By this time they were at home in woodland maneuvers, or on the 10th they would not have made nearly four miles in formation, combing every yard of the Argonne's breadth as they advanced. That march showed a reserve of vitality in the city men worthy of the day when the 82nd in the valley had overrun the Cornay heights, and the 1st and 32nd had reached the Kriemhilde Stellung. Patrols, encountering no resistance, came out of the Forest to see the promised land. Another stride, and the division would be in the open, facing the gap.
On the northern bank of the Aire, about half a mile beyond its sharp turn toward Grandpré, is the village of Saint-Juvin. The river bottoms here are broad and swampy between the slopes which draw together to form the walls of the gap. From the fronts of the 1st and 32nd Divisions the fragmentary trench system of the Kriemhilde ran northeasterly to a point just opposite the bend. Beyond this to the west the Germans depended upon the westward course of the river and upon the naturally strong positions on its northern side, culminating in the heights above Grandpré. The 77th's sector was extended slightly to the east to include Saint-Juvin, in order that the 82nd, which had taken over some of the front of the 1st, might undertake a movement against the Kriemhilde on the 1st's flank east of the river bend, passing Saint-Juvin on the east.
For four days the 82nd had been throwing its men into charges from the river bottom against heights, and wrestling against counter-attacks. Though it had conquered the trough of its northern course, the Aire river was still the nightmare of its evolutions. The left regiment remained facing the westward bend. The center regiment was to cross the northern course of the river, south of the bend, at Fléville, and join the right regiment, which was already across. This it did under heavy fire on the morning of the 11th, and, deploying, swung west in protecting the flank of the right regiment from the heights north of Saint-Juvin.
The 82nd had already received enough shocks to be called a "stonewall" division, and had given enough to be called a shock division. It was not surprising, then, though wonderful, that the left regiment made two miles in face of the heights; or that the right regiment made a half mile more and by 8 A.M. had reached the Kriemhilde Stellung. Their exhaustion, instead of staying the All-Americas, appeared to give them a delirium of valor. When front lines were riddled by casualties, the second line "leap-frogged," and charged on into the machine-gun fire. One battalion had all its commissioned officers killed or so badly wounded that they could not move; another all but one. Non-commissioned officers continued the attack; but there was no hope at present of taking the Kriemhilde, with its fresh waiting machine-gunners in their interlocking positions supported by artillery, as the 32nd on the 82nd's left had found. The part of it in front of the 82nd was not to be taken in the general attack of October 14th—not until the final drive of November 1st. Exposed in a salient under cross-fire, the survivors of the right regiment were ordered to withdraw even with those of the center regiment, where, still under flanking fire in face of the heights, they held their ground.
Meanwhile the left regiment was to cross the river westward of the bend, in order to assail the heights north and northeast of Saint-Juvin which commanded the village, and to protect the flanks of the other two regiments. The bridge near Saint-Juvin was down. A soldier going into attack under the weight of his pack and 220 rounds of ammunition cannot swim a river. Patrols searched up and down in the darkness in vain for a ford. When the engineers, who were called in, started building a footbridge, they were greeted by bursts of machine-gun fire which suddenly ceased. Instantly the infantry rushed on to the bridge, which was completed at dawn, the machine-gun fire was renewed with great accuracy and increased volume. Dead and wounded fell into the water; survivors leaped into the water and sprang up the opposite bank, facing the unseen enemy. Parts of two companies got across, and boldly started out to envelop Saint-Juvin. After losses of fifty per cent from annihilating machine-gun fire, the little band had to retreat across the river; but they had found that there was a ford near the ruins of the bridge.
Though worn down until its battalions hardly averaged the size of full companies, the left regiment was across by the ford early the next day, and charging for the heights northeast of Saint-Juvin, in the first stages of an action which was to carry on through the general attack of the 14th. In order to rid the flank of machine-gun fire, an officer led his men into the edge of Saint-Juvin itself, and took nests and prisoners. The right of the attack reached the Ravine of Stones, joining up with the center regiment in front of the Kriemhilde. There, in a wicked pocket, they stove off counter-attacks, and fought in and out with the Germans in a hide-and-seek in the treacherous folds of the slope.
In the general attack of the 14th the 82nd was once more called upon to show all the speed of a shock division fresh from rest in billets. Supporting the 42nd on its right, which began its three days of terrific storming of the Chatillon Ridge, where the Kriemhilde bends southward in a loop, the 82nd, with its infantry effectives less than half of normal strength, again attacked the Kriemhilde. It actually got through the Kriemhilde, but again was in a salient, and after further heavy casualties had to withdraw. On the left it had swept over Hill 182, the commanding height to the rear of Saint-Juvin, in coöperation with the attack of the 77th which I shall describe. As the All-American division, the 82nd was prolific in personal exploits. The sergeant who brought in 129 prisoners, and became more famous than the division commander, had a worthy comrade in the western "bronco buster," who, finding himself in face of a group of Germans on Hill 282, walked up to them, and, suddenly drawing his revolver, "took care" of the group. Then seeing a skirmish line of two hundred Germans forming, he picked up a dead German's rifle and shot the officer leading the charge, before he rushed back and brought up his machine-gun company to repulse the attack with the loss of half its numbers.
Of course, the action of the 82nd was influential in the fall of Saint-Juvin, which the 77th, facing the westward bend of the river along the entire front, was to take by a neat maneuver, as its part in pressing the left flank of the Germans in the general attack of the 14th. It was concluded that the German, being a creature of habit, had probably arranged his barrage to protect Saint-Juvin from attack from the south. This was all the more likely against the heady Americans, who had a way in their exasperating energy of taking the bit in the teeth and driving straight through to an objective. With one battalion making a threat in front, the other, crossing the river—which it managed to do most adroitly—from the east, would encounter little opposition. The event turned out entirely according to anticipation, except that the battalion which was to make the threat in front got out of hand, though in a manner which was bound to give a thrill to their commander even in his technical reproof.
After fighting two weeks in the Forest, the men of this battalion were feeling their oats, now that they were in the open. They did not see why the battalion on the right should have all the honor and excitement of taking Saint-Juvin, while they were making faces at it on the side lines. Their eagerness, according to the divisional report, turned the threat into an attack, with the result that they suffered from the barrage which the Germans laid down. At all events, they lost eight officers killed and twenty wounded in leading the men, who suffered in proportion, while the flanking battalion, with slight losses, entered the town on the afternoon of the 14th. The garrison tried to escape, but another little detail of prevision in the 77th's plan interfered. Accordingly the retreating Germans ran into our curtain of machine-gun fire which we laid down northwest of the town, and were captured.
After Chevières, a village on the south bank of the river, was also entered, the next nut to crack, the town of Grandpré on the other side of the river, was bound to be a bad one. It was a large town for this region, with a thousand inhabitants, resting against the bluff of the tongue of ridge which shoots out from the Bourgogne wood, which is the name for the southern end of the Boult Forest. The character of this bluff and of the "citadel" will be of more concern when we come to the thankless and bitter experience of the 78th Division in their assaults. It is sufficient to say now that the bluffs and the houses of the town command the river bank and the narrow opening of the Aire valley to the southernmost projecting edge of the Argonne Forest. While the German on the defensive had machine-guns to spare for use in this Gibraltar, he would apply the tactics in which he was expert by making an attack on the town pay a heavy price, at small cost to himself. On the nights of the 10th and the 11th, some patrols crossed the river and entered Grandpré, to meet with a reception as hot as it was enlightening. It was evident that Grandpré was not to be taken by a few daring men. We must cross in sufficient force to hold, and then only when at least a portion of the machine-gun nests in the town had been silenced. However, the patrols had found a ford.