Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne)

by Frederick Palmer

The open ground on the front was excellently suited for tanks. Forty or fifty would have approached a theoretically adequate number for the division's part in the general attack on October 4th. Unfortunately our troops had had little training in maneuvers with tanks, and the few which the French were able to spare for the 3rd were of relatively little service. For its artillery support, the 3rd had, beside its own brigade, that of the 32nd. This appeared quite generous on paper—but not in sight of those ridges. Their crests should have been ruptured by the high-explosive bursts of half a dozen regiments of heavy artillery, and received a shower-bath of shrapnel from half a dozen regiments of field artillery. However, there was the infantry—we could depend upon the "doughboys" even if we were short of artillery.

As a substitute for natural cover, a smoke-screen was helpful in obscuring the aim of the enemy's machine-gunners as the charge ascended the exposed slope of the first ridge. This was taken in the morning under the cross-fire from Hill 250, which had resisted the attack on the right, while the enemy artillery fire from the whale-back searched the whole field of the advance. The dependable infantry, closing up the gaps in ranks torn by shell-fire, swaying, re-forming, and rushing on, had accomplished this much; but there were the machine-guns from 250 sweeping the flank of the line on the ridge. The artillery was asked to pound 250; it did its best to answer this while it was answering other pressing calls. An effort to encircle 250 while it was being shelled was blasted back. No matter about 250; there was yet the second ridge to be taken; and the afternoon was young. Before nightfall the men of the 3rd had reached its reverse slope, and were digging in under shell-fire, while they received machine-gun fire not only from 250 but from Cunel Wood, which was now in flank of their advance. The Cunel was a small wood, but it was large enough for a host of machine-guns, and could not have been better placed for the German purpose.

The next morning, October 5th, under artillery support, the men of the 3rd tried infiltration over the crest of the second ridge by all the tactics known to veterans. Apart from ample machine-guns and infantry in the trenches, the Germans had two field guns on the ridge, firing at point-blank range in directions where they would be of most service. Infiltration would not do. There must be artillery preparation, then a sweep over the crest behind the shield of a strong barrage. During the organization of this attack, there was no lull in the bitter and stubborn fighting. If lines became disarranged, there was no demoralization. The Marne division was second to no division. It meant to go through. The Cunel Wood must be cleaned up as a part of the program of taking the second ridge. A line of men, crouching, methodical, bayonets glistening, started across the open against the wood, and melted away in face of the spitting of the machine-guns. Unflinchingly another line advanced, and still another, and they too melted away under that blaze from the wood's edge. Artillery preparation for the assault of the second ridge at 5 P.M. had included the Mamelle trench on the third ridge, where the Germans were known to be in strong force. The crest of the second ridge was gained. One company, targets against the slope for shells and machine-gun bullets, kept on until it reached the little Moussin brook in the valley. The German machine-gunners had this perfectly registered under an aim that swept the reverse slope. If the company had continued advancing, any survivor who reached the Mamelle trench would have been taken prisoner. That night the machine-guns on 250 were mopped up, which removed one source of assassination in flank. The 3rd was not keeping up with the lines drawn for it on the map, but it was making gains and holding them.

Fatigue and the drain from casualties were beginning to tell. It was evident from the number of Germans and machine-guns in the Mamelle trench that the enemy meant to fight desperately for its retention. There was no storming it without thorough artillery preparation until something was done to take care of Cunel Wood on the flank. In conjunction with the 80th on its right, the 3rd again charged Cunel's machine-gun nests. They made an entrance, only to find that the depths of the wood were plotted with machine-gun nests which began firing when the edge was taken. After the repulse of the main attack, a sergeant and twenty men of the 3rd stuck to their fox-holes. The following day they were able to withdraw in small groups. Meanwhile defensive positions were being organized on the second ridge. It was not a solacing fact to have the 32nd Division's artillery withdrawn at this juncture. In its place came a smaller force of French, who were welcome, but would have been more welcome if they had had more guns; but the British, the French, the Americans, and the Belgians, too, were using every available gun in the general offensive movement.

On the 7th and 8th the 3rd remained dug in, preparing for the general attack of the 9th which on the Army's left was to free the Aire valley. That day the objective was to take the Mamelle trench and pass on through to the Pultière Wood. Meanwhile on the 8th there had been remorselessly close quarters work in attacks and counter-attacks in trying to take Hill 253 on the left, with the result that the end of the day left the two lines about seventy-five yards apart on the slope. Starting from the valley of the Moussin brook on the 9th, we swept into the Mamelle, overran it in places, lost parts of it, held other parts as the contest swayed back and forth. On the 10th it was hammer-and-tongs again, as we made further gains supported by barrages, only to find as the barrage lifted that the guns from the whale-back were bursting shells on our heads,—and units were again in salients of interlocking machine-gun fire. The advantage gained was not in distance, but in cleaning up some of the machine-gun nests, which allowed us to hold on to more of the Mamelle. The 11th was a repetition of the same ferocity of initiative and resistance in the same kind of wrestle. It had been a test of endurance in sleepless effort between the men of the 3rd and the Germans, and the grit of the 3rd had won.

All this time the 80th on the left, which was swinging past the trench, was suffering from flanking fire from the machine-guns which the 3rd was trying to overcome. On the night of the 12th, the 3rd relieved units of the 80th, extending its sector. This frequent realignment in divisional sectors only made more difficult the repeated re-forming of the lines within the sector due to set-backs and casualties. The next day the elements of the 3rd which had taken over in the Peut de Faux Wood found themselves, after a terrific outburst of shell-fire, facing a strong German counter-attack. They had resisted German attacks before this on the Marne. At one point they withdrew from the line of the barrage; but when the barrage lifted, and they looked the enemy infantry in the eye at close quarters, they never budged.

There may have been faults in the command of the 3rd in this baffling problem of tactics on open slopes and ridges where communications were under the fire of artillery from both the whale-back and the heights across the Meuse, but there was no fault in the dependable infantry. Here, as along the rest of the front in the middle of October, we were learning that the enemy, having lost advantageous ground in the defense of the whale-back, was to hold the final heights with all the more stubbornness. In the successes from October 4th to 11th the 3rd had won one of the most conspicuous. After two weeks in line its endurance was not exhausted. It was now to begin preparing for the general attack of October 14th, which is another phase of the battle.

Support on its right flank, which had been essential to its progress, had been given by the peripatetic Blue Ridge men. The veterans of Stonewall Jackson's flying columns would have felt at home in the 80th Division. We know how well it had fought for three days in the initial attack that broke the old fortifications. On September 28th, when the 80th had been "squeezed out" of the narrowing Third Corps sector, its artillery and one infantry regiment had also remained in the fighting with the 4th Division, while the three other regiments had been marched around to be in readiness to assist the 37th in repelling a counter-attack against the Montfaucon woods. Now the Blue Ridge men were returned to become the left flank of the Third Corps on familiar ground. For such rapid travelers Army ambition had set a no less rapid pace on the map than for the 3rd. They were to keep on driving until they were through the Kriemhilde Stellung between Cunel and the Meuse. It was not fair to call them a fresh division, unless hard fighting and hard marching were counted a warming-up exercise, and going without sleep a tonic.

The first of the many hurdles in the steeple-chase planned for them was the Ogons Wood, whose machine-guns had shattered the attacks of the 79th on September 29th; but this was ancient history in a battle whose processes were so swift. It happened six days ago. We were in a new era; we were making another general attack as powerful as that of September 26th. The clock had run down on September 29th; it was wound up again by the 4th. The 80th had only to repeat its own successes in the first three days of the battle, and it was in Cunel. The staff must always talk in this encouraging fashion; but there was no reason to believe that there were fewer machine-guns in the Ogons Wood than when the 79th had been repulsed. Possibly their number had been increased during the stalemate period from September 29th to October 4th. There was one way of finding out—by sending a wave of human targets over those open slopes toward the wood's edge.

The machine-guns began firing with the mechanical regularity of a knitting machine, instantly the attack began. The Blue Ridge men were not surprised at this, or at receiving high-explosive shells from two directions. If they had not known from their own previous experience, the men of the long-suffering 4th Division on their right could have told them that once they were in the woods the German gunners would be slipping gas shells into their gun tubes in place of the H. E.'s used against them in the open. It was the quantity of shells and bullets that was unexpected. The enemy shell-bursts were keeping pace with them as automatically as their own barrages, and beyond their own barrage the enemy was laying down a stationary barrage awaiting their advance. Machine-gun fire increased with every step.