Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne - free ebook by Frederick Palmer

OUR GREATEST BATTLE (THE MEUSE-ARGONNE)

BY FREDERICK PALMER Author of "The Last Shot," "America in France," etc. NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1919...

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TO THE READER

During the war we had books which were the product of the spirit of the hour and its limitations. Among these was my "America in France," which was written, while we were still expecting the war to last through the summer of 1919, to describe the gathering and training of the American Expeditionary Forces, and their actions through the Château-Thierry and Saint-Mihiel operations. Since the war and the passing of the military censorship, we have had many hastily compiled histories, and many "insi

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I A CHANGE OF PLAN

The original scope of Saint-Mihiel—A winter of preparation for a spring campaign—Which is cut down to two weeks—The tide turning for the Allies—The advantage of a general attack—And especially of numbers—The tactician's opportunity—Why the Meuse-Argonne—The whale-back of Buzancy—Striking for the Lille-Metz railway—All advantage with the defense—The audacity of the enterprise—The handicaps—A thankless task at best. We were in the fever of preparation for our Saint-Mihiel attack. Divisions summone

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II INTO LINE FOR ATTACK

The Meuse-Argonne and the Somme Battle of 1916—The British had four months of preparation—And a trained army—But a resolute enemy—Our untried troops—Outguessing Ludendorff—Prime importance of surprise—Blindman's buff—What it means to move armies—Fixing supply centers—Staffs arrive—Their inexperience—Learning on the run—Our confidence—Aiming for the stars—Up on time. Comparisons with the Battle of the Somme, the first great British offensive, which I observed through the summer of 1916, often occ

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III NEW AND OLD DIVISIONS

A military machine impossible in human nature—Regular traditions—National Guard sentiment—National Army solidarity—Divisional pride—Our first six divisions unavailable to start in the Meuse-Argonne—British-trained divisions—What veteran divisions would have known. The Leavenworth plan was to harmonize regulars, National Guard, and National Army into a force so homogeneous that flesh and blood became machinery, with every soldier, squad, platoon, brigade, and division as much like all the others

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IV THE ORDER OF BATTLE

The Metropolitan Division in the Argonne proper—Six weeks without rest—Direct attack impossible in the Forest—Similar history of the Keystone Division—Pennsylvania pride—Its mission the "scalloping" of the Forest edge—The stalwart men of the 35th Division—Storming the Aire heights—Fine spirit of the Pacific Slope Division—A five-mile advance projected for the Ohio Division—North and South in the 79th Division—Never in line before, it was to strike deepest. Three National Army divisions were to b

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V ON THE MEUSE SIDE

The ground of the Verdun battle—The Crown Prince's observatory—The Third Corps to move the right flank down the Meuse—Businesslike quality of the 4th Division—A marshy front and no roads—Swinging movement of the Blue Ridge Division—The Illinois Division to secure the right flank—Dominating heights east of the Meuse. At this point let us consider the missions of the three corps. Liggett's First, with the 77th, 28th, and 35th Divisions, had the problem of the left flank, the conquest of the Argonn

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VI

WE BREAK THROUGH French gunners at home in the landscape—Sleep by regulations in spite of suspense—"Over the top" not a rush—Difficulty of keeping to a time-table—Even with a guiding barrage—What barbed wire means—And the trench mazes beyond—Moving up behind the infantry. The Pacific Slope, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and New York thus had the honor of the initial attack in our greatest battle, in which men from every state in the Union were to have a part

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VII IN THE WAKE OF THE INFANTRY

A successful surprise—The importance of traffic control in maintaining the advance—The "show" in the air—How the engineers built roads—And traffic blocked them—And colonels showed the traffic police how. The veteran accepts his long service as a guarantee of efficiency; the novice is patient under instruction and open to suggestion. Our desire to do everything in the book, our painstaking individual industry under a meticulous discipline, and our willingness as beginners to learn had served us w

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VIII THE FIRST DAY

Out in the open—The enemy limited to passive defense—And relying on machine-gunners—Their elusiveness—Problems of the offense—Slowing down—Up with the infantry—Why dispersion— Liaison up, down, and across—How keep the staff informed?—The spent wave before Montfaucon. What of the infantry lost to view in the folds of the landscape? They were confronting the originals of the hills, woods, and ravines, whose contours on paper had been the definite factor in making plans, while the character and res

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IX THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN

The call goes back for artillery—And at night for the rolling kitchens—The staff interferes with sleep—Our part meant no stopping—Keeping at the roads during the night—Montfaucon on the second day—Then drive for the whale-back—Enemy resistance holds our exhaustion—Settling down in the rain to slow progress. Moving on their feet, with each man's course his road through the trench system and across the country beyond, the infantrymen, as they hourly increased their distance ahead of the part of th

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X BY THE RIGHT FLANK

Two weeks of reconnaissance by the 33rd on the right—Surprising the enemy by charging through a swamp—Careful planning gives complete success by noon—Nothing more but build a road and wait—Two belts of woods in front of the 80th—The enemy must hold at the second belt—Which he does with enfilade artillery, gas, and a counter-attack from Brieulles—More artillery support necessary before the defenses of the town, beyond the belts, could be taken—The 4th does its first bit in workmanlike fashion—But

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XI BY THE LEFT

German comfort in the Forest retreats—The 77th see-sawing through—The 28th plowing down the trough of the Aire—Scaling the escarpments of the Chêne Tondu and Taille l'Abbé—An enemy counter-attack—The 35th pushing four miles down the east wall of the Aire—Pushing through an alley to the untenable position of Exermont—Unjust reflections on the persistence of the 35th. On the left flank the First Corps, composed of the 77th, 28th, and 35th Divisions, was having quite as hard fighting as the Third C

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XII BY THE CENTER

The wooded front of the Fifth Corps—Where the Germans discounted the chance of an attack—Particularly by a division that had never been under fire—The Pacific Coast men through the woods for a five-mile gain—And, its artillery up, keeps on for nearly as much more—Into a dangerous position which cannot be held—The "hand-made" attack of the Ohioans—Surprise carries them in a rush through the pathless woods—Three days of unsupported advance against counter-attacks—Open country for the advance of th

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XIII OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE

New York and the South on the British front—Up the Somme valley in the wake of the Australians—The Saint-Quentin Canal tunnel—Another ambitious plan—The simplicity of success in the attack of the 30th Division—The Pickett's charge of the 27th—A mêlée on the open slopes—In which the Australians take a hand—The German hinge at Bony holds—Australia carries on—The western front in movement—The British again in Le Cateau—Our part in the advance to Valenciennes. The Scotch thrift of Sir Douglas Haig,

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XIV DISENGAGING RHEIMS

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 the

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XV VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE

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 spe

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XVI MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH

West of the river—The 82nd Division called for—A difficult alignment—The outpost hills taken on the 7th of October—And the 28th cleans up the escarpments on its front—The all-American character of the 82nd—The enemy defends desperately the remaining escarpments—Repeated charges up the bluffs—Which are cleared by the 10th. Hovering in reserve since September 26th, the 82nd Division, National Army, was now to have its turn to be "expended" in the battle. During its period of waiting it had two bat

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XVII VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING

The 1st marking time—A fumble gives one height—Relying on the engineers—The triangle of hills—A tribute from the enemy—The Arrow Division also pointed at the whale-back—Which resists intact—Still the 1st goes on—"As good as the 1st." As soon as the 82nd's attacks on the river bottoms were well under way, the 1st was to make another rush, driving its wedge ahead of the 82nd's front over the hills of the eastern wall. On the 6th, the day before the All-Americas took Hills 180 and 223, and the day

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XVIII THE GRANDPRÉ GAP IS OURS

The "Liberty" Division trying to clear the Forest on its own—The battalion which refused to be lost—The "scalloping" succeeds—Out of the Forest—The 82nd across the Aire—The 77th takes Saint-Juvin, though not according to plan—And finally gets across the Aire to Grandpré. Its line the breadth of the Argonne Forest, no division could have waited more impatiently than the 77th or "Liberty" Division of New York City upon the driving of the wedge on the eastern wall of the Aire and the clearing of th

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XIX ANOTHER WEDGE

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 trou

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XX IN THE MEUSE TROUGH

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 si

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XXI SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND

John Pershing of Missouri following Pétain and Nivelle—Training his chiefs—The solidity of Liggett—From schoolmaster of theory to Army command—The wiry Bullard—His mark on the pioneer division—The inexorable Summerall, crusader, martinet, and leader of men—The imperturbable Hines. When from the window of a luxurious office thirty stories above the pavement I looked down upon the human current of Broadway, and over the roof-tops of the tongue of Manhattan, and across the bridges to other roof-top

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XXII A CALL FOR HARBORD

Pershing's right-hand man—From the center of power to the field—Radical measures for the Services of Supply—Our own Goethals—Varied personnel united in discontent—Regulars and experts—Harbord's two problems of construction and morale. As President, Theodore Roosevelt had made Pershing a brigadier over the heads of a small host of senior officers, and had likewise singled out Sims, who was to command in European waters. When he was forming his division, which destiny was not to allow him to lead

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XXIII THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE

Depending on Tours—The "front-sick" S. O. S.—Harbord not "Bloisé"—Getting his men together—Building morale—Troops as freight—Brest to the front—Construction figures—Atterybury's job—Sorting supplies at Gièvres—Hospitals and the product of war—Feeding the front from Is-sur-Tille—The point of the wedge at the railheads. If one division at the front knew little of what another division was doing, how much less its men knew of what was doing in the capital of the Services of Supply at Tours, that an

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XXIV REGULARS AND RESERVES

Isolation of West Pointers—College graduates not dissociated from the community—The monastic ideal of the founder of West Point—And the caste ideal—The officer a cleat on the escalator of promotion—Out of contact with America—Five years to make a soldier—A clan tradition—A blank check to the regulars. Before our entry into the war our busy people had occasional reminders that we had a United States Military Academy for training army officers. Its gray walls on the bluffs at West Point were one o

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XXV LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS

Developing "staff work" in France—The younger men from Leavenworth schools in the saddle—The inner ring of the expert—Building the "best staff" at Langres—The obsession of promotion. So it happened that the little band of regulars did not go out to sacrifice in a body. They were scattered through the training camps as instructors, and they directed the expansion of our army organization. The officers of our General Staff in Washington had followed the strategy of the war on the maps, and studied

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XXVI OTHERS OBEY

Misfit and unfit sorted at Blois—Clan again—What to do with the "dodo"—Making good after Blois—Its significance to the regular—The fear of Blois in its effect on the reservist—Faults of reserve officers—Feeling of the medicos—Staff propaganda—Getting to troops—Staff and line—Slow weeding out. When the promotion disease was most acute, however, the word promotion never exercised over the army the spell of the word Blois. Though Blois was not mentioned in the press, it was as familiar in the secre

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XXVII AMERICAN MANHOOD

Visualizing "over there"—Camping out in France—Unimportance of the leaders—Adopting "Jake"—America finding maturity—Playing the game—The coating of propaganda. If one by one all the sounds at the front from the thunders of the artillery to the rumble of the columns of motor-trucks were to pass from my recollection, the last to go would be that of the rasping beat of the infantry's hobnails upon the roads in the long stretches of the night, whether in the vigor of a rested division, in rhythmic s

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XXVIII THE MILL OF BATTLE

Wet misery—"Penetratin'er and penetratin'er"—The men behind the lines—Back to "rest"—Replacements as bundles of man-power—Reliefs in the fox-holes—Before and during an attack—Dodging shells—A struggle to keep awake—And "on the job"—Will, endurance, and drive—The wedge of pressure. As the processes of the Argonne battle became more systematic, they became more horrible. They would have been unendurable if emotion had not exhausted itself, death become familiar, and suffering a commonplace. The sh

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XXIX THEY ALSO SERVED

From tambourine to doughnut—The "Y" and the canteen—Too much on its hands—Other ministrants—Manifold activity of the Red Cross—But not at the front—Honor to the army nurses—The chaplain's label immaterial. Of the auxiliary organizations serving with the army the Salvation Army was nearest to the soldier's heart, and the Y. M. C. A., or the "Y," as the soldiers knew it, the most in evidence. When the pioneer Salvationists appeared in our training camps early in the winter of 1917-1918, some wits

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XXX THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE

No thought of peace at Souilly—The third attack—The Rainbow Division before Chatillon ridge—Three days of confused combat—Over the ridge—The Arrows sweep through Romagne—Outflanking the Dame Marie ridge—The new Ace of Diamonds Division—In and out—A corridor of fire—Knitting through the Pultière Wood—A fumble in the Rappes Wood—Which is finally "riveted"—The long-enduring Marne Division—Knits further progress. On the late afternoon of October 13th I happened to be in the stuffy little ante-room a

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XXXI A CITADEL AND A BOWL

Hopeless stabbing at the flanks—The Lightning Division at Grandpré—Vertical warfare—Scaling walls to the citadel—Stumbling toward Loges Wood—The All-Americas still doing their part—A bowl east of the Meuse—Approached through Death Valley—The Blue and Greys crawling toward the rim—The rough end of the stick for the Yankee Division—Belleau Wood a key point—General Edwards and the staff—Desperate grappling. The enemy must make sure of holding our left in front of Grandpré gap, or we would swing tow

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XXXII THE FINAL ATTACK

Stalwart 89th and 90th—Bantheville Wood cleaned up by the 89th—The 90th to the Freya system—The 5th, back in line, takes Aincreville and Brieulles—America's two-edged sword—An aggressive army and the Fourteen Points—Would the German links snap?—A last push—The military machine running smoothly—Vigorous divisions in line—Veterans in reserve—"We will go through." The rest of the picture, which had been done in the miniature of agonizing efforts for small gains, was now to be painted in bold stroke

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XXXIII VICTORY

A march of victory in the center—Held on the left—But full speed on the second day—The 89th stays in—Veterans in leash—The 90th to the river wall—The 5th pivoting—The Borne at last taken by the 79th—The 5th gets across the Meuse—Varying resistance to the main advance—Rainbows give way to French entry into Sedan—In motion from Meuse to Moselle on the last day—Isolated divisions in Flanders—Every village in France—The folly of war. One who moved about in the days before and the night before the at

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