VAUX AND HAMEL
July, 1918, was a red-letter month in the annals of American
belligerency on the European battle field. Events of historic moment, in
which American soldiers, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the French,
were irresistible protagonists, crowded one upon another. They had got
into their stride; they were seasoned and in the pink of condition; no
German heroics could withstand them.
As a sort of prelude to their memorable participation in General Foch's
offensive stroke of July 18, 1918, the American troops undertook a
little offensive of their own to the west of Château-Thierry, and
accomplished their object with devastating results to the enemy.
The investment and capture of Belleau Wood to the northwest had
completed a chain of operations designed to secure the American
positions. But there remained an awkward loop or sag which it was deemed
desirable to remove. Its straightening involved the occupation of a
little village called Vaux, with its tap on the main railroad line into
Château-Thierry, the capture of a knoblike crest of ground designated as
Hill 192, on the edge of Clerembauts Wood, and also the routing of
Germans from a sizable cluster of trees, midway between the two other
points and known as the Bois de la Roche. The front of the attack was
about two and a half miles, stretching from the village of Triangle,
then north to the Bois Clerembauts, across the Paris road, and running
south of Vaux. Vaux was an important objective, being considered vital
to the Germans for holding Château-Thierry.
The Americans went over Vaux and established themselves just beyond the
northern edge of the village, taking in the same rush the hills just to
the west of Vaux. This eliminated the German wedge almost completely,
the only remaining portion being at the wood of Clerembauts, where the
Germans were in a pocket.
A merciless, methodical artillery fire was leveled at the German
positions on the morning of July 1, 1918. American guns, big and little,
hurled torrents of high explosive and gas shells on the village with a
deadly accuracy of aim. By noon Vaux was on fire. Every house had been
hit at least once. A shell would fall on some little habitation, a cloud
of yellow smoke would arise, and the house was no more. The American
guns continued to belch all day with an unemotional, matter-of-fact
regularity from the depths of a score of leafy woods.
In the evening the infantry advanced. They swept through the enemy lines
and, had their object been to continue the advance, they could have done
so with the greatest ease, as virtually everything before them had been
cleared.
"The advance started at 6 o'clock, and at 6.25 the first of our men
entered the village of Vaux. By 6.40 they had gone through the wood,
gaining all their objectives. Our stormy petrels took Vaux in clean-up
style. Squads were ready with their hand grenades to clear the cellars,
but many of these had been closed by our fire, and the Germans had been
buried in them. From others the Germans came out and surrendered. In
some there was difficulty, and in that case our men threw in hand
grenades in great numbers. Generally, if there were any Germans left,
they surrendered.
"Four hours after the men went over the top American telephone lines
were working from Vaux back to our headquarters. By 7.30 our ambulances
were running into the wrecked village.
"A wounded German brought in about 10 o'clock said that in the morning
there had been 4,000 Germans in the village, but after the barrage
started some had been withdrawn, leaving only those who could be
sheltered in sixty-eight caves in the village. He said the cave in which
he took refuge was wrecked by an American shell and that he lay wounded
for six hours until the Americans came in."
For adroitness, dispatch, thoroughness, and sustained teamwork, the
attack on Vaux was an undoubted triumph for American arms, though a
small one. Each man moved to the particular post in the town to which
he had been assigned to perform his allotted task. None failed, and the
operation was completed with systematic smoothness; as though in a
twinkling, it was all over.
With Vaux and the Bois de la Roche in their hands, the Americans took
their machine guns to the edge of the wood, expecting a counterattack.
It duly came, the Germans launching a fresh regiment upon the lost
positions; but an hour later all was calm--the regiment was no more. A
second counterattack broke in the small hours of July 3, 1918,
accompanied by a heavy bombardment. The enemy lost heavily without
regaining a foot of the ground won by the Americans. The Germans
advanced in close formation from their trenches without being checked.
In some cases they were allowed to approach close to the American line.
Then the American gunners, from their hidden nests, mowed down the enemy
ranks with showers of bullets.
Later came a fight for the possession of a hill known as 204, situated
between Vaux and the Bois de la Roche. The Germans held it and the
French, in essaying the task of wresting it from them, invited American
detachments to lend a hand. The hill stood just outside the American
sector and commanded Château-Thierry. Volunteers were many; most of them
were new arrivals who had never faced the Germans. Practically none had
been under fire. They were waiting their chance, some swimming in the
Marne, others catching baseball, when the call came, and the response
was five times the number needed.
[Illustration: American soldiers near a barricade in the Rue du Pont,
Château-Thierry. The Germans were driven from the town in the First
Battle of the Marne, 1914, and again in the Second Battle of the Marne,
1918.]
A group of thirty Americans joined the French; they were pitted against
hidden machine guns, camouflaged rapid-fire nests, gas shells, and the
deafening roar of a heavy barrage. They were shot at by snipers hiding
in trees, they were shot at by big and little cannon with a roar that
deafened them; but they went ahead with the French veterans. They took
machine-gun posts, they took trench positions. But the German resistance
was too strong, due in part to their new device of fighting in ambush
from the tops of high trees, where they escaped shells exploding on the
ground, and obtained a good vantage point for pouring shot downward on
the attackers below.
Elsewhere on the western front American forces, linked with the British
lines, aided a body of Australians to attack Hamel. It was an early
morning advance, extending one and a half miles on a four-mile front,
including the village of Hamel and the trench system beyond it, south of
the Somme.
It was the first time Americans had fought with the British. They
comprised only a few companies fighting as platoons among the
Australians; but upon them rested the honor of the United States in the
adventure. The date, moreover, was July 4, 1918.
"You are going in with the Australians," their officers told them, "and
these lads always deliver the goods. We expect you to do the same. We
shall be very disappointed if you do not fulfill the hopes and belief we
have in you."
The Americans listened with a light in their eyes. They went in, with
"Lusitania!" as their battle cry, celebrating the Fourth of July with
"astonishing ardor, discipline and strength," the Australian officers
said. If the Americans had any fault at all, the Australians commented,
it was overeagerness to advance; they could hardly be restrained from
going too rapidly behind the wide belt of the British shell fire as the
barrage rolled forward.
The Hamel episode projected as a reminder that American forces were
clinching with the foe on other parts of the front as well as on the
Marne. But it was on the latter battle ground that the eyes of the world
were presently drawn. There the American army swung into its greatest
stride at this stage of the war.