CHAPTER XLIV
AMERICA OVER THE TOP
The first direct attack on the German lines made by American forces in the Lorraine sector took place on the night of March 9, 1918, with the cooperation of the French. Two raids were made. The troops engaged were ordered to cut off the two ends of a salient in the German line, flatten out the salient by artillery fire, enter the trenches, bomb the dugouts, sweep the trenches generally, and return.
Intense artillery fire, lasting four hours, leveled the German positions before the Franco-American troops advanced. They were divided into two forces, with small French detachments flanking each, and went forward at midnight behind a creeping barrage, each on a front of six hundred yards. Starting simultaneously, one advanced northwest of the salient, the other to the northeast. On the German first lines being reached, the barrage was lifted so as to box in the enemy positions at both points.
The troops dropped into the trenches, expecting a hand-to-hand fight, but found that the Germans had fled. Continuing, they reached the second German line six hundred yards farther on while American machine guns fired on each flank of the two parties to check flanking operations by the enemy.
The yield in prisoners was poor, the Germans having decamped. One French flanking party found two wounded Germans. The Americans found none. But they blew up a number of excellent concrete dugouts and returned with large quantities of material and valuable papers. While they were in the vacated German lines, enemy artillery began a vigorous counterbarrage, but it was quickly silenced by gas shells hurled by American heavy and light guns.
The raid was followed by a second on another part of the line, undertaken without the aid of the French. A preliminary bombardment swept the Germans' front trenches, tearing gaps in their barbed-wire entanglements, and wrought other destruction. The German batteries came into action, but accomplished nothing to halt the American progress. Entering the German trenches behind one side of a "box" barrage, which moved forward in front of them, they found numerous Germans hiding in the dugouts. Hand-to-hand fighting followed, the Americans using their automatic pistols and rifles. They penetrated 300 yards of the enemy line, going beyond their objective. More fighting developed, but the Germans were not equal to the assault and fled, leaving a number of dead and wounded in their trenches. The Americans fought so fast in effecting their object that the army doctors who accompanied them had little to do. They returned to their own lines without being impeded by a single German shell, and without fatalities. It was all over so quickly that the German batteries had no chance to get into real action. It was just a fifteen-minute adventure undertaken by way of feeling their way in testing their capacity to give the Germans a taste of their own medicine.
Following these engagements, the actual locality of which was not disclosed, American forces were reported to be very active in aggressive operations in the neighborhood of Lunéville, a town east of the Toul sector. This information revealed an extension of the American positions in Lorraine and an augmentation of forces that made the new sector one of the most active on the front. It appeared that the two simultaneous raids mentioned took place in this vicinity, northwest and northeast of Badonviller. The trenches evacuated by the Germans were occupied by the Americans, who consolidated them with their own lines. This forward movement, though a small one, marked the first permanent advance by the American army in France, and enabled the Americans and French to operate from higher ground than heretofore. The Germans made only feeble attempts to retake the position, and each time were repulsed. The parapets were turned toward the enemy, dugout entrances were changed, and new dugouts built to protect the troops. An exploring patrol examined the trenches, proceeding laterally until they established contact with the enemy. They came upon snipers' posts, listening posts, and nests from which machine guns had been firing into the American lines. These ambushes of the enemy were turned over to the tender mercies of the American batteries, which wiped them out. The positions of the Germans were made so uncomfortable at various points that they tried to regain their lost foothold by connecting shell holes. Their guns pounded the new American positions with heavy shells, some of the twelve-inch type, without affecting the Franco-American consolidation.
A German battery of mine throwers, one of which had made a direct hit on a dugout occupied by American soldiers, next received the earnest attention of American guns in the Lunéville sector. The battery had been causing considerable trouble. It was finally located, and upon it high-explosive shells were concentrated. It was blown up.
More German trenches in the Lunéville sector were destroyed. The enemy vacated them. When a patrol, without assistance from the artillery, crossed no-man's-land, they found the first and second positions wiped out. The patrol obtained further information and returned without casualties, the Germans apparently not daring to molest them. The indications behind the German lines were that they saw the need of constructing stronger earthworks to withstand the American fire. A patrol ascertained that the enemy had constructed trenches built of concrete half way up the side, and was using rock crushers and concrete mixers for building a number of "pill-boxes" opposite the American front.