Ludendorff, on his side, knew that he must hold the hinge of the door. He might yield toward the west, if necessary, but must not yield in front of Mézières and Sedan. The neck of the bottle must not be closed. The measure of our initial success, whatever the intrepidity of our attack, must depend largely upon how far we were able to take the Germans by surprise, and the depth of our advance must depend upon our ability to bring up our artillery and ammunition and food for our men. To the rear of the line from the Meuse to the Argonne Forest there are literally only two roads of approach. If we attempted to build more, they would immediately be visible to the aeroplane observers of the enemy. We could not build more when our engineers and our laborers were occupied at Saint Mihiel.
If we arranged elaborate dumps of ammunition, these would inevitably be seen by the enemy or their presence would be communicated in some way as past experience had proved. To move long columns of troops and transport by day was equally an advertisement of our plan for an enormous attack which was the thing that we wished to conceal when the success of the attack was to depend upon secret mobilization and a swift blow. If we were to repair the old roads across the broad area of the shell-crushed no-man's-land and through the trench systems after our attack, this also required the assembling of a great deal of material in view of the enemy.
No part of a modern army's arrangements is more difficult than the handling of the necessarily dense vehicular traffic behind the immediate front, even if ample supplies are brought to the railheads. The numbers of motor trucks and ambulances required were incredible. Our Service of Supply, which had been concentrating all its energies and material toward Saint Mihiel, now had to prepare for another equally great offensive. New railheads, new railways, new hospitals, new headquarters, and new routes of transport had to be established. With the certainty that the Saint Mihiel sector, if it became violent, would consume large quantities of ammunition we had to provide for the immense consumption of ammunition which would undoubtedly be required in the Meuse-Argonne.
The continued fighting throughout the summer, with additional and unexpected requirements for the new offensive campaign, had made increasingly heavy drafts upon transport and animals. It was no use to say that more horses were coming from Spain and from America; they were needed now. All the tanks and aeroplanes and the light and heavy artillery which were in the making at home or on the docks at New York would be of no service unless they were in the battle. The lack of sufficient railway lines and shortage of rolling stock required accordingly more travel on the limited roads approaching the area of concentration east and west of Verdun.
When artillery, in course of being withdrawn from the Saint Mihiel front to go to the Argonne front, had their horses killed, the weary survivors who were now to draw the guns could not be forced through according to the usual schedule. They had to cross the streams of traffic running to the Saint Mihiel front. At night all the roads were solid columns of men and vehicles that had to keep at the uniform pace of the slowest of its units lest motor transport, which could go fifteen miles an hour, in trying to pass tractor-drawn heavy artillery that could go three or four, should become imbedded in the mud and thus stall the whole column for hours.
Thus the unprecedented strain of the Meuse-Argonne Battle, which was to endure for six weeks, began with the difficulties of mobilization. During the Château-Thierry operations we had had summer weather, when men could sleep in the open with comfort, when it was easy to repair broken roads and when motor trucks which got off the road did not sink into the mud. Now we had already entered the period of chill fall rains which made the ground porous and wet marching soldiers to the skin. Instead of time for reflection and reorganization, in applying the lesions of the Saint Mihiel salient, every officer and man was straining his utmost to make sure by improvisation, when organization failed and by sheer sleepless industry, of meeting with forced smiles each new contingency as it developed.
Our three corps in line were, the first under General Liggett on the left, the fifth under General Cameron in the center, and the third under General Bullard on the right. The corps headquarters were established only four days before the attack. Unfamiliar except in theory, and from what they had learned at Saint Mihiel, with the problems of directing an army in a prolonged battle, they had not a quarter of the time for preparations which they ordinarily should have received even if they had had long experience. They did not know the division commanders or the divisions which were to serve under them, and the divisions did not arrive until the last moment.
Artillery brigades, fresh from the training grounds where they had only received their guns, marched up to be assigned to divisions with which they had never cooperated in action. Batteries that had no horses depended upon batteries that had horses to be drawn into position. The coordination of infantry units for the attack was dependent upon coordination by paper directions rather than previous association.
We had an enormous concentration of artillery and of aviation, thanks to assistance from the French, but our aviation and much of that of the French sent us was new. Our aviators lacked experience as observers in keeping their liaison in directing artillery fire and in informing the infantry of the movements of their units and of the enemy's. Infantry and artillery commanders who had had little previous battle experience, were not always fortunate in their efforts to keep liaison with one another and with the aviation in view of the aviation's inexperience. To say that the American army was ready for such an offensive as that of the Meuse-Argonne would be unfair to the men who began the battle and detracting from the glory of their achievement. Her courage, eagerness, adaptability, and industry were merits which were to overcome the handicaps in a way that made results even more glorious in the greatest battle of our history.
Aside from the fact that two of the divisions in line were going under fire for the first time there was not one of the divisions which was not handicapped in some way for their effort, either for want of artillery or because they had had no time to rest after hard marches or previous battles. In the space of this brief review it is impossible to tell of their actions in detail which reflected credit on each one of the Regular, National Guard, or National Army divisions, and which, taken together, reflected credit upon the army as a whole.