Our 110 days' fighting

Foreword

THE Americaa people realize in a general way what wonderful work was done by the American Expeditionary Forces in the great war. They scarcely realize, however, to any extent, that this work was done in the face of difficulties all but insurmountable, or that General Pershing and those under him accomplished miracles in overcoming adverse conditions that sprang from many causes, most of them going back to our lack of preparation for war, some of them inseparable from war, and, therefore, unavoidable.

The country may well be proud of the fact, in spite of our general lack of preparation for war, that in the great Meuse-Argonne battle — which proved the decisive battle of 191 8, and which lasted from September 26th to November nth — the quality of our leadership and plans were such that our partially trained troops were able to drive back the picked troops of the German Army from Verdun to Sedan.

In the course of these operations, three strongly prepared defensive lines, in a terrain which in itself afforded great natural obstacles, were captured from the enemy, in spite of the effort of the enemy to hold these lines at all cost to prevent the ruin of his armies on the Western Front.

viii FOREWORD

They can further be proud of the fact that our leadership, plans, and the devotion of our men were such that this great victory was won with a total loss on our side of approximately 9,000 less than that inflicted on the enemy.

What the American Expeditionary Forces accomplished in France forms a grand picture that compels the admiration of the patriotic American. The small-souled critic may pick up a magnifying glass and apply it to the picture in an endeavour to bring out prominently small flaws that, in the distorted view of the glass, may appear great, but when seen in correct perspective and relation to the remainder of the picture, do not affect in any way its grandeur.

Those of us who were called upon to hold more or less responsible positions in the American Expeditionary Forces in France, and who are, therefore, acquainted with the facts, feel that Mr. Page in his book, "Our no Days' Fighting," has rendered a distinct public service in giving a splendid vista of the organization of the American Armies in France, and of the period of fighting that began with Cantigny and ended with Sedan.

Apart from the official reports, which are to come out later, nothing can appear that will have greater immediate interest than Mr. Page's book. It forms a brief, readable, and concise account of the part the American troops played in Europe. In this necessarily brief record we get only a glimpse of the principal difficulties that confronted General

FOREWORD ix

Pershing and his staff in France. It would take hundreds of volumes to recite them all, little and great, and in the detail necessary to a clear understanding of their importance to all our operations.

The soldiers, whose devotion to duty has set a new standard in our army, and their leaders from General Pershing down, including the staffs who directed operations in the American Expeditionary Forces; who spent days and nights of heart-breaking anxiety and labour in struggling with untoward conditions; whose motto was, "GET RESULTS," under any and all circumstances, and who finally presented to their country a victorious army — are satisfied to rest their case with the Nation, feeling sure of a just verdict.

J. W. McAndrew,

Major General U. S. Army.

Chief of Staff, A. E. F.,

CONTENTS Foreword by Major General McAndrew

PAGB

I. Our Training and Our Plan of Campaign 3

II. A Little Battle That Proved a Great

Point and Made 100,000 Men ... 20

III. Our Sixty Days Under the French . . 31

IV. The Triumph and Humour of St. Mihiei 62 V. The Campaign of the Argonne-Meuse . 83

VI. With the AUies 142

Statistics of the First Army .... 267

LIST OF MAPS

PAGE

The American Army's Supply System ... 7 ^

Seicheprey and the Fixed Trench System . . 12 *^

Artillery Plan for the Cantigny Attack . . 22 "

The Plan of the First American Attack . . 23 '^

Cantigny and the Trenches of the War of Movement 27

Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood ... 35 -^

Ludendorff's First Effort to Widen the Marne

Salient 39

Ludendorff's Second Effort to Widen the Marne

Salient 41

Where the Tide of War Changed .... 48

America's Part in Clearing the Marne Salient 55

The Topography of the St. Mihiel Salient . 63

The Official Plan of the St. Mihiel Attack . . 67

The Lane of the 42nd's Advance at St. Mihiel 69

The Allied Advance . 77

The Woods of the Argonne-Meuse Battlefield 92

The Roads of the Argonne-Meuse .... 95

The Official Plan of the Argonne-Meuse Attack 98

Xlll xiv LIST OF MAPS

PAGE

Looking from the American Positions, September 26th 106

Relief Map of Montfaucon Area .... 107

The German Defence Lines . . . . . . 115

The Verdun Hills and the Woevre Plain . . 134

The Last Battle 136

Where We Cut the German Communications . 137

Two Detail Maps of the Argonne-Meuse. Supplement

Chapter I Our Training And Our Plan Of Campaign

THE first independent offensive action by the American Army in Europe, the taking of Cantigny, took place only five and a half months before the war ended.

The first American division to take over an active sector of line did so only in April, six months before the war ended.

And the American First Army, formed on the 20th of July, had its first action at St. Mihiel, September 1 2th, just two months before the war came to an end.

The active fighting of any large bodies of American troops was confined to two main periods — from Chateau-Thierry to the Vesle, some sixty days, in which eight of our divisions took part; and the Argonne-Meuse battle, forty-seven days, in which twenty-two divisions took part. There were two or three days' fighting at St. Mihiel in between these two times. There were also several other notable actions, as those of the 27th and 30th divisions with the British, but none involving more than two divisions.

In other words, our army just barely got in at the finish, and to do that it had to fight before either its training or equipment was ready. But if it had not gone in, ready or unready, and had not paid the price when it did, the war would not have ended on November nth. The war ended then because the Germans were beaten — defeated in the military sense. Let there be no mistake about that. And the American Army in its hundred-odd days of fighting provided one of the vital elements of this defeat.

If the Marines of the 2nd Division at Belleau Wood, and the 3rd Division machine gunners at Chateau-Thierry, provided a dramatic entrance of our army into the main struggle, the moral decisions that placed them there were no less dramatic. If the six green divisions that went over the top in the Argonne-Meuse battle on September 26th performed heroic deeds, the moral courage to set them at such a task was no less remarkable, and far back of that, the moral courage to train them for open warfare was worth a great victory in Itself. Most battles are lost or won before the first shot is fired. With this in mind it is worth stud5dng the American Army's action In France, for It is full of brave, human endeavour, of moral and physical courage at many times and places that are still little known.

The short period In which our forces were actually engaged has tended to obscure somewhat the fact that when the war ended General Pershing commanded the largest force in American history, which had fought and won one of the great battles of all times — the Argonne-Meuse battle, which lasted forty-seven days and used more American troops than there ever were in an American army before. This extraordinary result came suddenly. The work, however, that produced it was slow.

When General Pershing first landed in France, he determined to create a purely American force of quality and size large enough to bring victory to the Allied armies, for even before the German offensive of the spring of 191 8 it was clear that the maximum British and French forces were not sufficient to defeat the Germans, then reinforced by their troops from Russia. General Pershing's intention was to train divisions until there were enough for an army corps, and occupy a separate American sector with that. As more divisions were trained and as the number of corps increased he planned to form an American army, and as the troops further increased more armies, until there were American groups such as existed in the armies of the French, British, and Germans. This was to be strictly an American organization, just as the British Army was entirely British, and the French all French. It would, of course, be under the supreme Commander-in-Chief, as all others were; even before he reached France, General Pershing was a believer in a unified command.

The divisions which were to make up this American force were to be trained principally for open warfare, a war of movement, with less attention paid to trench warfare, although they were to spend a certain time in quiet sectors of the front-line trenches as part of their training.

It is worth while for every American who takes pride in what the army accomplished to contemplate carefully this conception of training — two thirds for open warfare, one third for trench warfare. This conception was decided upon in the summer of 1 91 7, when there had been no war of movement on the Western Front for nearly three years. As prosaic as it looks on paper, this decision was more important than most battles, for it made our part in the final battle possible. It had this significance : Continued trench fighting almost inevitably meant a stalemate. A war of movement meant a decision one way or the other. The American Army was built for offensive, for victory. It is probably fair to say that the bulk of military opinion on the Allied side did not agree with General Pershing, and his decision was, therefore, a very bold one. But seldom has sound thinking and courage been better rewarded. A good many thousand American soldiers are alive now who would have died had his decision been the reverse. He expected to vindicate his belief in open warfare in the spring of 19 19. It was vindicated, most opportunely, six months earlier.

The position on the front, ultimately to be taken by the group of American armies being planned, was practically fixed by the only possible remaining line of supply. The British had all the northern ports, and their lines covered everything from the battle area to the sea, as far south as Havre. The French

THE AMERICAN ARMY's SUPPLY SYSTEM

This map shows in general the area occupied by British and French supply systems into which we could not go without confusion, and the lines of the supply we organized for our army. This only available line of supply chiefly dictated our position on the front.

supply lines took in all the Paris area and a broad belt running eastward from the capital. A supply system south of the French belt, from the sea to the battle line, between Verdun and Belfort, was about all that was left. Therefore Chaumont became headquarters, and the neighbourhood of Neufchateau and Saint-Dizier became our main advanced base.

The first place selected by the American staff for attack was the St. Mihiel salient, and the staff was working on this project many months before there was any American force ready even for a minor engagement, not to mention the taking of this position. To make a purely American army, trained for open warfare, with the first attack to be made at St. Mihiel — such were the plans.

By March, 19 17, there were four American divisions which had finished their training and were theoretically ready for battle. Still, they had never been seriously engaged and no one knew how they would compare with first-class veteran troops in the ordeal of battle.

The first division which arrived after General Pershing in the spring of 19 17 went into the trenches for training for the first time in October of that year. Three other divisions had followed it, the 2nd made up of two regiments of regulars (mostly recruits), the 9th and 23rd, and two regiments of Marines; the 26th Division, made up of the New England National Guard; and the 42nd, the Rainbow Division, made up of guard units from many states. But none of these divisions had yet been tested under fire. They had had trench practice in quiet sectors, some patrol work, and had been subjected to a few German raids. Until March, 191 8, no American unit had ever made a raid itself. The first one planned was to take place at one o'clock on the morning of March 4th. It was to be carried out by a detachment of 150 men from the ist Division then in line on the southern side of the St. Mihiel sector. There was a good deal of suppressed excitement over this first offensive action, even if it was a small one. The whole division would have volunteered for the duty. The Commander-in-Chief himself was present. Nearly everyone stayed up, so as not to miss anything.

The plan was for the engineers to crawl out over No Man's Land, and put Bengalore torpedoes under the German wire, so arranged that they could be set off from a safe distance. At the appointed time the wire was to be blown up, the box barrage was to surround entirely the point to be attacked, and the raiders were to rush across, capture as many of the enemy as possible, and come back before the Germans could retaliate. The infantry, artillery, and engineer watches had been exactly synchronized, so that everything should work in harmony. To the second, on the appointed time, a wonderfully precise and accurate barrage surrounded the point of attack. The hundred and fifty raiders hurried out of their trenches. But the German wire remained intact. The attacking party was ordered back again. And then, about this time, the missing engineers turned up. They had not been out preparing to blow up the German wire. They had been lost!

The miscarriage of this plan killed no one on this occasion, as such miscarriages often do. To train an army, especially a very new one, so that everything Wxli happen correctly, and on time, is a task which is very difficult, and hard even to conceive in its true proportions. And if any one is disposed to laugh at the engineers for getting lost, let him take a map and go forth in the trenches in that sector in broad daylight, with no enemy to bother him, and see how rapidly he can get to any given point. Trenches are very crooked, puzzling, and slow and slippery lanes of travel.

The largest action in which American troops appeared before Cantigny was the so-called "battle of Seicheprey." It, too, occurred on the southern side of the St. Mihiel salient, and it, too, was unfortunate, if judged by immediate results.

This "battle" of Seicheprey was in reality a large raid. The Germans intended to cross the two American trenches between their lines and the village, clean it up, and then withdraw to the Sibille trench immediately north of the town. If they were not too heavily attacked, they meant to hold this position. And, in a general way, they carried out this mission successfully.

In the early morning of April 20th there were no Americans in the foremost trench. The second, the Sibille trench, was occupied by three companies of the 102nd Infantry, each minus one platoon.

They had orders to hold this trench if attacked. They also had been instructed by the French to have no outposts more than ten meters in front of the trench. Behind these trenches in the village was one platoon and the battalion headquarters.

About four o'clock in the morning of the 20th the German artillery became active. Later it quieted down, and then again, at about a quarter past five, it fell heavily on the village of Seicheprey and on parts of the Sibille trench in front. The American major in command, in the village, asked for a return artillery fire, which was given; but he got no word of any kind from his troops in the trenches, until about six o'clock a few of them retreated into the town with the Germans close behind them. With these men and the platoon that made up the town's garrison the major retreated to the southern edge of the village. The Germans cleaned up most of the town, destroyed the dugouts, kitchen, and first-aid station, captured the battalion headquarters and all its papers, and on an appointed signal withdrew to the cemetery that they held as a kind of advanced post in front of the Sibille trench, which they now organized for defence. It was discovered later that the Germans had come in three parties from the northeast, north, and northwest of Seicheprey, all arriving at the town at about the same time, and all having overcome the resistance of the Americans in the trenches. Most of our 400 or 500 losses in killed, missing, wounded, and prisoners occurred in the fighting in the Sibille trench. But the Ger-

SEICHEPREY AND THE FIXED TRENCH SYSTEM

The heavier black lines show the Franco-American trenches. The lighter black lines the German trenches. The lines of xxxx indicate wire. The Germans who attacked Seicheprey came from the direction of Richecourt, from Lahayville, and through the Bois de Remieres.

mans did not escape easily, for we buried forty-one of their men, and they left other indications of having met a very stiff resistance. Our men probably had little real chance to make a successful defence, because of having no patrols to warn them and not being able to see on account of a heavy fog. The Germans, following their barrage very closely, were on them before they were aware.

The Germans held the Sibille trench all day, with the small American force lying in front of them in the village, while back on the next hill preparations for a counter attack were in progress. But the day passed with no reaction on our part, except artillery fire, and a little before the counter attack was ordered an American patrol discovered that the Germans had abandoned the Sibille trench and returned to their own lines.

Seicheprey was a very successful performance for the Germans, who endeavoured to use it to dampen our morale, sending out reports by their wireless and printing in their paper, the Gazette des Ardennes^ a list of the prisoners, with the comment that, as General Pershing was very new at the game, he might like to know what had become of his men. But while such misadventures were annoying, they were part of the process of education. And this process was not an orderly procession of perfect achievements. No one can appreciate the real accomplishments of the army who does not realize how unskilled it was to begin with, and how dangerous it was to be unskilled in the presence of a keen and practised enemy. Even our successes In the training period were sometimes rather high priced. A part of the 5th Division in August, 19 18, under French orders attacked and captured the town of Frapelle in the Vosges near St. Die. The account of this in one of the New York papers was as follows :

The brilliant work of the American troops on Saturday in low ground bordering the little River Fave, east of St. Die, In the Vosges, has scarcely, perhaps, received the attention it deserves. It may be taken for granted that the affair must have been pretty serious for the enemy, otherwise Ludendorff would not have allowed himself in an official report to state that the Germans advanced posts had "yielded to an enemy local thrust."

What Ludendorff omitted to add was that very few of the defenders of these advanced posts succeeded in falling back, as nearly the whole lot were killed or made prisoner. The American attack, according to accounts which reached here today, was carried out with extraordinary dash. Charging with the bayonet on the village of Frapelle from two sides, the Americans carried the machine gun nests with a single rush, cleaning out the trenches and shelters with grenades as they went. The German garrison was practically wiped out.

There is nothing so far to indicate whether Saturday's affair may be regarded as the precursor of other operations on that part of the front, which has been for many months regarded by both sides as exceptionally quiet. Frapelle, however, is the first stage on the very important road from St. Die to Strassburg, via the Col de Saales. It lies in a river bottom, between five and six miles from the Col de Saales, from the crest of which the run down into Alsace is rapid and easy.

This was all true. But it was also true that the garrison consisted of four men, one an idiot, and that, while it cost us nothing to take the town, the German artillery caused us a good many casualties before we withdrew from the village again.

Seicheprey and Frapelle and various other raids and minor activities taught us much. After Seicheprey battalion headquarters were not again put where the Germans were likely to get the papers. The men at Frapelle learned the cost of holding bad positions. Our artillery became surer of itself. We were not so likely to carry on a night battle between two parts of our own trenches if they happened to be very crooked. We were getting on in our training. And in recounting these instances, it is not intended to imply that we were not getting on very well. We were. But merely to give the bright side of the picture, which was all that came to the papers at the time, does not give a fair estimate of the situation. Without the less victorious side the record takes on an air of precision and assurance which the actual progress of events often lacked.

Suddenly, in March, our army was forced to give up its orderly plan of training and growth. In a sense. General Pershing was a sufferer from his own principal theory. The German General Staff also believed that the only way to win the war was to get out of the trenches and start a war of movement. The Germans had evolved a theory for accomplishing this end, and General Von Hutier practised it on the Russians near Riga. From this it became known as the Riga attack, or the Von Hutier method. Instead of concentrating troops on a front some days before an attack, which usually resulted in detection by the enemy, they brought them up from many directions and had them arrive practically at the time of offence. The numbers and effect of surprise due to this system enabled them to break through the trench lines. They provided their infantry with light artillery, which it could take along in the advance, and which gave the troops power to keep up their progress even after they had left behind their field guns and heavy artillery, whose range had hitherto set the limit for any continuing attack.

Using this system, the Germans broke through the British Fifth Army, and in five days had gone twenty-five miles to within artillery range of Amiens and the main lateral railway behind the British lines. In the face of this crisis. General Pershing immediately gave up (for the time) the plans on which he had been working so hard for a separate American force.

The Secretary of War was in France. At a conference in Paris, General Pershing and Mr. Baker decided that we should turn over our forces to General Foch. The President approved by cable. On the 28th of March, General Pershing attended a meeting of the Allied commanders. As he came into the room he walked straight up to General Foch and said in French:

" I have come to tell you that the American people would consider it a great honour for our troops to be engaged in the present battle; I ask you for this in their name and my own.

"Infantry, artillery, aviation, all that we have, is yours; use it as you wish. More will come, in numbers equal to requirements.

" I have come especially to tell you that the American people will be proud to take part in the greatest and finest battle of history."

At that time there were four trained American divisions in France — a few more than 100,000 combatant troops, enough to make the first corps the first step in General Pershing's original hopes. General Foch accepted the offer. The ist Division was sent to the line opposite Montdidier — a still active sector. The 26th went in the line at St. Mihiel. We had entered the war on the firing line. The four divisions which were to have constituted the first American corps to take over the first American sector were scattered across France. The American plan had been surrendered in the face of the Allied crisis.

In the meanwhile, aff^airs had proceeded from bad to worse. On the 9th of April, the Germans broke through the Portuguese at Armentieres, and pushed their advantage until another great wedge was driven into the British line and the channel ports were threatened. The difficulties of transportation, caused by the Amiens line being under fire, made it very hard to get French reinforcements as far north as the fighting at Kemmel Hill in time to be of assistance. On April 12th Sir Douglas Haig had issued his famous communique in which he said:

Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.

With the help of French reinforcements the front held. The Belgian army repulsed a German drive north of Ypres — an important contribution to the whole situation of which little has been said. By the middle of May, the lines were again stabilized. When the storm had broken on the Allied lines in March, the High Commissioners of Great Britain and France had gone to the American Government in Washington and asked that we send every available man to France, no matter how much training he had or how much he lacked.

The British cut down communications with their colonies and again cut down the imports into England, combed their merchant marine for ships, and gave us the tonnage to bring our men in a hurry. Ten of our divisions were to go into their area to be ready to help stem another German attack there. The others were to go into various French armies to build up their reserves. In actuality, there had not been much to Foch's famous strategic reserve army, and what there had been was exhausted. Nor, as history will show, did the Generalissimo have the power with which the public was wont to credit him. He was faced with a somewhat desperate situation. On May 1st the Germans could count on 1,600,000 rifles on the Western Front against the 1,343,000 rifles of the Allies. If America was coming at all, it was time to start. In April and May the men began to pour into France. American divisions were arriving back of the British lines, some via England and some via the French ports, and other American divisions were coming into a training area behind the French armies. In the ten months prior to April we had sent 283,511 men to France. In April, 117,212 troops of all kinds embarked. In May, the numbers rose to 244,345. The papers were full of the great troop movements, but, although we had been at war for more than a year, and our ist Division had been in France for most of that year, American troops had engaged in no real fighting. Yet American help was the main feature of any programme of bettering the Allied fortunes. By the middle of May there was no fear that great numbers would not arrive, but how would they fight.? They were brave enough, admittedly, but 28,000 brave men might be a mob and not a division of fighting troops. The officers were of good character and intelligence, but these qualities do not necessarily imply military knowledge and leadership. The divisions manoeuvred well in training, but what would they do in battle? That was a vital question to America, to the Allies, and to Germany, in May, 1918.

The German press belittled the possibility of our fighting well. Our press and the Allied press took success for granted. Neither side was quite sure. The stage was set for the trial.

Chapter II

CANTIGNY A LITTLE BATTLE THAT PROVED A GREAT POINT AND MADE 100,000 MEN

THE trial was at Cantigny. It was, naturally, planned some time in advance, but in the march of events a thing happened the day before the Cantigny attack which more than ever made the demonstration of American fighting ability necessary. Our attack was to begin on the morning of May 28th. On the morning of May 27th, a great mass of German troops suddenly pushed across the Ailette, up over the strong position of the Chemin des Dames, and before the day was over the French lines were completely broken, and the Germans had crossed the Vesle on their way south to the Marne. The communiques that reached Paris on the night of the 28th told of the rapid and continuous German progress. But there came also that night another piece of news. The American Army had at last actively entered the war. The ist Division shed a bright little ray of light on the otherwise dismal picture. And this ray of light was of great significance, for if the Americans could successfully meet the Germans, the Allies were assured an eff^ective force big enough to win the war — the Americans were then arriving at the rate of 250,000 a month. If the Americans could not successfully meet the Germans, then, well, the situation was very bad indeed.