The Marne Division—A wedge in the east over open ridges—Magnificent, but not war—A footing in the Mamelle trench—Blue Ridge men hammering a way into the Ogons Wood—And into the Mamelle trench—A still hunt in a German headquarters—The dead line of the Brieulles road.

Our First Corps was still on the left, with the trough of the Aire now behind it. Our Fifth Corps, including the 1st Division after its transfer from the First, was still in the center, and our Third Corps in the yet unconquered trough of the Meuse on the right. Departing from the arbitrary lines of the Corps, in following the movement for the conquest of the Forest and of the trough and the walls of the Aire to its conclusion, no mention was made of the other divisions from the flank of the 32nd to the Meuse. All had been attacking with the same vigor as those to the left.

On October 1st the 3rd Division, under Major-General Beaumont B. Buck, had relieved the 79th, going in beside the 32nd. Its part is given separately from that of the 32nd, which was in the same, or Fifth Corps, because it was also to drive a wedge in the general attack of October 4th. Be it the 1st or 2nd, or the 4th or 5th, the 3rd considered itself the peer of any regular division. It had become veteran without any trench service when it hurried to ChÂteau-Thierry to its baptism of fire, in the crisis of the third German offensive of the spring. I have described in my first book how, flanks exposed, it "stonewalled" on the Marne's bank against the fifth German offensive; and how, then swiftly crossing the Marne, it had joined our other divisions in the advance to the Vesle. Though its emblem was three white stripes on a blue field, indicating its three battles, it was sometimes called the Marne Division. The reputation for unflinching endurance and bold initiative which it had won was now to be further enhanced in an action whose toll of casualties was second—and then by only one hundred—to that of the 1st, which drove the wedge along the Aire.

Having come from Saint-Mihiel, its replacements absorbed in its ways, its units all fresh and trained in coÖperation, it marched along the road through Montfaucon which was ever under shell-fire, and down the slopes in face of the guns of the whale-back, following the path where the 79th had "expended" itself, with the spring of youth in its steps and confidence in the heart-beat of every man. Such was its pride and spirit that one would say that anything that this division could not do no other division could do. Judging by the sector and the mission to which it was assigned, this was also the view of the Army command.

The line which it took over from Nantillois to the Beuge Wood was exposed to continual harassing fire. Before it were three bare irregular ridges, surmounted by commanding hills, with woods on the right flank. On the last of the three was the Mamelle trench, a part of the Kriemhilde Stellung. Army ambition, fondly contemplating the freshness and efficiency of the 3rd, saw it driving over those bare ridges, all the while under the guns of the whale-back, past flanking machine-gun fire from the wooded Hill 250 and Cunel Wood on the right. Piercing the Mamelle trench, it was to sink its wedge into the right flank of the whale-back, while the wedge of the 1st was sunk into the left flank. It was the precept of the Army that if you did not order a thing it would not be delivered. One never could tell. The 3rd might do a miracle. It had done something like a miracle on the banks of the Marne. The better a division was, the more was expected of it: which is only logical and human.

The open ground on the front was excellently suited for tanks. Forty or fifty would have approached a theoretically adequate number for the division's part in the general attack on October 4th. Unfortunately our troops had had little training in maneuvers with tanks, and the few which the French were able to spare for the 3rd were of relatively little service. For its artillery support, the 3rd had, beside its own brigade, that of the 32nd. This appeared quite generous on paper—but not in sight of those ridges. Their crests should have been ruptured by the high-explosive bursts of half a dozen regiments of heavy artillery, and received a shower-bath of shrapnel from half a dozen regiments of field artillery. However, there was the infantry—we could depend upon the "doughboys" even if we were short of artillery.

As a substitute for natural cover, a smoke-screen was helpful in obscuring the aim of the enemy's machine-gunners as the charge ascended the exposed slope of the first ridge. This was taken in the morning under the cross-fire from Hill 250, which had resisted the attack on the right, while the enemy artillery fire from the whale-back searched the whole field of the advance. The dependable infantry, closing up the gaps in ranks torn by shell-fire, swaying, re-forming, and rushing on, had accomplished this much; but there were the machine-guns from 250 sweeping the flank of the line on the ridge. The artillery was asked to pound 250; it did its best to answer this while it was answering other pressing calls. An effort to encircle 250 while it was being shelled was blasted back. No matter about 250; there was yet the second ridge to be taken; and the afternoon was young. Before nightfall the men of the 3rd had reached its reverse slope, and were digging in under shell-fire, while they received machine-gun fire not only from 250 but from Cunel Wood, which was now in flank of their advance. The Cunel was a small wood, but it was large enough for a host of machine-guns, and could not have been better placed for the German purpose.

The next morning, October 5th, under artillery support, the men of the 3rd tried infiltration over the crest of the second ridge by all the tactics known to veterans. Apart from ample machine-guns and infantry in the trenches, the Germans had two field guns on the ridge, firing at point-blank range in directions where they would be of most service. Infiltration would not do. There must be artillery preparation, then a sweep over the crest behind the shield of a strong barrage. During the organization of this attack, there was no lull in the bitter and stubborn fighting. If lines became disarranged, there was no demoralization. The Marne division was second to no division. It meant to go through. The Cunel Wood must be cleaned up as a part of the program of taking the second ridge. A line of men, crouching, methodical, bayonets glistening, started across the open against the wood, and melted away in face of the spitting of the machine-guns. Unflinchingly another line advanced, and still another, and they too melted away under that blaze from the wood's edge. Artillery preparation for the assault of the second ridge at 5 P.M. had included the Mamelle trench on the third ridge, where the Germans were known to be in strong force. The crest of the second ridge was gained. One company, targets against the slope for shells and machine-gun bullets, kept on until it reached the little Moussin brook in the valley. The German machine-gunners had this perfectly registered under an aim that swept the reverse slope. If the company had continued advancing, any survivor who reached the Mamelle trench would have been taken prisoner. That night the machine-guns on 250 were mopped up, which removed one source of assassination in flank. The 3rd was not keeping up with the lines drawn for it on the map, but it was making gains and holding them.

Fatigue and the drain from casualties were beginning to tell. It was evident from the number of Germans and machine-guns in the Mamelle trench that the enemy meant to fight desperately for its retention. There was no storming it without thorough artillery preparation until something was done to take care of Cunel Wood on the flank. In conjunction with the 80th on its right, the 3rd again charged Cunel's machine-gun nests. They made an entrance, only to find that the depths of the wood were plotted with machine-gun nests which began firing when the edge was taken. After the repulse of the main attack, a sergeant and twenty men of the 3rd stuck to their fox-holes. The following day they were able to withdraw in small groups. Meanwhile defensive positions were being organized on the second ridge. It was not a solacing fact to have the 32nd Division's artillery withdrawn at this juncture. In its place came a smaller force of French, who were welcome, but would have been more welcome if they had had more guns; but the British, the French, the Americans, and the Belgians, too, were using every available gun in the general offensive movement.

On the 7th and 8th the 3rd remained dug in, preparing for the general attack of the 9th which on the Army's left was to free the Aire valley. That day the objective was to take the Mamelle trench and pass on through to the PultiÈre Wood. Meanwhile on the 8th there had been remorselessly close quarters work in attacks and counter-attacks in trying to take Hill 253 on the left, with the result that the end of the day left the two lines about seventy-five yards apart on the slope. Starting from the valley of the Moussin brook on the 9th, we swept into the Mamelle, overran it in places, lost parts of it, held other parts as the contest swayed back and forth. On the 10th it was hammer-and-tongs again, as we made further gains supported by barrages, only to find as the barrage lifted that the guns from the whale-back were bursting shells on our heads,—and units were again in salients of interlocking machine-gun fire. The advantage gained was not in distance, but in cleaning up some of the machine-gun nests, which allowed us to hold on to more of the Mamelle. The 11th was a repetition of the same ferocity of initiative and resistance in the same kind of wrestle. It had been a test of endurance in sleepless effort between the men of the 3rd and the Germans, and the grit of the 3rd had won.

All this time the 80th on the left, which was swinging past the trench, was suffering from flanking fire from the machine-guns which the 3rd was trying to overcome. On the night of the 12th, the 3rd relieved units of the 80th, extending its sector. This frequent realignment in divisional sectors only made more difficult the repeated re-forming of the lines within the sector due to set-backs and casualties. The next day the elements of the 3rd which had taken over in the Peut de Faux Wood found themselves, after a terrific outburst of shell-fire, facing a strong German counter-attack. They had resisted German attacks before this on the Marne. At one point they withdrew from the line of the barrage; but when the barrage lifted, and they looked the enemy infantry in the eye at close quarters, they never budged.

There may have been faults in the command of the 3rd in this baffling problem of tactics on open slopes and ridges where communications were under the fire of artillery from both the whale-back and the heights across the Meuse, but there was no fault in the dependable infantry. Here, as along the rest of the front in the middle of October, we were learning that the enemy, having lost advantageous ground in the defense of the whale-back, was to hold the final heights with all the more stubbornness. In the successes from October 4th to 11th the 3rd had won one of the most conspicuous. After two weeks in line its endurance was not exhausted. It was now to begin preparing for the general attack of October 14th, which is another phase of the battle.

Support on its right flank, which had been essential to its progress, had been given by the peripatetic Blue Ridge men. The veterans of Stonewall Jackson's flying columns would have felt at home in the 80th Division. We know how well it had fought for three days in the initial attack that broke the old fortifications. On September 28th, when the 80th had been "squeezed out" of the narrowing Third Corps sector, its artillery and one infantry regiment had also remained in the fighting with the 4th Division, while the three other regiments had been marched around to be in readiness to assist the 37th in repelling a counter-attack against the Montfaucon woods. Now the Blue Ridge men were returned to become the left flank of the Third Corps on familiar ground. For such rapid travelers Army ambition had set a no less rapid pace on the map than for the 3rd. They were to keep on driving until they were through the Kriemhilde Stellung between Cunel and the Meuse. It was not fair to call them a fresh division, unless hard fighting and hard marching were counted a warming-up exercise, and going without sleep a tonic.

The first of the many hurdles in the steeple-chase planned for them was the Ogons Wood, whose machine-guns had shattered the attacks of the 79th on September 29th; but this was ancient history in a battle whose processes were so swift. It happened six days ago. We were in a new era; we were making another general attack as powerful as that of September 26th. The clock had run down on September 29th; it was wound up again by the 4th. The 80th had only to repeat its own successes in the first three days of the battle, and it was in Cunel. The staff must always talk in this encouraging fashion; but there was no reason to believe that there were fewer machine-guns in the Ogons Wood than when the 79th had been repulsed. Possibly their number had been increased during the stalemate period from September 29th to October 4th. There was one way of finding out—by sending a wave of human targets over those open slopes toward the wood's edge.

The machine-guns began firing with the mechanical regularity of a knitting machine, instantly the attack began. The Blue Ridge men were not surprised at this, or at receiving high-explosive shells from two directions. If they had not known from their own previous experience, the men of the long-suffering 4th Division on their right could have told them that once they were in the woods the German gunners would be slipping gas shells into their gun tubes in place of the H. E.'s used against them in the open. It was the quantity of shells and bullets that was unexpected. The enemy shell-bursts were keeping pace with them as automatically as their own barrages, and beyond their own barrage the enemy was laying down a stationary barrage awaiting their advance. Machine-gun fire increased with every step.

There was no continuing against such a shower of projectiles and hissing of bullets. A halt was called. A battalion of reserves was brought up while the artillery was told where to concentrate its fire; separated units were brought together, re-formed on a new line; tanks came up on the left to assist in the second charge at 5.30 P.M.; but the enemy had only held his fire, waiting for the second charge to start. It came nearer the Ogons, but when darkness fell the Blue Ridge men were still lying in the open, south of the wood, the enemy's guns still keeping up an intermittent galling fire, which was falling alike on the dead and the wounded and the survivors. Patrols filtered into the woods during the night—and the Blue Ridge men had a gift for such work—only to learn that a few enterprising scouts, in their stealthy crawling, if they wished to escape massacre or being taken prisoner, had to avoid drawing fire.

Attack again! Keep on trying! The next morning all the machine-guns were ordered up to send a barrage of bullets over the heads of the charge into the edge of the woods. This had been efficacious on other occasions, but it was not this time, as the infantry knew instantly they rose to advance, when the deadly refrain from the edge of the woods showed no more diminution than the wrath of the guns from the heights. Ground was gained in places between the swaths of the machine-guns' mowing; but no part of the line penetrated the woods, though it was close to the woods when it was stopped. Attack again! Keep on trying! The enemy will break if you try hard enough! The wedge must be driven, whether through woods, over slopes, or through trenches. Again reorganization; again the line re-formed to make the most of gains; again the artillery ordered to concentrate on the woods for an attack at 6 P.M. This time the jumping-off place was so near the woods, that the Germans, when the barrage descended upon them, were as a rule disinclined to wait for the charge. Many who remained held up their hands. The men felt relief at being at last no longer a target in the open as they made swift work of mopping up the whole of the Ogons.

The next day, the 6th, the divisional artillery assisted the 3rd in its efforts for the Mamelle trench. Patrols trying to reach the trenches north of the Ogons—which incidentally was being gassed—ran into an array of machine-gun nests, and brought back information about what was in store for the next attack; for the German, as we know, was much in earnest on the east flank of the whale-back. On the night of the 6th the brigade which had been in front during these two days was relieved by the brigade in reserve. On the 7th and 8th, while there was more or less of a lull in the battle everywhere except in the Aire valley and the Argonne, the 80th was busy with patrols, locating enemy pill-boxes for the information of the artillery, and preparing for its part in the general attack of the 9th all along the line—the attack that brought us up to the main line of defenses at many points—the third great attack of the battle. September 26th, October 4th, and October 9th are the three dates.

The 80th did not start at daylight, the same hour as the 3rd on its left. Its thrust waited on the advance of the 3rd to a certain point. At 3.15 the word came for the 80th to attack. After fifteen minutes of furious artillery, the first wave rose and moved forward in face of the machine-guns, while the enemy brought down a curtain of shell-fire in front of the second wave when it rose, in order to keep it from supporting the first, whose ranks were being rapidly thinned; but all the powers of destruction which the enemy could bring to bear could not stay the men of the fresh brigade in their hard-won stages of progress, now that the slopes and the Ogons were at their back. They took the strong point of the Ville-aux-Bois farm, and still going after dark they reached the Cunel-Brieulles road.

There was a familiar sound to that word Brieulles. The 80th on September 28th had attacked the hills in front of this town at the bend in the river. Brieulles was still in the enemy's hands, but the village of Cunel was ahead in the dark night. There must be numerous Germans in Cunel. In stealthy audacity two companies of the Blue Ridge men now turned a trick that would have rejoiced the heart of Jeb Stuart or Colonel Mosby. They slipped into Cunel very quietly, and returned with two crestfallen German battalion staffs—thirty officers and sixty men—whom they had caught completely by surprise.

The next morning the enemy had his revenge of the kind which his hidden long-range artillery in its lofty positions out of reach of our guns might take. An attack was ordered for 7 A.M. As it was forming, and the morning light dissipated the mist, the watchful German observers were taking notes and passing the word to the gunners in Brieulles and in the Rappes and PultiÈre woods. The minute-hands were near the "H" hour on wrist watches, and the line ready, when a concentration of screams came from three directions, and geysers of earth and shell fragments and gusts of shrapnel had something of the effect of a volcanic fissure opened at the men's feet. Officers were killed or thrown down by the concussion in the midst of their hasty directions. Two companies were decimated, two others scattered in confusion, by this sudden and infernal visitation; but this did not mean that the Blue Ridge men were to give up making the attack. They reorganized and charged according to orders. The enemy guns which had caused such havoc in their ranks disputed their advance. Against this whirlwind they managed to go beyond the Brieulles-Cunel road, but could not hold their positions. The Germans made the road a dead line, and for days to come its ribbon was to be the clear gray background upon which human targets were clearly visible to their watchful gunners. The "pinch-hitting" 80th was the only division thus far that had been twice in the battle line of the Meuse-Argonne. Before it went in again, its infantry was to have a real rest, though its artillery, engineers, and ammunition train remained to support the 5th Division which took its place.