XXXII
THE FINAL ATTACK
Stalwart 89th and 90th—Bantheville Wood cleaned up by the 89th—The 90th to the Freya system—The 5th, back in line, takes Aincreville and Brieulles—America's two-edged sword—An aggressive army and the Fourteen Points—Would the German links snap?—A last push—The military machine running smoothly—Vigorous divisions in line—Veterans in reserve—"We will go through."
The rest of the picture, which had been done in the miniature of agonizing efforts for small gains, was now to be painted in bold strokes on a swiftly flowing canvas. During the last ten days of October, after the general attack of the 14th had slowed down, our preparations for the final attack included the taking of certain positions which would be serviceable as "jumping-off" places, and the arrival of two conspicuously able National Army divisions.
The 89th had been formed under Major-General Leonard Wood, which assured that the men of clear eyes and fine physique, drafted from Kansas and Missouri, would be well and sympathetically trained. If the division might not have Wood at its head in France, it was to have in his successor, Major-General William M. Wright, a leader worthy to exemplify the standards he had established. All the army knew "Bill" Wright, a man of the world as well as an all-round soldier, practical and broad-minded, who faced a problem or an enemy in all four-square robustness and energetic determination. In the Saint-Mihiel drive, and afterward in the Saint-Mihiel sector, the 89th had fully met the high expectation of its old commander and his admirers.
His men were as devoted to Major-General Henry T. Allen, who had formed the 90th from recruits and commanded it in France. The six feet of "Hal" Allen were as straight, now that his hair was gray, and he was as spare in body and as youthful in spirit as in the days when he was a lieutenant of cavalry, or organized the Philippine Constabulary. He too was known to all the army, always "all there," whether on parade or in a stuffy dugout, or in any group of men at home or abroad. When he went among his tall Texans they said that they had a general who looked like a general. Both Allen and Wright were afterward rewarded with corps commands for their service in the concluding drive of the battle.
As for the spirit of the infantry of the 90th during all the battle, only three stragglers were reported from the whole division. They were from Texas, as they were prompt to tell you. They had shown in the mire of the Saint-Mihiel salient that men from a very dry atmosphere can endure penetrating humid cold as well as the hot sun. The sight of them, no less than of the 89th and other divisions from the Middle West, was an assurance that anemia does not flourish in their native States. Neither the 89th nor the 90th had received enough replacements to change their local character. Their regional pride was accordingly almost as strong as their divisional pride. Both, when they arrived in the Meuse-Argonne, were considered as "shock" divisions, so rapid had been their progress in efficiency since they had come to France.
Taking over from the 32nd on October 19th, the 89th immediately proceeded to clean up the troublesome Bantheville Wood. Though the operation was entirely successful, it required severe fighting under other adverse conditions than machine-gun and artillery fire, which grew worse, the farther the infantry advanced. The roads through the wood, which was continually gassed, were impassable. Stretcher-bearers had to wade in mud knee-deep for the mile and a half of its length in bringing back the shivering wounded, and the men stricken with influenza.
When the Germans built that excellent bathing and disinfecting plant at Gesnes, they did the 89th a good turn. Taking care of over four thousand of our exhausted men, it was the adjutant of their fine physique in so conserving the strength of the division that it was able, after ten days of action and exposure which might well have "expended" it, to fight its way to the Meuse and across the Meuse in the ten days of advance from November 1st until the armistice.
The 90th, taking over on October 22nd from the 5th Division in that violent sector of the Rappes Wood in front of Bantheville, under the cross artillery fire from the heights of the whale-back and east of the Meuse, its line joining the 89th on the left, made a spring for the village of Bantheville on the 23rd, capturing and holding it. The next day it drove ahead until it was up to the Freya Stellung, the second line of defense of the whale-back, with a precision that defied the enemy's artillery and machine-guns. The Freya was not as strong as the Kriemhilde, neither being of course a trench system in the former accepted sense; but the Freya had fragments of trenches and strong positions for machine-guns, linked together in characteristic mobile defense. Eager as the Texans were to attack the Freya, it was not in the plan that they should. They were to dig in and expose themselves as little as possible to the cross artillery fire, and "make medicine" for their part in the general attack, which would sweep over the Freya on November 1st. The Germans tried several counter-attacks; but every one was promptly repulsed by the accurate fire of the Texans, whom the deluges of shells could not budge from their positions.
Meanwhile the tried regulars of the 5th Division, which had come into line on the Meuse flank on October 27th, had a few chores to do before they were to carry out their brilliant programme in crossing the Meuse. I use the word chores, because the Aces, now refreshed and full of "pep," made their successes appear to be little more. We had not yet taken Brieulles on the river bank, though it had been set as a part of the Army objective of the initial attack of September 26th. For four weeks it had been whipping our flanks with its machine-gun fire and protecting enfilading German batteries. After having vigilantly pushed forward aggressive patrols, which seized vantage points, in a rush in the darkness on the morning of the 30th, the 5th took Aincreville. That evening skirmishers went into Brieulles, and cleared it of the enemy. To a point opposite Liny, where the river curved westward, we had straightened out our line on the Meuse bank, shortening our Third Corps front, which at the same time had cut deeper into the flank of the Barricourt ridge, the final crest of the whale-back.