CHAPTER XVII
The World’s Greatest Battle
CONSIDERING the numbers engaged, the severity of the defense, the difficulty of dislodging a foe entrenched with nature’s aid, and the dash, energy and destructive work of the offensive, the fight for the Argonne has no equal in the records of mankind. This has been the verdict of many witnesses; not alone those with the desire to give praise to their fellow Americans, but alien critics also have affirmed it.
History has recorded many bloody encounters of modern times. Waterloo, the Bloody Angle, Pickett’s charge—these are but a few instances of the pluck and bravery that men will show when facing an equally determined enemy. The greatest war has furnished innumerable evidences that men are no less courageous than in former times.
As we have seen, it was a trick of the Germans, practiced over and over again, to vacate a position under pressure and at night, when the victors had paused to reinforce and count results, to come back again, occupying much of the ground they had vacated during the day. But the Americans soon discovered this ruse and looked for it; they also followed the Huns more closely and held all of the ground taken from them.
Greater dash, a more complete disregard for danger which amounted in many cases to individual foolhardiness, causing at the same time the enemy to feel that he was up against foemen that outclassed him in that sort of thing, had much to do with the winning streak that the Yanks maintained. The Germans fooled themselves into thinking that they were above defeat where the great forest, its ravines and hills, afforded them such protection, but this was the sort of thing that the Americans—many of them hunters, sportsmen, woodsmen, mountaineers, or with vacation experiences in such places and having the hereditary instincts of ancestors who were pioneers—now welcomed.
This manner of fighting took from the Germans their natural inclinations following their training as a body of men who depended upon the spirit of comradeship and who were only at their best when fighting shoulder to shoulder. But it was exactly according to the American standards and training, showing clearly the superiority of the latter method of making each man depend on himself. Moreover, it was what is known as open fighting, differing from trench warfare and though the opposing forces often fortified themselves behind natural rock masses and within thickets and groves, they were not as fixed as in the elaborate dugouts and fortresses beneath the surface of the ground. In some instances, however, over officers had erected cabins or stone huts.
The fighting in the Argonne occurred mostly in the daytime and except where some few night raids were carried out with slight gain either way, the opposing forces were content to lie in wait until early morning hours, when they again leaped at each other’s throats, the Yanks doing most of the jumping and the Huns getting the larger part of the throttling. Then, until the fall of darkness again, the battle went on uninterruptedly.
Naturally, slow progress was made in the forest. Between the Aire River, which skirts the Argonne region on the east, and the Meuse, an average of twelve miles away, the attacking Americans got on much faster, taking village after village and compelling the Germans to fall back continually. Units of other divisions cleared the immediate valley of the Aire of Huns, but before all this was done the now famous 77th Division had penetrated into the very center of the forest and was still going strong. After pausing to make good the ground and re-form, the drive was resumed in the early morning of October 4th, the sounds thereof conveying the glad fact to Herbert Whitcomb, Don Richards and their brave little company.