpré the
Aire has two beds, which made the crossing of the river bottom under
shell- and machine-gun fire the more trying. In Grandpré the 78th found
itself in possession of only a section of the town near the river bank
on the morning of the 16th, and with only small detachments of troops
across the river,--which it must cross in force under plunging fire
before it reached the foot of the slopes.
It simplifies the action which followed to divide it into two parts:
the left brigade, operating against the Grandpré positions, and the
right against the Loges Wood positions. I shall describe that of
Grandpré first. A principal street of the town runs up the hill against
the western slopes of the escarpment. Machine-gunners and snipers could
go and come from the heights into the back doors of the houses, and
pass upstairs to the front windows, whence they could sweep the street
with their fire. The division knew the escarpment as the "citadel";
for this tongue of high ground on its eastward side was surmounted by
the ruins of ancient buildings, with old stone walls which must be
scaled, while the Saint-Juvin road, which runs past it, is on the edge
of a swamp. The only way to attack the citadel from the town, which it
absolutely commanded, was over a narrow causeway where a squad of men
could not properly be deployed. My Lord's castle of olden times had
an ideal position for holding the villagers on the river bank in meek
subjection.
A vertical warfare ensued in Grandpré, the Germans firing downward from
upper-story windows and the citadel, and the Americans firing upward.
It took two days of house-to-house fighting, in and out of doorways,
hugging the house walls, and taking house by house, before this town
of a thousand inhabitants was cleared of Germans, whose tenacity in
holding the town itself, when they had the citadel at their backs, was
indicative enough of the store they set by their right flank. On the
19th, the town having been mopped up, and sufficient troops across the
fords for the purpose, an attack was made on the citadel and upon the
western slopes of the escarpment. Beyond the citadel a park extends for
a distance of a quarter of a mile. Beyond that Talma Hill, and Hills
204 and 180, and Bellejoyeuse farm formed a rampart of heights at the
edge of the wood. The 78th, wrestling with machine-guns in this small
area, was to use enough tactical resource for a great battle.
At 2 A.M. the Lightnings began the assault. The hour was chosen because
darkness favored the plan, which must be that of scaling the walls
of an ancient fortress. Two separate parties made the attempt on
the walls. The enemy machine-guns from the Bourgogne Wood instantly
concentrated on one party, a target despite the darkness, while a
shower of bombs was thrown down upon their heads. The other party
reached the top, only to be met by irresistible fire from machine-guns,
which the artillery had not been able, for a good reason, to silence.
The guns were dropped into deep dugouts during the bombardment, and
hoisted by cables to turn on the advancing infantry, immediately the
bombardment was over. This care in preparation was another indication
of the value the Germans placed on the citadel and the hills at
the edge of the wood. Under scourging machine-gun fire, the attack
everywhere had to fall back, after severe casualties, except that the
right regiment of this brigade took the Loges farm, between the Loges
Wood and the Bourgogne Wood, which it managed to hold by skillful
digging under cross-fire.
For the next four days there were the usual patrols, while the 78th's
artillery hammered the citadel and the hills. On the 23rd a small
party, led by a lieutenant and three or four men, under a powerful
rolling barrage finally scaled the walls of the citadel and rushed on
to Bellejoyeuse farm, where they had a ferocious struggle with the
garrison while waiting for the second wave of the attack to come to
their support; but the second wave, having been stopped by a curtain of
machine-gun and artillery fire, had to fall back to the northern edge
of the park. The gallantry of that little band had not been in vain, as
was that of the men of the 5th who went through the Rappes Wood. They
had the citadel. There had been success, too, at another vital point.
Talma Hill had been taken. The Lightnings on the left were having their
reward for their arduous sticking to it in a warfare which was no
longer vertical, though still at a great angle of disadvantage.
Their jumping-off places having been gained, progress became more rapid
in a series of thrusts. On the 25th, one party entered the Bourgogne
Wood from Talma Hill. There was a gap of half a mile between them
and the troops in the park. Both they and the men in the park held
on against the worst the enemy's machine-guns and artillery could
do, while it took two days' persistent fighting by other units to
conquer machine-gun nests and snipers, to close the gap. On the 29th
Bellejoyeuse farm was taken; Hill 180 beyond it was taken; Hill 204 had
already been stormed with the aid of the French. The left brigade of
the 78th had finished the task.
The traveler who goes to the Meuse-Argonne battlefield, as he follows
the road from Grandpré on his way up the valley of the sinuous Aire,
would do well to take a long and thoughtful look at the sweep of open
ground between the river and the green mass of the Loges Wood rising
from its edge. Let him imagine the right brigade of the 78th crossing
the river on the 16th, and plunging through mud knee-deep, as in the
freshness of the youth of its men and its division spirit, without
artillery preparation, and without time to organize an attack properly,
answering the call of the Army to divert German strength from the
fronts of the divisions in the center, it went across that exposed zone
straight in face of the blaze from the machine-guns in the woods and
the associated heights. Though the gray valley floor was sprinkled with
the figures of the dead and wounded, the charge reached the edge of the
wood; it had gained the foot of the stairs.
Loges Wood was not only high ground. Its character and situation as
well peculiarly suited it for defense. The wood was thick enough to
prevent the artillery making a barrage to protect the infantry, and
sparse enough to give hidden machine-guns in the thickets a free
play. It was estimated that there were machine-guns at intervals of
forty yards in the German first line of defense, not to mention the
interlocking system in the depths of the woods. The ground itself
was a series of ravines, resembling nothing so much as a corrugated
iron-roof. Each formed a natural avenue for machine-gun fire. The
machine-gunners in the woods were supported by plentiful artillery in
the rear to concentrate upon the open spaces before the wood and on
the irregular open slopes east and west, which were linked together in
singular adaptability for the enemy's purpose. He was not, in this
instance, to depend upon small groups of machine-gunners to fight to
the death. Knowing from past experience that these would be overcome by
our hammering tactics, he was prepared to keep on putting in reserves
for counter-attacks to answer our attacks. Therefore Loges Wood was to
become a cockpit.
The problem of how to attack it was baffling. Of course, encircling
was the obvious method; but this meant a longer exposure of the men
in the open, while as they swung in toward the wood they would have
cross-fire from the adjoining positions into their backs. The troops
that had reached the edge of the wood drove halfway through on the
morning of the 17th, but were withdrawn to make an attack from the
west. The reserves sent to hold the line they had gained had a rough
and tumble with a German counter-attack, and had to yield a hundred
yards. The attack from the west under the flanking fire of Hill 180
managed to dig in and hold on the west side of the wood, level with the
line in the wood. This was progress; but it was progress at a terrible
cost. The position was too murderous, however thoroughly the men dug,
to be maintained. The Lightnings must either go forward or back, or be
massacred in their fox-holes.
On the morning of the 18th the support battalions passed through the
front line, and, rushing and outflanking machine-gun nests, in a
fight that became a scramble of units, each clearing its way as fast
as it could, numbers of our men broke through to the northern edge
of the wood. All the while the Germans, instead of holding fast to
their positions, were acting on the offensive at every opportunity,
infiltrating down the ravines, as they tried to creep around isolated
parties, and again charging them. No commander could direct his
troops under such conditions. It was a fight between individuals and
groups acting as their own generals, of German veterans, with four
years' experience in this kind of fighting, against the resourceful
Lightnings. His artillery gassing the southern edge of the wood to
keep back our reserves, the enemy kept forcing in more reserves in his
counter-attacks, which gained weight and system until they forced our
survivors, by ghastly losses, to retire to their starting point.
Thus far the Germans were still holding the escarpment and citadel
and the hills at the edge of the Bourgogne Wood, in line with the
southern edge of the Loges Wood, and well south of its northern edge,
while the Loges farm, between Grandpré and the Loges Wood, was an
outpost of enfilade fire at close quarters. We know how in its night
attack just before dawn, though it failed to take the citadel, the
left brigade took and held Loges farm. The right brigade was to move
at the same time on the wood. Though our artillery had tried to smash
the nests, its shells had been unsuccessful among the trees, and when
a frontal advance was attempted, it met heavier machine-gun fire than
hitherto. At the same time we attacked the wood from another direction,
trying for the eastern edge. The Germans had the wood encircled with
machine-guns, however. Our charge, as it turned in its swinging
movement, met their fire in face, and received machine-gun fire in
flank and rear from the village and high ground around the village of
Champigneulle. Driven back to its starting point, it closed up its gaps
and charged again under this cross-fire of machine-guns and a deluge of
gas and high-explosive shells which shattered it.
The brigade had used up all its reserves; the division had none
available; Corps could send none. By this time our divisions in the
center had gained the Kriemhilde, and were consolidating their gains,
and, therefore, events on other parts of the front had their influence
in a Corps order to withdraw to the Grandpré-Saint-Juvin road. When the
exhausted men in the gas-saturated Loges Wood were told that they were
to retreat, they complained. They might be staggering with fatigue,
and half-suffocated from wearing their gas masks, but they had been
fighting in hot blood at close quarters for the wood. They did not want
to yield to their adversary. They were critical of the command which
compelled them to retrace their steps in the darkness, which was done
in good order, across the levels spattered with the blood of their
comrades who had breasted the machine-gun fire.
Every bullet and shell which the men of either brigade of the 78th
had received was one less fired at the heroic 42nd in its struggle
for the mastery of the treacherous slopes and the wire and trenches
of the stronghold of the Chatillon ridge. Their ferocious attacks,
made in the hope of gains which the Army knew were impossible, had
served another purpose in convincing the Germans that our final drive
would concentrate on this flank instead of on the Barricourt ridge to
the east of the whale-back. In this final drive the 78th, after hard
fighting, was to enjoy its retribution; for it took Loges Wood, and
afterward knew the joy of stretching its legs in rapid pursuit for
twelve miles. Its casualties were 5,234 for all of its operations.
While we are following the careers of the divisions before the attack
of November 1st, we must not forget that the 82nd was still in line on
the right of the 78th. It had reached the Kriemhilde on October 11th,
and then in the general attack of the 14th penetrated the Kriemhilde,
where it bends west from the Chatillon ridge, and it had taken Hill 182
and the other heights to the north and northeast which commanded the
defenses of Saint-Juvin. As the result of these actions of determined
initiative and heroic sacrifice, one regiment had 12 officers and 332
men fit for duty; another regimental commander reported that eighty per
cent of his survivors were unfit for duty, and that the other twenty
per cent ought to be on the sick list. However, they could be depended
upon until they swooned. The effective rifle strength of the division
was 4,300, or less than a third of the normal total for a division. Yet
it attacked in support of the 78th's effort against Loges Wood. Then it
settled down to holding its lines and patrolling.
Provident General Duncan saved his exhausted men from a part of the
strain by skillful front-line reliefs on alternate nights. As the
All-Americas might not go into rest as a division, he established a
rest camp of his own, where exhausted, slightly gassed, wounded, and
sick men had clean clothing, baths, and plenty of hot food, which
rehabilitated them into "effectives"; and this enabled him to keep the
82nd in line until the night of October 31st, when the exhaustion of
its memorable service in the Aire trough was to rob it of the thrill of
pursuing the enemy to the Meuse, which the now rested 77th and 80th,
taking its place, were to know. It had taken 900 prisoners, and paid
for its success with 6,764 casualties.
So much for the left flank. We have bidden farewell to the Aire valley,
whose trough and gap were now behind us; but we were not to be through
with the Meuse until the day of the armistice. I approach no part
of our fighting in France with a greater sense of incapability than
the battle east of the Meuse--a separate battle, so influential in
the fortunes of the main battle, which has never received its share
of credit. Here every feature of the main battle was repeated in a
confined arena which recalled to me the assaults on Port Arthur. I have
already described the early operations of the 29th and 33rd in driving
the wedge, which we hoped would relieve our Third Corps from long-range
flanking fire to which it could not respond; and how they had been
checked in the quixotic mission of an immediate conquest of the Borne
de Cornouiller, or Hill 378.
As we know, the Borne, about three miles from the Meuse, was the
supreme height of the eastern valley wall. Southward in the direction
of the attack it sloped down into the steep-walled ravine of the Vaux
de Mille Mais, whose eastern end gave into a series of ridges rising to
the summit of Hill 370, protecting the Grande Montagne Wood in front as
it protected 378 in flank by the Grande Montagne Wood and the famous
Molleville farm. Thence an encircling ridge turning southward toward
the Verdun forts formed the rim of a bowl. Had the German Army, as
planned, withdrawn to the Meuse line, these hills would have been to
their defense what the hills of Verdun were to the French defense in
the battle of 1916.
Once the heights were taken, except for a series of detached hills, the
way was open to the plain of the Woëvre and to Germany. Back of them
and on their reverse slopes the Germans had built barracks for their
men, and assembled their material for the great Verdun offensive. On
the crests and the near slopes they had built concrete pill-boxes at
critical points, and arranged a system of defense in the Verdun days,
when they had learned by experience the tactical value of every square
rod of ground. The approach from the bottom of the bowl--which is a
rough description--to the rim was covered by many smaller interlocking
and wooded hills and ridges cut by ravines. There was no ravine, it
seemed, no part of this pit which was not visible to observers from
some one of the heights. The operation of the French Corps, under which
our divisions operated, must be fan-shaped, sweeping up the walls of
the bowl, as a wedge at any given point would have meant annihilation.
The approach to the bowl for our troops was along a road through a
valley, which was as warranted in receiving its name as any Death
Valley in the war. On the French side of the old trench line this ran
through an area of villages in utter ruin from the bombardments of the
Verdun battle, then through Samogneux and more ruins, woods, and fields
of shell-craters into the valley of the bowl itself.
For five or six miles, then, stretched an area of desolation without
any billeting places where troops could rest, except a few rat-infested
and odorous, moist dugouts and cellars, roofed by the débris of
villages. The young soldier who was going under fire for the first
time, as he marched forward past that grayish, mottled, hideous
landscape, might see the physical results of war upon earth, trees,
and houses. When he came into Death Valley, he was to know its effects
upon men. For two or three miles the road was always under shell-fire.
By day visible to the enemy's observers, by night his gunners could be
sure that guns registered upon it, if they fired into the darkness,
would find a target on its congested reaches. It was inadequate to
the traffic of the divisions engaged. Troops marching into battle
must run its deadly gamut before they could deploy. It was the neck
of the fan-shaped funnel of the battle-line. Transport was halted
by shell-torn cars and motor-trucks and dead horses until they were
removed, and by fresh craters from large calibers until they were
refilled. There was no rest for the engineers; all the branches which
were not ordinarily in the front line knew what it was to be under fire.
The Illinois men of the 33rd, on the left, after they had crossed the
river and reached the slopes of the Borne de Cornouiller on the 9th,
could move no farther on their front until the rim of the bowl was
taken on their right. They stood off counter-attacks, and continued
nagging the enemy until their relief on October 21st, forty-three
days after they had gone into line on the left bank of the Meuse,
and twenty-six days since, in the attack of September 26th, they had
taken Forges Wood in their brilliant swinging maneuver which had been
followed by their skillful bridging and crossing of the river. Now the
division was to go to the muddy and active Saint-Mihiel sector for a
"rest," relieving the 79th, which had had its "rest" and was to return
for a part in the last stages of the battle. Even the much traveled,
enduring, industrious, and self-reliant infantry of the 33rd had not
had such a varied experience as the artillery brigade, which I may
mention as a further illustration of how our units were moved here
and there. It had been attached in turn to the 89th Division, the 1st
Division, the Ninth French Corps, the 91st Division, the 32nd Division,
the Army artillery, and finally to the 89th Division for the drive of
November 1st, without ever once having served with its own division.
While the 33rd had been maintaining its ground, under orders to attempt
no advance, in the east of the Meuse battle, the Blue and Grey 29th,
its regiments intermixed at times with French regiments, had been
forcing the action among the ravines and woods of the Molleville farm
region against the same kind of offensive tactics that the Germans
were using in the Loges Wood, and for an equally important object in
relation to the plan of our operations as a whole. All parts of its
front line and its support positions were being continually gassed. The
frequent shifting of its units in relation to the French, in an effort
to find some system of making progress up the walls of the rim, were
additional vexation in trying to keep organization in hand over such
difficult ground, under such persistent and varied fire against the
veteran Prussians and Wurtembergers, who were quick to make the most of
every opening offered them.
A branch of the Death Valley road, the Crépion road, runs up the
eastern slope of the bowl. The point where it passes over the rim
was most vital. From a rounded ridge on both sides of the road for a
stretch between woods you look down upon the village of Crépion in
the foreground and receding slopes in the distance. This point gained
might flank the Etraye Wood positions, the Grande Montagne, and
eventually Hill 378, the Borne de Cornouiller itself.
Commanding the southern side of the road and approaches to the summit
was Ormont Wood, which rose to the crest of a very high hill, 360, only
eighteen feet lower than the Borne, which was defended by pill-boxes.
On the other side of the road were the Reine and Chênes woods. Beyond
these was the Belleu Wood, on the same side of the road. Belleu and
Ormont were key points. Belleu was to have as bad as name as Belleau
Wood in the Château-Thierry operations.
On October 12th the Blues and Greys of the 29th, coöperating with the
French, undertook in an encircling movement, which was complex in its
detail, to take the woods on both sides of the roads. This aroused all
the spleen of the German artillery. It drew violent counter-attacks
from the German infantry, continued in two days of in and out fighting.
Successive charges reached the edges of Ormont. There under a tempest
of artillery fire they looked up the slope through the thickets toward
the summit of 360, where the machine-guns were emitting too murderous
a plunging fire to permit them either to advance or to hold all the
ground they had gained. On the north side of the road Reine Wood and
a part of Chênes Wood were taken against counter-attacks. This was
encouraging. Though it did not seem to make the capture of Ormont
easier, it opened the way for an attack on the 15th toward Molleville
farm on the left and Grande Montagne on the right. Much ground was
gained on the left, and some on the right, where the fire from the
Etraye ridge stopped the advance.
We were slowly working our way toward the rim, using each bit of woods
or ridge which we won as a lever for winning another. All the while we
were an interior line, attacking up a gallery against an exterior line
whose ends could interlock their cross-fire. On the 16th, by dint of
the sheer pluck of units dodging artillery concentrations and zones of
machine-gun fire, and wearing down machine-gun nests, further progress
was made on the Grande Montagne. The 29th, always under shell-fire and
gas, had been attacking and resisting counter-attacks for eight days.
It was not yet "expended" by any means; but it was glad to find that
another American division was coming into the arena to relieve some of
its own as well as French elements.
Had we any division whose veterans might feel, as the result of their
experience, that they were familiar with all kinds of warfare, it was
the 26th, the "Yankee" Division, National Guard of New England. As I
have mentioned in my first book, the Yankees had learned not to expect
a sinecure. Assignments which meant victory with theatrical ease never
came to them. If four divisions were to draw lots for four places in
line, they took it for granted that the worst would go to the 26th,
which had become expert in gripping the rough end of a stick. The
second division to arrive in France, the 26th was put into trenches,
after a short period of training, in the ugly Chemin des Dames region,
away from the American sector. From there it was sent direct into
the mire of the Toul sector under the guns of Mont Sec, where it
resisted the powerful thrust of German shock troops at Seicheprey. The
length of time it remained in the Toul sector, and the length of the
line it held there, might well have turned it into a division of mud
wallowers; but it was able, on the contrary, to make some offensive
thrusts of its own, and only longed for the time when it might have
something like decent ground for an attack. From Toul it went to
relieve the Marines and Regulars of the 2nd in the violent Pas-Fini
sector on the Château-Thierry road, where, after more than two weeks
in line, instead of having the period of rest and reorganization given
to divisions before a big attack, it drove through to Epieds in the
counter-offensive. Then at Saint-Mihiel, where it was with the French
on the western side of the salient, by rapid marching it swung across
to Vigneulles to meet the veteran 1st in closing the salient.
If there were any replacements in the 26th who felt apprehension as
they came up Death Valley, the older Yankees, in the name of all the
mud, shells, gas, machine-gun fire, and hardships they had endured,
soon gave them the heart of veteran comradeship by their example.
Saint-Mihiel had been revenge for them. It had set a sharper edge on
their spirits. Artillery and all the other units having long served
together, the Yankees were to be "expended" as other veteran divisions
had been for a great occasion in the battle--an occasion in keeping
with their tough experience. It was not for them to have the straight
problem of charging a trench system, but to maneuver in and out of
these ravines and woods, facing this way and that against appalling
difficulties. Maine forests, Green Mountains, White Mountains, little
Rhode Island, and Massachusetts and Connecticut had traditions in their
history in the background of the fresh traditions the Yankees had won
in France. With the Blue and Greys already in, and the 79th coming,
the east of the Meuse battle became somewhat of a family affair of the
original colonies. The French had great respect for the 26th. Much was
expected of it, and it was to do much.
It went to the attack immediately on the morning of the 23rd. On
the left it coöperated with the 29th, which, feeling rejuvenated in
the presence of Americans on its flank, concentrated its remaining
effectives for an ambitious effort which carried the Americans through
to the Etraye ridge, and even to the important Pylone, or observatory,
before the advance elements were stopped. This was the high watermark
for the Blue and Grey, splendidly won. Without trying to follow the
detail of the maneuver, the 26th, as soon as it was known that its
Etraye ridge attack was succeeding, put in a reserve battalion and
rushed for the Belleu, that wood on the east of the Crépion road, just
short of the vital point on the rim that I have mentioned. In the
impetuosity of new troops in their first battle, and the spryness and
wisdom of veterans, this battalion swept over the machine-guns and
through the wood, which the 29th had already entered, to meet a savage
reception.
This was shaking the whole plan of German defense. It was an insulting
slap in the face to German tactics. Just over the crest beyond Belleu,
as I have already mentioned, the slope ran down to the plain of the
Woëvre. The German had no shell-fire to spare now for the other bank
of the Meuse. Batteries whose fire had been the curse of the Third
Corps swung round in concentration on that exposed patch of woods.
The machine-gunners in the pill-boxes and log-covered redoubts were
reinforced by others. It was a wonderful thing to have gone through
Belleu Wood; but in order to have held, the Yankees would have needed
something less permeable to bullets and shell-fragments, and subject to
gas, than a "stern and rock-bound coast" determination. The battalion
had to withdraw from the wood during the night, which was illumined by
a fury of bursting shells.
The Yankees were now fairly warmed to their task. On the 24th they
fought all day for Belleu Wood and Hill 360 in the Ormont Wood. A
cleverly arranged smoke-screen protected their first entry into Belleu,
when they advanced five hundred yards. The Germans knew well how to
fight in that wood. They could draw back from their advanced line of
fox-holes to their strong shell-proof emplacements, and call for an
artillery barrage to blast our charge. Then they could gather for a
counter-attack. Four times that day they rushed the Yankees under
the support of their concentrations of artillery, which prevented
our reinforcements coming up, and the fourth time they drove out our
survivors. Attack again! New England would not accept the rebuff from
Prussia. At 2.30 the next morning the Yankees charged the wood in
darkness and rain, and they went through it, too.
There was no use of our artillery trying to crush the concrete
pill-boxes defending the Ormont height on the other side of the road.
They were invulnerable to shells, for the Yankees were facing, in most
exposed down-hill positions, the latest fashion in mobile tactics in
command of well-tested defenses on high ground. Trench-mortar fire in
addition to machine-gun fire and shells shattered the two battalions
which tried by all the suppleness of veteran tactics to reach Hill 360
on the 23rd. The next morning, after the usual night of shell-fire and
suffering from cold on the wet ground, another attack did reach the
hill, and fought in and out around it and in the woods, but could not
hold it against the plunging fire of unassailable pill-boxes.
On October 24th a new commander, Brigadier-General Frank E. Bamford,
who was trained in the school of the 1st, came to the 26th. Some
people thought that our army staff was not in very intimate touch with
the situation in the bowl. Preoccupied with the main battle, it was
harassed by the flanking fire from the heights east of the Meuse. It
wanted possession of these heights before starting the next general
attack. A veteran division had been sent to take them. Evidently harder
driving was required from Division Headquarters of the 26th.
"Go through!" Individuals did not count; success alone counted.
Officers had been relieved right and left for failing to succeed. "Go
through!" Other heights had been taken: why not these? Perhaps someone
had overlooked the fact that while the German army retained anything
like cohesion or any dependable troops, its command would not yield
this Gibraltar in covering its retreat toward Germany after it was out
of Sedan and Mézières, and withdrawn from the whale-back; and this was
all the more reason for our desiring Gibraltar. The relief of other
divisional commanders created nothing approaching the stir made by that
of Major-General Clarence R. Edwards.
Well-known before the war as Chief of the Insular Bureau, possessing
characteristics that were bound to attract attention, he had had
command of the 26th from its organization. He went about much among his
men. They all knew his tall figure. They and the line officers were
bitter over losing him. If there had been a vote of the soldiers of the
division on the question of recalling him, it would have been almost
unanimous in his favor. The staff seemed to think that he was too kind
to officers of a type which other division commanders relieved; that
the success of the division had been due to the fine material in the
ranks, which needed better direction; and finally that his long service
had broken him down to a point where he had lost his grip on his
organization. In answer, his friends said that he had made the division
out of the nucleus of many National Guard units and replacements. He
had given it its original spirit of corps, and kept up its spirits
under handicaps which would have demoralized many divisions.
In the first two days the 26th had suffered 2,000 casualties. On the
27th they were sent into one of those ambitious attacks which look well
on paper. To the right of Hill 360, which of course was on the rim, was
a valley, and beyond that on higher ground the Moirey Wood, continuing
the rim. Relying on veteran experience to carry out this daring
maneuver, they were to swing around Hill 360, and into the valley,
and take Moirey Wood. Such encircling movements had been carried out
before; but their success had been dependent upon the relative strength
of the positions to be encircled and of the forces occupying them, not
to mention the volume of all kinds of fire on the flanks of the attack.
This attack invited the reception that it met no less than a man who
jumps into a rattlesnake's nest. The German army might be staggering
to defeat, but east of the Meuse the German units were not yet in the
mood to turn their backs to the heights, and retire to the plain. With
a wonderful accuracy and system they poured the intensest concentration
of artillery fire that even the bowl had known. All the guns on all
the heights which could swing around upon any part of the bowl seemed
to have only one target for shells of all calibers, mixed with gas,
which is so hard on men who are clambering over slippery ground in
violent physical effort. Units could not see one another from the smoke
of the bursts, tearing gaps in the line, which was at the same time
ripped by machine-gun fire from the pill-boxes. Every step forward
meant more machine-gun fire in flank, and more of it in rear, without
any diminution of the volume in front. It was not in human flesh to "go
through"; and there was nothing more to be said on the subject.
At the same time, on the other side of the Crépion road the 26th had
sought to drive through Belleu Wood and over the ridge. If both attacks
had succeeded, and could have held the ground gained, we might have
won the battle; but we could not have held it under the artillery
concentrations which the Germans were able to deliver, unless each
man had a shell-proof pill-box of the weight of a trench helmet--an
invention which would have ended the war before we ceased to be neutral.
We were not in full possession of Belleu Wood yet. Conditions there
were indeed "mixed." Yankees and Germans were dug in in fox-holes in
the northern edges, at points where either could watch the other. Back
of the Germans were their trenches on the crest, and their interlocking
pill-boxes; at their command always the infernal concentrations of
artillery fire which could be brought down on a few minutes' notice.
They still had the higher ground; they could slip back for rest into
their bomb-proofs and camps in the valley. Many of our fox-holes were
full of icy cold water, where the men had to lie--and did lie; for to
show their heads was to receive a blast of fire. But the Yankees, all
the while nagging the enemy by sniping and shell-fire, held on here and
across the road under the same conditions. It was out of the question
for warm food to reach the outposts, who received their rations by
tossing biscuits from one fox-hole to another.
On their military maps the French gave Belleau Wood, which the Marines
had taken in the Château-Thierry campaign, the name of the Marine Wood.
Belleu Wood or Ormont Wood might either be called the "Yankee" Wood,
though the 29th might ask that one be called the "Blue and Grey" Wood,
or Grande Montagne the "Blue and Grey" mountain. After having repulsed
counter-attacks on previous days, depleted as it was in numbers, the
29th supported the attack of the 26th through Belleu Wood in an attack
through Wavrille Wood, where it met irresistible fire of the same kind
as the 26th had against Hill 360 and Moirey Wood.
The 29th's three weeks' service in the hell's torment of the bowl was
now over. In its place came the 79th, National Army, which was also
from both sides of Mason and Dixon's line, north and south mingling
in its ranks. We know the 79th of old for its rush down the Montfaucon
valley and over the slopes in the first stage of the battle. The
isolation of units in slippery ravines and woods, and the depth of
the shelled area, required two nights for relief. The 29th's 5,636
casualties were balanced on the bloody ledger of its record by 2,300
prisoners. This was a remarkable showing; testimony of harvest won by
bold reactions against counter-attacks, of charges which made a combing
sweep in their sturdy rushes, even when they had to yield some of the
ground won. Man to man the Blue and Greys had given the enemy better
than he sent; but not in other respects. They could not answer his
artillery shell for shell, or even one shell to three.
My glimpses of the battle east of the Meuse among the Verdun hills
recalled the days of the Verdun battle, while the French were stalling,
with powerful artillery support, on the muddy crests and slopes and
in the slippery ravines. When they re-took Douaumont and Vaux, they
had a cloud of shell-bursts rolling in front of the charge. We were
going relatively naked to the charge. This had been our fortune in most
of our attacks in the Meuse-Argonne, as our part in driving in our
man-power to hasten the end of the war. There was something pitiful
about our divisional artillery in the bowl, trying to answer the
smashing fire of the outnumbering guns with their long-range fire from
the heights. The artillery of the 29th for three weeks kept its shifts
going night and day, while the veteran artillerists of the 26th had
problems in arranging patterns of barrages to cover the infiltrating
attacks which put new wrinkles in their experience.
Of the 29th's wounded, thirty-five per cent were gassed. The whole
area of the bowl was continually gassed. Sickness was inevitable from
lack of drinking water, warm food, and proper care. While the Germans
could slip back to billets on the reverse slopes, and to shell-proof
shelters, let it be repeated that our men had to remain all the time
under the nerve-racking shell-fire in the open, and under soaking rains
that made every hole they dug on the lower levels a well. Some of the
woods which they occupied were shelled until they could see from end to
end through the remaining limbless poles of the trunks. The desolation
of Delville and Trônes woods in the Somme battle were reproduced; but
the 26th and the 29th were there to attack, and they kept on attacking.
The fire they drew was a mighty factor in the success of our thrusts
in the main battle against the whale-back. It should be enough for any
soldier to say that he served east of the Meuse. The 79th and the 26th,
which remained in to the death, were to sweep over the rim into the
plain, as we shall see.