From their heights on the north bank of the river the Germans were covering all the approaches to the town with artillery, trench-mortar, and machine-gun fire clear to the edge of the Argonne. Where we appeared in obvious avenues of approach, they brought down heavy barrages. The "Libertys" could not make a move in the open without being seen; but they kept on infiltrating forward with the rare canniness they had learned in fighting machine-gun nests through underbrush. By the morning of the 15th they were ready for the final attack. All day their artillery was pounding the town and approaches. All day they were maneuvering and advancing as they held the enemy's attention, until at dusk a detachment rushed the ford and entered the town. Other detachments built boat-bridges, and swam the river in the dark to add their numbers in making sure that we held what we had gained. All night plunging fire from the bluffs continued, and raking fire from the houses swept the streets, while the western and northern edges of the town were being organized to turn over to the 78th Division.
Both river banks were ours; we had the gap, if not the citadel or the bluffs or all the buildings in the town, on the same day, it happened, that the British were at the gates of Lille. For nearly three weeks the "Libertys" had been in action. For all but five days of that time, they had been in the damp woods out of sight of the sun. In its taking of the Forest and of Grandpré and Saint-Juvin, and its subsequent advance to the Meuse after it came into line for a second time, the 77th had 4,832 casualties, and captured 720 prisoners, 3,200 rifles, and pieces of heavy and 16 of light artillery. Even now, when they were to have a holiday, they were not to leave the Forest which their valor had won, but to settle down in the comfortable rest camps in its recesses—much better than the roofless and torn walls of villages—which the enemy had built in the days when he thought that he had permanently occupied this part of France, and when no Prussian of the Landwehr or a shock division ever dreamed of being dispossessed by draft men of New York City, who at that time had never had a rifle in their hands.
XIX
ANOTHER WEDGE
The Marne Division—A wedge in the east over open ridges—Magnificent, but not war—A footing in the Mamelle trench—Blue Ridge men hammering a way into the Ogons Wood—And into the Mamelle trench—A still hunt in a German headquarters—The dead line of the Brieulles road.
Our First Corps was still on the left, with the trough of the Aire now behind it. Our Fifth Corps, including the 1st Division after its transfer from the First, was still in the center, and our Third Corps in the yet unconquered trough of the Meuse on the right. Departing from the arbitrary lines of the Corps, in following the movement for the conquest of the Forest and of the trough and the walls of the Aire to its conclusion, no mention was made of the other divisions from the flank of the 32nd to the Meuse. All had been attacking with the same vigor as those to the left.
On October 1st the 3rd Division, under Major-General Beaumont B. Buck, had relieved the 79th, going in beside the 32nd. Its part is given separately from that of the 32nd, which was in the same, or Fifth Corps, because it was also to drive a wedge in the general attack of October 4th. Be it the 1st or 2nd, or the 4th or 5th, the 3rd considered itself the peer of any regular division. It had become veteran without any trench service when it hurried to Château-Thierry to its baptism of fire, in the crisis of the third German offensive of the spring. I have described in my first book how, flanks exposed, it "stonewalled" on the Marne's bank against the fifth German offensive; and how, then swiftly crossing the Marne, it had joined our other divisions in the advance to the Vesle. Though its emblem was three white stripes on a blue field, indicating its three battles, it was sometimes called the Marne Division. The reputation for unflinching endurance and bold initiative which it had won was now to be further enhanced in an action whose toll of casualties was second—and then by only one hundred—to that of the 1st, which drove the wedge along the Aire.
Having come from Saint-Mihiel, its replacements absorbed in its ways, its units all fresh and trained in coöperation, it marched along the road through Montfaucon which was ever under shell-fire, and down the slopes in face of the guns of the whale-back, following the path where the 79th had "expended" itself, with the spring of youth in its steps and confidence in the heart-beat of every man. Such was its pride and spirit that one would say that anything that this division could not do no other division could do. Judging by the sector and the mission to which it was assigned, this was also the view of the Army command.
The line which it took over from Nantillois to the Beuge Wood was exposed to continual harassing fire. Before it were three bare irregular ridges, surmounted by commanding hills, with woods on the right flank. On the last of the three was the Mamelle trench, a part of the Kriemhilde Stellung. Army ambition, fondly contemplating the freshness and efficiency of the 3rd, saw it driving over those bare ridges, all the while under the guns of the whale-back, past flanking machine-gun fire from the wooded Hill 250 and Cunel Wood on the right. Piercing the Mamelle trench, it was to sink its wedge into the right flank of the whale-back, while the wedge of the 1st was sunk into the left flank. It was the precept of the Army that if you did not order a thing it would not be delivered. One never could tell. The 3rd might do a miracle. It had done something like a miracle on the banks of the Marne. The better a division was, the more was expected of it: which is only logical and human.