Against the left brigade the Germans did not depend upon defensive tactics alone. Their reserves, more prompt in arriving than on the right, counter-attacked at 9 A.M. to stem the brigade's advance. There was a pitched battle, a conflict of charges, for a fierce half-hour; but the brigade, putting in the last of its reserves, won the mastery, and at 9.30 was in pursuit of the enemy. An hour later its advance elements, running a gamut of artillery and machine-gun fire, were in the village of Ivoiry. Now turning their attention to the conquest of Hill 256 beyond the town, which was lashing them with plunging machine-gun fire, storming parties finally swept over the crest; but their exposure to the blasts which the enemy promptly concentrated made their position untenable. With the left holding its gains after this slight withdrawal, the center advanced at 5.45 and took a strong and threatening position which made the victory of the day more secure. The line at dark was along the Ivoiry-Montfaucon road.
After the exhaustion of fighting its way through the forest on the first day, the 37th had used every available man on the second day. The engineers had now made a road through the forest. This, being unequal to caring for all the transport in a steady flow, was the more inadequate owing to the delays due to the repair of sloughs, which were always appearing at some point in its four-mile length. Hungry infantrymen lying on the moist ground were wondering if they would ever have the strength to rise again. The prodigal, hasty crowding in of reserves which necessity required had exposed all the troops to the widespread artillery fire and the long-range sweep of bullets, which caused many casualties.
On the next day, the 28th, the Army command, as we know, was to call for a supreme effort all along the line. Despite the tireless labor of the gunners with their snatch ropes, most of the 37th's artillery was still stalled where it could be of no service. Without their shields the Ohio men again rose to the attack at seven on the morning of the 28th. In half an hour they had entered the Emont Wood on their left and the Beuge Wood on their right. They continued on toward the village of Cierges until the blasts of fire from the heights and woods of the whale-back, not only upon the elements in advance but upon those in support, forced them to take cover. They were now within a quarter of a mile of the Cierges-Nantillois road. Meanwhile the Germans had been filling Emont Wood with phosgene gas to such an extent that it became untenable. In another attack at 5.45 P.M. the Ohio men encircled the wood. By dark their outposts were just south of Cierges.
Gettysburg did not last three full days, but any veterans who fought throughout that battle will have some idea of what the 37th Division as a whole had endured on September 26th, 27th, and 28th. The division commander reported lack of food and a "condition of almost collapse" among his men, which did not weaken the determination of Corps or Army to expend any energy remaining in the 37th in another effort on the next day to "crack" the chain of heights between the Aire and the whale-back. How fruitless this proved only makes the final effort of the 37th the more appealing. The Ohio men were willing; they were willing, after shivering on wet earth all night without blankets, as long as they had strength enough to stagger to their feet,—and they might have had more strength if they had had more food. There was only one relieving feature of their situation, so unfavorable from the first. A German water-point equal to supplying the whole division had been captured. There was enough to drink, if not enough to eat: that is, for such units as the water-carts could reach.
Yet Corps and Army thought the 37th ought to be very cheerful. Hadn't they been assigned, on the morning of the 28th, ten small tanks to assist them in taking Cierges? The tanks were moving gallantly along the western edge of Emont Wood until the German artillery, from the heights which had them in plain view, concluded that they had gone far enough, and put them out of action. Then the German artillery turned its undivided attention to assisting the German infantry, concentrating its volume upon any attempt of the Ohioans, whose brains and legs were numb from fatigue, to storm particularly murderous flanking machine-gun nests. Patrols, creeping up ravines and dodging bursts of shells, succeeded in entering Cierges. They could not be supported by the artillery, which was now up, as it had run out of ammunition. Thus our guns were silent when the enemy started a counter-attack beyond Cierges; but the vengeful and accurate fire of the infantry soon sent the survivors of the advancing German wave to cover. Later the artillery, having received some ammunition, when it had an aeroplane signal of the Germans massing for another counter-attack, scotched it promptly. If the Germans could not budge us, we could not budge them. Every time we showed our heads in any effort for another gain, we stirred up a hornet's nest of bullets and offered a fresh target for a storm of shell-bursts.
Late in the afternoon word came from the 91st, asking coöperation from the 37th in a further advance to relieve pressure on the wedge it had driven past the fronts of its neighbors. The fact that the message was two hours in transit was sufficient comment on the state of communication between divisions which had extended themselves to the limit of their power. The Ohio men who were already intrenching might still be willing to charge, but it was the willingness of the spirit rather than of the flesh. Had every gun and machine-gun on their front there on the threshold of the whale-back been silenced, and had they been ordered to march another two miles over that rough ground, a majority would have dropped in their tracks from exhaustion. There was nothing to do but stick where they were. This was as easy as for logs of wood to lie in their places. They fell asleep over their spades, and the bursts of high-explosive shells which shook the earth did not waken them. All they asked of the world was rest and food.
Remaining in a stationary line all the next day, they had recovered enough strength to march back when the 32nd Division relieved them on the night of the 30th. At the cost of 3,460 casualties their rushing tactics, keeping the jump on the enemy, had taken 1,120 prisoners and 23 guns. Fatigue and sickness from exposure, as well as casualties, had worn them down. If they had fought with less abandon of energy, with less resolute and vivid spirit, their casualties would have been much larger. From the first they had thrown in all their reserves; and to the end they had fought with all their numbers in order to overcome the handicaps of their mission.
On the right of the Fifth Corps the 79th Division, National Army from the Atlantic Coast—Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the District of Columbia—was to have its baptism of fire at the same time as the Pacific Coast men on the Corps left,—a baptism preparing it for its memorable service later in taking Hill 378, or the Borne de Cornouiller, on the east bank of the Meuse. In place of its own artillery brigade, which had not yet received its guns, it had three regiments, less six batteries, of the veteran artillery of the 32nd Division, and one regiment of that of the 41st Division, National Guard from the Pacific Coast.
As one of the two divisions which had never been under fire before, the 79th had been given the farthest objective of any division. The German trenches on its front were everywhere in the open, crowning a gentle ridge. The wire had been badly cut, but the Eastern Coast men made no more fuss over that handicap than their neighbors. When they came to the top of the ridge, they might see the field of their action, in its relation to the Army plan, spread before them. There was the route of their advance, following a valley with the ribbon of the Esnes-Montfaucon road at its bottom, and the distant ruins of Montfaucon on their high hill as distinct a goal as the stone column of a lighthouse on a shore. They were not only to take this on the first day, but to pass on down the slopes beyond, and, conquering patches of woods and ravines, carry their flying wedge to the foot of the heights of the whale-back. On the second day Army ambition designed to assail the whale-back itself, as we know. Well might these inexperienced troops have asked in irony: "Is that all you expect of us? Don't you think we can do it in the forenoon, and take the whale-back in the afternoon, so that we can get on to the Lille-Metz railway tomorrow?"
As the 79th had open country to traverse, it ought to go fast. With adjoining divisions clearing the walls of the valley leading up to Montfaucon, it was supposed to be marching over a boulevard compared to the route which the 37th had in the Montfaucon forest. Indeed every division was given the idea that all it had to do was to keep deployed and moving according to schedule. As for the distance itself which the 79th had to travel, any golfer may measure it as two and a half times that of an eighteen-hole round, with a quarter of the distance through traps and bunkers, and the rest altogether in the rough of a surpassingly hilly course, while he carries a rifle and a soldier's pack and ammunition. In the immediate foreground was a belt of weed-grown shell-craters, their edges joining, the passage being further complicated by the ruins of two villages—Haucourt and Malancourt—within the area of the trench system. On the left, over the moist slippery weeds of the shell-craters, the men could not keep pace in the mist with the barrage, which had been made specially rapid in order to urge them to the rapid movement required; but this delay did not prove important.