ON THE LORRAINE FRONT

The American expeditionary force in France were still in process of being "broken in" when the war entered upon its fourth year. They remained well behind the firing lines in their training camp, continuing their education in trench warfare. The manipulation of the hand grenade, rifle, bayonet, trench mortar, and machine gun under conditions to which the British and French had long been inured, and, most irksome and unpopular task of all, trench digging, formed the order of the day. Contingents gradually progressed toward the stage closely approximating real warfare by undergoing the ordeal of "gassing" in order to be equal to the quick adjustment of masks when gas shells were fired in action. Other companies found their way behind the British lines to drill their nerves to withstand scenes of ruin and desolation, the whine of high-explosive shells, and the rattle of shrapnel. All these preliminaries were directed toward a modest aim—storming a trench line. Formerly troops were trained for undertaking rapid marches and complicated maneuvers. In this war their endurance and fighting spirit became restricted to a narrow field—that of penetrating enemy lines on a front of ten kilometers, whose depth did not extend beyond one kilometer.

The American troops did not take kindly to "digging in." Their officers found great difficulty in impressing them with the importance of taking cover. They were like their Canadian brothers-in-arms, of whom it was said that they would die in the last ditch but never dig it. They were averse to submitting to the unheroic obligation of learning to fight in ambush; they clung to primitive ideas of warfare and wanted to spring upon and charge the enemy in the open. Only bitter losses finally persuaded the Canadians, French, and Australians that fighting the Germans from a hole in the ground was the only way of fighting them at all; but the Americans had yet to pay their toll for yielding to their natural antipathy to fighting underground. Their zeal for the pick and shovel, despite the war's terrible object lessons, remained lukewarm.

"It seems a shame to curb the fine fighting spirits of our troops," an American training officer said; "but they must be made to understand as far as possible that impetuosity must be subordinated to steadiness. This has become a time-clock war. The men must advance in given time and go no further. Every step of infantry advance must first be worked out with the artillery, and when the plan is arranged it must be strictly adhered to. "We realize that it will be difficult to hold our men to this plan. If they see a battle going on, their favorite impulse will be to push on as fast as they can, and some are bound to do so, just as the Canadians did in the earlier stages. We will undoubtedly have big losses in this way, but the men who come through our first battles will be worth their weight in gold thereafter. They will learn quickly the value of steadiness and absolute discipline under fire, and they will be the steadying influence we can distribute through the newer units of our great army as they get their final preparation for trial by fire."

More to their taste was the training practice of charging dummy Germans in specially prepared trenches under the direction of an English sergeant major. At one camp three short lines of such trenches were constructed in a dip in the ground, ending at a rise some hundred yards off, with tin cans on sticks dotting them. The charge was thus undertaken:

"'Ready, gentlemen,' said the drill sergeant. 'Prepare for trench bayonet practice by half sections. You're to take these three line of trenches, lay out every boche in the lot, and then get to cover and fire six rounds at them 'ere tin 'ats. Don't waste a shot, gentlemen; every bullet a boche. Now, then, ready! Over the top and give 'em 'ell right in the stomach! Fritz likes his victuals, but not that sort. Get at 'em!'"

The men ran some ten yards and dug their bayonets savagely into dummy Germans made of sacks, which swung in the wind, and disappeared in the first trench. Their rifle butts rose and fell as they lunged desperately at the supposed foe. Then they reappeared and advanced farther, taking cover and lying spread-eagled behind a shallow trench, blazing at the cans, which fell rattling.

After some four months' training in camp, the long-looked-for tidings that American troops had taken their place beside the fighting forces of the Allies at length came from General Pershing's headquarters. On October 27, 1917, the first official announcement of war news from that source was issued in this form:

"In continuation of their training as a nucleus for instruction later, a contingent of some battalions of our first contingents, in association with veteran French battalions, are in the first-line trenches of a quiet sector on the French front. They are supported by some batteries of our artillery, in association with veteran French batteries.

"The sector remains normal. Our men have adapted themselves to actual trench conditions in the most satisfactory manner."

The "quiet sector" was occupied by helmeted infantry of the United States, without the knowledge of the enemy, by arriving at night through pouring rain and seas of mud. At six o'clock on the morning of that day, American artillery, already installed, fired the first American shot of the war at the German working party and shelled the German positions. The Germans gave shell for shell. The fusillades continued all day.

During the lull in the firing at dusk the first American machine guns appeared in a little deserted, shell-wrecked village well within hostile gun range and a few kilometers from the American trenches. The guns were hauled by Missouri mules, whose drivers were swathed in ponchos and helmeted to their eyes. The cavalcade moved in a long, silent line along a road margining a dark canal, followed by infantry rolling camp kitchens.

Other infantry followed through the cobble-paved streets. The darkness hid lines of men with packs on their backs, rifles slung on their shoulders, rain glistening on their helmets and coats, the wind whipping their coat skirts round limbs moving with machinelike precision. Only the tramp of many hobnailed boots disclosed their march through the village. They safely entered their trenches, unit by unit, and passed quickly to the places assigned them. The French welcomed them with ardor. Every American was shaken by the hand, some were hugged, and even kissed on both cheeks in the French custom. Quietness was essential, since the German trenches were not far away; but the fervor of the French troops overcame their precaution. It was too great a day for mute welcomes. The Americans had arrived!

The trenches were found to be muddy but well constructed. The troops settled down in them, and at daylight, under low-hanging, dripping clouds, they obtained their first view of the German lines, stretching away in the rolling terrain. They were in contact with the enemy at last.

They received their baptism of fire mingled with showers of mud, their clothes soaked to the skin. American shells fell and exploded in German territory, and German projectiles broke near the American positions, sprinkling fragments, but doing no serious damage. They were merely establishing contact as a prelude to more serious operations. Gunners and infantrymen alike, the latter in first-line trenches, over which both American and German shells whizzed, were satisfied, though wet, feeling that the distinction of being the first Americans to be in action more than recompensed for weather discomforts.

Their first quarry was a stray German mail carrier who had lost his way in the dark and was taken prisoner near the American trenches. He encountered an American patrol in no-man's-land in company with another German, and was shot while running away after refusing to halt.

While waiting for a real attack sniping engaged the troops' attention, especially on clear days, when German snipers sought targets. Many bullets passed singing harmlessly overhead. Their frequency called for retorts, and a number of infantrymen were detailed to single out the snipers. Sniping the sniper became part of the preliminaries of settling down to trench warfare.

The troops realized by these activities, trifling though they were, that mimic charges and class-room demonstrations of the training camp were things of the past and that they faced the real foe. The Germans in fact, were not tardy in impressing them with their new situation. They discovered that Americans were facing them and set about making a raid. Berlin announced the result in a brief bulletin on November 3.

"At the Rhine-Marne Canal, as the result of a reconnoitering thrust, North American soldiers were brought in as prisoners."

The news brought the American people a step nearer to a realization of the actualities of the great struggle. It also disclosed that the Americans were established on a section of the front defended by the German Crown Prince's army and facing Lorraine. The so-called "quiet sector" stood revealed as the only front through which war could be carried into the heart of Germany. It lay before the gap in the French barrier forts, Verdun-Toul and Epinal-Belfort, flanked by the invulnerable Verdun on the northeast and the French positions in the Alsatian Vosges on the southeast. A quiet sector it might be, but more than 40,000 German dead lie buried there, the flower of the army of the Crown Prince of Bavaria. They fell in a twenty-eight day battle in August and September, 1914, when five French army corps under General Castelnau fought seven under the Crown Prince The Germans finally retired into Lorraine after vainly attempting to cross the Moselle. Both General PÉtain—who attempted an offensive there in 1916, but was checked from proceeding with it by political high commands—and General Castelnau were convinced of the vulnerability of this sector as a roadway into Germany, and prophets were not wanting who saw in the presence of the Americans there a foretoken that an American army might essay what the two French Generals had not accomplished. At any rate, after an unbroken calm of three years, the sector was no longer quiet.

The Germans had scored by drawing first blood. The Berlin press was riotously gleeful over the event, one journal, the "Lokal-Anzeiger," gloating over it in these terms:

"Three cheers for the Americans! Clever chaps they are, it cannot be denied. Scarcely have they touched the soil of this putrefied Europe when they already are forcing their way into Germany.

"It is our good fortune that we are equipped to receive and entertain numerous guests and that we shall be able to provide quarters for these gentlemen. They will find comfort in the thought that they are rendering their almighty President, Mr. Wilson, valuable services, inasmuch as it is asserted he is anxious to obtain reliable information concerning conditions and sentiments in belligerent countries.

"As Americans are accustomed to travel in luxury and comfort, we assume that these advance arrivals merely represent couriers for larger numbers to come. We are sure the latter will come and be gathered in by us. At home they believe they possess the biggest and most colossal everything, but such establishments as we have here they have not seen.

"Look here, my boy, here is the big firm of Hindenburg & Co., with which you want to compete. Look at its accomplishments and consider whether it would not be better to haul down your sign and engage in some other line. Perhaps your boss, Wilson, will reconsider his newest line of business before we grab off more of his young people."

A salient of the American position occupied by a small detachment had been successfully raided by the Germans before daybreak, resulting in three Americans killed, several wounded, and a dozen captured or missing. The Teutons started a heavy barrage fire, which isolated the salient, so that help could not reach the troops, nor could they retire, and thus had the besieged men at the mercy of their superior force. The Americans fought obstinately until they were overwhelmed. They had only been in the trenches a few days and were part of the second contingent who had entered them for training under actual war conditions. They succeeded in capturing a German prisoner, and inflicting casualties; but the latter did not become known as the enemy, in fleeing the trench, took their dead and wounded with them.

After shelling the barbed-wire front of the trenches, dropping many high-explosive missiles of large caliber, the Germans directed a heavy artillery fire to cover all the adjacent territory, including the passage leading to the trenches, thereby effecting a complete barrage of the salient front and rear. Soon after the enemy, exceeding two hundred in number, rushed the breaches and wire entanglements on each side of the salient, lifting the barrage in the forefield to permit their passage.

It was an elaborate encircling bombardment to achieve a trifling object. An American platoon, numbering only nineteen men, were corraled by a heavy fire from 77's and 115's, which searched the whole line of trenches communicating with the salient where they were isolated. The French, who had only recently vacated the position to make way for the Americans, estimated that the German shells expended exceeded eight thousand.

With the raising of the frontal barrage, the German raiders advanced. They were composed of storm troops, volunteers, machine gunners, artillerymen, pioneers to destroy the wire entanglements, and stretcher bearers to carry off their casualties. They had gathered round a group of ruined farm buildings some seven hundred yards from the American trenches, armed with grenades, revolvers, trench knives, and rifles. They followed, in columns of fours, a tape across no-man's-land laid out by leaders who had previously been over the ground. Advancing across a swampy ravine toward the salient, they penetrated the gaps in the American wire entanglements, and a number reached the trenches at the rear of their barrage. The Americans were thus cut off from behind. Other raiders stayed outside the trenches to protect those who entered them and to shoot any Americans who appeared above the parapet. The trenches were stormed right and left of the salient, one party clearing them as they proceeded, the other invading the dugouts for prisoners.

The darkness of the trenches veiled what next happened. After the Germans had completed their work and retired, an American trooper, private Enright, was found with his throat cut from ear to ear on the top of the parapet. While fighting a German in front of him he appeared to have been attacked from behind by another armed with a trench knife. A second trooper, private Hay, lay dead in the trench, and outside a dugout was the body of Corporal Gresham.

In the confusion some of the American troops mistook the Germans for their own comrades, and paid for their error. Corporal Gresham, for example, was the sentry at a dugout door when three men advanced toward him. Supposing them to be Americans he shouted:

"Don't shoot! I'm an American."

"It's Americans we're looking for," answered one of the three, and shot him dead with a revolver. It was a brief, ordinary affray, in nowise different from other happenings occurring nightly all along the front. But nineteen Americans were set upon by over 200 Germans, and it was the Americans' first taste of Teutonic warfare. They fought stoutly with pistols, knives, and bayonets until overcome, whereupon the Germans went off with an American sergeant, a corporal, and ten privates, all of whom were trapped in a dugout near the tip of the besieged salient.

The raid scarcely lasted five minutes and outside the salient no one in the American lines knew it was proceeding. The German communiquÉ dismissed it in three lines. From Berlin's viewpoint it was inconsequential; but to Americans it was of moment in being their first clash with the enemy. Young, inexperienced soldiers, cooped in a position they were not familiar with, encountering their baptism of fire under circumstances of surprise, uncertainty, and darkness, had acquitted themselves well against heavy odds, and prevented the enemy from penetrating beyond the first line of trenches.

The American dead were buried with due honors on French soil. The general commanding the French division in the section delivered an oration at their graves in the presence of French and American troops amid the roaring of guns and whistle of shells. His words belong to the record of America's part in the war:

"Men! These graves, first to be dug in our national soil, and but a short distance from the enemy, are as a mark of the mighty land we and our allies firmly cling to in the common task, confirming the will of the people and the army of the United States to fight with us to a finish, ready to sacrifice as long as is necessary until final victory for the most noble of causes, that of the liberty of nations, the weak as well as the mighty. Thus the deaths of these humble soldiers appear to us with extraordinary grandeur.

"We will, therefore, ask that the mortal remains of these young men be left here, left with us forever. We inscribe on the tombs, 'Here lie the first soldiers of the Republic of the United States to fall on the soil of France for liberty and justice.' The passer-by will stop and uncover his head. Travelers and men of heart will go out of their way to come here to pay their respective tributes.

"Private Enright, Private Gresham, Private Hay! In the name of France I thank you. God receive your souls. Farewell!"

After this foray shelling became of daily occurrence. The troops continued their training under fire, the first contingent giving place to the second contingent, and the second to the third in occupying the trenches, after each had undergone a spell of patrol work, sharpshooting, and accustoming their nerves to falling shrapnel. Trench conditions enabled them to acquire a better insight of the science of war than they could learn in months of instruction in training camps. While the infantry were thus engaged in their underground finishing school, the gunners, in addition to making progress in actual firing, acquired greater facility in observation work and in locating enemy batteries by the sound method. The heavy guns on both sides engaged in duels at long range, with the lighter pieces working at targets nearer the lines. This gun activity was not without its toll. German casualties due to American marksmanship, of course, could not be ascertained, but they were probably equal to the American killed and wounded.

The troops were eager for an opportunity to retaliate on the foe for trapping their comrades in the salient, and on November 14, 1917, a patrol succeeded in exacting a partial revenge. Assisted by some French troops they planned a night ambuscade near the German lines on a shell-ruined farm. It was a dreary vigil in the mud, where they lay throughout the small hours, until their patience was rewarded by the appearance of a large German patrol, in number more than double those of the Franco-Americans. They permitted the Germans to pass, and then attacked them on their flank. The fusillade of French and American bullets from shell craters and other shelters where the sharpshooters lay concealed took the Germans by surprise. They precipitately fled, taking their fallen with them. No French or American trooper was hit by the shots the Germans fired in their hurried retreat. More notable than such skirmishes on the American front before Lorraine was the part a number of unarmed American engineers, in company with Canadians, took in the encircling movement the Germans made on the British positions before Cambrai on November 30, 1917. For some time past American engineers had not only been of yeoman service behind the French lines in hauling tons of ammunition and other equipment to supply the French forces, but had been engaged on the railroad in the rear of the British front. They did not belong to the fighting units, and no achievements were looked for from men whose sole arms were picks and shovels. But the ramifications of the German assault on Gouzeaucourt brought these workers in the rear to the forefront of the attack, and they distinguished themselves in a manner which drew tributes from both the French and British high commands. A staid official account of the rÔle they played thus describes the situation:

"Two and one-half companies of railway engineers, with a strength of eight officers and 365 men, were encamped at Fins on November 30, 1917, having completed their work in the neighborhood. At 6.30 four officers and 280 men went to Gouzeaucourt, arriving at 7 and starting to work with Canadian engineers. The entire contingent was under a Canadian major and an American captain. The area was three miles in the rear of the line and none of the troops was armed.

"At 7.15 German barrage fire moved on Gouzeaucourt after heavy shelling to the east. At 7.30 a general retirement was ordered, and it was effected with some difficulty, due to the artillery, machine-gun and airplane fire.

"A number of losses were sustained at this time, and also among the men who, cut off by the German advance, had taken refuge in dugouts. Some of these men who had been cut off succeeded in joining British combatant units and fought with them during the day."

A story of American grit and pluck lay concealed in the last sentence. The American and Canadian engineers, cut off as described, were taken prisoners by the Germans. They were fifty in number, and accompanied by a German escort marched along the road leading from Gouzeaucourt to Cambrai. As they proceeded disconsolately toward the zone of the German prison cages, they encountered a small body of British troops who had been separated from their comrades and were wandering about aimlessly. The appearance of the Germans with the prisoners produced an immediate charge toward them by the British. The Germans sought to drive their captives toward La Vacquerie before the advancing British reached them. But the prisoners, seeing rescue at hand, turned upon their guards and fought them barehanded until the British troops interposed and vanquished the Germans. The American engineers and their comrades thereupon took possession of the German rifles and with their rescuers found their way back to the British lines.

A number of American engineers were killed and injured, presumably during the German attack on Gouzeaucourt, since no mention was made of casualties in the adventure on the highroad. Their losses were largely due to their being unarmed when the Germans came, a predicament which forced them to seize the guns of dead and wounded soldiers to protect themselves. The army commands afterward ordered that all engineers be armed to enable them to take their place with the troops in any future emergency which brought them again face to face with the foe. The French Government was so impressed with their performance that it sent the following communication to Washington:

"We must remark upon the conduct of certain American soldiers, pioneers and workmen on the military railroad in the sector of the German attack west of Cambrai on November 30, 1917. They exchanged their picks and shovels for rifles and cartridges and fought with the English. Many died thus bravely, arms in hand, before the invader. All helped to repulse the enemy. There is not a single person who saw them at work who does not render warm praise to the coolness, discipline, and courage of these improvised combatants."

Their exploit stirred the American camp to enthusiasm mingled with envy. The British front at Cambrai was a long step from the American trenches in the Lorraine sector, and tidings of the happenings at Gouzeaucourt impressed the troops with the fact that not on them only was the glory of the Stars and Stripes being upheld on the soil of France. An infantry sergeant voiced the general feeling of his comrades thus:

"We stay in the trenches for a spell and let Fritz shoot his artillery at us and have never really had a chance to use our rifles except to snipe and pot Fritz out in no-man's-land on dark nights. These railroaders managed to run their trains right into a good, thick scrap, and if this isn't luck, I don't know what it is."

Casualties continued to grow with the constant shelling. Sporadic raids over no-man's-land and visitations of German airships added to them. Bombs were dropped on a party of engineers, killing one of them, and two privates were victims of a German aviator's explosive over a wood in which they were camped.

Winter set in with a snowfall that impeded the training of the troops and communications. Roads became impassable by drifts, and many motor trucks, after crawling at a snail's pace over the hilly roads, became stranded in the snow. A thaw in January turned icy roads into river beds. Torrential streams flowed from melting snows in the hills, and together with a downpour of fine rain combined to make weather conditions on the American front the worst the troops had encountered since their arrival in France. The roads were cluttered in places with ditched motor trucks. Here and there mule-drawn vehicles were mired. Transport trains drawn by mules suffered most before the thaw, the animals slipping and falling on the icy roadbeds, and were unable to rise except by the aid of thick layers of branches and twigs placed under their hoofs. The beginning of 1918, in short, found the American army in France, like their allied comrades on the rest of the front, stalled by the weather, and little tidings came of their accustomed activities.