BEFORE AMIENS
The Allies' resistance to Germany's spring offensive of 1918, which
aimed to reach the Channel ports and Paris, at first revealed no
indication that American forces were taking part in the defense. The
sweep of her first advance, begun on March 21, 1918, extended from the
vicinity of Arras, on the north, to La Fère, on the south. The latter
town was near a great bend then in the western line around the wood of
St. Gobain, a short distance northwest of the Chemin-des-Dames, where,
as shown in the previous chapter, Americans were stationed. Hence the
German attack swept within fighting distance of American arms.
The United States was in sufficient strength along the western front to
make it certain that General Pershing would not let Great Britain and
France bear the sole burden of meeting the German advance. But for some
days the share of the American forces in the fighting was veiled in
mystery. Berlin finally shed a little daylight on the subject. In its
official communiqués of March 24 and 25, 1918, it alluded to American
reserves having been thrown back on Chauny, which is eight miles west of
La Fère. These bulletins contained the following passages:
"The British Third and Fourth Armies and portions of Franco-American
reserves who had been brought up were beaten, and on the line of
Bapaume-Bouchavesnes and behind the Somme, between Péronne and Ham, as
well as at Chauny, were repulsed with the heaviest of losses.
"The corps of Generals von Webern and von Conte and the troops of
General von Geyl, after a fierce battle, crossed the Crozat Canal.
"French, English, and American regiments which had been brought up from
the southwest for a counterattack were thrown back on Chauny in a
southwesterly direction."
The next day General Pershing threw further light on the mystery in a
message to the War Department:
"Reference to the German communiques of the 24th and 25th regarding
American troops: Two regiments of railway engineers are with the British
armies involved in this battle. Three companies of engineers were
working in the areas mentioned in the communique in the vicinity of the
Crozat Canal."
Thereby hung a tale similar to that which recorded the part American
engineers took at Cambrai, as told in the previous volume. By true
Teutonic indirection, the German "Vorwärts," in commenting on the battle
in the area named, indicated that the American share in it was not
negligible:
"Attacks of combined Allied forces against the pivot of the German
attacking front near La Fère were particularly heavy. These
counterattacks did not find us unprepared. It testifies to the superior
foresight of the German command that these attacks, in which American
troops certainly participated only symbolically, were not only beaten
off, but were thrown back on the Oise Canal by an energetic blow."
These allusions were foretokens that something unusual was taking place.
The staid official language of General Pershing, in a communication to
the War Department, thus described what had happened:
"Certain units of United States Engineers, serving with a British army
battalion, March 21 and April 3, 1918, while under shell fire, carried
out destruction of material dumps at Chaulnes, fell back with British
forces to Moreuil, where the commands laid out trench work, then
proceeded to Demuin, and were assigned a sector of the defensive line,
which was constructed and manned by them, thence moved to a position on
the line near Warfusee-Abancourt and extending to north side of Bois de
Toillauw. The commands started for this position on March 27, 1918, and
occupied it until April 3, 1918, during this time the commanding
officer of a unit of United States Engineers being in command of the
subsector occupied by his troops. This command was in more or less
continuous action during its stay in this position. On April 3, 1918,
the command was ordered to fall back to Abbeville."
General Rawlinson, commanding the British forces engaged in this battle,
acknowledged the services performed by American engineers in a letter to
the colonel commanding a United States engineer regiment.
"I fully realize," he wrote, "that it has been largely due to your
assistance that the enemy is checked.... I consider your work in the
line to be greatly enhanced by the fact that for six weeks previous to
taking your place in the front line your men had been working at such a
high pressure erecting a heavy bridge over the Somme. My best
congratulations and warm thanks to you all."
It appeared that a gap had to be stopped in the bending line through
which the Germans otherwise would have streamed. Amiens lay before their
advancing hosts, and the way was open. The critical moment came on the
afternoon of Tuesday, March 26, 1918. It was imperative that more troops
should be thrown into the British line to arrest the German onrush.
Reenforcements were on the way, but could not arrive in time.
A dashing British officer, Brigadier General Carey, hastily improvised a
scratch force of every available element within reach. American
engineers were among them, and they were eagerly drawn into the fray. By
telephone, messenger, and flag signals, General Carey assembled a little
army from behind the lines which included labor battalions, cooks, and
orderlies, sturdy middle-aged men, of various occupations, electricians,
signalers, members of an infantry training school, machine gunners
hurriedly armed with rifles, engineers, and fifty cavalrymen for
scouting. He also improvised a staff as he proceeded, "officers learning
the ground," as one onlooker described it, "by having to defend it and
every man from enlisted man to brigadier jumping at each job as it came
along."
Early in the German advance, British reports had mentioned "Americans
fighting shoulder to shoulder with the French and British." No American
force was then identified as in the fight, and not until several days
after did Pershing begin to send reenforcements to the Allies. The
Americans referred to so mysteriously were part of that strangely mixed
force that Carey drummed up from the void. These engineers at Carey's
call picked up rifles and merged themselves in his motley corps without
orders from anybody. They had been called from their work, which was
constructing and operating field railways and building bridges.
The beginning of their exploits was due to three companies of an
American engineer regiment being caught in the early bombardment.
Ordered to fall back, one of the companies, which had been consolidated
with the British Royal Engineers, was delegated to the task of
guaranteeing the destruction of the engineers' dump referred to by
General Pershing, which it had been decided to abandon. This detachment
destroyed all the material, made a rapid retreat, caught up with the
larger group, and immediately resumed work, laying out trenches. These
operations lasted from March 22 to 27, 1918. As the German attack became
more intense, the engineers joined up with the mixed force General Carey
had assembled.
Then followed a week's brilliant defense of the road to Amiens. Led by
General Carey, this assorted force, numbering 1,500 men, plunged into
the swirling battle line, where they were strung over a front of 1,200
yards, against which hordes of Germans were thrown.
"It seems almost inconceivable," wrote a correspondent, "that these
defenders, brave unto death though they were, could have been able to
hold that long sector, but they held. The enemy advanced in force and
hurled themselves time and time again against the line in this region,
but they found no weak spot. This composite force stood as gallantly and
as well as their comrades to the right and to the left. They clung on
for many hours until the regulars came up."
What happened at Cambrai had been repeated before Amiens. American
engineers, facing an emergency, had thrown their tools aside and taken
up arms. They were not many; but, nevertheless, history will never
record the battle of Picardy without including the story of how Carey's
men acquitted themselves, nor omit the fact that Americans were in the
fray.
Afterward American troops in strong force took up positions on the
active fighting front in Picardy with the French and British. General
Pershing's first reenforcements occupied a sector east of Amiens on a
rolling terrain. The artillery was first on the line, entering on a dark
night reddened by the continuous flashes of friendly and hostile guns.
Under a fire at times heavy, the American gunners took up the positions
of the French batteries and set about digging in. When the infantry
moved in, the firing was just as intense. In some places the troops,
after passing through villages, were raked with shrapnel. In several
instances they found the trenches shallow; in other cases there were no
trenches at all. The positions were soon improved and the shell holes
connected. The American lines generally ran about 200 to 400 yards apart
with the high ground about evenly divided about them.
The American troops were there to stay. The pack on each man's back as
he entered the firing line was loaded with paraphernalia that pointed to
permanency so far as such a condition obtains in warfare. Each carried a
blanket, with a pair of shoes tied on either side of it. Among other
articles carried were two pairs of socks, a suit of underwear, a towel,
soap, toilet articles, two days' emergency rations of four packages of
hard bread, and a can of corned beef, whatever trinkets he had, a deck
of cards, a set of dice, and photographs and letters especially
cherished by him. In addition he carried canteen, rifle, bayonet, 160
rounds of ammunition, a shovel, pick, and a wire cutter (or bolo).
A French communiqué, in reporting a violent bombardment of
French-American positions on April 24, 1918, specifically located the
American sector as "south of the Somme and on the Avre."
The opposing lines ran north and south, with the enemy between the
Americans and the rising sun. Between the rear American echelons
extended the main road between Amiens and Beauvais. Amiens, the German
objective, lay thirty-five kilometers away on the American left.
Beauvais was about the same distance away on the American right and two
hours distant by train from Paris. The Americans were between the
Germans and the sea.
On April 3, 1918, this American line was violently attacked by the
Germans near Villers-Bretonneux--the first occasion that brought fully
equipped American troops in force into the swing of the continuing
Picardy battle. It was an afternoon bombardment, beginning at 5 o'clock,
and lasted for two hours. The German guns were directed especially
against the Americans, who were supported on the north and south by the
French. The intensity of the enemy's fire slacked about 7 o'clock,
whereupon the German commander sent forward three battalions of
infantry. The Americans met them and a violent struggle ensued. There
was hand-to-hand fighting all along the line, as a result of which the
enemy was thrust back, his dead and wounded lying on the ground in all
directions. Five prisoners remained in American hands. The American
losses were severe, but so were the enemy's. The French were full of
praise for the manner in which the Americans acquitted themselves under
trying circumstances, especially in view of the fact that they were
fighting at one of the most difficult points on the battle front.
An interlude of comparative quiet set in, if such a term can be used
when there were daily artillery firing and patrolling. The Americans,
settling in their positions, became stronger; they appeared to be better
intrenched than the Germans, who were continually harassed, day and
night. The enemy was wastefully lavish in the use of gas, some of it
liquefied, in glass bottles which were hurled through the air apparently
by means of a spring. On bursting they liberated heavy, white fumes that
caused nausea, sneezing, and coughing, but did not otherwise harm the
Americans. These missiles, thrown without any detonation, were a variant
on the avalanche of "mustard" gas shells the Germans periodically
showered. They appeared to be disconcerted by the unmoved bearing of the
Americans before the gas assaults; instead of retreating from the clouds
of fumes, the Americans countered by sending gas of twofold strength
into the enemy's lines. In fact, the Americans always greeted every
exhibition of German fire by returning it two to one. Their positions
became daily more firmly established and those of the Germans more
difficult to retain.
Higher up, northwest of these positions in Picardy, American troops had
established positions in union with the British forces under Sir Douglas
Haig. Thus "American fronts" by the middle of May, 1918, interposed
along the entire western line from the North Sea to the Swiss border.
Their distribution between French and British sectors placed fresh
troops where they were needed and afforded scope for invaluable training
in modern warfare to both officers and men that they could obtain in no
other way. Those in Picardy were not long in proving that they were
equal to their experienced Anglo-French comrades in arms in the task
they had set themselves.