Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne). Frederick Palmer
by the enemy. On the left it was to keep up with the swift progress of the 79th, with its course dominated on the left by the Montfaucon heights, and on the right by the heights east of the Meuse—of which we shall hear much before the story of the Meuse-Argonne battle is told. There were wicked slopes and woods to be conquered. Indeed, its position on the right flank of the 79th confronted as stern and complex difficulties as that of the 37th on the left flank of the 79th.
On its right was the 80th Division under Major-General Adelbert Cronkhite, sturdy, thick-set, cut out of sandstone, who faced the world all four-square with his Blue Ridge men. The 80th had done well at the British front, and had been in reserve at Saint-Mihiel. Though it had its own divisional artillery and its units complete, this was its first experience in a drive through first-line fortifications for an extensive objective. If it had not so far to go as the 4th, its trying maneuver in swinging toward the Meuse included passing between the Juré and Forges Woods, which, unless cleared of the enemy, would enfilade its advance with machine-gun fire.
The 33rd Division, Illinois National Guard, had the extreme right. I have mentioned already the preparation which the 33rd had had in the August offensive with the British. Major-General George Bell was calm and suave, but a stalwart disciplinarian. Before leaving the States he had eliminated many officers who for temperament, physical disability, or other reasons appeared less serviceable abroad than at home. This enabled him to travel to France without excess baggage, and to arrive there with his organization knit together by a harmonious and spirited personnel. As for his men, they were from Illinois and of the Illinois National Guard, as you may learn in Cairo, Springfield, or Chicago, for Illinois had been one of the forward states in supporting its Guardsmen.
The 33rd was to swing up along the Meuse by noon of the first day, and to rest there as a pivot for the Third Corps—a delicate operation. Its position was as picturesque as its record was various, in its service first with the British under the Australian Corps, then with a French, and later with an American Corps. If the war had lasted long enough the Illinois men might have been sent to serve on the Italian front, to complete their itinerary of military cosmopolitanism. At its back now was the Mort Homme, or Dead Man's Hill, whose mention in the communiqués during the Verdun fighting was frequent in the days when the world hung on the news of a few hundred yards gained or lost on the right or left bank of the Meuse. There under countering barrages from the quick-firers and the plowing by high explosive shells, Frenchman and German had groveled in the torn earth, mixed with blood and flesh, between the throes of hectic charges for advantage. The Germans won the hill, but eventually the French regained it. Then silence fell on the shambles where the unrecognizable dead rested, and above them rose not the red poppies of the poet's pictures, but weed and ragged grass from the edges of the shell-craters.
Such was the texture of the rising undulating carpet unrolled to the northeast over the battlefield of Verdun. In the foreground it was variegated by the ruins of villages and those exclamation points of desolation, the limbless trees, which melted into its greenish-ashen sweep over the fort-crowned hills in the distance. Beyond them was the plain of the Woëvre; and beyond that was Germany. An occasional shell-burst showed that the volcano of war still simmered; its report was an echo of the crashing thunders of the past, which we were to awaken again in the valley of the Meuse.
The Meuse seemed only a larger Aire, asking its way sinuously in this broken country. As vision followed its course past the German trench system in front of the Mort Homme and past the area of destruction, it was arrested by the bald ridge of the Borne de Cornouiller, or Hill 378. Mark the name! It will have a sinister part in our battle. Ten of our divisions were to know its wrath without knowing its name. Higher than any of the Verdun forts, except Douaumont, and higher than the heights of the whale-back, it had been in the possession of the Germans since August, 1914. From its summit observers could give the targets to the countless guns hidden in the woods and ravines of its reverse slopes.
An offensive against frontal positions resembles the swinging open of double doors, with their hinges at the points where the first-line fortifications are broken. The farther the doors are swung, the greater the danger of enemy pressure on the hinges, whose protection is the tactician's nightmare. In broadening his front of offensive operations by alternating attacks Marshal Foch may be said to have been opening several doors which were to become the alternately advancing panels of a screen.
The Fourth French Army was the left flank of our army in the Meuse-Argonne. As its left, and therefore the left of the whole Franco-American attack, was making only a slight advance at the start, it was little exposed. Our Third Corps had the right flank of the whole movement, the Meuse River being the hinge, with the swing toward the west bank of the Meuse, which bends westward toward the heights of the whale-back on the Corps front. This gave it a frontal command of the west bank, while it put the German trench system on the east bank in the right rear of our line of general movement. Though the Meuse was an unfordable stream, and we held the bridgeheads to prevent any infantry counter-attack, this could not prevent cross-fire upon us from artillery and even from machine-guns. As from the Mort Homme one had a visual comprehension of the mission of the Third Corps, which was more informing, not to say more thrilling, than the study of maps at Headquarters, the inevitable question came to mind as to what was being done for our protection on the east bank. The answer was that French artillery and infantry were to undertake "exploitation." This was a familiar word, which could not intimidate the artillery on the Borne de Cornouiller. Forces in exploitation on the flanks, however encouraging in battle plans, form an elastic term in application, dependent upon what sacrifices they will make in the thankless task of diverting the enemy's fire to themselves. With the heights of the Meuse commanding one flank and the heights of the whale-back commanding the other, the Third Corps was to operate in the Meuse trough as in the pit of an amphitheater, striving to fight its way up the seats under a plunging fire from the gallery.
Still, there was nothing else to be done. Someone had to take punishment on the flanks for the support of the drive on the center. The grueling which the Third Corps was to endure in advancing on one side of the trough of a river valley beyond the enemy line on the other was as certain to entail severe losses as was the mission of the First Corps against the Argonne Forest and down the valley of the Aire. The duty of all concerned, in an offensive which was organized in haste in the hope of winning a great prize by springing into the breach of opportunity, was not to hesitate in consideration of handicaps, but to minimize them as much as possible in the initial plan, and then to strike in fullness of confidence and of all the power at our command. The strategy of the battle was daring in conception, and resolute in execution.
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 before it was won. In that area of rolling country from Verdun to the Bar-le-Duc-Clermont road, which had been stealthily peopled by our soldiers, the swarming of their khaki was relieved by scattered touches of the blue of the Frenchmen who had come to assist us. Though ours was the flesh and blood which was to do the fighting—every infantryman was an American—the French were filling the gaps in our equipment which we could have filled ourselves, as I have said, only by delaying the Meuse-Argonne offensive until the spring of 1919 as we had originally planned.
Under their camouflage curtains in an open field, or in the edge of a woods, or under the screen of bushes which fringed a gully, the groups of French gunners seemed at home in a landscape that was native to them while it was alien to the Americans. When at rest their supple lounging attitudes had a certain defiance of formal military standards,