The bull-dog 4th—Enfilade shell-fire from a gallery of heights—Driving and holding a salient—A second try—As far as it could reasonably go—Reversing Falkenhayn's offensive—The 33rd builds bridges—To cross and join the Blue and Grey Division in a surprise attack—A bowl of hills—The Borne de Cornouiller holds out.

On the 80th's left during the advance of October 4th-11th was the bull-dog 4th Division, under its bull-dog commander, Major-General John L. Hines, which had been continuously in line since the first day of the battle. Hines had been trained in the school of the pioneer 1st. When he was with the 1st, he considered that it was the "best" of the Regular divisions. Since he had been in command of the 4th, he had changed his mind as the result of maturer judgment and more experience in the field. The 4th was now the "best" of the Regular divisions. The question of whether or not it was the "best" of all our divisions, including National Guard and National Army, so enlarges the field of rivalry that it must be left to the decision of divisional historians.

No one on the Army staff considered relieving the 4th before the attack of October 4th. If any man of the division thought of relief, he knew that the bull-dogs might not expect it when they were in a position where the Army could not afford to allow them to loosen their grip on the enemy. What incoming division could familiarize itself on short notice with that treacherous front in the trough of the Meuse river, which the 4th knew by experience?

Its right rested in the woods on the west bank of the Meuse, while the German front line was four miles back on the east bank on its flank. Enemy machine-guns had hiding-places on the banks not only of the river but of the Meuse Canal, which follows the course of the river. Beyond the river bottoms, on the east bank, were many patches of woods on the first slopes, which brought field artillery within range of the 4th's front, while the heavy artillery in the ravines and woods around the Borne de Cornouiller, or Hill 378, was also in range. To this quite gratuitous bombardment, entirely out of our own battle zone, from the eastern gallery upon the pit of the amphitheater of the 4th's action, we had no means of replying. It must be accepted with the same philosophy as an earthquake or any other violence of nature. In front of the 4th's right flank was the town of Brieulles in the river bend, which held batteries of field guns, its surrounding swamps defended by machine-gun nests giving it the character of a fortress with a moat. To the left of it was the Fays Wood, facing more open ground, and back of that the frontal gallery of heights holding still more artillery, while on their left was the gallery of the whale-back.

Campaigners who have been for a long time sleeping on doors and the hard ground, when they try a bed again find, as I found on one occasion, that it is so unnaturally soft that they lie down on the floor before they can sleep. The men of the 4th had become so accustomed to enfilade shell-fire that they would hardly have felt at home without it. If they had been receiving shells from the rear as well as from front and flank, I think that General Hines would only have set his jaw the harder, and his bull-dogs would have said: "We thought we'd be hearing from you. Now we know the worst. But you can't make us let go." When they took a piece of woods from the Germans, it was immediately gassed. Some of them thought little more of putting on their gas masks than a baseball player of putting on his mitt. Already a veteran division when they came into line, they had taken an excoriating course in practical warfare which made their previous experience comparatively that of a grammar school. There could be nothing new in store for them in the attack on October 4th; they could be under none of the illusions of fresh troops in their first plunge into the cauldron.

Army ambition chose to make them another wedge—we were falling into the habit of wedges as the only means to progress—which was to take the Fays Wood; then the Forest Wood (Bois de ForÊt), by crossing open ground under the enfilade of Brieulles and all the guns on the other side of the Meuse. This may have seemed a reasonable mission for them, as they were already so hardened to flanking fire. Indeed the flank of this division was exposed in its drive down the Meuse valley in much the same way as the 1st's on the Aire wall, with the difference that its right carried down the slopes falling toward the river in plain view of the heights on the other side.

The 4th could be trusted to do not only its valorous but its professional best. In view of the galleries of guns overlooking the sector, it seems superfluous to say that it had not enough artillery support. The bull-dogs had given up calling for artillery assistance. They had been under superior artillery fire so long that they took it for granted that they would have to attack under support of artillery inferior to the enemy's when they drove their wedge into tiers of machine-gun nests; but they had in their favor their amazing capacity for judging where shells were going to hit and taking cover before they burst, for slipping out from under barrages without losing their heads, and thus keeping their formations, and for filtering in between concentrations. It was amazing how many German shells were required to make a casualty in the 4th; otherwise there would not have been enough men of the division left for a charge on the morning of October 4th, when their waves went forward with that suppleness of adaptability which is the difference between drill-ground and veteran precision.

Their line of advance in the open plowed by shells, they carried all the machine-gun nests in the Fays Wood, put the wood behind them, and reached the Cunel-Brieulles road. So they had driven home their wedge, a very sharp-pointed one. Their left flank was exposed to the Ogons Wood, which the 80th could not reach in its repeated charges, and to the Cunel Wood beyond, which the 3rd had not taken, and to the guns of the whale-back. On their immediate front they faced the machine-gun fire from the western portion of the Peut de Faux Wood on their left, and on their right from a series of trenches on a ridge which supported the Kriemhilde, while the increasing volume of fire on both flanks emphasized the German intention to permit no rash American flying column to slip down the river valley in flank of the whale-back. Thus the advance was in the narrow angle of a murderously sharp salient on bad ground. This could not be deepened into the jaws of hell; it could not be retained except at a futile sacrifice. The bull-dogs could dodge shells from across the Meuse, but they could not dodge a hose play of machine-gun bullets coming from both flanks. If they managed protection in one direction, they could not manage it from the other. Skillfully making a virtue of necessity, they withdrew in the night to the line of the Ville-aux-Bois farm, where they were still in a salient, but one which their craft in taking cover and their tenacity could hold, and did hold against three determined counter-attacks under strong barrages against the Fays Wood. On the 9th the tactical plan required that they mark time until the 80th had reached a given point, as the 80th in turn waited on the advance of the 3rd. The day was overcast; it was already dusk at 5.40 P.M., when word was given for the 4th to charge as the start of three days' fighting more bitter than the division had yet known.

Draw a line east and west through the 4th's front, and it would now have passed to the north of the Borne de Cornouiller, whose guns were throwing their shells into the right rear of the charge. Their fire was joined by that from all the other galleries, while the machine-guns from Brieulles swept a field of targets revealed by the light of bursting shells. Barrages of gas shells were laid across the path of the charge and into the woods ahead. This was particularly trying in the gathering darkness, over ground where landmarks could not be distinguished. The bull-dog did not take hold this time. There was nothing to grip except the murderous flashes. To go on was only to court a fearful casualty list and inevitable confusion and disorganization in the darkness, which could not be readily repaired.

The troops were recalled, while the German gunners continued to shell the field of their advance, thinking that they were still moving forward. The next morning, they started early in order to have a full day before them. In face of the same kind of deluge of gas and shells, and trench-mortar in addition to machine-gun fire, and under the support of their own barrage, they made one bite of the tongue of Martinvaux Wood with its trench line on the right. They passed through the eastern portion of the Peut de Faux Wood, where the undergrowth was dense and there was no protecting men with a barrage. Advance elements charged across the ravine into the larger ForÊt Wood; but it was hopeless to try to consolidate in the midst of gas and machine-gun fire from the depth of the wood. By this time the line was past Brieulles, whose guns and machine-guns were of course stabbing the flank at close quarters.

Brieulles, considering the cost of taking it, was not so important to immediate Army purpose as thrusting the wedge into the flank of the whale-back. So Brieulles, which was not to be ours until we won the whale-back three weeks later, had to be borne; and it was the way of the 4th to bear such thrusts in the ribs without flinching, as it prepared for another attack the next day under the plunging fire from the galleries. Beginning again at 7 A.M., when it had finished its day's work it was through the gassed ForÊt Wood, and had sent its patrols up on Hill 299 beyond. This was the high-water mark of its arduous and glorious part in the battle. It had gone as far as anything but tactical madness would permit, until the heights of the whale-back and east of the Meuse could be broken. Until October 19th, it held its gains under continual gassing and cross artillery fire.

Twenty-three days in the welter of the Meuse slopes, it had been able to remain all that time in gassed woods and ravines in cold autumn rains, owing to its character that made every ounce of energy answer a resolute will to well-directed ends; for this bull-dog also had something of the nature of the opossum and the panther. It knew how to spring. The depth of the division's advance was eight miles, and the marvel of this was that every yard since the first day had been gained in frontal attack against machine-gun nests protected by superior artillery fire. It had taken 2,731 prisoners and 44 guns, some of them of large caliber, with a loss of 6,000 officers and men killed and wounded. A proud division the 4th, with the right to be proud, though it had no parades in its honor, as its personnel came from all parts of the country, when it returned home.

The farther we went, the more bitterly we realized the murderous handicap of a force advancing on exposed slopes on one bank of a river, with its flank at right angles to the other bank held by the enemy far back of its reserves. After the attack of October 4th on the right went forward naked to this terrible flanking fire, the French Seventeenth Corps, in support of the forthcoming attack of the 9th, including two American divisions, the 29th and the 33rd, under its command, was to make a drive from the old trench system at Samogneux—the start line of the German Verdun offensive of 1916, and opposite the line from which our army had started on September 26th—down the east bank of the Meuse. The French engaged at many points on the Allied front were short of troops; but despite all the calls from other points the high command had finally fixed its eye on the Borne de Cornouiller.

Our Illinois men of the 33rd Division had been holding our side of the river bank, dug in in face of the other bank and the German flank, with only divisional artillery to answer the long-range artillery from the heights. Having won attention for its brilliant swinging movement which brought its front to the river bank on the first day of the battle, the 33rd was now to undertake a far more difficult, and a spectacular and daring, maneuver. Every veteran from CÆsar's day on the Rhine to Grant's and Lee's on the Potomac knows what it means to force a crossing of an unfordable stream under fire. In this instance it must be done under frowning heights, in the days when machine-gun bullets carry three thousand yards, and shells, according to the caliber of the gun, from three to seven times as far. There were to be two bridges; one at Brabant, 120 feet long, and one at Consenvoye, 150 feet long.

In building their own exclusive road over the Mort Homme, which enabled the rolling kitchens to bring up hot meals to the infantry, the Illinois engineers had shown their capacity for "rustling," which they now applied in gathering material for their new task. In broad daylight, in full view of the enemy's guns which forced them to wear their gas masks, they brought their boards and timbers to the river bank and did their building. Shells were falling on their labors at Consenvoye at the rate of ninety an hour; but that did not interrupt their labors. Men fell, but others kept on the job. Punctuality was a strong point with the Illinois men. The bridges must be up on time, and they were.

The time of crossing depended upon the movement of our 29th Division, coming up on the east bank as the flank of the advance of two French divisions. At 9 A. M. the 29th passed the word, and the regiment of the 33rd which had been assembled in the Forges Wood rushed for the bridges. Night would have been a more favorable time for crossing, perhaps; but that was not on the cards. All the divisional artillery was pounding the opposite bank as a shield, while the French artillery was also busy, and the advance of the infantry on the other bank was drawing fire. Thoroughly drilled for their part, the Illinois men lost no time in the crossing, which was effected with slight casualties. Now under command of the Seventeenth Corps, joining up with the flank of the 29th, it worked its way for a mile and a half up the river bank until it dug in at night on the edge of the Chaume Wood after a faultless day's work.

In the operations east of the Meuse now begun, I shall describe only the actions of our own divisions. The 29th Division, under command of Major-General Charles G. Morton, had taken the name of the "Blue and Grey." Many of its Guardsmen were grandsons of veterans from New Jersey, Delaware, and Virginia. After nearly two months in the quiet trench sector at Belfort, it had been marched on the night of the 8th past the ruins of villages in the Verdun battle area for its initiation into two weeks of fighting, which showed that one side of the trough of the Meuse had no preference over the other in the resistance which the enemy had to offer.

A system of hills extending from the Verdun forts to the Borne de Cornouiller formed the walls of a bowl, which the French Corps in a fan-shaped movement was to ascend. Their slopes were wooded and cut by ravines commanding the bottom of the bowl itself, which was irregular, but everywhere in view of the heights. The 29th was to drive straight toward the Borne de Cornouiller. Upon its success on the first day, may it be repeated, depended largely the success of the 33rd's crossing of the Meuse. The farther away from the river, the stronger were the enemy's positions. Advancing without any artillery preparation, the 29th took the enemy completely by surprise. It was twenty minutes before he brought down his artillery fire. This gave the Blue and Greys a good start. After hot work at close quarters they captured Malbrouck Hill, which was a strong point in the German support trench system of Verdun days. Then passing across the open under increasing German gun-fire, they overran all the machine-gun nests in the dense Consenvoye Wood. There they were halted by orders to allow the division on their right to come up. Combat groups which had reached Molleville farm and the Grande Montagne Wood were called in, and the position consolidated during the night. The enemy by this time was fully awake to the plan of the Seventeenth Corps. He unloosed that torrent of shells and gas from the heights of the rim of the bowl which was not to cease for three weeks.

Its right exposed after an advance of three miles on the 8th, digging in under the bombardment and repulsing counter-attacks, the 29th was not to attempt to advance on the 9th; but the 33rd had orders to go to Sivry on the banks of the Meuse, whose possession was most important. By noon it had fought its way through Chaume Wood, and by dark its patrols, infiltrating around machine-gun nests and under machine-gun fire from the slopes were in Sivry. All that night it was under gas and shell-fire. The next day it must make sure of Sivry. The 29th was to attack on its right in support. Despite the artillery concentrations on the whole movement laboring in the bowl, we were still to try to break through to the Borne de Cornouiller. This was a vain ambition, which the Illinois men and the Blue and Greys none the less valorously tried to achieve.

The 33rd had brought more reserves across the river, which had to pass through powerful artillery barrages to relieve the decimated battalions at the front. They actually reached the ridge east of Sivry, right under the guns of that towering Hill 378 of the Borne de Cornouiller. On their right the 29th again and again charged for the possession of the Plat-ChÊne ravine, which was a corridor swept with plunging fire from right and left and in front, and saturated with gas. Casualties were enormous, in keeping with the courage of this new division inspired by the heritage of both Blue and Grey. It was futile to persist in the slaughter of such brave and willing men; futile for the 33rd to try to hold the exposed salient of the Sivry ridge; but every shell they received was one spared our men on the slopes of the west bank of the Meuse. Austrian troops which had been holding the line against them were replaced by veteran Prussians and Wurtemburgers, who knew how to make the most of their positions, and who answered attacks with counter-attacks. As the left flank which must not yield the river bank, the 33rd intrenched in the Dans les Vaux valley through the Chaume Wood. We were within a mile of the Borne, but what a horrible mile to traverse. The first stage of that detached battle east of the Meuse, so important in its relation to the main battle, was over. Its second stage I shall describe later.