MILLION DOLLAR BARRAGE
At eleven o'clock that night, September 25th, a signal gun barked far
down the line. The gunners of every battery were at their posts,
lanyards in hand, and on the instant they pulled.
That has become known in the army as "the million dollar barrage,"
because enlisted men figured it must have cost at least that much.
Whatever it cost, no man in that great army ever had heard the like. It
ranged from the smaller field pieces up to great naval guns firing
shells sixteen inches in diameter, with every variety and size of big
gun in the American army in between. There had been talk in the war of a
bombardment "reaching the intensity of drum fire." No drums the world
ever has heard could have provided a name for that bombardment. It was
overwhelming in the immensity of its sound, as well as in its effect.
There were 3,000 guns on the whole front.
Toward morning, the twelve ugly, snub-nosed weapons of the 103d Trench
Mortar Battery, under Captain Ralph W. Knowles, of Philadelphia, added
their heavy coughing to the monstrous serenade which rent the night.
They were in position well up to the front, and their great bombs were
designed to cut paths through the enemy barbed wire and other barriers
so the infantry could go forward with as little trouble as possible.
Zero hour for the infantry was 5.30 o'clock on that morning of September
26th. Watches of officers and non-commissioned officers had been
carefully adjusted to the second the night before and when the moment
arrived, the long lines went over the top without further notice.
The former National Guard of Pennsylvania was but one division among a
great many in that attack, which covered a front of fifty-four miles
from the Meuse clear over into the Champagne and which linked up there
with the rest of the whole flaming western front. The American army
alone covered twenty miles of attacking front, and beyond them extended
General Gourard's French army to the west.
The full effect and result of the artillery preparation was realized
only when the infantry went over the top. The early stages of the
advance were described by observers as being more like a football game
than a battle. The route was virtually clear of prepared obstructions,
although there was hardly a stretch of six feet of level ground, and the
German opposition was almost paralyzed.
The whole field of the forward movement was so pitted with shell craters
as to make the going almost like mountain climbing. Over this field a
part of the great battle of Verdun in 1916 had been fought and the pits
scooped out by the artillery of that time, added to those due to the
constant minor fire since, lay so close together that it was utterly
impossible for all the men to make their way between. The craters left
from the Verdun battle could be distinguished by the fact that their
sides were covered with grass and that once in a while a few bones were
to be seen, melancholy reminder of the brave men who died there.
Seen from observation posts in the rear, the advancing soldiers
presented an odd picture, dropping suddenly from view as they went into
a hole, then reappearing, clambering up the far side. They jumped over
the edges, often into a pool of stagnant water with a bottom of slimy
mud, and the climbing out was no easy task, burdened as they were with
equipment.
It was now the season of the year when the days are still fairly warm,
but the nights are keen and frosty. The men started out in the chill of
the morning with their slickers, but as the day advanced they began to
feel these an unbearable impediment in the heat and rush of battle and
they discarded them. When night came they bitterly cursed their folly,
for they were wretched with the cold.
The early morning was gray and forbidding. A heavy mist covered the
land, hampering the air force in their work of observation, but overhead
the sky was clear, giving promise of better visibility when the sun
should heat the atmosphere and drive the mists away.
The infantry, with machine gunners in close support, went forward
rapidly. They came to the first German trench line and crossed it almost
without opposition. A surprising number of Germans emerged from
dugouts, hands up, and inquired directions to the prison cages in the
American rear. The Pennsylvanians were just beginning to feel the effect
of the loss of morale in the enemy army.
To the surprise of our doughboys, the artillery opposing them was weak
and ineffectual. To this fact is attributed the great number of what are
known as "clean" wounds in the Argonne fight--bullet wounds which make a
clean hole and heal quickly. In view of the great number of men struck
during this campaign, it is extremely fortunate that this was so. Had
the German artillery been anything like what it had been in other
battles, our casualty lists would have been much more terrible, for it
is the shrapnel and big shells that tear men to pieces.
Beyond the first German line, which was just south of Grand Boureuilles
and Petite Boureuilles, on opposite sides of the Aire river, the German
defenses had not been so thoroughly destroyed and the resistance began
to stiffen. Out from their shelters, as soon as the American barrage had
passed them, came hordes of Germans to man their concealed machine gun
nests. The lessons of the Marne-Aisne drive had been well learned by the
Pennsylvanians, and there were few frontal assaults on these strong
points, many of which were the famous concrete "pill boxes"--holes in
the earth roofed over with rounded concrete and concealed by foliage and
branches, with narrow slits a few inches above the surface of the earth
to permit the guns to be sighted and fired.
When the infantry came to one of these that spat flame and steel in such
volume that a direct attack threatened to be extremely costly, they
passed around it through the woods on either flank and left it to be
handled by the forces coming up immediately in their rear, with trench
mortars and one-pounder cannon, capable of demolishing the concrete
structures.
The infantry passed beyond the area in which the artillery and trench
mortars had wiped out the barbed wire and ran into much difficulty with
the astounding network of this defensive material woven through the
trees. The Germans had boasted that the Argonne forest was a wooded
fortress that never could be taken. American troops proved the vanity
of that boast, but they went through an inferno to do it. The wire was a
maze, laced through the forest from tree to tree, so that hours were
consumed in covering ground which, but for the wire, could have been
covered in almost as many minutes. The men had literally to cut and hack
their way through yard after yard.
The towns of Boureuilles, great and small, were cleaned up after smart
fighting, and the advance was continued up the beautiful Aire River
valley in the direction of Varennes.
The Pennsylvania infantry was advancing in two columns. The 55th
Brigade, including the 109th and 110th Infantry regiments, was right
along the river, and the 56th Brigade, made up of the 111th and 112th,
went through the forest on the left, or west of the river. On the right
of the Twenty-eighth Division was the Thirtieth Division, consisting of
National Guard troops of North and South Carolina and Tennessee, and on
the left was the Seventy-seventh Division, selected men from New York
State.
The town of Varennes stands in a bowl-shaped valley, rich in historic
significance and, at the time our men reached there, gorgeous in the
autumnal colorings of the trees. It was at Varennes that Louis XVI was
captured when he attempted to escape from France.
Coming up from the south to the high ground surrounding Varennes, the
Iron Division forged ahead faster than the troops on their right could
move through the forest. Before the officers and men of the liaison
service could apprise the Pennsylvania commanders of this fact, they
discovered it for themselves when a hot fire was poured in on their
flank from German "pill boxes" and other strong points.
It was decided, since the troops were rolling onward in fine style, not
to halt the division while the other division caught up, so Major
Thompson was sent off to the east with a battalion of the 110th to look
after that flanking fire. The battalion disappeared into the woods, and
in a little while a sharp increase in the sound of the firing from that
direction indicated that it was hard at work. After some time it came
back into its position in the line. The other division had easier going
for a time as a result of the efforts of the four companies of
Pennsylvanians, and the embarrassing fire from the right flank was
silenced.
After a number of the German "pill boxes" had been reduced and entered
by the Pennsylvania troops, it was discovered that they were, like so
many other German contrivances and devices of the war, largely bluff. In
instance after instance, where the intensity of the fire from these
places had led our men to expect a garrison of a dozen men they found
only one. The retreating Germans had left a single soldier with a large
supply of rifles to give the impression of a considerable force manning
the fort. Prisoners said their instructions had been to fire as rapidly
as possible and as long as possible and to die fighting, without thought
of surrender.
When the Pennsylvanians forced their way to the lower crest of the ridge
looking down into the valley where Varennes lies, the edge of the
Argonne forest to the westward still was occupied by enemy machine
gunners. Officers of the division stepped out from the shelter of trees
and looked over the ground with their glasses to plan the next phase of
the attack. German snipers promptly sighted them and in a moment bullets
were singing through the trees above their heads and to both sides, but
they remained unperturbed.
"Get me an idea of what is over in that wood," said General Muir to his
aides, and Lieutenant Raymond A. Brown, of Meadville, Pa., and Captain
William B. Morgan, of Beverly, Mass., started out on the risky mission.
Lieutenant Brown's pistol was packed in his blanket roll. He borrowed a
rifle and a cartridge belt from a private soldier. Three hours later
they returned and made reports upon which were based the next actions of
the troops. They told nothing of their experiences, but Lieutenant Brown
had added a German wrist watch to his equipment and Captain Morgan
showed a pair of shoulder straps which indicated that the troops
opposing them were Brandenburgers.
As they went down the far side of the hill toward Varennes, the
Pennsylvania soldiers saw an amazing evidence of German industry. The
whole slope was painstakingly terraced and furnished with dugouts in
tiers, leading off the terraces. The shelters of the officers were
fitted out with attractive porticos and arbors.
As evidence of the hurried retreat of the Huns, who apparently had not
dreamed the Americans could advance so swiftly through their leafy
fortress, a luncheon, untouched, lay upon a table in an officer's
dugout. At the head of the table was an unopened letter.
In another dugout was an upright piano, which must have been looted from
the town and lugged up the hill at the cost of great labor. But, most
astonishing of all, upon the piano was sheet music published in New
York, as shown by the publisher's name, long after America entered the
war. Our officers puzzled long over how the music could have got there,
but found no solution.