Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne)

by Frederick Palmer

It is unlikely that the enemy will direct his attack against the wooded territory in Sector K (Cheppy Wood) or against the neighboring sectors on our left. He would have to meet an unknown situation, and to advance through the heavy underbrush of the woods, which are totally secured from observation, would be very difficult....

It is only in the case of a deliberate offensive against the whole front of the Group or Army that there should be any retirement to the main line of resistance (the Lai Fuon ravine).

The main line of resistance must be held in any event.

The Lai Fuon ravine really bisected the woods transversally into two masses or belts. In describing the action of the Corps, which had the mission of taking the ravine and both sections of the woods, I shall begin with the 91st Division, National Army from the Pacific Slope, on the left. The 91st had never been in any except a practice trench, or heard a bullet or shell fired in battle, when it went into position for the attack. On its left was the 35th of the First Corps, and on its right the 37th of its own Fifth Corps. For artillery the 91st had that of the 33rd, and a battalion from the 82nd. The fact that the 33rd was also using borrowed artillery in its own attack is sufficiently indicative of the character of the hasty and heterogeneous mobilization of our unprepared army for the battle.

The Pacific Coast men had traveled far, clear across the Continent and across the Atlantic. Traveling was in their line. If distance had kept them from reaching the front as soon as some of the eastern divisions, noticeably those praised New Yorkers of the 77th, they would show that they could move fast and stick in the war to the end. The pioneer heritage was theirs; they were neighbors to Alaska, who looked toward Asia across the Pacific: big men who thought big and were used to doing big things. Their people depended upon them for great deeds worthy of their homes beyond the Great Divide. As the National Guard divisions from the Pacific Coast had had the misfortune, through sudden necessities when they were the only available men in depot, to be cut up for replacement, the men of the 91st had as an intact division a special responsibility in upholding the honor of the Coast.

They had the stamina which their climate breeds. They were under no apprehension that their inexperience in battle would not enable them to take care of the Germans they met, once they were through the trenches and in the open. As men of the distances, they had imagination which applied all their training to the situations which they would have to encounter. No veterans ever went into action with more confidence than these draft men. The roar of the surf on Pacific beaches, of the car-wheels from the Coast to New York, of the steamship propellers across the Atlantic, was the song of their gathered energy suddenly released in a charge.

The wire on their front had not been well cut; but what might have been a justifiable cause for delay they overcame in an intrepidity of purpose supported by a team-play which prevented confusion of their units. Happily the prompt taking by the stalwart Kansans and Missourians of the Vauquois hill positions commanding the 91st's field of advance, which had been the object of the French attacks in 1915, removed a formidable threat on their left. The Germans, who had been told that a division which had never been under fire was on their front, had no thought that it would attempt a serious attack. They were accordingly the more unprepared for the avalanche of man-power which came rushing at them. Relatively few in numbers, waiting on the 5th Guard Division to come up in reserve, they had a painfully urgent desire to start to the rear and meet it on its way forward.

If the uncut wire had made progress slow for the men of the 91st at the start, once these fast travelers were past the fortifications, they stretched their legs in earnest as they rushed through the thickets of the first belt, which in their sector was the Cheppy Wood, in a practically unbroken advance. When they came out in front of the Lai Fuon ravine, they had the "jump" on the enemy on their front. He had not the numbers to form up for a determined defense on that main line of resistance which he was supposed to hold in any event. The best he could do was a skilful rearguard action. Speedy as they were, the Pacific Coast men could not force the enemy, who surrendered or withdrew after bursts of machine-gun fire, to close with the bayonet, as they desired.

Having fought their way through the Véry Wood, the narrowing spur of the second belt, which extended only part way across their front, they had now open hilly country, for the most part, before them. The men were warmed up for their afternoon's work. As they continued to gather in prisoners, as they pressed steadily ahead against rearguard resistance, they maintained the liaison of their units admirably. By nightfall they had advanced nearly five miles. The Coast might well be proud of its sons in their first day's battle.

They had been fortunate in preventing congestion of their transport, and their artillery was fast coming up in support when they attacked with unbroken vigor the next morning. They were to find, as all other divisions found, that the second day was a different kind of day from the first. As all their power was needed on the 27th to support the 37th Division in its attack for the ridges protecting Montfaucon, all four regiments were put into line, with orders to go as far as they could, regardless of whether or not their ardor carried them ahead of the other divisions into a salient. They drove the enemy out of the positions which he had taken up overnight, and continued their advance in repeated charges against his increasing resistance. Parties charged into the village of Epinonville several times, to receive a blistering cross-fire from positions in flank and rear, and from the Cierges Wood, where the German machine-gunners looked down upon all the streets and approaches of the village.

Though its flanks were still exposed, the 91st was told to go ahead the next day, the plan of the Army command, as we have seen, being to use all the fight there was in every division on the 28th, when our ambition still dared an immediate conquest of the whale-back after the taking of Montfaucon. Switching now to a two-regiment front, after fifteen minutes of preparation by the artillery, which was all in position, the Pacific Coast men again attacked on the third day, which, in turn, they were to find different from the second. While the guns kept moving forward and striving to lay down protecting barrages and to smash machine-gun nests, they made a mile and a half against resistance hourly becoming more vicious and determined, taking Epinonville and entering the Cierges Wood, which was to earn such a sinister reputation.

Despite the general results of September 28th, which had somewhat dampened its ambition for a prompt decision, the Army command, now seeking to drive a wedge into the heights between the Aire and whale-back in order to break the chain of its covering defenses, ordered the 91st to continue attacking on the 29th. The two regiments in the rear, which had had a little rest, passed through the two that had been exhausted by the hard work in front on the 28th. Two battalions of the engineers, whose indefatigability had kept the roads in shape, were sent into line. As we know, the engineers were never allowed to be idle. If they had nothing else to do, they could fight.