Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne)

by Frederick Palmer

The Commander-in-Chief having on the 5th directly urged all possible speed on the left toward the Meuse at Sedan, which was of course the farthest objective from our starting-point, those mouth-watering veteran hounds in reserve of the First and Fifth Corps at last had their leashes removed, and joined the pack in full cry. Taking the place of the 78th, the men of the 42nd knew now that there was a rainbow's end, and they meant that it should go to none other than the Rainbow Division. March is hardly the word for their speed; gallop is a better one. On the 8th they had reached Wadelincourt, a suburb across the river from Sedan, in their wonderful dash. Their Rainbow ambition having considered all northern France as their objective, they found that they were out of the American sector, and accordingly must be "side-slipped." The French took Sedan. There was historical fitness in the French poilus, in their faded blue, being the first troops to enter that town, where a French disaster, due to a travesty of imperial leadership, had glorified the Hohenzollern dynasty, which was now a travesty with its armies in dissolution.

The 1st, swinging over to the left but still remaining with the Fifth Corps, had a long march before reaching the front of the 80th, which it relieved. When it received the word to go, it developed a speed which was sufficient reason for its being in at the finish, without depending upon its record in previous actions. Our pioneer veterans had two days and two nights in line, advancing ten miles. Then they were "squeezed out" by the "side-slipping" of the 42nd from before Sedan. From the morning of November 5th, when the call came to them, until midnight of November 7th-8th, their units had fought for forty-eight hours, and marched from thirty to forty-five miles. Will the race-horse 2nd please take note of this?

If the Arrows of the 32nd, the third of the veteran divisions in reserve, had had to go home without being in the final drive, when the 42nd was in it, our army staff would have been even more unpopular than it was. They, too, had this chance. As the Third Corps' front broadened with its advance over the heights on the other side of the river they took over a portion of the sector of the 15th French Colonials, where they were driving the enemy in most uncivil fashion when the flag fell.

The Texans of the 90th had to swing their right flank to the river bank in liaison with the flank of the 5th, and keep firm liaison with the 89th on their left. They faced very resolute fire from the other bank in their bridge-building, which had to be done under most troublesome conditions after some expensive reconnoitering, in which the Texans did not allow artillery or machine-gun fire to interfere with their pioneering audacity. On the 9th they had orders to cross. That night they went over their new bridge under a pitiless fire. While one detachment went into Stenay, which lies under a bluff, where it had a busy time in cleaning up the town, the other detachment pressed on into Baalon Wood.

Meanwhile the Kansans and Missourians of the 89th had been preparing, at the same time with the 2nd of the Fifth Corps, to cross and take the heights of Inor. As soon as their outposts reached the bank, their patrols had begun swimming the river under machine-gun fire. They were assigned some German pontoons, which they transformed into rafts. The first was rowed across; the others were pulled across with ropes. Seventy-five men being crowded on each raft, they put one whole battalion on the opposite bank while footbridges were being smashed by the enemy artillery as fast as the engineers could build them. The battalion, having taken over a hundred prisoners, pressed on to Autreville. It goes without saying that the 2nd had also effected a crossing—and under equally trying conditions.

Every battalion over the Meuse, every rod of ground gained, was considered a further argument for the Germans to accept the terms of the armistice now in their hands. Until the word to cease fire came, the Army would go on fighting; at dawn on the 11th, when the German delegates were signing their names on Marshal Foch's train our Second Army, weak in numbers and strong in heart, began carrying out the orders that had been planned in the Saint-Mihiel sector, where several of our veteran divisions had been resting after being expended in the Meuse-Argonne, and we had the 7th and 88th among our new divisions. On the right was the 92nd, colored, National Army, nearest of all our troops to the former German frontier, who were the first to cross it, I understand, in their successful charge. To say that the 28th and the 33rd were also in the action is sufficient. They were going ahead, and the German infantry was resisting with machine-gun fire which caused numerous casualties, and the German artillery was responding with a heavy bombardment at some points, when word was flashed through from Marshal Foch to our General Headquarters, and through to the Second Army, and out to the regiments and battalions, that at 11 A.M. hostilities would cease.

The Second Army advance was immediately stopped. Everywhere east of the Meuse our troops were advancing on the morning of the 11th. The 81st was engaged on the flank of the veteran 26th, which had been ceaselessly pushing the enemy over the hills since November 1st, and was now approaching the plain. The 79th, after taking the Borne de Cornouiller, had faced round in a rapid and brilliant maneuver, pressing over the rim of the bowl from the Grande Montagne and from Belleu Wood, in whose fox-holes three of our divisions had suffered, and moving down into the plain had taken Damvillers, and was now storming the last of the three hills between its line and the plain of the Woëvre. The men were wrathful at being stopped. They wanted to finish the job: to take the last of the hills.

At many points where our infantry units were far beyond our communications and infiltrating around hills and through woods, it took some time to reach the rapidly moving advance detachments with the news that they were to cease firing and go no farther. Particularly was this true in front of the Fifth Corps, whose skirmishers, having just crossed the river, were taking the bit in their teeth. A few elements were still engaging the German rearguard at eleven, unaware that the war was over, while on all the remainder of the front from Switzerland to Holland there was silence for the first time in four years—and the mills of hell had ceased grinding.