There was nothing to do, then, but cross or die in the effort, without waiting for darkness. All available artillery was asked to pound the east bank of the Meuse until eight in the evening. At four in the afternoon the 5th started to lay a pontoon bridge across at Cléry-le-Petit, where the river was 110 feet wide and 10 feet deep. The pontoons were not blown up by shell-fire quite as fast as they were put in the water. Therefore the bridge was finally completed. Under a barrage of artillery fire two battalions made a rush to cross the bridge. The German artillery began tearing them to pieces at the same time that it was tearing the bridge to pieces.
Happily the 5th was not putting all its eggs in one basket. At 6.20 another party, without any artillery preparation, succeeded in crossing the canal as well as the river at Brieulles, and once on the other side would not be budged from maintaining their narrow bridgehead in face of the plunging fire from the heights. Just below Brieulles, another battalion, which was also favored, no doubt, by the German attention being drawn to the fragile targets of the pontoons, in the most unostentatious but expeditious manner got across by using rafts, duckboards, poles, and ropes, and by swimming. The water of the river was bitter cold, but we were winning the war, and every soldier in the Meuse-Argonne was used to being wet by rain. This sopping battalion made a lodgment in Chatillon Wood, and kept warm during the night by cleaning the Germans out of it.
It appeared at midnight that the whole division would have to swing round to cross the river by way of Brieulles; but before morning the left brigade, on the north, put pontoons over successfully during the night, and crossed a battalion; for the Aces of the 5th had taken the Corps order to heart. Never let it be said that the 5th was holding up the entire Army—if it really were. General Hines was a very taciturn man, as I have remarked; and the Army staff had studied foreign methods in propaganda.
By 8 A.M. there were artillery bridges over the Meuse at Brieulles. Such speed as this ought to be encouraged by calling for more speed. Two brigades had detachments across the river. The next thing was to join up the bridgeheads and take Dun-sur-Meuse, and this immediately. General Ely, of square jaw and twinkling blue eyes, did not care who took it, so it was taken.
"Take Dun-sur-Meuse and the hill north of 292, and from there go to the east," he told one brigade. "Do not wait for the other brigade. Keep pushing up with that one battalion, and take that place."
"Keep shoving your battalions through," he told the other brigade. "Don't stop, but go through Dun. Take the shelling, and take the machine-gun fire, and push things along. You are to go to Dun unless the other fellow gets there first."
Thus Dun and the heights were taken that day, and the 5th fully established on the east bank of the Meuse. It was an accomplishment admirable in courage and skill.
The spirit of rivalry shown by the battalions rushing for Dun was that of all the divisions sweeping down the apron of the reverse slopes of the whale-back toward the river. This apron was not a smooth descent, but undulating, broken by hills, ravines, and woods, where machine-gunners could take cover and force deployment. In many instances advancing was no mere maneuver. The 89th ran into strong opposition on the heights overlooking the Meuse, and in common with all other divisions could not answer the enemy artillery, as we did not want to fire into the inhabited villages on the other bank. The 2nd met strong resistance on the 4th, which required organizing a regular attack; but, of course, it went through. Lejeune was not a man to consider any other result, or his men inclined to waste time when the 1st Division was waiting in the rear to take the 2nd's place if it so much as stubbed its toe. As we know, on critical occasions, the 2nd did not worry about casualties. Its casualty list, whose total was the heaviest of any division in France, for the final drive was over four thousand.
Enemy resistance varied with the mood of individual units. A few answered the professional call and the call of fatalism not to miss an opportunity to turn their machine-guns upon our advancing troops. Others asked only to escape or to surrender. The harder we pressed, the larger would be this class. Our own mood was that of the soldier who has his enemy in flight. Every blow was another argument for an armistice, and a further assurance of an early passage home. The elation of the chase eliminated the sense of fatigue. Abandoned guns, rifles, bombs, trench mortars, worn-out automobiles and trucks, all the stage properties of retreat were in the wake of that German army whose mighty organization had held the world in a fearful awe. We were passing through a region where houses were intact and only a few shells had fallen in the course of our advance. Villagers in a wondering delirium of joy were watching the groups of German prisoners, too weary for any emotion except a sense of relief, of officers with long faces and a glazed, despairing look in their eyes, officers who were indifferent, and occasional ones in whom the defiance of Prussian militarism still bore itself in ineffectual superciliousness; and watching these strange Americans going and coming on their errands, and the passage of our troops, guns, and transport in an urgent procession which thought of nothing except getting ahead.