Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne)

by Frederick Palmer

If the Fifth Corps took its objectives, you might be certain that General Hines of the Third Corps on the right would take his, and maintain his reputation for brevity by reporting the fact with no more embellishment than a ship's log. If he had written Cæsar's commentaries, they would have been compressed into one chapter. The former commander of the bull-dog 4th Division, who had been on the Meuse flank under the cross artillery fire from September 26th, knew his ground. As the Third Corps had its flank on the Meuse and was to swing in toward the river bank, it had the shortest advance of the three corps to make.

The Texans of the 90th, on the left of his Corps, had been fretting for a week in face of the Freya Stellung and the Andevanne ridge, which they were now to take. In one of his trips about the front, General Allen had had his artillery commander killed at his side by a shell. His Texans were the kind that would carry out his careful plans for the attack. Barrages were cleverly arranged; machine-gunners put on high points for covering fire. On the 1st the Texans made short work of the Freya Stellung, reaching their objectives at every point, and eager to go ahead. The Germans put in a first-class division against the Texans on the night of the 2nd; but that did not make any difference. It was a furious give and take at some points, but on the night of the 2nd they had Villers-devant-Dun and Hill 212. The next day, in face of only desultory shelling, it was a matter of tireless maneuver and scattered fighting, with the worst punishment from low-flying German planes, raking our lines with machine-gun bullets. That night the 90th was organizing on the Halles ridge, preparatory to striking for the river bank.

The 5th, the right division of the Third Corps, as it pivoted on the Meuse bank, had patrols studying the river for a crossing at Brieulles and beyond on November 1st. The next morning its left entered Cléry-le-Petit, a mile farther down the river from Brieulles, and cleaned up the horseshoe bluff known as the Punch-bowl. Now we had word that the Fourth French Army, on the west, and our First Corps, on the east, of the Bourgogne forest, in their rapid pursuit were out of touch with the enemy. This prompted energetic measures by the 5th in crossing the river, which General Ely was to apply in dashing initiative that will hold our attention later.

By this time on that shell-cursed western slope of the Meuse where many of our divisions had fought under the cross-fire from the galleries, there was only an occasional burst. Apart from the taking of the whale-back, there was another reason—the action east of the Meuse, where our divisions, coöperating with the French, had sprung to the attack on the morning of November 1st no less energetically than on the main battlefield. The Yankees of the 26th, as the only National Guard division then in the front line, sharing the freshened confidence of the hour, put the survivors of all four regiments in line, their sector being now farther south, over the ridges and through the woods north of Verdun, where they were hampered by bad roads and mud, which was to give them a part in keeping with their record in the last acts of the drama. The 79th was making a maneuver up the slopes of the bowl which called for initiative and consummate tactical resourcefulness. Kuhn, who had formed the division and led it, knew his men. There was nothing they would not attempt. He knew his enemy, too. A great honor had come to the 79th, the honor of storming the Borne de Cornouiller, or Hill 378, the highest of all the hills we took in the battle,—"corned willy," as the soldiers fighting for it on cold corned beef called it.

There was no rapid pursuit for them, but wicked uphill work all the way, in three days of repeated charges. Starting from the Molleville farm clearing, they had to ascend the steep, wooded slopes of the Etraye and Grande Montagne ridges, and struggle down one side and up the other of that deadly Vaux de Mille Mais and other ravines, before they were in sight of the Borne. The German grew bitter in his resistance at the thought of having to yield this favorite height, which had given his observers a far-flung view, and his artillery cover to swing the volume of fire into the flank of our Third Corps. The Borne was a bald and gently rounded ridge, with the undulating plateau-like crest, facing the bare and steep slope which the 79th had to ascend, peculiarly favorable for machine-gun defense in front, while along the bordering road to the west, in the edge of the Grande Montagne Wood, machine-guns could sweep in flank the road and the whole slope. Piles of cartridge cases which had been emptied into our waves were silent witnesses of the fire the assaults of the 79th had endured when every khaki figure was exposed on the blue sky-line, a pitilessly distinct silhouette at close range.

Checked at this point and that, taking advantage of each fresh gain in gathering their strength for another effort, the men of the 79th kept on until they had worked their way through the woods and finally overrun the crest. There in their triumph, as they looked far across the Meuse over the hills and ridges and patches of woods, they might see the very heights of the whale-back which had been their goal when they charged down the valley of Montfaucon on September 26th in their baptism of fire. That Borne was the crowning point of those frowning hills and ridges east of the Meuse, which bullet-headed Prussian staff officers, who dreamed of fighting to the last ditch, had foreseen as a line of impregnable defense on French soil, which should become as horrible a shambles as their neighbors, the hills of Verdun. They had a new and inexpressibly grateful relation now to the vineyards of France, her well-tilled fields, her flower gardens of the Riviera, and the security of the whole world—for everywhere the bullet-headed Prussian officer was becoming the protesting flotsam in the midst of a breaking army which he could not control. The 79th had gone as far as it was wanted to go in following north the course of the Meuse in that movement begun on October 8th when the 33rd crossed the Meuse and advanced on the flank of the 29th toward the Borne.

Now another division, the 5th, was to cross the Meuse. The Meuse bottoms were broad, as I have hitherto noted, and swampy in places under the heavy rains, and required that the Meuse canal as well as the river should be bridged. There were many points on the river bottoms as well as on the hills on the east bank where machine-gunners might hide. German units still being urged to stand felt the appeal to their skill of such an advantage of position; their commanders the value of holding all the Meuse heights they could to assist the retreat of the Germans on the west. The 5th, despite its daring efforts, was not to achieve a crossing until the 90th on its left had finished its longer swing. On the night of the 3rd our Third Corps measured eight miles of front on the river bank. For the 5th and the other divisions, as their fan-shaped movement toward the bend brought each in turn to the river, it was a case of patrols finding openings by night between the tornadoes of machine-gun fire, where the engineers might do the building under the protection of our artillery. Material for the bridges had to be found or brought from the rear. In this our initiative and resourcefulness were at their best.

At dark on the night of the 3rd the attempts began. The engineers went to their hazardous task of working under fire, which is harder than shooting back at your enemy. They stealthily managed to put a footbridge across the river, but when they started to build another across the canal, they met a hurricane of machine-gun and rifle fire, while the German guns concentrating upon them forced their retirement. The engineers are a patient and tireless lot, who can wait until a burst of fire has died down and then start work again. By 2 A.M. they had two footbridges across the canal. When a small column of infantry tried to cross, they were blown back by the enemy, who had evidently been watching for the target to appear. The infantry dug in between the canal and the river. This much was gained at all events.

At 9.30 the next morning came a message from the Corps, directing that "the crossing will be effected regardless of loss, as the movement of the entire Army depends upon this crossing, and it must be done at once."