Frederick Palmer

Skill essential to break the heights east of the Aire—The "per schedule" 1st Division—The much-used 32nd Division—A combined frontal attack on October 4th—A thin wedge to FlÉville on the Aire—Which is broadened to the east the next day.

After this diversion to the accounts of divisions detached for other offensives, we return now to our own battle in the Meuse-Argonne, where we had learned to our cost in the two last days of September that no nibbling attacks at the close of a drive that had spent its momentum would serve our purpose against the gathering power of the enemy. There was no abatement in our industry as we rested our weary divisions still in line, replaced exhausted with fresh divisions, brought up fresh material, improved our road facilities, and tightened our organization during the temporary deadlock of furious nagging under incessant fire at the front.

MAP NO. 7
IN THE TROUGH OF THE AIRE.

All thought centered, every finger moving about a map eventually came to rest, on the bastion of the heights to the east of the Aire river. To the west its fire swept across the river trough, where the Pennsylvanians of the 28th Division were in a vise, to the Forest where the New York City men of the 77th were held fast in their tracks; southwest and south it looked down upon Exermont ravine and the ground which the Missourians and Kansans had had to yield after the charges that had taken the last of their strength, leaving the 28th's flank in the trough further exposed; southeast upon Gesnes and Cierges, where the battalions of the Pacific Coast men of the 91st and the Ohio men of the 37th in their weariness had been stopped by its blasts; and to the east on the valley north of Montfaucon, where the Eastern Coast men of the 79th had expended the last of their reserves against the Ogons Wood, and beyond upon the stalwart 4th, which was also being shelled by the batteries across the Meuse, whose bank the Illinois men of the 33rd were holding.

This mighty outpost locked the door to all the approaches to the whale-back. There was no use of puttering with Fabian tactics; it could be taken only by a spearhead drive. Though salients are the bane of generals, the only thing to do in this case was to make a salient. For this we must have troops of the mettle of Pickett's charge and the charge at Cold Harbor, whose courage would hesitate at no sacrifice, and whose skill and thrift would win victory with their sacrifice.

Our 1st was our pioneer division in France. It had fired our first shot in the war; had fought the first American offensive at Cantigny; had driven through with the loss of half its infantry to the heights of Soissons in turning the tide against the Germans; and in its swift and faultless maneuver in the Saint-Mihiel operation it had joined hands with the 26th Division to close the salient. Being a proved "shock" division, too valuable to be kept in a stationary line when another offensive was in preparation, it was immediately withdrawn from Saint-Mihiel and sent to the Meuse-Argonne area, where its presence in reserve was a consoling thought. At first the Army command considered expending it in a sweep up the east bank of the Meuse to take the heights which were raking our Third Corps with flanking artillery fire; and later considered using it to follow through the center, after the taking of Montfaucon, in a direct thrust at the whale-back. These missions had to yield to the more pressing one, which stopped all traffic to make way for its rapid march around the rear of the line on September 30th to take the place of the 35th in face of these monstrous heights.

This division wasted little time and few words on sentiment. The hardships of war had become a matter of course to its survivors. Recruits who filled the gaps from death, as they were rapidly inculcated into its standards, absorbed the professional spirit. "You belong to the 1st, Buddy. And this is the way we do things in the 1st"—was the mandate of initiation into a proud company, which was facing its second winter in France. The only way to escape another winter in France was to win the war; and the way to win the war was by hard fighting. The regular field officers had been trained in a severe school; five out of six of the company officers were reservists. It was one of these young lieutenants, later killed in action, who characterized the views of the division when he said: "This is a mean and nasty kind of war, but it's the only war we've got, and I hope it's the last we'll ever have. The right way to fight it is to be just as mean and nasty, and just as much on the job, as the mean and nasty Boche."

In command was Major-General Charles P. Summerall, who had led the 1st in the drive to Soissons. He is a leader compounded of all kinds of fighting qualities, a crusader and a calculating tactician, who, some say, can be as gentle as a sweet-natured chaplain, while others say that he is nothing but brimstone and ruthless determination. "As per schedule" are the first words of his divisional report, which is as brief and cold prose as I have seen, describing as hot action as I have ever known. He might be called "per schedule" Summerall, and the 1st the "per schedule" division.

Another veteran division was to form the right side of the wedge: the 32nd, National Guard of Michigan and Wisconsin, under Major-General William G. Haan, a leader whose fatherly direction and "flare" communicated team-play and enthusiasm which an iron will could drive to its limit in battle. Iron was needed now: the iron of the spearhead, which would not blunt. The 32nd knew open warfare from its storming of the heights of the Ourcq in the ChÂteau-Thierry operations; and working its way over trench warrens from its three days' fighting as a division attached to Mangin's Army in the Juvigny operation north of Soissons. Sent from its first hard battle to its second without time for rest or replacements, it marched away from Juvigny, after losses of seven thousand six hundred men in the two battles, with half its requisite number of infantry officers and its infantry companies reduced to one hundred men. When it went into camp at Joinville, it had eight days, hardly enough to recuperate from its exhaustion, in which to train in its veteran ways five thousand replacements, before, with only two hundred men to the company—and half recruits, be it remembered,—and with each company short three officers, it was started for the Meuse-Argonne area. But it was considered—it must be considered—veteran by the Army command for this emergency, which was to give it a front of three miles in the place of the relieved 37th and 91st Divisions. The Arrow division, as it was called, which had twice pierced the German line, was to pierce it a third time before it was withdrawn again.

In comparison with the 32nd, the 1st was at the top of its form. It had not had heavy losses since its Soissons drive of July 18th-22nd. The two months' training of the replacements which it had then received included its experience in the Saint-Mihiel operation, which had been instructive without leaving many gaps in its ranks. On the 1st's front were the 5th Guard and 52nd German Divisions, which had come fresh into line. So veterans met veterans. The character of the opposition which the Missourians and Kansans of the 35th, whom the 1st had relieved, had faced, may be judged by the fact that for the four days in line before it advanced the 1st had daily average casualties of five hundred, while its men were hugging their fox-holes, readjusting their line, and throwing out patrols to gain information of service in the coming attack.

Immediately ahead of it was the Montrebeau Wood, which the Germans had been fortifying since they recovered it from the 35th; beyond that the deep broad Exermont ravine, guarded in the center by the Montrefagne, or Hill 240, with its crest crowned by woods which covered its slopes almost to the edge of the ravine. This was only the highest of the series of hills which extended west to east from the Aire valley across the sector of the 32nd. When the first series was taken, other hills still higher commanded the valleys and reverse slopes beyond, in a witchery of irregularities which had their culmination in a final congeries of wooded hills in front of the Kriemhilde Stellung of the whale-back, some six miles beyond the 1st's line of departure. Every open space was covered by interlocking machine-gun nests supported by artillery concentrations. Ravines were corridors for the sweep of fire; or if they gave cover their ends were sealed by fire. With its left moving along the eastern wall of the Aire, its flank naked to the fire from the western wall, the 1st was to drive a human wedge over these hills in order to gain one of the two sides of the trough, whose interlocking and plunging fire, as we have seen, had stayed the First Corps in the trough and in the Forest. Of course, the 1st would "go through" at the start. Its own record and standards compelled it to go through. It would make the wedge. What would be the result after the wedge was made? Unless the point of the wedge were protected by a spreading movement at its base, it would be crushed by pressure from both sides. Here the part of the 32nd became vital in gaining the hills on its front, which, remaining in the enemy's hands, would threaten the right of the 1st with a fire interlocking with that from the western wall of the Aire. In the valley of the Aire, of course, the Pennsylvanians of the 28th were to try to advance under cover of the 1st's thrust. If they were checked, and the 32nd were also checked, the Germans would not be slow to see or to improve their opportunity to force a repetition of the bloody result of Pickett's charge and of the assault at Cold Harbor.

The 1st and the 32nd were not the only veterans attacking on October 4th. There was to be an offensive along our whole line to engage the enemy at every point to support the prime object of making the wedge. The 1st started for its objectives at the same hour, daylight, as the other divisions. Its left overran the Germans of the 5th Guard Division in Montrebeau Wood, and swept down into the Exermont ravine. There the groups of dead of the 35th, killed by shell-bursts, gave warning against "bunching" that the men of the 1st took to heart. They did not move forward in dense formation, but in thin swift lines offering the enemy few targets, and those briefly. Orders were simple; responsibility direct and ruthlessly delegated. Company leaders knew what to do against machine-gun nests, and they did it, thanks to the fresh vigor and thorough training of the men.

The right of the 1st crossing Exermont ravine under enfilade and frontal fire charged into the wooded slopes of the Montrefagne, or Hill 240. Twice that day we had the hill; and twice the Germans, reinforced, surged back and drove us off. Our men were saying that "every Boche who didn't have a machine-gun had a cannon"; for the enemy, realizing the value of every foot of ground, was using roving guns attached to his infantry battalions. We were doing the same. There were instances, in the course of this battle for the heights, when our infantry charges came within a hundred feet of field guns which the enemy boldly—and it seemed miraculously—withdrew under our rifle fire to the cover of reverse slopes.

The repulse of the right of the 1st was of course intimately concerned with the situation of the 32nd, which was fighting against the same kind of tactics on the same general kind of ground, which had its own particularly refractory qualities. Before the attack the Arrows had entered Cierges, which they found unoccupied; but the German evacuation of the village only opened up a field of approach commanded by the strengthened defenses of the surrounding positions, which had already forced the withdrawal of the last of the reserves of the 37th and 91st in their final charges before being relieved. Thus the 32nd had its center in a kind of trough, commanded by heights and woods. Gesnes was its first goal; but to take Gesnes the positions east and west of it must be conquered. On the right the charge reached the summit of Hill 239, due east of the village of Gesnes, but could go no farther. To the west were the two woods ChÊne Sec and Morine, forming a single oblong patch. The left charged them repeatedly, in vain. The Arrows were fighting with veteran will, but their charges could not proceed against the welter of machine-gun and artillery fire, while they were swept by bullets from German aeroplanes flying audaciously low.

In all that long day of ceaseless endeavor, when its replacements were learning their lessons hot from the enemy's guns and rifles, the 32nd had been able to gain a little more than half a mile, with every rod counted. Its effort and that of the right of the 1st, let it be repeated, had been mutually dependent for success on their liaison in the hectic rushes of units for points of advantage over the treacherous ground. That is, if an element of one division made a gain, it must have the support of a gain by the other. Though the wedge made by the left of the 1st on October 4th was narrower than we had planned, we did have a wedge, and where we wanted it—on the wall of the Aire valley. We must not lose that wedge, though the 28th had been able to make only a slight advance in the valley. The dangerous position of the left of the 1st on the bluff above FlÉville called for desperately hard driving the next day by both the 32nd and the 1st's retarded right.

In supporting the 1st's right, whose advance was so vital in protecting the entrant the 1st's left had made, the 32nd set its heart on gaining the block of the Morine and ChÊne Sec woods and Hill 255 beyond. From midnight to the hour of attack, all the artillery of the 32nd pounded them, keeping the dark masses of the woods and the outlines of the hill flickeringly visible in the flashes of a stream of bursting shells, which it would seem no defender could withstand. At 6.30 three battalions of infantry began the assault of the woods, and over the fresh shell-craters, past smashed machine-gun nests, through a litter of fallen saplings and splintered limbs, they kept on until they reached the open. This was a triumph of incalculable value to the right of the 1st, and in turn to the wedge on the Aire wall. But when the charge started to go on to Hill 255, the artillery concentration could not stifle the irresistible machine-gun fire of the nests hidden in all the recesses of the forward slopes, or the guns on the reverse slopes and on the series of heights beyond.

Meanwhile the center and right had passed the village of Gesnes through encircling fire, which, once they were beyond the village, grew to such volume that they were stopped. Demands went back for more shells from the divisional artillery,—demands which the artillery of three or four divisions and all the heavy artillery of the Army, which could alone reach the more distant enemy guns, could not have filled. However, the gunners gave all the volume in their power with all possible rapidity. Again the infantry moved forward to the attack; but our bombardment seemed only to have stirred up a heavier one in answer, and brought additional enemy machine-guns to bear. It was hopeless to try to go on. If the Arrows could not go on, it was folly to remain targets nailed to exposed ground around Gesnes, and accordingly they withdrew through the town, but still retaining the hard-won woods on the left, whose possession was essential to the success of the attack of the right of the 1st.

The 1st's goal on the 5th was that wooded hill and the wooded slopes of the Montrefagne, which had resisted the efforts of yesterday. During the night Summerall had appeared among his men, a dynamic, restless figure, insisting that there must be no failure on the morrow. With all the divisional artillery at play in a mobile pattern of fire, at once smashing the enemy machine-gun nests and advancing the shields where needed, the infantry in systematic charges continued making progress until the Montrefagne was theirs. When darkness came, they joined up with the left in line with FlÉville. The wedge was this much broadened, its position accordingly stronger. As the 28th had still been unable to make much headway, the wedge could not be driven farther until the base was spread, without exposing a longer flank to the fire from the western wall of the Aire valley, and on the right from the sector of the 32nd, whose elements were in poor liaison that night with those of the 1st. So the men of the 1st, become cave-dwellers on the heights in their industrious digging, had one side of the Aire trough as far as FlÉville,—and that was the intrinsic value of the wedge. The next step was to be the spreading of the wedge across the valley of the Aire itself, by thrusting in another fresh division between the 1st and the 28th at the base of the bluffs to assault the Forest escarpments. This movement would support the 1st, and would in turn be supported by the 1st's further advance.