According to European standards none of the divisions in the first shock of the Meuse-Argonne battle was veteran, of course; and the mission given them would have been considered beyond their powers. Indeed, the disaster of broken units, dispersing from lack of tactical skill, once they were against the fortifications, would have been considered inevitable. A veteran or "shock" division in the European sense—such divisions as the European armies used for major attacks and difficult operations—would have had a superior record in four years of war. Its survivors, through absorption no less than training, would have developed a craft which was now instinctive. They were Europeans fighting in Europe; they knew their enemy and how he would act in given emergencies; they knew the signs which showed that he was weakening or that he was going to resist sturdily; they knew how to find dead spaces, and how to avoid fire; and they had developed that sense of team-play which adjusts itself automatically to situations. All that our divisions knew of these things they had learned from schooling or in one or two battles. We had the advantage that experience had not hardened our initiative until we might be overcautious on some occasions.
The battle order of our divisions for the Meuse-Argonne battle was not based on the tactical adaptation of each unit to the task on its front. We must be satisfied with placing a division in line at a point somewhere between the Meuse and the Forest's edge where transportation most favored its arrival on time. One division was as good as another in a battle arranged in such haste. The French Fourth Army was to attack on the west of the Argonne Forest; on its right a regiment of the 92nd (colored) Division, National Army, with colored officers, was to form the connecting link between the French and the American forces. For men with no experience under heavy fire, who were not long ago working in the cotton fields and on the levees of the South, this was a trying assignment, which would have tested veterans. Never before had colored men under colored officers gone against a powerful trench system. All the British and French colored troops had white officers, and our other colored division, the 93rd, which was attached to the French Army through the summer and fall of 1918, had white officers.
We come now to our divisions in place on the night of September 25th, with whom will ever rest the honor of having stormed the fortifications. When I consider each one's part I should like to write it in full. I shall mention them individually when that best suits the purpose of my chronicle, and at other times I shall describe the common characteristics of their fighting: in either case mindful of the honor they did us all as Americans.
IV
THE ORDER OF BATTLE
The Metropolitan Division in the Argonne proper—Six weeks without rest—Direct attack impossible in the Forest—Similar history of the Keystone Division—Pennsylvania pride—Its mission the "scalloping" of the Forest edge—The stalwart men of the 35th Division—Storming the Aire heights—Fine spirit of the Pacific Slope Division—A five-mile advance projected for the Ohio Division—North and South in the 79th Division—Never in line before, it was to strike deepest.
Three National Army divisions were to be in the initial attack. It was a far cry for the men who a year before had tumbled into the training camps at home, without knowledge of the manual of arms or of the first elements of army etiquette and discipline, to the march of trained divisions forward into line of battle in France. On the extreme left of the line was the Liberty Division, from New York City. The metropolitans were given the task of taking not a town, but a forest, with which their name will be as long connected as with our largest city. Its left flank on the western edge of the Argonne Forest and its right on the eastern, the 77th had a long divisional front of over four miles; but it would have been unsatisfied if it had had to share the Forest. The Forest was its very own. The public at home seemed to have the idea that the whole battle was fought there. If it had been, the 77th would have had to share credit with twenty other divisions, which had equally stiff fighting in patches of woods which were equally dense even if they were not called forests.
MAP NO. 4
DIVISIONS IN THE FIRST STAGE OF THE MEUSE-ARGONNE BATTLE, SEPTEMBER 26TH-OCTOBER 1ST.