America's War for Humanity Part 6

"History has as ruthlessly brushed aside most of the army commanders of the early days. Von Kluck, who led the Germans on Paris, is retired.

Rennenkampf, with whom the Russians meanwhile swarmed into East Prussia, is a memory only. Sir John French has been recalled to England. That little group of generals who saved France and Europe at the Marne is decimated. Foch and Castelnau, and Manoury are no longer in command, while Gallieni, worn out in the service of his country, was borne on his last journey through the streets of Paris on a sunny spring day in 1916.

"Even Joffre has been superseded in a military sense, though not as an idol of the nation. France still holds him as close to her heart as Germany possibly could hold Von Hindenburg--almost the only one of the war's early commanders to retain his military power."

RUSSIAN CAPITAL IN PERIL

On August 23, Riga, the Russian seaport which is the gateway to Petrograd, was reported in peril from the Germans, who were conducting a determined advance on the north of the eastern front under the immediate direction of Field Marshal Von Hindenburg. With a j.a.panese mission in Washington, headed by Viscount Ishii, it was expected that steps might be taken to send j.a.panese troops to the aid of the Russians.

Russia's critical internal situation, aggravated by the new German drive against Riga, was watched by officials in Washington with the gravest concern. While the taking of Riga would not necessarily be a decisive blow, it would make the Baltic more than ever a German lake, leaving the Russian fleet in the position of the mouse in the rathole to the German cat, just as the Kaiser's fleet was the mouse to the English fleet outside.

The outcome of the forthcoming extraordinary national council to be held at Moscow was therefore awaited in Washington with the keenest interest, scarcely less keen than in Russia itself. The immediate fate of Russia, it was felt, depended upon the action of the council in its efforts to throw off the demoralizing socialistic control of the Russian army and workmen. German intrigues in Russia were known to be exerting powerful influence to bring about anarchy within the new democracy.

CLOSING IN ON LENS

An advance by the Canadians in the neighborhood of the Green Gra.s.sier on the southern edge of Lens added greatly to the strength of the British line, which continued to tighten steadily about the heart of the city.

The Gra.s.sier is a great slag heap, and lies only about 300 yards south of the central railway station of Lens, and overlooks it.

The Canadians made their a.s.sault before dawn this time, and the attack was preceded by a protracted and exceedingly intense bombardment of the German positions. The Germans, exhausted by the long strain of constant counter-attacks, found the Canadians in their midst with little warning.

But the defenders did not give up without a struggle, and there was fierce bayonet fighting.

The Gra.s.sier was an important buffer between the Canadians and the defenses of the city proper, and the Germans reached it through tunnels connected with the network of pa.s.sages and dugouts beneath Lens.

Part of the ground about the Gra.s.sier was inundated, due to the waterway near by having broken its banks, and this, in conjunction with the great number of machine-gun emplacements on the elevation, made it a particularly difficult position for attack.

An advance upon two German colliery positions adjoining the Gra.s.sier to the northwest, earlier in the night, also involved stiff hand-to-hand fighting. About the Gra.s.sier were numerous sh.e.l.l-shattered buildings, many of which had been strongly fortified by the Germans. The Canadians bombed their way systematically through these defenses, silencing the machine guns and clearing out the defenders.

The fighting on August 23 was on the edge of the city proper, rather than in the suburbs. Notwithstanding the tremendous strain upon the Canadians during the previous week, there was no diminution in the strength of their attacks. They worked steadily and methodically, gradually weaving a net about the Germans, who were living miserably in their underground positions within the great coal center.

MANY GERMANS CAPTURED

In the three days' fighting on the western front from August 21 to 23, the Entente Allies captured 25,000 German prisoners and by September 1 the total for August had reached more than 40,000, according to Major-General Frederick B. Maurice, chief director of the British war intelligence office. This topped the figure of prisoners which the Germans claimed to have taken in a single month on the Russian front, although their total undoubtedly was composed by at least half of mere stragglers from the mutinous and disorganized Russian units.

On September 1, 1917, the positions recaptured by the French around Verdun were safely consolidated in their possession, every German effort being thrown back in disorder. The fighting had developed into a big-gun duel, in which the French continued to maintain undoubted mastery, and they were firmly established once more on the left bank of the Meuse, which the Germans had intended to hold at all costs. Thus ended the last hope of the Crown Prince of Germany, who apparently was obsessed with the desire to conquer Verdun, in the neighborhood of which thousands of the flower of the German army found only a burial place, without any laurels of victory.

ALLIED GAINS IN THE WEST

The early autumn of 1917 witnessed steady gains by the British and French forces co-operating in Flanders and to the South of the Belgian border along the western front. The artillery on both sides was constantly active, but with evident superiority on the part of the Allies. Repeated German attacks were repulsed in the Champagne and along the Meuse, while in the Ypres region the Allied troops made frequent gains in spite of the concrete defenses established by the enemy to strengthen their entrenched positions.

Repeated successes of the Allies along the Chemin des Dames finally forced a German retreat along a fifteen-mile front which the Crown Prince had made strenuous efforts to hold. The Germans were compelled to retire because French victories on October 21-23 enabled French guns to enfilade the Ailette Valley behind the German positions, exposing the enemy to a series of disastrous flanking attacks and hampering the German communications. On October 30-31 the French bombarded the German lines vigorously. The enemy had already moved their artillery across the Ailette to a ridge north of the river. On the night of November 1 they completed their preparations for retreat and withdrew their infantry.

French patrols approaching the German lines on the morning of November 2 were fired upon at first, but on renewing their reconnoissance soon after dawn found the German trenches empty.

It was impossible for the Germans to keep their front line supplied with ammunition or food, the carriers of which were obliged to pa.s.s through a tornado of sh.e.l.ls and machine gun bullets while crossing the Valley of the Ailette, where their every movement could be observed by the French.

Eventually the position became untenable and the Germans retired during the night to the Northern side of the Ailette Valley. The best elements of the Crown Prince's army had sustained severe losses and were compelled to go to the rear to reconst.i.tute their diminished ranks. The evacuated territory North of the crest of Chemin des Dames included several towns that had been pulverized by bombardment, and the retreat brought the important city of Laon within range of the French guns.

The captures by the French in this sector from September 23 to November 1 included 12,000 prisoners, 200 heavy field guns, 220 trench mortars, and 720 machine guns. In ten days, from September 21 to 30, twenty-three German airplanes were destroyed and twenty-eight forced to descend badly damaged.

THE FIRST AMERICAN CASUALTIES

The first list of Americans killed and wounded in combat with the enemy reached Washington on October 17, in an official report from Rear Admiral Sims of an encounter between a German submarine and an American destroyer. One American sailor was killed and five sailors were wounded when the submarine torpedoed the destroyer Ca.s.sin on patrol duty in European waters. The destroyer was not sunk and after making a gallant fight reached a British port.

Two days later Rear Admiral Sims reported that the American troop transport Antilles, homeward bound from France, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on October 17. Seventy men of the 237 aboard lost their lives, including four naval enlisted men, sixteen army enlisted men, three ship's officers, and 47 members of the ship's crew. The Antilles was under convoy of American patrol vessels at the time it was sunk.

FRENCH TRIBUTE TO U.S. DEAD

At the burial on November 7 of the first three American soldiers killed in the trenches in France by a raiding party of Germans, a guard of French infantrymen, in their picturesque uniforms of red and horizon blue, stood on one side and a detachment of American soldiers on the other while the flag-wrapped coffins were lowered into the grave, as a bugler blew taps and the batteries nearby fired minute guns. The French officer commanding in the sector paid an eloquent tribute to the fallen Americans, his words being punctuated by the roar of the guns and the whistle of sh.e.l.ls. In conclusion he said:

"In the name of the French army and in the name of France, I bid farewell to Private Enright, Private Gresham and Private Hay of the American army.

"Of their own free will they had left a prosperous and happy country to come over here. They knew war was continuing in Europe; they knew that the forces fighting for honor, love of justice and civilization were still checked by the long-prepared forces serving the powers of brutal domination, oppression and barbarity. They knew that efforts were still necessary. They wished to give up their generous hearts and they had not forgotten old historical memories while others forgot more recent ones.

"They ignored nothing of the circ.u.mstances and nothing had been concealed from them--neither the length and hardships of war nor the violence of battle, nor the dreadfulness of new weapons, nor the perfidy of the foe. Nothing stopped them. They accepted the hard and strenuous life; they crossed the ocean at great peril; they took their places on the front by our side and they have fallen facing the foe in a hard and desperate hand-to-hand fight. Honor to them! Their families, friends and fellow-citizens will be proud when they learn of their deaths.

"Men! These graves, the first to be dug in our national soil and only a short distance from the enemy, are as a mark of the mighty land we and our Allies firmly cling to in the common task, confirming the will of the people and the army of the United States to fight with us to a finish, ready to sacrifice as long as is necessary until final victory for the most n.o.ble of causes, that of the liberty of nations, the weak as well as the mighty. Thus the deaths of these humble soldiers appeal to us with extraordinary grandeur.

"We will therefore ask that the mortal remains of these young men be left here, left with us forever. We inscribe on the tombs, 'Here lie the first soldiers of the republic of the United States to fall on the soil of France for liberty and justice.' The pa.s.ser-by will stop and uncover his head. Travelers and men of heart will go out of their way to come here to pay their respective tributes.

"Private Enright! Private Gresham! Private Hay! In the name of France, I thank you. G.o.d receive your souls! Farewell!"

ITALY INVADED BY TEUTONS

In the first week of October Austrian forces, heavily reinforced by Germans, opened a gigantic drive in an effort to crush Italy. It soon resulted in wiping out all the gains made by the Italians under General Cadorna on the Isonzo and in the Trentino, and in a determined invasion of Northern Italy by the enemy, with the city of Venice as its immediate objective.

The Teuton attack began on the morning of October 24, after an intensive artillery fire in which specially constructed gas sh.e.l.ls were thrown at various places. The offensive covered a 23-mile front, from Monte Rombon Southeast through Flitsch and Tolmino and thence Southward to the Bainsizza Plateau, about ten miles Northeast of Goritz, the scene of desperate fighting in the drive by the Italians which wrested important mountain positions from the Austrians.

The greatest shock came from the North, where the Isonzo was first crossed by the enemy. At this point there occurred a weakening of certain troops of the second Italian army, which gave the overwhelming German contingents an opportunity to pa.s.s forward between a portion of the army on the North and that on a line farther South. Then began the double exposure of the Southern force to fire in the front and on the flank which required a steady falling back until the entire Italian army was moving towards newly-established positions farther West. The commanding height of Monte Nero, which the Italians had occupied after deeds of great valor, was defended against onslaughts from three sides which gradually resulted in envelopment and the capture of many thousands of Italian troops and hundreds of guns.

A general retreat of the Italian forces was then carried out, with shielding operations by rear guards, and the main body of General Cadorna's army retired to the Tagliamento. The Germans encountered stubborn resistance on the Bainsizza Plateau and heaps of enemy dead marked the lines of their advance. In one of the mountain pa.s.ses a small village, commanding the pa.s.s, was taken and retaken eight times during desperate artillery, infantry and hand-to-hand fighting.

Goritz was sh.e.l.led heavily and what remained of the city was further reduced to a ma.s.s of debris. One of the main bridges from Goritz across the Isonzo was blown up by the Italians and the enemy movement thus was further impeded.

West of Goritz the town of Cormons also was sh.e.l.led heavily. The great German guns opened enormous craters and literally tore the towns to pieces.

The heaviest pressure began to be felt on the Carso front on Friday, October 26. The Teutons then increased their bombardment to deafening intensity and supplemented this with huge volumes of poison gas and tear-sh.e.l.ls. The humid air and light winds permitted great waves of the deadly gases to creep low toward the Italian lines, the rear guards protecting themselves with gas masks and by hiding in caverns.

Amid the onslaught of overwhelming ma.s.ses of the enemy, the Italians fell back slowly. The retreat, as in other instances of the war, was the most terrible for the civilian inhabitants. There was an enormous movement Westward. All the roads were packed with dense traffic, with four or five lines abreast of teams, automobiles, motor trucks, pack mules, artillery wagons, and ox carts. The soldiers marched or rode, singly, in groups, in regiments, in brigades, or in divisions.

"It was such a time as the world has seldom witnessed," said a Red Cross spectator. "Even fields and by-roads were utilized for the colossal migration. The only wonder was that the great army was able to withdraw at all and establish itself along the new line of defense.

"Many heartrending scenes were witnessed along the route, as the torrential rain and the vast zone of mud increased the misery of the moving mult.i.tude. Food was scarce and many went without it for days, while sleep was impossible as the throng trudged westward. The military hospitals were evacuated, with all other establishments, and pale and wounded patients obliged to join in the rearguard march or fall into the hands of the enemy. The roads were strewn with dead horses.

"Families with eight or ten children, the youngest clinging tightly to the grandfather, trudged amid ranks of soldiers of many descriptions."

The safe retirement of the Tagliamento was due to the unexampled heroism of large bodies of Italians, of such spirit as the Alpine troops on Monte Nero, who refused to surrender, and the regiments of Bersaglieri at Monte Maggiore, the members of which perished to the last man rather than yield ground. It was by such resistance in the face of overwhelming forces of the enemy that the civil population was able to retire. And it was owing to the valor of Italian aviators, combating the Austro-German army of the air, that the fleeing women, children and old men, who crowded the roads, were not struck down by bursting bombs.

By November 1 General Cadorna's forces had effected their retirement behind the Tagliamento River line, but at the cost of tremendous losses, aggregating 180,000 prisoners and 1,500 guns. It was soon seen, however, that the Tagliamento line could not be successfully held against the enemy and a further retirement was carried out, Southward through the mountainous country to a shorter line along the Piave River East of Venice and Northwesterly to the Trentino boundary. This gave French and British reinforcements the opportunity to arrive in sufficient numbers to aid in checking the invaders.

As one result of the Italian reverses, General Cadorna was relieved of the chief command, though he was credited with a masterly retreat. He was succeeded by General Diaz.