IN THE ARGONNE
So away they went to the southeast and came to a halt in the vicinity of
Revigny, just south of the Argonne Forest and about a mile and a half
north of the Rhine-Marne Canal. Here they found replacement detachments
awaiting them and once more the sadly depleted ranks were filled.
The division was under orders to put in ten days at hard drilling there.
This is the military idea of rest for soldiers, and experience has
proved it a pretty good system, although it never will meet the approval
of the man in the ranks. It has the advantage of keeping his mind off
what he has passed through, keeping him occupied and maintaining his
discipline and morale. The best troops will go stale through neglect of
drill during a campaign, and drill and discipline are almost synonymous.
As undisciplined troops are worse than useless in battle, the necessity
of occasional periods of drill, distasteful though they may be to the
soldier, is obvious.
"A day in a rest camp is about as bad as a day in battle," is not an
uncommon expression from the men, although, as is always the case with
soldiers, they appreciate a change of any kind.
This rest camp and its drills were not destined to become monotonous,
however, for instead of ten days they had but one day. Orders came from
"G. H. Q.," which is soldier parlance for General Headquarters, for the
division to proceed almost directly north, into the Argonne. This meant
more hard hiking and more rough traveling for horses and motor trucks
until the units again were "bedded down" temporarily, with division
headquarters at Les Islettes, twenty miles due north from Revigny, and
eight miles south of what was then, and had been for many weary months,
the front line.
The doughboys knew that something big was impending. They had come to
believe that "Pershing wouldn't have the Twenty-eighth Division around
unless he was going to pull off something big." They felt more at home
than they had since leaving America. All about them they saw nothing
but American soldiers, and thousands upon thousands of them. The country
seemed teeming with them. Every branch of the service was in American
hands, the first time the Pennsylvanians had seen such an organization
of their very own--the first time anybody ever did, in fact, for it was
the biggest American army ever assembled.
Infantry, artillery, engineers, the supply services, tanks, the air
service, medical service, the high command and the staff, all were
American. It was a proud day for the doughboys when showers of leaflets
dropped from a squadron of airplanes flying over one day and they read
on the printed pages a pledge from American airmen to co-operate with
the American fighting men on the ground to the limit of their ability
and asked similar co-operation from the foot soldiers.
"Your signals enable us to take the news of your location to the rear,"
read the communication, "to report if the attack is successful, to call
for help if needed, to enable the artillery to put their shells over
your heads into the enemy. If you are out of ammunition and tell us, we
will report and have it sent up. If you are surrounded, we will deliver
the ammunition by airplane. We do not hike through the mud with you, but
there are discomforts in our work as bad as mud, but we won't let rain,
storms, Archies (anti-aircraft guns) nor Boche planes prevent our
getting there with the goods. Use us to the limit. After reading this,
hand it to your buddie and remember to show your signals." It was
signed: "Your Aviators."
"You bet we will, all of that," was the heartfelt comment of the
soldiers. Such was the splendid spirit of co-operation built up by
General Pershing among the branches of the service.
To this great American army was assigned the tremendous task of striking
at the enemy's vitals, striking where it was known he would defend
himself most passionately. The German defensive lines converged toward a
point in the east like the ribs of a fan, drawing close to protect the
Mezieres-Longuyon railroad shuttle, which was the vital artery of
Germany in occupied territory. If the Americans could force a break
through in the Argonne, the whole tottering German machine in France
would crumble. Whether they broke through or not, the smallest possible
result of an advance there would be the narrowing of the bottle-neck of
the German transport lines into Germany and a slow strangling of the
invading forces.
After the first tempestuous rush, there was no swift movement. The Yanks
gnawed their way to the vaunted Kriemhilde line, hacked and hewed their
way through it, overcoming thousands of machine guns, beset by every
form of Hun pestilence. Even conquered ground they found treacherous.
The Germans had planted huge mines of which the fuses were acid, timed
to eat through a container days after the Germans had gone and touch off
the explosive charge to send scores of Americans to hospitals or to
soldiers' graves.
To the Americans, not bursting fresh into battle as they had done at
Chateau-Thierry, but sated and seasoned by a long summer of campaigning,
fell the tough, unspectacular problem of the whole western front. While
the world hung spellbound on the Franco-British successes in the west
and north, with their great bounds forward after the retreating
Germans, relatively little attention was paid to the action northwest of
Verdun, and not until the close of hostilities did America begin to
awaken to the fact that it was precisely this slow, solid pounding, this
bulldog pertinacity of the Americans that had made possible that
startling withdrawal in the north.
So vital was this action in the Argonne that the best divisions the
German high command could muster were sent there and, once there, were
chewed to bits by the American machine, thus making possible the rapid
advances of the Allies on other parts of the long front.
The Pennsylvania men looked back almost longingly to what they had
regarded at the time as hard, rough days along the Marne, the Ourcq and
the Vesle. In perspective, and from the midst of the Argonne fighting,
it looked almost like child's play. Back home over the cables came the
simple announcement that a certain position had been taken. Followers of
the war news got out their maps and observed that this marked an advance
of but a mile or so in three or four days and more than one asked:
"What is wrong with Pershing's men?" It was difficult to understand why
the men who had leaped forward so magnificently from the Marne to the
Aisne, traveling many miles in a day, should now be so slow, while their
co-belligerents of the other nations were advancing steadily and
rapidly.
A very few minutes spent with any man who was in the Argonne ought to
suffice as an answer. Soldiers who were in the St. Mihiel thrust and
also in the Argonne coined an epigram. It was: "A meter in the Argonne
is worth a mile at St. Mihiel." The cable message of a few words nearly
always covered many hours, sometimes days, of heroic endeavor, hard,
backbreaking labor, heart-straining hardship and the expenditure of
boundless nervous energy with lavish hand, to say nothing of what it
meant to the hospital forces behind the lines and to the burial details.
September 24th, division headquarters of the Twenty-eighth moved up to a
point less than two miles back of the front lines, occupying old,
long-abandoned French dugouts. That evening Major-General Charles H.
Muir, the division commander, appeared unexpectedly in the lines and
walked about for some time, observing the disposition of the troops. He
was watched with wide-eyed but respectful curiosity by many of the men,
for the average soldier in the ranks knows as little of a division
commander as of the Grand Llama of Tibet. Frequently he cares as little,
too.
The General cast a contemplative eye aloft, to where countless squirrels
frolicked among the foliage of the great old trees, chattering in wild
indignation at the disturbers of their peace, and birds sang their
evensong upon the branches.
[Illustration: (C) _International Film Service._
BRIEFLY AT REST IN THE ARGONNE FOREST
Periods of rest in the inferno of fighting in the Argonne were not
frequent, but this group of Iron Division doughboys was snapped by the
camera during a lull, while they were grouped about the entrance to an
old German dugout.]
The Iron Division now was completely assembled, functioning smoothly and
efficiently, every unit working as a cog in the one great wheel. The
artillery brigade, which had made its bow to modern warfare in the Vesle
region, was established on the line well to the rear of the infantry. It
had rushed at top speed from the Aisne plateau, making some record
hikes. The guns were moved only by night and each day the weapons were
camouflaged, usually in a friendly patch of woods. One night they made
thirty miles, which is covering ground rapidly, even under the most
favorable circumstances, for an organization with the impedimenta of
an artillery brigade.
There were times, in those long night marches, when the little natural
light from a moonless sky was blotted out by woods through which the
roads passed, and the artillerymen moved forward in absolute blackness.
To have a light of any kind was dangerous, because of the frequent night
forays by enemy flyers, and therefore forbidden. Patrols went along in
advance to "feel" the road, and the men with the guns and caissons
followed by keeping their eyes on the ghostly radiance from illuminated
wrist watches worn by officers with the advance patrols.
When it came to the work of placing the guns for the preparatory
bombardment of the offensive, the position assigned the Pennsylvania
regiments was in a forest so dense that to get an area of fire at all,
they had to fell the trees before them. But concealment of battery
positions in a surprise attack is a vital consideration, and to have cut
down hundreds of trees would have been an open advertisement to enemy
observation planes of the location of the batteries.
To overcome this difficulty, the trees which it was necessary to remove
were sawed almost through and wired up to others, which were untouched,
in order to keep them standing to the last moment. In order to get their
field of fire, it was necessary for the men of some batteries to cut and
wire as many as a hundred trees. In this way everything was prepared for
the opening of the bombardment save the actual felling of the trees, and
not the keenest eye nor the finest camera among the Boche aviators could
detect a change in the character of the forest.
At dusk on the night of Wednesday, September 25th, the artillerymen cut
the wires holding the trees with axes and pulled the monarchs of the
forest crashing to the ground to left and right of the path thus opened
up, leaving the way clear for the artillery fire. A total of more than a
thousand trees were felled in this way for the three regiments.