THE LAST HUN DRIVE
Our Pennsylvania regiments now were operating directly with French
troops, under French higher command, and in the line they were widely
separated, with French regiments between.
The troops faced much open country, consisting chiefly of the
well-tilled fields for which France is noted, with here and there a
clump of trees or bushes, tiny streams, fences and an occasional farm
building. Beyond these lay a dense woods, extending to the Marne, known
variously in the different localities by the name of the nearest town.
The Bois de Conde, near Monthurel, was the scene of some of the stiffest
fighting that followed.
The real battle line lay right along the Valley of the Marne, a little
more than two miles away, and the men of the Pennsylvania regiments were
disappointed again to learn they were not actually holding the front
line. That was entirely in the hands of the French in that sector, and
French officers who came back to visit the American headquarters and to
establish liaison with these support troops confidently predicted that
the Boche never would get a foothold on the south bank of the river. The
river, they said, was so lined with machine gun nests and barbed wire
entanglements that nothing could pass.
That evening, Sunday, July 14th, runners brought messages from brigade
headquarters to Colonel Brown, commanding the 109th, and Colonel George
E. Kemp, of Philadelphia, commanding the 110th. There were little holes
in the French line that it was necessary to plug, and the American
support was called on to do the plugging.
Colonel Brown ordered Captain James B. Cousart, of Philadelphia, acting
commander of the third battalion, to send two companies forward to the
line, and Colonel Kemp, from his post command, despatched a similar
message to Major Joseph H. Thompson, Beaver Falls, commanding his first
battalion.
Captain Cousart led the expedition from the 109th himself, taking his
own company, L, and Company M, commanded by Captain Edward P. Mackey,
of Williamsport. Major Thompson sent Companies B, of New Brighton, and
C, of Somerset, from the 110th, commanded respectively by Captains
William Fish and William C. Truxal.
Captain Cousart's little force was established in the line, Company M
below Passy-sur-Marne, and Company L back of Courtemont-Varennes. The
two companies of the 110th were back of Fossoy and Mezy, directly in the
great bend of the river. The Dhuys River enters the Marne near that
point and this river separated the positions of the 109th and 110th
companies. Fossoy, the farthest west of these towns, is only four miles
in an air line from Chateau-Thierry, and Passy is about four miles
farther east.
The reason for this move was two-fold: Marshal Foch had manipulated his
forces so that it was felt to be virtually certain the next outbreak of
the Germans could be made only at one point, directly southwest from
Chateau-Thierry. If the expected happened, the green Pennsylvania troops
would receive their baptism of fire within the zone of the operation,
but not in the direct line of the thrust. Thus, they would become
seasoned to fire without bearing the responsibility of actually stopping
a determined effort.
The second reason was that the French had been making heavy
concentrations around Chateau-Thierry, and their line to the east was
too thin for comfort. Therefore, their units were drawn in somewhat at
the flanks, to deepen the defense line, and the Pennsylvania companies
were used to fill the gaps thus created.
French staff officers accompanied the four companies to the line and
disposed them in the pockets left for them, in such a way that there
were alternately along that part of the front a French regiment and then
an American company. The disposition of the troops was completed well
before midnight. The companies left behind had watched their fellows
depart on this night adventure with longing, envious eyes, and little
groups sat up late discussing the luck that fell to some soldiers and
was withheld from others.
The men had had no sleep at all the night before and little during the
day, but no one in those four companies, facing the Germans at last
after so many weary months of preparation, thought of sleep, even had
the artillery fire sweeping in waves along the front or the exigencies
of their position permitted it.
Eagerly the men tried to pierce the black cloak of night for a first
glimpse of the Hun lines. Now and then, as a star shell hung its flare
in the sky, they caught glimpses of the river, and sometimes the flash
of a gun from the farther shore gave assurance that the Boche, too, was
awake and watching.
About 11.30 o'clock, the night was shattered by a ripping roar from
miles of French batteries in the rear, and the men lay in their trenches
while the shells screamed overhead. It was by far the closest the
Pennsylvania men had been to intensive artillery fire, and they thought
it terrible, having yet to learn what artillery really could be.
Days afterward, they learned that prisoners had disclosed the intention
of the Germans to attack that night and that the French fire was
designed to break up enemy formations and harass and disconcert their
artillery concentration.
The Germans, with typical Teutonic adherence to system, paid little
attention to the French fire until the hour fixed for their bombardment.
Midnight came and went, with the French cannon still bellowing. Wearied
men on watch were relieved by comrades and dropped down to rest.
At 12.30 o'clock, the German line belched forth the preliminary salvo of
what the French afterward described as the most terrific bombardment of
the war up to that time. The last German offensive had opened.
The gates to glory and to death swung wide for many a Pennsylvania lad
that night.
That the French did not exaggerate in their characterization of the
bombardment was shown in documents taken later on captured prisoners.
Among these was a general order to the German troops assuring them of
victory, telling them that this was the great "friedensturm," or peace
offensive, which was to force the Allies to make peace, and that, when
the time came to advance, they would find themselves unopposed. The
reason for this, said the order, was that the attack was to be preceded
by an artillery preparation that would destroy completely all troops for
twenty miles in front of the German lines. As a matter of fact, shells
fell twenty-five miles back of the Allied lines.
For mile on mile along that bristling line, the big guns gave tongue,
not in gusts or intermittently, as had been the case for days, but
continuously. Only later did the men in the trenches learn that the
attack covered a front of about sixty-five miles, the most pretentious
the Huns had launched. Karl Rosner, the Kaiser's favorite war
correspondent, wrote to the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger:
"The Emperor listened to the terrible orchestra of our surprise fire
attack and looked on the unparalleled picture of the projectiles raging
toward the enemy's positions."
Pennsylvania's doughboys and engineers shared with the then Prussian War
Lord the privilege of listening to the "surprise fire attack," but to
them it was like no orchestra mortal ear had ever heard. Most of those
who wrote home afterward used a much shorter word of only four letters
to describe the event. There was, indeed, a strange unanimity about the
expression: "It seemed as if all ---- had broken loose!"
Crouching in their trenches, powerless to do anything for themselves or
each other, they endured as best they could that tremendous ordeal. The
very air seemed shattered to bits. No longer was it "the rumbling
thunder of the guns," to which they had been giving ear for weeks.
Crashing, ear-splitting explosions came so fast they were blended into
one vast dissonance that set the nerves to jangling and in more than one
instance upset completely the mental poise of our soldiers, so that they
had to be restrained forcibly by their comrades from rushing out into
the open in their temporary madness.
Paris, fifty miles away "as the crow flies," was awakened from its
slumber after its holiday celebration by the sound of that Titanic
cannonade and saw the flashes, and pictures were jarred from the walls
by the trembling of the earth.
The regiments back in the support line were little, if any, better off
than the four companies of Pennsylvanians up in the front line, for the
Hun shells raked the back areas as well as tearing through the front
lines. Men clenched their hands to steady shaking nerves against the
sheer physical pressure of that awful noise, but officers, both French
and their own, making their way along the lines in imminent peril to
encourage the men, found them grimly and amazingly determined and
courageous.
As usual with the Boche, he had a schedule for everything, but it went
wrong at the very start this time. The schedule, as revealed later in
captured papers, called for the swinging of prepared pontoon bridges
across the Marne at 1.30 o'clock, after one solid hour of artillery
preparation, and the advance guards were to be in Montmirail, thirteen
miles to the south, at 8.30 o'clock that morning.
As showing the dependence placed by the Germans on their own ability to
follow such a schedule, it may be permissible here to recall that during
the fighting an automobile bearing the black and white cross of the
Germans was driven into a village held by Americans. It was immediately
surrounded and a German major, leaning out cried, irascibly:
"You are not Germans!"
"That's very true," replied an American lieutenant.
"But our schedule called for our troops to be here at this time,"
continued the perplexed German.
"They missed connections; that's all. Get out and walk back. You are a
prisoner," snapped the American.
The anticipatory artillery fire of the French had so harassed the
Germans in their final preparations that it was not until two hours
after their schedule time, or 3.30 o'clock in the morning, that the
pontoons were swung across the river and the infantry advance began.
The Prussian Guards led. The bridges swarmed with them. The French and
Americans loaded and fired, loaded and fired until rifle barrels grew
hot and arms tired. Gaps were torn in the oncoming hordes, only to be
filled instantly as the Germans pushed forward from the rear. The
execution done among the enemy when they were concentrated in solid
masses on the bridges was terrific, and for days afterward the stream,
about 100 feet wide in that section, was almost choked with the bodies
of Germans.
The moment the enemy appeared, the excitement and nerve-strain of our
Pennsylvania soldiers dropped from them like a robe from a boxer in the
ring. Their French comrades said afterward they were amazed and deeply
proud of the steadiness and calmness of these new allies. Their
officers, even in the inferno of battle, thrilled with pride at the way
their men met the baptism of fire.
All the new troops going to France have been "blooded" gradually in
minor engagements and have been frequently in contact with the enemy
before being launched into a major operation. Virtually the only
exception to this was the case of the seven divisions of the British
regular army that landed in France and were rushed at once into the
maelstrom of the first German onslaught in 1914, retreating day by day
and being slaughtered and cut to pieces constantly, until they were
almost wiped out.
It was the intention that the Pennsylvania troops should be carried by
slow and easy stages into actual battle, too, but a change in the Boche
plans decreed otherwise. Thus, Pennsylvania regiments, with the
engineers fighting as infantry, found themselves hurled immediately into
front line fighting in one of the most ambitious German operations of
the war.
The maximum German effort of the July thrust was made directly along
their front. It seemed almost as if the enemy knew he faced many new
troops at this point and counted on that to enable him to make a
break-through.
But Pennsylvania held. The great offensive came to smash.
Official reports compiled from information gathered from prisoners and
made public afterward showed that the enemy engaged fourteen
divisions--approximately 170,000 men--in the first line in this part of
the battlefield. Behind these, in support, were probably fourteen
additional divisions, some of which, owing to the losses inflicted on
those in the front line, were compelled to take part in the fighting. No
figures are available as to the number of French, but their lines were
so thin that Americans had to be thrust in to stop gaps, and there were
fewer than 15,000 men in the Pennsylvania regiments.