RAIDING THE NEW FOE
American activities had hitherto been confined to what became known as
the original American front, facing Lorraine beyond St. Mihiel. This was
apparently an irregular line, in the vicinity of the Rhine-Marne canal,
and fronting Nancy, Lunéville, Toul, and other towns whose existence
became known by General Pershing's reports.
It was their "breaking in" ground. American troops there obtained an
intimate acquaintance with modern warfare. The numerous trench raids
that marked their operations apparently had no strategical relations to
the movements on the battle line elsewhere, nor even disclosed any local
tactical object. Americans and Germans seemed merely to be watching each
other with lynx eyes, each on the alert to catch the other napping and
steal a march for the glory of the achievement.
The casualties in these skirmishes were usually slight, and a few
prisoners now and then would fall to one or the other side. But few
raids took place without losses, which gradually became impressive as
the engagements increased in frequency and scope. A trench raid is a
trivial thing, with an inconsequential outcome when it has any outcome
at all; but repeated daily, the casualties such raids produce, added to
the fatalities resulting from random artillery fire, assume the
dimensions of those of an extensive battle. They do not stand out as
distinctive operations; proceeding upon established methods, there was a
general sameness in their repetition, and they only became noticeable
for the outstanding incidents that were bound to arise in each
undertaking.
An early attack by the Germans was made behind a dense fog after
daybreak, through which came a violent artillery barrage as a
forerunner. The fog was of a density that blotted out everything but the
nearest enemy positions. Through it enemy projectiles exploded on three
sides of an American listening post just outside the wire, within
forty-five feet of an enemy listening post. In a few minutes hundreds of
high-explosive shells had dropped round the post and the surrounding
ground, cutting off the men there. American artillery replied; but all
traces of German dead and wounded were removed by the time the Americans
had emerged from their dugouts after their barrage was raised.
The Germans followed their sortie against the listening post by a heavy
bombardment of the American lines a few days later. American guns
responded, shell for shell, wrecking several of the enemy's dugouts, and
badly damaging some of his first-line positions. They were caved in by
the American 75's, and the Germans spent several days in repairing them
and patching up gaps in the barbed wire before the wrecked trenches
could be reoccupied. A number of the men who were wounded slightly by
shell splinters were treated in the lines with their first-aid packets
and insisted on remaining at their posts until the fight was finished.
The enemy's next artillery exercise was a concentrated fire on one of
the American positions with the object of obliterating it. Americans
guns at once punished the German batteries with a retaliatory fire of
double force, and then swept the enemy lines with a vicious barrage.
Whereupon the German guns ceased firing.
The enemy presently resorted to the use of gas to harass the American
positions. Aimed at a wood, a rain of shells, largely composed of gas
and high explosives, came from the German minenwerfers. They burst in
the air, the high explosives detonating when they came in contact with
the earth, and broke into fragments among a number of men before they
could adjust their masks. Other troops were overcome by the fumes while
asleep in their dugouts. The fumes lingered in the gassed area long
after the shells had exploded, filling shell holes and other
depressions, and incapacitating men who ventured to work in the
vicinity. But the American guns exacted swift retribution. They leveled
a heavy fire on the German minenwerfers, and in half an hour had razed
the position. Timbers were thrown high in the air, and explosions,
probably of enemy ammunition, testified to American marksmanship. The
ground about the German batteries was churned upside down, and there was
no doubt of the fate of any German soldiers who were on the spot.
The beginning of March, 1918, saw the first pitched battle between
Americans and Germans in the St. Mihiel salient north of Toul. The enemy
started it by a morning raid in a driving wet snow, preceded by heavy
gunfire, intermixed with poison gas. The latter was discharged on the
trenches in a generous hail of shells, the Germans evidently thinking
that this second cloud of gas would daunt the American troops after
their previous foretaste. The Americans were not daunted; their masks
quickly covered them, and few troops were affected.
The woods behind the salient were shot to pieces by the German fire. As
soon as the barrage was raised on the trenches to the right of the
salient, some 300 Germans swept forward under the protection of their
fire. They jumped into what was left of the trenches, expecting to make
a haul of prisoners; but they found the Americans ready for them.
A fierce hand-to-hand fight followed in front of wire entanglements and
in shell holes. Meantime American barrage fire swept no-man's-land,
catching many running Germans who had turned tail from fighting at close
quarters.
The Germans were thrown back, leaving ten dead in the American trenches.
Two were officers, entangled in the wire. The ground was littered with
enemy hand grenades, boxes of explosives for destroying dugouts, and
incendiary bombs the enemy had no opportunity of using. The enemy had
paid dearly for his enterprise, but the Americans also suffered in
proportion. Berlin claimed that twelve had been captured.
They had cut the American wire with caution, making no noise, but the
sentry was watching their performance all the time, and let them proceed
until he was sure of routing them.
Another American patrol experienced, for the first time, a German attack
of liquid fire. Enemy troops were about to throw flame projectors into
the American trenches when an American patrol near by opened fire on
them. The Germans fled precipitately, pursued by the Americans, and
dropped four projectors, two of which were flaming. All the projectors
had been punctured by American shots.
The foregoing series of engagements shows that in every case the Germans
were the aggressors. The Americans, in fact, were merely holding the
Lorraine sector without aspiring to take the field until they were
better acquainted with trench warfare. The Germans, believing they had
green troops before them, were accordingly venturesome, and disposed to
put them on their mettle, which they accordingly did, only to find that
the supposedly raw American troops were no longer raw. The Germans
themselves had contributed to ridding them of any greenness with which
they credited them. The Americans had occupied the Lorraine sector as
substitutes for the French, and the Germans were accordingly eager to
know the quality of their new antagonists. Hence these series of raids
made on the American front. Soon the tables were to be turned by the
Americans conducting raids of their own.