The Yanks Are Coming! (13 page)

The attack began at 1:00 a.m., 12 September 1918, with an artillery barrage, which it was hoped would clear German obstructions
(chiefly barbed wire). This it did with extraordinary success because the wire was rusty, old, and brittle and burst apart when struck. At 5:00 a.m., the infantry moved out under cover of fog and made rapid progress. By noon the Big Red One was halfway to Vigneulles. The German units on the withdrawing Wilhelm Line were not the best, and some of them were close to utter demoralization. A lone American lieutenant on horseback, riding ahead to find a quicker route to bring ammunition and supplies to the forward infantry, came upon a detachment of twenty-six German soldiers. Rather than blasting him off his saddle or taking him prisoner, the Germans surrendered and demanded the lieutenant escort them back to the American lines; they didn't want to be mistaken for active soldiers and get shot. In another incident an American sergeant with an empty pistol (though the Germans didn't know that) rousted more than three hundred German soldiers out of a dugout and into captivity.

Coming from the north, the 26th Division had to cut through forests, but found these amazingly lightly defended, and by 2:00 a.m., 13 September, the division had reached Vigneulles. By the end of 13 September, the job was essentially done. The Germans were fully withdrawn behind the Michel Line, and Pershing was content to leave them there and move his troops on to the Meuse-Argonne. It sounds easy on paper, and relatively speaking it was, but the Americans still suffered 7,000 casualties (the Germans, about 22,500: 15,000 surrendered, 7,500 killed or wounded). Pershing was bullish, and the reduction of the Saint-Mihiel salient was considered an American success. It was the largest American battle since the War Between the States, and the troops had executed their assignments admirably. If the German units were not the best, if they were in the process of withdrawing anyway, it was equally true that the Germans had held this line for four years; that in that time the Germans had
repelled two French attempts to drive them out; and that the German high command considered Saint-Mihiel a terrible defeat. Hindenburg was appalled at how quickly the salient had been overrun; Ludendorff was depressed to the point of a nervous breakdown. Two hundred square miles of French territory had been liberated, and the Americans had badly dented the Germans' sense of military superiority. But in retrospect, for the Americans the battle of Saint-Mihiel was in many ways a meticulously well-planned, enormous live-fire training exercise. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive would be something else entirely.

NO EASY DAY

Colonel George C. Marshall, operations officer of the First Army, had a fortnight to get nearly a million tons of supplies and four thousand guns, not to mention more than six hundred thousand men, to their new positions above Verdun for the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. It was, as one historian has written, “the biggest logistical undertaking in the history of the U.S. Army, before or since.”
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Units were regrouped after the battle of Saint-Mihiel and rushed onto inadequate roads that were bogged with mud, jammed with masses of men, machines, and horses, clogged by accidents, and patrolled by military police who tried desperately to keep the traffic moving and douse the hot tempers of frustrated drivers. If there was to be any hope of secrecy, all movement had to be at night. Artillery took priority. Units that had been held in reserve at Saint-Mihiel were next in line, for they were moving to the front; and then the combat units that had crushed the salient. The Americans succeeded (with the help of the French) in moving this giant anaconda of men, machines, and supplies into position. But even Marshall was left wondering “how
in the world the concentration was ever put through in the face of so many complications.”
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The doughboys arrived to confront what First Army chief of staff Colonel Hugh Drum called “the most ideal defensive terrain I have ever seen or read about. Nature had provided for flank and crossfire to the utmost in addition to concealment [for the German defenders]. . . .”
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Major General Hunter Liggett, commander of I Corps, on the left side of the American line, facing the Argonne Forest, was put in mind of one of the most famous battlefields of the American Civil War:

           
The region was a natural forest besides which the Virginia Wilderness in which Grant and Lee fought was a park. It was masked and tortuous before the enemy strung up his first wire and dug his first trench. . . . The underbrush had grown up through the German barbed and rabbit wire, interlacing it and concealing it, and machine guns lurked like copperheads in the ambush of shell-fallen trees. Other machine guns were strewn in concrete pill boxes and in defiles. On the offense tanks could not follow, nor artillery see where it was shooting, while the enemy guns, on the defense, could fire by map. . . . Patently it would be suicidal to attack such a labyrinth directly; it must be pinched out by attacks on either side.
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Liggett had only one consolation: the Germans considered their defenses in the Argonne so formidable that they garrisoned them with second-class troops.

Pershing's goal was a drive north to Sedan, a distance of about forty miles. Throughout this sector, bordered by the Argonne Forest
to the west and the Meuse River to the east, the doughboys would be fighting over ground that the Germans had held and fortified since 1914. The German defenses centered on three east-west ridgelines, as well as defensive positions on the Heights of the Meuse, which was partially forested high ground running north-south behind the Meuse River, where the Germans stationed most of their heavy artillery. The Americans' one advantage was that Ludendorff expected an attack at Metz—the attack Pershing had wanted to make, following up on the American victory at Saint-Mihiel, rather than the one Foch compelled him to make at the Meuse-Argonne. But whatever hope Pershing drew from the Germans having only an estimated five divisions in the sector was tempered by the fact that the Germans could rapidly reinforce the area. They had even built rail lines that could rush troops and supplies to the front. Pershing's staff estimated that within three days those five German divisions could become twenty, with four of them arriving in the first twenty-four hours; and there were many more divisions in reserve that could be called into the battle, so that the twenty could be nearly doubled. Pétain thought Pershing would be lucky if he reached Montfaucon, about five miles north from the Americans' starting position, in three months. A French liaison officer told Major General Robert Alexander, commander of the 77th Division of I Corps, which would have to fight through the Argonne Forest, “Sir, I have no doubt that your men are brave and that you have made every preparation that will give them a chance for victory tomorrow, but permit me to say that, in my opinion, the [German] line in your front
will not move
. It has been in place for four years, is solidly established, well wired in, and the Boche is a good soldier. I fear that you will not be able to make the advance you hope for.” Alexander replied, “The line
will
move.”
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Pershing's audacious plan was to blast ahead faster than the Germans (and Pétain and the French liaison officer) thought possible; he would sacrifice numbers in the interest of speed, choosing nine divisions for the initial assault. He gave his commanders a first-day objective of the
Kriemhilde Stellung
, a heavily defended ridgeline that was part of the Hindenburg (or as the Germans called it, the Siegfried) Line, which was meant to be impassable.
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It was ten miles to the north, five miles deeper than Montfaucon, the fortified Mount of the Falcon that Pétain thought Pershing might need three months to reach. Pershing planned simply to storm it on his way to the strongest part of the German defenses, the
Kriemhilde Stellung
. He trusted to determined commanders like Alexander—and that his doughboys would make up in spirit what they lacked in experience.

At 11:00 p.m., 25 September 1918, the American artillery erupted (among the artillery commanders was a creatively swearing Captain Harry S. Truman). The doughboy infantry had been given no warning—in order to maintain secrecy—and sleepers got rude awakenings. Some troops cheered the astonishing flash of lights and the explosions that marked shells hitting home on German ammunition dumps. Others quavered under the thunderous roar—or were torn to pieces by German artillery firing in response. Under the lightning of the guns, the men were hustled into their positions, past withdrawing French troops—220,000 of them in total from the French Second Army—who had held the trenches awaiting the Americans' arrival.

The Americans leapt into the Meuse-Argonne Valley at 5:30 a.m., 26 September, piercing a thick fog made thicker by a covering smoke barrage. Commanders were under orders to press the advance and bypass German pillboxes and machine gun nests that could not be reduced immediately. The first objective had to be Montfaucon. It blocked the center of the American advance and was the high point
of the Meuse-Argonne Valley. The French had failed to wrest it from the Germans in 1914 and 1915, but Pershing and his staff believed it could be taken swiftly, counting on surprise, artillery and air support (tanks were on hand too, if they could handle the terrain), and American fighting prowess. Pershing was so confident of the superiority of his American troops that “he devised an attack timetable fit for an army of supermen,” in the words of one historian.
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The supermen were organized into three corps, with Liggett's I Corps having orders to sweep the Argonne Forest on the American left; V Corps under Major General George Cameron was given the task of taking Montfaucon; and, on the right, III Corps, commanded by Major General Robert Bullard, would advance along the west side of the Meuse River and protect V Corps' flank.

The American commanders thrust forward Pershing's trident. On the left, I Corps had to battle through the treacherous terrain of the Ardennes, but did reasonably well. On the right, III Corps made good progress, not much stymied by German resistance. The crucial point, however, was the center of the line, and here Montfaucon did not fall as easily as was hoped. Cameron's two-pronged attack on the objective began well, but as the morning fog lifted, German machine guns and artillery pinned down both sides of the assault, which was entrusted to the 79th Division, a majority of whose men had been in the Army for less than four months. Hard-charging American troops briefly occupied the town but could not dislodge the Germans from the Butte of Montfaucon. With that, Pershing's hope for a bold start was squelched. The German commander of the Meuse-Argonne sector, General Max von Gallwitz, noted that the attack appeared uncoordinated and led by inexperienced troops. He was confident he could turn them aside and remained suspicious that the attack was really a feint.

Inexperienced many of the doughboys might have been, but they made good for their commanders by noon, 27 September, taking the Butte of Montfaucon—even if they were then cut off and had to survive three days without supplies. Indeed, all along the American advance, even where it had gone well, the friction of war had sown confusion. Troopers and generals got lost. Traffic jams of artillery and men (including evacuated wounded) clogged the miserable, muddy roads. The delay to Pershing's plan was costly. German reinforcements rapidly stiffened the defenses the doughboys had to breach, and the Americans found it impossible to break through the
Kriemhilde Stellung
. On 29 September, Pershing had to concede that his great lunge had failed. He called a halt until he could bring up veteran reinforcements.

THE BIG PUSH

Pershing was fighting the biggest and costliest battle in American history. By battle's end, which was the end of the war, 11 November 1918, 1.2 million American troops had been involved, one-tenth of them were casualties, and more than 26,000 of those were dead. Pershing had a gargantuan task in front of him: doing his not inconsiderable part to roll back the Germans from France and win the war.

New divisions brought up, units reorganized, orders issued, Pershing's army went back into action on the morning of 4 October—and found the Germans waiting with reinforced positions and showers of artillery shells raining down from the Heights of the Meuse. Against this storm of steel and lead, the doughboys set their helmet straps and trudged forward, but bullets and artillery shells can slow an advance even more effectively than rain and mud; so Pershing ordered the French XVII Corps (which included an American
division) to suppress the German guns on the Heights of the Meuse with a direct assault.

In the west, in the Argonne Forest, the 77th Division had a similar task—to find and suppress the big German guns—but it had to fight amid the large, dense, tangled forest that effectively cut regiments into their component parts and that was spiked with German machine gun nests, snipers, and blockhouses. It left some troopers feeling, not for the first time, as if they were reliving their ancestors' experiences of Indian fighting, though the Indians in this case had higher-powered weapons and better discipline.

The landscape itself was sobering. If Belleau Wood was “Hell Wood,” it was but a small corner of hell compared to the Argonne, which, as one American officer charged with its conquest wrote, “was a bleak, cruel country of white clay and rock and blasted skeletons of trees, gashed into innumerable trenches and seared with rusted acres of wire, rising steeply into claw-like ridges and descending into haunted ravines, white as leprosy in the midst of that green forest, a country that had died long ago, in pain.”
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