The race-horse division in another spearhead action—Regulars and Marines—A division that had learned coÖrdination—Trying for Blanc-Mont—One attack that cost nothing—An exhausted division reinforced by the new Southwestern division—Which keeps up with the Marines—The 36th learns fast—And pursues the enemy to the Aisne.

Ever the demand from all parts of the Allied line was for American troops. Their speed in attack had become a recognized factor in the plans of the unified command, which moved them about with an inconsiderate rapidity which was hard on shoe-leather and most uncomfortable. The very sight of the soldiers of our young army moving into a sector of their line before an action quickened the spirits of the veterans of the old armies.

If Sir Douglas Haig had two American divisions for storming the Hindenburg line, then General Gouraud, whose Fourth Army had broken the trench line for gains west of the Argonne Forest, in conjunction with our advance between the Forest and the Meuse, must have two divisions for the next step in the general offensive movement which was to disengage Rheims, in a drive northward from Somme-Py to the Aisne. These two included the 2nd, Marines and Regulars, the race-horse division, which had the longest experience in France of any regular division except the pioneers of the 1st. Our sore need of its veteran skill in the Meuse-Argonne had to yield to an urgent request, which amounted to a command, from higher authority. Naturally, the 2nd would have preferred being with our own army; but wherever it was it would fight well. It was to add to its laurels now in the rolling country of Champagne, where the deep strata of chalk under the light subsoil formed solid walls for defenses, accrued through four years of digging, as distinct on the background of the landscape as the white tape on a tennis court or the base-lines on a baseball diamond. Soldiers in blue or khaki, after fighting in this region in rainy weather, looked like men who had just come from work in a flour-mill, where they had been wrestling with the splashing mill-wheel. It was a custom to rub helmets with the chalk of parapets for the sake of invisibility.

The action in which the 2nd was again, as on July 18th, to play the part of the spearhead was to cut the Rheims salient by thrusts on the sides, much as one would push in the roofless walls of a house on a man within, which is much more reasonable than trying to break up through the floor to get at him. The third German offensive of May had all but encircled Rheims from the west; had the last and unsuccessful offensive attained its end of a deep advance east of the city, Rheims would have been far behind the enemy's line. As it was, heroic resistance had saved the city, at the price of leaving it for four months in a salient as pronounced and as dangerous as the Ypres salient, which must be reversed and then broken. The reversal which would put the enemy in turn into a salient was started west of Rheims, on September 30th, by General Berthelot's Fifth Army; in a three days' advance his line, pivoting on the city, swung up from an east-west direction to a northwest-southeast direction, effectively turning the salient inside out. The line now ran for some twenty miles southeast past the edge of Rheims, turned east through Champagne for another fifteen miles to AubÉrive, and then, as a result of General Gouraud's advances from September 26th, turned northeast to the northern end of the Argonne. A simultaneous attack by Berthelot, on the west face of this flat arc with a thirty-mile chord, and by Gouraud on the east face, would send the enemy scurrying back to a maximum depth of twenty-five miles to the line of the Aisne river, which here runs roughly east and west.

From just north of Somme-Py, in the center of the up-slanting east face of the salient, the 2nd Division, attached with French divisions to the Twenty-first Corps, was to strike over chalk ridges and through woods northwest toward Machault. The attack was first set for October 2nd, but was postponed while the division spent this day in cleaning German recalcitrants out of a portion of the trench system taken over from a French division which had captured it. The Corps orders for the attack were then issued so late that there was not time to have them translated and written out, as the custom was, for the sake of accuracy which was considered indispensable to the team-play of units; but they had to be sent orally to our two brigades.

In the center of the field of attack was the VipÈre Wood, which was known to hold many machine-gun nests. By a converging movement the Marine brigade was to pass this wood on the left, and the Regular brigade to pass it on the right in flank, and form line beyond it,—which was not a mission a general would assign to tyros who had not yet learned to maintain the liaison of their units in difficult fighting. In order to go into position, the Regular brigade had a night march around the rear of the line. Happily the men of the 2nd Division had had experience of this sort of thing. They had gone in on the run at ChÂteau-Thierry, and again in the crucial drive at Soissons on July 18th. It had been said that they did things best in a hurry, which may have led to their being relied on as "hit-and-run"-experts; nevertheless they had an idea of their own that if they might have moved into line and looked over the ground a few hours before going into an attack, instead of charging when they were breathless from sprinting, they might have done equally well with slightly less nerve strain.

As the French guides who were to meet the Regular brigade at dark and show it the way did not appear, which was a common failing with guides, the brigade had to grope about among shell-craters and communication trenches to find its jumping-off place, which was still partly occupied by the enemy. By 5 A.M. only six companies were in position; but by 5.50, the hour for attack, thanks to the owl's eyes and instinct of direction which seemed to be a part of the equipment of the 2nd, every company was up in order, ready for the charge. With tanks assisting against its machine-gun nests, they swept past the VipÈre Wood. A loss of twenty per cent of their infantry did not interfere with their reaching their two-mile objective on schedule time at 8.30.

The race-horse proclivities of the 2nd, having been developed on no level speedway but over all the hurdles of modern defense against all arms of fire, were accentuated by the rivalry of the Regular and Marine brigades. The Marine was the better brigade of the two. All the Marines say so. I agree with them. The Regular brigade was also the better. All the Regulars say so. I agree with them. If the Marines were up to their objective, the Regulars must be; and if the Regulars were up the Marines must be, or die in the attempt. No ifs, or buts, or excuses of any kind except casualties were ever accepted in the 2nd for not advancing. And you must not lose life unskillfully, or your brigade might be convicted of not being as professional as the other,—and that would be a disgrace. The 2nd had been fortunate in its commanders. Major-General Harbord, a Regular, had leaned backward toward the Marines; and Major-General Lejeune, a Marine officer, who was now in command, leaned backward toward the Regulars. They were wise men, occupied with making the 2nd the "best" division in the army.

Despite the trouble it met on the way from cross-fire and machine-gun nests in the Somme-Py Wood, the Marine brigade was also up on schedule time at 8.30. The two brigades had not been thinking much of their flanks; they were concerned in racing each other. While either considered the other incapable of its own stride, neither thought that any brigade in the world except itself could keep pace with the other. They were not surprised to find that the French were not up on their flanks; and the fact that the French were not, interfered with the success of another advance planned for 11 A.M., unless the 2nd were to drive into a salient which increasing machine-gun fire indicated as an unprofessional effort,—suicide not being professional with the 2nd unless one brigade should make it a custom which the other would have to follow.

Though the French on the right might hold up their end in a further attack before noon, there was no chance that the French on the left could: with the Marine front line more than two miles in advance, the French were still occupied in trying to conquer the sinuous warrens of the Essen trench, which was acting an assassin's part in the rear of the Marines. Indeed, the Germans were counter-attacking, further intensifying the seriousness of the situation. The reserve regiment of Marines had other work to do than assisting the front-line regiment in a further advance. While its men, in helping the French division, were breaching dugouts, using their bayonets, throwing and dodging bombs as they rushed around traverses and met counter-rushes in an infernal hand-to-hand wrestle, and sending out chalk-plastered Germans in torn uniforms to join the groups of prisoners and wounded coming from the front, Marshal Foch sent a telegram of congratulation to the Corps, with word to press the advance.

At 4 P.M., when the reserve regiment of the Marines had finished its task in applying in savage hand-to-hand fighting, characteristic of the old days before open warfare became the rule, all its training in trench warfare, an order was given to obey that of the Marshal; but it hardly concerned the front regiment of Marines, which was without the support of the reserve regiment, while the retarded French on the flank, still fighting hard for their gains, were well to the rear. The reserve regiment of the Regulars, passing through the front regiment, made three-quarters of a mile, where it met machine-gun fire from both flanks. At 7.30, the French on the left having made progress, the reserve regiment of Marines, passing through the front regiment, made another hard-won gain against flanking fire, and in the darkness had to repulse two counter-attacks.

It had been a great day even for the 2nd Division, with four miles of advance and a toll of two thousand prisoners; a day of systematic and masterly fighting which had added to its list of honors that of forcing the Germans forever out of the deep maze of the Champagne trenches. The trucks and the rolling kitchens as well as the artillery, which had never been far behind the infantry, were up that night; and the ambulances, in keeping with the race-horse spirit, running close up to the front, had made a record in their expeditious care of the wounded, who had been gathered with a promptness, in the fields under fire, worthy of a show drill at maneuvers. For if we had any division which knew how, and had reasons of long service for knowing how, to coÖrdinate all its branches in action, it was the division which had learned its lessons in the taking of Belleau Wood, Vaux, and Vauxcastille.

It need not be said that the program was to continue the advance the next day; but the Germans had been preparing overnight to impede its fulfillment with something of the same ferocity they had shown in the Essen trench. As usual in these days, after the Allied attack had spent its initial momentum in breaking them out of their fortifications, the Germans reacted by applying open warfare tactics on a second line of resistance. While the French were striving to come up on both flanks, the whole line was being deluged with shells and machine-gun fire. On the afternoon of the first day, the Marines by their customarily swift tactics had taken a portion of Blanc-Mont—the adjective being used before the name, contrary to modern French fashion—a hill which ran back in an irregular shelf covered by patches of sparse woods. Well-made trenches, dugouts, and communicating trenches so easily dug and kept up in the firm chalk, were evidence of the German's appreciation of the hill's importance in the defense of their positions east of Rheims.

A congeries of machine-gun nests on its west slope, which was still untaken, by its enfilade fire from our sector had stopped the advance of the French on the left. Without waiting for them, and with a view to clearing the way for them, the Marines on the afternoon of the 4th, supported by their artillery, attacked this position. They tested out its strength well enough, in face of withering blasts, to learn that they must devise another plan of assault. This was a wise precaution, as the event was to prove. They spent the night in tireless and canny preparations for the next day's effort. Early in the morning a battalion started over the ridge. They did not want for shields; and their confidence in the accuracy of their veteran artillery led them to keep close behind the smothering fire of the barrage with a speed and agility in the systematic advance of their units which made a record even for the race-horse division. The German machine-gunners, as they saw that hurricane of bursting shells approaching, rushed to cover, which they hugged in desperate and prayerful intimacy as it passed over them. They rose, to find that a human whirlwind in its train was upon them. Without a single casualty the battalion had taken 213 prisoners and 75 machine-guns. The thing seemed miraculous; but there were the machine-guns, and there were the startled Germans who had thrown up their hands. When I went over the ground, still littered with equipment and scattered cartridge cases, that commanded every avenue of approach, I had an example which might well be quoted in all future text-books of how speed and skill may get "the jump" on an enemy. Here was certainly something, not to tell the Marines, but for the Marines to tell those Regulars, who, holding a large section of the line, could respond that though they had no theatrical exhibits to please the gallery gods they were having an affair of their own which might make any Marine thankful for his health's sake that he was climbing hills.

On the right of the Regular brigade the French had not yet taken MÉdÉah farm, which was a perfect haven for machine-guns bearing on the Regulars' flank. The Germans, in this section, were fighting hard enough to atone for the easy surrender of their comrades on Blanc-Mont in their defense of the ridges in front of the village of Saint-Etienne-À-Arnes, the next landmark in the path of the 2nd's progress. The Marines found a thorn in the flesh in a strong point near Blanc-Mont, whose defenders refused to be stampeded. Enemy artillery fire was furious throughout the 5th. On the morning of the 6th, at 6.30, under another hurricane barrage, a regiment of Regulars and one of Marines side by side set out to take the last ridge before Saint-Etienne. This meant that something had to break. It was one of the occasions when professional spirit did not consider the folly of suicide, as the rival units charged side by side. They took the ridge with a loss that was estimated at thirty per cent, and dug in. The French on the left had forged ahead. Meanwhile, with the French on the right valiantly struggling against MÉdÉah farm, and our Regulars checked, our line was at a sharp angle.

It had been a grueling day for a division which notably never spared itself in its high-strung intensity; and four or five days seem to have been the limit of endurance for soldiers who were continuously fighting. Relief for the 2nd was due. On the night of the 6th the 36th Division, National Guard of Texas and Oklahoma, under command of Major-General William R. Smith, which was lately from home and had never been under fire before, began arriving. Its fresh and inexperienced battalions were now mixed with the tired battalions of the 2nd to learn the art of war at first hand from old masters, who included not only their comrades of the Regulars and Marines but the Germans in a very ugly mood. After a day of reorganizing and digging, while the French were in the outskirts of Saint-Etienne, the Marines on the left and a regiment of the 36th on the right charged Saint-Etienne on the morning of the 8th. The French were reported to have patrols in the town, but a portion of it at least seemed to be very much in the hands of the enemy. At least his machine-gunners, in the course of their supple infiltrations, had established themselves in the adjoining cemetery, which gave them a free sweep of fire across the ground of our advance, which was open fields without any more cover than a house floor. For half a kilometer the men of the 36th kept their line even with the veterans. The Marines entered the town while the men of the 36th were still in the open.

It was the Southwesterners' first taste of machine-gun nests. They had no standards of previous experience for judgment as to the density of fire which would warrant a halt. Their orders were to keep on going; and they kept on. In front of them, as they crossed the open, was a wooded ravine. Our guns could not bombard it with any appreciable effect upon its nests, which were sending a tornado of bullets into the 36th's charge in addition to the shower of shells from the German guns. The Southwesterners who were meeting both bullets and shells for the first time did not fall back before this deadly combination of artillery and machine-gun fire, which would have dismayed hardened veterans at their best, until they had kept faith with Alamo traditions by losing a third of their numbers.

The 2nd's engineers now came up for a fighting part in protecting our hard-pressed flanks. We withdrew our front to the town, which we held. Meanwhile, though the French had taken MÉdÉah farm, the division's right was still well back of the line of Saint-Etienne. All day of the 9th was spent in re-forming our position after the see-sawing conflict of the 8th; but the Germans, far from showing any signs of withdrawal, made a counter-attack on the French beyond MÉdÉah farm and on our Regulars, who repulsed it with their rifle fire.

The race-horse division, which had been hurried from the mud of the Saint-Mihiel sector without time to rest, had been doing a steeple-chase for nine days. Physical exhaustion claimed it for its own. As it withdrew, with casualties of 4,771 and the capture of 1,963 prisoners from eight German divisions, the Regulars and Marines and the French of the Twenty-first Corps had the satisfaction of knowing that German guns had fired their last shot at the cathedral and the ruins of the city of Rheims.

The Texans and Oklahomans who now took up the battle were assigned the tired artillery of the 2nd, as they had no guns of their own. They lacked horses, transport, and nearly everything a division should have, except rifles, which were in the hands of men who knew how to use them. On the morning of the 10th their reconnaissance in force showed that the enemy artillery and machine-gun fire was as powerful as ever. It was hardly in the books that an inexperienced division should begin a movement in the dark; but the French being ready to advance on the left, the 36th began an attack that evening.

The Germans, already preparing for retreat, still had large forces of field artillery in range. Evidently they were determined to take revenge on these new troops by expending in the rapid fire of a prolonged bombardment all they could of their ammunition, instead of leaving it behind to be captured. The accurate and moving sheet of death which was laid down upon the advancing infantry of the 36th was the kind from which men will withdraw in the sheer instinct of self-preservation. Indeed, a panic would have been excusable. But the lean tall Texans and Oklahomans had not come all the way from home to be in a battle at last with any idea of celebrating the occasion, or gratifying the Germans, by a retreat, because of a display of fireworks. Among the leaping flashes in the dark, with voices unheard and men revealed for an instant in shadowy outline, with officers who had the direction of units being killed and wounded, with gaps being torn in the line, there was bound to be some disorganization. But there was no faltering. The Texans and Oklahomans are not by nature panicky. They accepted stoically this screaming tumult of destruction. Particularly it was not the nature of the Indians among them to be distracted by a "heap big noise." Officers agreed that there was no problem except that of keeping units together. All the men wanted was to "get back" at the German, straight into his barrage. Pressing on as they closed up their gaps, the charging groups with the bit in their teeth took the village of Machault.

The enemy resistance had suddenly broken. After this final spasm of splenetic reprisal, all the German guns were moving fast toward the Aisne. The Texans and Oklahomans did not waste much time over the machine-gunners who attempted a rearguard action, but "hiked" ahead for fifteen miles in a single day, as a reminder to the 2nd, which had considered them "tenderfeet," that in the matter of long-distance racing they yielded the honor to nobody. Bridges destroyed, machine-gun nests established on the north of the river, the German served notice that he was to make another stand. The Texans and Oklahomans enjoyed themselves in swimming across on scouting trips and in a period of active sniping gratifying to ranger inheritance. The last day they were in line they completed their brief service by cleaning up Forest farm, east of Attigny, in an uninterrupted rush which gave them the opportunity to make the most of their qualities, and in ejecting the enemy from a bend in the river which he still held. Their casualties were 2,651, and they had taken 813 prisoners and an engineer depot worth ten millions of dollars, which had supplied that section of the German line for four years. It was their only battle, but they had fought it in a way to make the most of it, in attest to the enemy of what might be expected of such a new division, if, fully equipped, it should take to the war-path again.