On the right success was more prompt. By noon a battalion was past the village which had resisted so many attempts to capture it. Knowing Romagne of old, the right had executed a clever flanking movement, under the special protection of a flexible barrage, which outwitted the enemy. By 11.30 the village was in the hands of the swiftly moving Arrows, and entirely mopped up. Its name might now be inscribed on the division banners with those of Fismes and Juvigny. The Germans had arranged many bloody traps in the streets, but the men of the 32nd had taken too many positions from the enemy to be fooled by such tricks.
The left meanwhile was burrowing into the steep and slippery sides of the Dame Marie ridge, with a blast of machine-gun fire grilling every head that showed itself. There are occasions when officer and soldier know that the odds are too great against them; when they halt and dig, from the same instinct that makes a man step back from a passing train. This was such an occasion. It looked as if the ridge could not possibly be taken in front, when the men on the extreme flank, quick to press forward instantly there was any opening in the wall of fire, saw their opportunity. The 42nd, with their first onrush halted, had kept on pushing, and they were driving the Germans off Hill 288, which had been pouring its fire into the ranks of the 32nd men facing the Dame Marie. This gave a purchase for a tactical stroke, which was improved before the German realized that he had fumbled, and could retrieve himself. A reserve battalion which was hastened forward slipped around to the left of the Dame Marie. With its pressure on the flank, and that of the center regiment, which had lost liaison on the left but had no thought of stopping while it could keep up with the right, the enemy was forced completely off the ridge by dark, and the advance pressed on into the woods beyond. The Arrows had now not only penetrated the Kriemhilde, but had gone clear through it. Too much gold can not be used in State capitals in inscribing the Dame Marie beside the heights of the Ourcq to glorify the deeds of the 32nd for the admiration of future generations. Despite its two weeks' hard service, it was to remain in line,—or rather to continue advancing for four days longer, as it grappled with the machine-gun nests in Bantheville Wood.
On the night of the 19th-20th it was relieved by the 89th. All the survivors among numerous replacements which it had received after Juvigny could claim to belong to that fraternity of veterans, which, from the hour they marched down the apron of the Ourcq in parade formation in the face of the enemy's guns, had shown the qualities which make armies unconquerable. No division ever stuck to its knitting more consistently, or had been readier to take the brunt of any action. Its part in the Meuse-Argonne battle had been vital and prolonged. The number of its prisoners, all taken in small groups in desperate fighting, was 1,095, its casualties were 5,019, and it had identified the elements of nine German divisions on its front.
On its right in the attack of October 14th a division new to the great battle had come into line—the regular 5th, under command of Major-General John E. McMahon. Its emblem was the ace of diamonds. The 5th was just as regular as the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th, and it had no inkling of a doubt that it could prove as ably as the other four that it was the "best" regular division. As a basis for its confidence was its record in Lorraine, where it had preparation for a larger role in its faultless taking of the village of Frapelle, when for the first time in two years the Vosges mountains had resounded with the bombardment of an offensive action. Officers and men had been thoroughly drilled. Uniformity had not suffered from the injection of inexperienced replacements. The 5th had both the ardor of the fresh divisions which had gone in on September 26th without having previously been under fire, and long trench service, which made the Aces the more eager to be in the "big show."
The command took them at their own estimate in a characteristic—an aggravatedly characteristic—fashion. If ever a division were warranted in losing heart on the ground that their superiors were "not playing the game" with them, it was the 5th, which was submitted to everything in the way of changing orders that is ruinous to morale. It was moved about without any regard to the chessboard rules of war. Doubtless this was necessary; but it was hard on the 5th, though it was only to confirm other people, including the Germans, in the opinion that the 5th was a great division.
On the night of October 11th-12th a brigade of the 5th was ordered to take over the line of the 80th and a part of the line of the 4th. The sector was on the Cunel-Brieulles road, where the 80th had been checked, and under the flanking fire of the galleries of guns, on the right from east of the Meuse, on the left from the whale-back, as well as in front, which I have described fully in my account of the 4th division. Relief was not completed until after daylight, at 6.30 in the morning. Patrols were sent forward into the Pultière Wood when word came that the Germans were massing for a counter-attack. The 5th was preparing to receive them, and establishing itself in its sector, when orders came that it was to withdraw. Nothing irritates a soldier of spirit more than to be sent into position for action, and then to turn his back upon the enemy. Withdraw! The aces of diamonds to withdraw! They were willing to play the game, but they were filled with disgust at such an order. After long marches from the rear, after spending the whole night in effecting a most difficult relief under continuous fire, after a day full of annoyances in organizing an uncertain line swept by shell-bursts, they were to march back, through the night in the gamut of the enemy artillery, which became increasingly active in evident knowledge of their exposure. Units had as much reason for becoming confused as they would have in a night attack.
Disheartened at having to retreat—for that was the word for the maneuver—some showed less alacrity than in going to the front, while the filtering process of withdrawal under the cross-fire was bound to separate men from their commands. The language they used of course was against the German artillery, not against high commanders. A part of the relief had to be carried out in broad daylight in sight of the German artillery observers; indeed, it was not finished until noon. Without having made a single charge, the brigade had been exhausted and suffered many casualties.
The change of plan considered using the 5th as a fresh division, which it would not long remain if this kind of maneuvering were continued. Army ambition had decided that it was to be the eastern wedge in the converging attack to Grand Carré farm, of which the 42nd was to be the western. Hence a change of sectors for the 5th, which, after marching into hell's jaws and out again, was to be "side-slipped" into the sector of the amazingly tenacious 3rd, which, though it might well be considered "expended" by its severe casualties and long exertions, was to take over the wicked sector from which the 5th had been withdrawn. "Side-slipping" was almost as common and hateful a word in the battle as liaison. Consider a battalion as a bit of paper fastened by a pin to a map, and moving it right or left was a simple matter; but moving men under shell- and machine-gun fire, in the darkness, from one series of fox-holes to another with which they were not familiar, you may be assured on the word of any soldier, who lost a night's sleep, while soaked to the skin by the chill rain, and had his comrades killed in the process, was anything but a simple matter.
Naturally the three divisions, the 5th, 32nd, and 42nd, were interdependent for success in this converging attack. As the veterans of the 42nd, doing all that veterans could do, were three days in taking the Chatillon ridge, and the regulars of the 5th could not bring to life their dead in the Rappes Wood to continue charging, either division had another reason than the unconquerable resistance on its own front for not keeping the schedule of high ambition.
According to the original plan, the Aces of the 5th, passing through the 3rd, were to advance across open ground in a corridor between the artillery fire of the Romagne heights and the flanking machine-gun nests of the Pultière and Rappes Woods, over which flanking artillery fire would pass from the heights east of the Meuse. The 5th's commander was to change the plan—another change with additional maneuvers, though a wise one—by attacking the Pultière Wood, which would save the Aces from some flanking machine-gun fire on the right.