On the 7th the 1st, which had been under the First Corps, was transferred to the Fifth, and its front extended to include Hill 269. It was now time for the division engineers, who had been working night and day on the roads, to cease their idling and begin fighting. The battalion which was sent to take over 269 from the 32nd was soon to find what store the Germans set by it, once they realized the blunder that had allowed it to slip out of their hands. The enemy's artillery proceeded to make this sharply defined cone a pillar of hell; but the engineers were used to digging, and they dug with a vengeance. They were also used to sticking on the job. In the face of counter-attacks, supported by a rain of shells and bullets of artillery and machine-gun barrages, they held their ground in the midst of fountains of earth and flying débris and frightful casualties, with that resolution in which every man, no matter how many of his comrades are killed, determines that he will not yield alive.
After the driving of the wedge to Fléville and the taking of Montrefagne, the 1st had been badly shattered. The heavy rains had made the holding of the eastern wall of the Aire under the murderously accurate flanking fire from the western wall all the more horrible. Transport was being regularly shelled; woods, where reserves might take cover, were being gassed. Not only was the doctrine of the 1st never to yield ground taken upheld at every point, but it was continuing to improve its position on the 7th and 8th while it reorganized its available forces, steadily reduced by casualties, in an undaunted offensive spirit.
The 28th having taken the Châtel-Chéhéry heights of the opposite valley wall, and the 82nd attacking the Cornay heights, the 9th was chosen as the day when the hammer should again begin pounding the wedge into the ramparts ahead. By this time the 1st had had over 5,000 casualties, representing more than one-third of its infantry. There was an old rule that when a third of your men were out of action it was time for retreat. This had ceased to apply in the Great War; it was hardly a view that Summerall would hold. The 1st had not yet finished its task, and he meant that it should be finished. There could be no question of fatigue, or excuses. More engineers were summoned into line; everything that veteran experience could arrange was ready. The ammunition supply and the transport were up; the hospital service was prepared for heavy casualties. Every man's jaw was set for a final triumphant drive which should finally clear the wall of the Aire.
The enemy's jaw was set too. He knew that our next rush would be a desperate effort to reach the main-line defenses of the whale-back. Indeed, this was our plan, which required that the 1st go about a mile and a half over even more formidable ground than in the drive of the 4th and 5th. On the 1st's right, Hill 269 in the Moncy Wood was safely held, if at a bloody cost. On the center and right the Montrefagne Wood ran northeast in the narrow tongue of the Little Wood. In this wood, about on a line with 269, was Hill 272, the highest of all the hills on the 1st's front, which we knew was strongly held and strongly fortified. The Little Wood, broadening beyond it, extended westward, while the ravine between it and the Moncy Wood (Hill 269) wound in the same direction. Well back in this portion of the Little Wood was Hill 263, which was at the apex of a triangle with 269 and 272 as the base. Our seizure of Ariétal farm in the ravine before it could be fortified enabled our men, thanks to the protection from our seizure of Hill 269, to establish themselves on the 7th and 8th on the slopes of the two other hills. Thus we were saved from a cross-fire in having to pass between the two base angles of the triangle toward the apex. We could take Hill 272, the remaining hill at the base, in flank. It was certainly good generalship which won this advantage for us, and poor generalship which lost it for the enemy. Once we had Hill 263 at the apex, it was downhill through the Romagne woods until we were before the Kriemhilde Stellung, which bent southward on the 1st's right in front of the 32nd's sector. To the west of Little and Romagne woods many patches of woods gave cover for machine-guns on the ascents of the Maldah ridge, which ran to the end of the Aire wall where the Aire bent sharply westward to the gap of Grandpré. However, the crux of the problem of the 1st on the 9th was the taking of Hill 272 at the western point of the triangle and 263 at the apex.
Being a gunner, Summerall believed in making the most of gun power. He had trained the artillery of the 1st, and knew its capabilities. This implied anything but penuriousness in the expenditure of ammunition. Throughout the 7th and 8th, day and night, the 1st's artillery had been "softening" the defenses of these two hills and of all the other positions with a concentrated bombardment, and placing ceaseless interdictory fire in their rear to keep them isolated from communication.
If ever infantry needed powerful barrages to protect its swift charges, it was on the morning of the 9th. Any failure to go home at any point might be fatal to the whole movement. As supple as the enemy, the 1st was using roving, or tramp, guns to counter his roving guns. The remainder of the divisional artillery was entirely concentrated in making shields in turn for the right, left, and center, which advanced successively instead of at the same time. The weather as well as the barrages was in our favor. A dense fog hid our waves from the enemy's observation. His machine-gunners in some instances could not see to fire until our men were upon them; in others, as the fog lifted on the exposed targets, our losses were ghastly without staying our progress.
Apart from the engineers, the division had only one battalion of fresh infantry in reserve. This battalion was sent against the highest of the hills, 272. Breaking through the fog, in bolt surprise, it took prisoner every man of the garrison of 272 who was not killed. As the curtain of bursting shells of the shield which our men were hugging lifted, the German lieutenant-colonel in command of the hill started out of his dugout, only to see the charge sweeping past its mouth, and, in turn, past all the dugouts where his troops had taken cover from the approaching tornado. He knew that all was lost; and he wept in his humiliation at being captured. It was the first time that the shock division to which he belonged had ever been on the defensive. He paid a soldier's tribute to the power and accuracy of the artillery fire of the 1st, which for two days had marooned him, without food for his men and unable to send them orders or to receive orders from his superior. He had not believed that in five years the Americans would have been able to develop such a division as the 1st; and one's only comment on this is that the men of the 1st were the same kind of men as in the other divisions. He had happened to meet the 1st, as any other division will tell you. German officers who met other divisions in the Argonne held the same view about them. Professional opinions from such experts were worth while.
Our attack on Hill 272 on the left and our possession of 269 on the right protecting their flanks, the troops which were making a head-on drive for 263 had an equally brilliant success, thanks to the same thoroughgoing, enterprising, and courageous tactics. Those on the left, with the enemy's plans upset by the loss of 272 and 263, wove their way through the patches of woods, conquering successive machine-gun nests until the Côte de Maldah was theirs in a sweep no less important as a part of the well-arranged whole, though perhaps less sensational. So much for the day's work of the 1st in the high tide of its career on October 9th.
We shall now take up that of the Arrows of the 32nd. On the 7th and 8th the 32nd had been busy sending out patrols and seeking to gain certain vantage points which would be useful in the next day's attack. It had established itself in Gesnes. Its own artillery was now back with the division, taking the place of that of the 30th Division, which, after its exhausting work in forcing its guns through the Montfaucon woods in support of the 37th, had still remained in line in support of the 32nd. In addition the artillery of the 42nd, or Rainbow, Division, which was now coming up in reserve, was placed at the disposal of the 32nd; for it could not have too much gun power if it were to make any headway on the 9th. Nor could it have too much infantry. The 181st Brigade of the 91st, Pacific Coast, Division had not gone into rest when the 91st had been "expended" in the early period of the battle. It was now placed in line between the 1st and the 32nd, and despite their fatigue the Pacific Coast men were relied upon for nothing less than the assault of that Hill 255 whose galling fire had checked the 32nd's advance on the 5th.
The "side-slipping" of the division sector when the 1st relinquished the bank of the Aire and came under the administration of the Fifth Corps had not given the 32nd any easier task. Wasn't it a veteran division? Wasn't it used to being expended? The ambition of the Army command was in the saddle again, expecting the Arrows, with the artillery of two divisions in support, to penetrate immediately the Kriemhilde Stellung, or main defenses of the whale-back.