AT SEICHEPREY AND XIVRAY
The Germans had reached the conclusion that the Americans must be taught
a lesson. The latter were making a disquieting impression elsewhere on
the western front in cooperating with Anglo-French forces who were
resisting the German advance. Moreover, the Americans in their own
sectors showed an unseemly enterprise and eagerness to meet the kaiser's
hosts at close quarters, and even to hold them in small esteem.
Besides, the people at home must be persuaded that the hordes of
untrained and raw Americans who were spreading along the western front
were negligible and despised factors as belligerents, and the best way
to drive this conclusion home to the German people was to give the
Americans a sound thrashing. Such a disciplinary measure, the German
mind reasoned, would also have the effect of discouraging the Americans
from continuing to come to the rescue of their sorely pressed Allies.
The American sector running eastward of the famous salient of St. Mihiel
was chosen as the location of the castigation. In this sector lay the
village of Seicheprey among rolling hills, overlooking a winding valley
that runs to the northeast. The German positions were on high ground,
commanding the Allied trenches, and directly opposite them, behind the
American line, Seicheprey nestled on the southwestern slope of a steep
hill some 900 feet high. On the right, the hill was approachable on a
gradual incline, the greater part of which is covered by a small
rectangular grove called the Wood of Remières. Here the American line
joined the French.
The front of the attack made by the Germans ran something under two
miles from Seicheprey to the Remières Wood. Their object appeared to be
threefold, apart from the ultimate aim to discourage the Americans and
convince the German people that the United States was a poor antagonist.
One was to test the American strength and determine whether the
Americans, still unseasoned, as measured by the hardened condition of
the other Allied troops, after their four years of war, would brave
heavy shell fire, followed by strong infantry attacks. The second was to
widen the base of the St. Mihiel salient, which was too narrow to hold
with security. The third was to drive a wedge between the American and
French lines.
The assault came at sunrise on April 20. An all--night bombardment,
which sent a deluge of shells, many of them of poison gas, into the
American positions, preceded it. A German barrage was launched; the
Americans met it by a counterbarrage. In short, the regulation artillery
curtains were swept across the battle zone, under which the opposing
forces tried conclusions.
On a front extending for a mile and three-quarters the enemy sent a
force of 3,000 men, preceded by picked storm troops, who advanced in
three columns. They had been specially trained for the operation and
greatly outnumbered the resisting Americans; they carried rations and
intrenching tools, indicating that the aim was to occupy the American
trenches--if taken--for a long period. On the left and in the center the
assault was repelled, but on the right the assailants succeeded in
occupying Remières Wood, whose eastern edge was a short distance behind
the American line. The Germans pursued their customary tactics of
"infiltration," that is, of gradual progress in small groups, supported
by quick-firers along the line of entry made in the Allied position with
the object of taking the American center in the rear. Protected by trees
and favored by the character of the terrain, the Germans were so far
successful that by night they had reached the crest of the hill flanked
by Remières Wood, and delivered a heavy attack on Seicheprey.
The Germans carried the village, but only after furious hand-to-hand
fighting. They entered it in the belief that the Americans had gone, and
with good reason, since liquid fire, gas, and other devices of
frightfulness had been used to clear the village. But some Americans had
remained, and they attacked the Germans with hand grenades, killing many
of them. The Americans only fell back when they were greatly
outnumbered, after making a stubborn defense. German airmen poured
machine-gun fire upon them; but the antiaircraft batteries came into
play and American airmen took the air, bringing down two of the enemy
planes and dispersing the others. Before retiring the Americans fought
for every inch of the way, yielding slowly, and pouring a deadly
machine-gun, rifle, and automatic fire into the advancing enemy.
The Germans were not permitted to hold either Seicheprey or the Remières
Wood. Without a moment's delay the Americans and French organized a
counterattack and drove them out of the village.
It was found that the retreating Germans had set traps there in the
form of boxes containing high explosives to which they had attached
wires stretched across the streets. Some of the advancing troops stepped
on the wire, causing explosions and the traps had to be removed. Before
dawn of the next day the Franco-American forces had not only recovered
the village but forced the enemy back to the hilltop above it.
The battle circled about the brow and slope of the hill on which
Seicheprey stood and the wood of Remières at its foot. The Germans
returned to the charge with forces estimated at three battalions, led by
storm troops. Two hours' hard fighting followed. Finally, the Americans,
supported, as before by the French from an adjoining sector, now drove
the Germans down the slope into Remières Wood, already held by the foe,
and fought them among the trees all the morning. Toward noon the Allies
swept forward irresistibly and retook the wood completely. Fighting
stubbornly, the Germans were pushed back beyond the wood's eastern
fringe to their own trenches, where they endeavored to maintain
themselves. But a new Franco-American advance, combined with pressure
from the flank, forced them to retreat, and by evening they had retired
to the original starting point, and the American line was completely
reestablished.
It was the first time the Germans had met the Americans in serious
fighting on a scale which removed the engagement from the category of
small skirmishes in local operations, and apart from the ultimate
result, which was a defeat for the Germans, they learned something of
the quality of Americans, both as massed and individual fighters.
North of Seicheprey an American detachment was separated into small
groups and was cut off from the company to which it belonged throughout
the entire fight. Behind the Americans and on their left flank were
German units, but they could have retired on the right. They decided to
fight, which they did notwithstanding the incessant enemy bombardment
and rifle fire. Numerous hand-to-hand combats were fought in the course
of this long struggle, from which the Americans found themselves obliged
to retire toward nightfall, but only after destroying their machine
guns.
In Seicheprey a squad of Americans found several cases of grenades,
with which they made a determined fight, holding out the entire day on
the northern extremity of the village. They refused to surrender when
summoned to do so, and at the end of the fighting only nine out of the
original twenty-three were left. A cook surprised by the Germans, and
half stunned by a blow from a grenade, seized a rifle and continued
firing until he fell dead.
Toward evening a hospital which had been established in Seicheprey was
blown up, along with the doctors and ambulance men. The chief surgeon of
the American regiment engaged hurried to the spot with French and
American ambulance cars. The rescue party passed through a severe
barrage fire, but eventually reached the village, where they tended to
the wounded for many hours under a heavy enemy fire.
The American losses were never clearly known. They were estimated at
200. The Germans claimed 183 prisoners, which would leave only seventeen
dead and wounded on the American estimate. The scope of the battle
showed that the American losses in dead and wounded were much more than
that, hence the number of prisoners the Germans claimed was discredited.
As to the German casualties, a German prisoner put them at 600 killed,
wounded and missing, of these, more than 300 German dead were found in
the American trenches and in no-man's-land. The defeat of the Germans
was sufficiently proved by the omission of the German official bulletins
and the German press to mention the successful counterattack.
The Xivray affair (June 16, 1918) in the Toul sector furnished another
example of American alertness and vigor in an emergency. Xivray was
originally behind the German lines, but they had been penetrated by the
Americans, and the town was in American hands. As was the case in other
engagements, German prisoners betrayed that the enemy's purpose in
raiding the town was to carry off as many Americans as possible with a
view to extracting information from them. The enemy's design, as thus
revealed, was to send a large party without preparatory artillery fire.
They were to take up a position near the American barbed wire, and send
a signal rocket for a box barrage to cover Xivray and the approaching
communication trenches, while heavy artillery bombarded the villages in
the rear.
The American fire apparently precipitated a violent bombardment. It came
at 3 o'clock in the morning and was directed at the American first line
before Xivray, the American batteries, and at villages far in the rear.
An Associated Press correspondent thus described what follows:
"Six hundred men advanced to the attack in no less than a dozen
different columns, led by 200 picked Bavarian storming troops. They came
up on the right flank, on the left, and on the center under cover of
smoke, making a dark night still darker. They crept up the ravines and
slipped through the hollows. The sharp ears of sentries alone prevented
a total surprise.
"Their guns laid down a heavy box barrage that prevented the reenforcing
of the front line. One platoon, led by Lieutenant Doan, got through the
first curtain of fire. Doan even went through the second with some
volunteers, but that was all the help that could be sent to the 225 men
that were holding the line attacked. They were only one to three, but
they fought in a way to surprise and dismay the 600 Germans.
"One machine-gun section in the village was reduced to two men--Monfort
Wyckoff and John Flynn. Their gun jammed and Flynn kept the Germans off
with his revolver while Wyckoff got the quick-firer going again. They
held their ground to the end. Two other men, unable to get a sight at
the Germans from their trench, climbed the parapet and stood there
erect, firing their automatics from the shoulder.
"Two companies of infantry, without dugouts to shelter them, held their
ground on the right of the position through a heavy artillery
preparation and kept the enemy from bringing up reenforcements
throughout the fight. Meanwhile, in the center at Xivray and on the
left, the machine gunners did the rest.
"The enemy's plan, according to prisoners, was to force the village,
destroy the defense works, make the place untenable, and take prisoners.
The effort was well organized and might have succeeded but for the work
of the quick-firers.
"The Germans had lost a third of their 600 men when growing daylight
impaired the effectiveness of their smoke screen, and they began to
retire. The fifty-odd unwounded Americans left out of 225 went over the
top after them.
"Two hundred is a conservative estimate of the German losses, for our
men buried forty-seven of them on the field, and there were more corpses
in the tall grass facing the position out of reach. Thus the Germans
lost nearly as many men as they had facing them during the fight."