Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne)

by Frederick Palmer

The morning advance drove its point beyond the Cierges Wood, but was checked by merciless fire from Cierges village on the right. Though the front was in a salient, still the orders were "at all costs" to "push ahead." At 3.40 that afternoon, after forty minutes' preparation by the artillery, which was keeping faithfully up to the infantry despite the weariness of horses and men, the right once more moved forward with a vigor that was amazing after the four days' strain, and succeeded in passing through Gesnes and in gaining a footing in Morine and Chêne Sec Woods on its left. Every rod farther meant an increase of overwhelming cross-fire. Either there must be support on the flanks from the adjoining divisions, or this tongue of men thrust into furious cross-fire must be withdrawn. Support could not be given. The 35th Division on the left was stopped in the shambles of the Exermont ravine, the 37th on the right was facing counter-attacks. Accordingly on the night of the 29th the 91st fell back to the front of the morning's gains. The 32nd, which was to have such hard fighting in re-taking the positions which the 91st had temporarily held, was to relieve it on October 4th. During the 30th the 91st organized defensive positions, and until October 4th held its ground under continuous artillery and machine-gun fire as well as harassing blasts of machine-gun bullets from low-flying enemy aeroplanes. Though the men were suffering from exposure and diarrhea, the whole division was not to be relieved. The 181st Brigade, under Brigadier-General John B. MacDonald, was assigned to the 1st and 32nd Divisions to take part in the greater effort of fresh troops to break the heights between the crest of the whale-back and the Aire, which was to be such a brilliant and costly exploit. The 91st had advanced for a depth of nearly eight miles, and held its gains for a depth of nearly seven miles.

It might be said that the 37th Division had had, as National Guardsmen, a longer military experience than the other two divisions of the Corps, and some trench experience in a tranquil sector, which, however, was slight technical preparation for the offensive action which it was now to make. If ever there was a "hand-made" battle, it was that of the Ohio men. For artillery they had the brigade of the 30th Division, which, after five days' hard marching when it should have been brought by train, arrived with its men exhausted and its horses utterly so. There were no French guns to assist this tired artillery brigade, operating with a division with which it was associated for the first time.

Ohio's predilection for politics is well-known; and it has even been said that her National Guardsmen took some interest in politics. The politics of September 26th was Republican-Democrat-Socialist politics,—all the political genius of Ohio, town and country, from the river to the lake, armed, trained, and resolute. I have no idea what part these soldiers will play in the future of Ohio elections; but I do know how they fought in the Meuse-Argonne. It is something that Ohio should not forget.

Their rush through the trench system was soon over. Ahead was the full depth of nearly four miles of the Montfaucon woods which I have already described. The old trench system was partly in the midst of woodland wreckage, caused by long sieges of artillery fire, of the same character as that facing the 77th in the Argonne Forest. In its attack through the thickets the 37th was to have the assistance of no scalloping movement in forcing the enemy's withdrawal from its front.

I have already referred to the enemy's conviction that our "untrained" troops would not have the temerity to attempt an attack which comprised the taking of this deep belt of woods; and do not forget that half way through the belt, which it really divided into two sections, was the Lai Fuon ravine. Here, as our troops emerged to descend the hither and ascend the opposite slope, they would be in full view; and here, in the edge of the woods on the far slope, the Germans had long ago organized the positions for that main line of resistance which the enemy memorandum of September 18th had said must be held in any event,—which did not include, however, the event of a drive by the Ohio men of the same swiftness as that of the Pacific Coast men on their left.

Had the 5th German Guard Division come up a little earlier, had the Germans had time to mass reserves for the defense of the ravine, it seems impossible that it could have been conquered without a siege operation. The value of taking an enemy by surprise and audaciously following up the surprise was singularly illustrated by the rushing tactics of the Ohio infantry, who cleared the whole depth of the woods on the first day. When they were halted, it was not for long. Theirs was no cautious policy. Their reserves, keeping close to the front line, were ready instantly to add their weight in the balance in charging any refractory machine-gun nests. The Germans never had time to form up for prolonged or effective resistance. Their familiarity with the woods made retreat behind the screen of underbrush the more inviting in face of the numerous figures in khaki which they saw swarming forward through the openings in the foliage. Instead of a determined stand on the Lai Fuon line, there was only a rearguard action, fitfully though never clumsily carried out by the veteran Prussians, in their injured pride at having to yield to the American novices.

With no thought except to keep on going, when the Ohioans emerged from the woods into the open, they pressed on toward the commanding positions of Montfaucon on their right. The fact that there was nothing like a practicable road for their transport through the woods behind them now developed a handicap which they appreciated keenly in their eager appetites and the thought of shields for the next days' attacks. Though tanks and artillery were of no service in the woods, they were needed now. The tanks assigned to assist the Ohioans as they came into the open did not arrive until the evening, when they were short of gasoline. The artillery, by the use of snatch ropes, managed to bring up one battalion of guns to the south of the ravine.

When rain began to fall, it made the woodland earth soft, hampering the efforts of the engineers, who themselves labored without food all the day and all through the night and all the next day without pause, as they dug and chopped away roots and cut saplings for corduroys in making a passage through that four-mile stretch of forest—-and forêt it was though called a bois—which separated the fighters from their beleaguered supplies. Signal corps carts, so necessary to lay the wire for the communications which would enable the infantry to send in reports and receive orders promptly, and the small arms ammunition carts, which would keep soldiers who were without their shields from being without cartridges as well, were forced through by dint of an arduous persistence in answer to the urgency of the call. Rolling kitchens with warm meals could do no more rolling than if they were hotel kitchens. Ambulances had to wait at the edge of the forest for wounded brought three and four miles on stretchers or plodding on foot or hobbling on canes and crutches made from tree limbs.

Was this division, with its artillery, its ammunition trucks, and all its supplies waiting upon a road through four miles of the forest whose time of completion was uncertain, to attack the next day after all the exertion of working its way through the forest? Of course. The Fifth Corps was supposed to take Montfaucon on the night of the 26th. Montfaucon must be taken on the 27th, and early, too, or the pencilings on the maps would be fatally behind ambitious objectives in the center. To the west of Montfaucon in small patches of woods and on crests were the positions of the Völker Stellung, which the Germans had plotted, though they had done no digging, for the defense of Montfaucon; but the lines where trenches were to be dug and the points machine-guns were to occupy had been carefully assigned. Therefore units of reserves as they arrived would know exactly where to go without loss of time. Naturally, we wanted to attack this position while it was still weakly held. For all the Ohio men knew, the enemy might have already concentrated there in force, when without their artillery, machine-guns, or trench mortars, uncertain even of a constant supply of small arms ammunition, they began their second day's action at the break of dawn. In swift charges the right overran the ridges, overwhelming German reserves, who were arriving too late, on their way forward. By 11 it had patrols in Montfaucon, and by 1.30 in the afternoon it had cleared the enemy from the cellars as well as from the steep and winding streets of the town, which were littered with the débris of buildings that had crumbled under shell-fire.