On October 12th the Blues and Greys of the 29th, coöperating with the French, undertook in an encircling movement, which was complex in its detail, to take the woods on both sides of the roads. This aroused all the spleen of the German artillery. It drew violent counter-attacks from the German infantry, continued in two days of in and out fighting. Successive charges reached the edges of Ormont. There under a tempest of artillery fire they looked up the slope through the thickets toward the summit of 360, where the machine-guns were emitting too murderous a plunging fire to permit them either to advance or to hold all the ground they had gained. On the north side of the road Reine Wood and a part of Chênes Wood were taken against counter-attacks. This was encouraging. Though it did not seem to make the capture of Ormont easier, it opened the way for an attack on the 15th toward Molleville farm on the left and Grande Montagne on the right. Much ground was gained on the left, and some on the right, where the fire from the Etraye ridge stopped the advance.
We were slowly working our way toward the rim, using each bit of woods or ridge which we won as a lever for winning another. All the while we were an interior line, attacking up a gallery against an exterior line whose ends could interlock their cross-fire. On the 16th, by dint of the sheer pluck of units dodging artillery concentrations and zones of machine-gun fire, and wearing down machine-gun nests, further progress was made on the Grande Montagne. The 29th, always under shell-fire and gas, had been attacking and resisting counter-attacks for eight days. It was not yet "expended" by any means; but it was glad to find that another American division was coming into the arena to relieve some of its own as well as French elements.
Had we any division whose veterans might feel, as the result of their experience, that they were familiar with all kinds of warfare, it was the 26th, the "Yankee" Division, National Guard of New England. As I have mentioned in my first book, the Yankees had learned not to expect a sinecure. Assignments which meant victory with theatrical ease never came to them. If four divisions were to draw lots for four places in line, they took it for granted that the worst would go to the 26th, which had become expert in gripping the rough end of a stick. The second division to arrive in France, the 26th was put into trenches, after a short period of training, in the ugly Chemin des Dames region, away from the American sector. From there it was sent direct into the mire of the Toul sector under the guns of Mont Sec, where it resisted the powerful thrust of German shock troops at Seicheprey. The length of time it remained in the Toul sector, and the length of the line it held there, might well have turned it into a division of mud wallowers; but it was able, on the contrary, to make some offensive thrusts of its own, and only longed for the time when it might have something like decent ground for an attack. From Toul it went to relieve the Marines and Regulars of the 2nd in the violent Pas-Fini sector on the Château-Thierry road, where, after more than two weeks in line, instead of having the period of rest and reorganization given to divisions before a big attack, it drove through to Epieds in the counter-offensive. Then at Saint-Mihiel, where it was with the French on the western side of the salient, by rapid marching it swung across to Vigneulles to meet the veteran 1st in closing the salient.
If there were any replacements in the 26th who felt apprehension as they came up Death Valley, the older Yankees, in the name of all the mud, shells, gas, machine-gun fire, and hardships they had endured, soon gave them the heart of veteran comradeship by their example. Saint-Mihiel had been revenge for them. It had set a sharper edge on their spirits. Artillery and all the other units having long served together, the Yankees were to be "expended" as other veteran divisions had been for a great occasion in the battle—an occasion in keeping with their tough experience. It was not for them to have the straight problem of charging a trench system, but to maneuver in and out of these ravines and woods, facing this way and that against appalling difficulties. Maine forests, Green Mountains, White Mountains, little Rhode Island, and Massachusetts and Connecticut had traditions in their history in the background of the fresh traditions the Yankees had won in France. With the Blue and Greys already in, and the 79th coming, the east of the Meuse battle became somewhat of a family affair of the original colonies. The French had great respect for the 26th. Much was expected of it, and it was to do much.
It went to the attack immediately on the morning of the 23rd. On the left it coöperated with the 29th, which, feeling rejuvenated in the presence of Americans on its flank, concentrated its remaining effectives for an ambitious effort which carried the Americans through to the Etraye ridge, and even to the important Pylone, or observatory, before the advance elements were stopped. This was the high watermark for the Blue and Grey, splendidly won. Without trying to follow the detail of the maneuver, the 26th, as soon as it was known that its Etraye ridge attack was succeeding, put in a reserve battalion and rushed for the Belleu, that wood on the east of the Crépion road, just short of the vital point on the rim that I have mentioned. In the impetuosity of new troops in their first battle, and the spryness and wisdom of veterans, this battalion swept over the machine-guns and through the wood, which the 29th had already entered, to meet a savage reception.
This was shaking the whole plan of German defense. It was an insulting slap in the face to German tactics. Just over the crest beyond Belleu, as I have already mentioned, the slope ran down to the plain of the Woëvre. The German had no shell-fire to spare now for the other bank of the Meuse. Batteries whose fire had been the curse of the Third Corps swung round in concentration on that exposed patch of woods. The machine-gunners in the pill-boxes and log-covered redoubts were reinforced by others. It was a wonderful thing to have gone through Belleu Wood; but in order to have held, the Yankees would have needed something less permeable to bullets and shell-fragments, and subject to gas, than a "stern and rock-bound coast" determination. The battalion had to withdraw from the wood during the night, which was illumined by a fury of bursting shells.
The Yankees were now fairly warmed to their task. On the 24th they fought all day for Belleu Wood and Hill 360 in the Ormont Wood. A cleverly arranged smoke-screen protected their first entry into Belleu, when they advanced five hundred yards. The Germans knew well how to fight in that wood. They could draw back from their advanced line of fox-holes to their strong shell-proof emplacements, and call for an artillery barrage to blast our charge. Then they could gather for a counter-attack. Four times that day they rushed the Yankees under the support of their concentrations of artillery, which prevented our reinforcements coming up, and the fourth time they drove out our survivors. Attack again! New England would not accept the rebuff from Prussia. At 2.30 the next morning the Yankees charged the wood in darkness and rain, and they went through it, too.
There was no use of our artillery trying to crush the concrete pill-boxes defending the Ormont height on the other side of the road. They were invulnerable to shells, for the Yankees were facing, in most exposed down-hill positions, the latest fashion in mobile tactics in command of well-tested defenses on high ground. Trench-mortar fire in addition to machine-gun fire and shells shattered the two battalions which tried by all the suppleness of veteran tactics to reach Hill 360 on the 23rd. The next morning, after the usual night of shell-fire and suffering from cold on the wet ground, another attack did reach the hill, and fought in and out around it and in the woods, but could not hold it against the plunging fire of unassailable pill-boxes.
On October 24th a new commander, Brigadier-General Frank E. Bamford, who was trained in the school of the 1st, came to the 26th. Some people thought that our army staff was not in very intimate touch with the situation in the bowl. Preoccupied with the main battle, it was harassed by the flanking fire from the heights east of the Meuse. It wanted possession of these heights before starting the next general attack. A veteran division had been sent to take them. Evidently harder driving was required from Division Headquarters of the 26th.
"Go through!" Individuals did not count; success alone counted. Officers had been relieved right and left for failing to succeed. "Go through!" Other heights had been taken: why not these? Perhaps someone had overlooked the fact that while the German army retained anything like cohesion or any dependable troops, its command would not yield this Gibraltar in covering its retreat toward Germany after it was out of Sedan and Mézières, and withdrawn from the whale-back; and this was all the more reason for our desiring Gibraltar. The relief of other divisional commanders created nothing approaching the stir made by that of Major-General Clarence R. Edwards.