And they thought we wouldn't fight Part 34

On March 21st, the Germans had launched their first powerful offensive on a front of fifty miles from Arras to Noyon in Picardy and had advanced their lines from St. Quentin to the outskirts of Amiens.

On April 9th, the German hordes struck again in Flanders on a front of twenty miles from Lens northward to the River Lys and had cut into the Allied front as far as Armentieres.

There followed what was considered an abnormal delay in the third act of the demonstration. It was known that the Germans were engaged in making elaborate arrangements for this mid-summer push. It was the enemy hope in this great offensive to strike a final effective blow against the hard-pressed Allied line before America's rising power could be thrown into the fight.

The blow fell on the morning of May 27th. The front selected for the a.s.sault was twenty-five miles in width, extending from the Ailette near Vauxaillon to the Aisne-Marne Ca.n.a.l near Brimont. The Prussian Crown Prince was the t.i.tular chief of the group of armies used in the a.s.sault.

One of these forces was the army of General von Boehm, which before the attack had numbered only nine divisions and had extended from the Oise at Noyon to east of Craconne. The other army was that of General Fritz von Bulow, previously composed of eight divisions and supporting a front that extended from Craconne across the Rheims front to Suippe, near Auberive. On the day of the attack, these armies had been strengthened to twice their normal number of divisions, and subsequently captured German plans revealed that the enemy expected to use forty-five divisions or practically half a million men in the onslaught.

The battle began at dawn. It was directed against the weakly held French positions on the Chemin des Dames. It was preceded by a three hour bombardment of terrific intensity. The French defenders were outnumbered four to one. The Germans put down a rolling barrage that was two miles deep. It destroyed all wire communications and flooded battery emplacements and machine gun posts with every brand of poison gas known to German kultur. Dust and artificial smoke clouds separated the defenders into small groups and screened the attacking waves until they had actually penetrated the French positions.

The French fought hard to resist the enemy flood across the Chemin des Dames with its ground sacred with tragic memories, but a withdrawal was necessary. The French command was forced to order a retreat to the Aisne. Hard-fighting French divisions and some units of the British Fifth Army, which had been badly hit in Picardy in March, made an orderly withdrawal southward.

On the second day of the fight the enemy made a strong thrust toward Soissons, and after keeping the city under continual bombardment, succeeded in overcoming all resistance and occupying the city on May 29th. On the first day of the attack alone, twelve thousand explosive, incendiary and poison gas sh.e.l.ls were hurled in amongst the hospitals in Soissons. American ambulance units did heroic work in the removal of the wounded.

The Germans forced a crossing on the Aisne. On the following day, May 30th, they had crossed the Vesle River and had captured Fere-en-Tardenois. On the following day their victorious hordes had reached the Marne and were closing in on Chateau-Thierry.

Some idea of the terrific strength of the enemy offensive may be gained from a recapitulation which would show that in five days the Germans had pushed through five successive lines of Allied defence, and had penetrated more than twenty-five miles. On the first day, they had captured the Chemin des Dames, on the second day, they had overcome all resistance on the Aisne, on the third day, their forces, pushing southward, had crossed the Vesle River, on the fourth day, they had destroyed the lines of resistance along the Ourcq, on the fifth day, they had reached the Marne.

It was a crisis. The battle front formed a vast triangle with the apex pointing southward toward Paris. The west side of the triangle extended fifty miles northward from the Marne to the Oise near Noyon. The east side of the triangle ran north-eastward thirty miles to Rheims. The point of this new thrust at Paris rested on the north bank of the Marne at Chateau-Thierry. The enemy had advanced to within forty miles of the capital of France; the fate of the Allied world hung in the balance.

Undoubtedly I am prejudiced, but I like to feel that I know the real reason why the German hordes stopped at Chateau-Thierry on the north bank of the Marne. To me that reason will always be this--because on the south bank of the Marne stood the Americans.

On that day and in that event there materialised the German fears which had urged them on to such great speed and violence. In the eleventh hour, there at the peak of the German thrust, there at the climax of Germany's triumphant advances, there at the point where a military decision for the enemy seemed almost within grasp, there and then the American soldier stepped into the breech to save the democracy of the world.

The Marne River makes a loop at this place and Chateau-Thierry lies on both banks. The Marne there is called a river, but it would hardly come up to the American understanding of the word. The waterway is more like a ca.n.a.l with banks built up with stone blocks. There are streets on either bank, and these being the princ.i.p.al streets of the town, are bordered with comparatively high buildings.

While the Germans were on the outskirts of the city, American forces had made brilliant counter attacks on both sides. To the west of Chateau-Thierry the German advance forces, seeking to penetrate Neuilly Wood, had been hurled back by our young troops. To the east of Chateau-Thierry the enemy had succeeded in crossing the Marne in the vicinity of Jaulgonne.

This operation was carried out by the German 36th Division. On the night of May 30th, at a point where the Marne looped northward eight miles to the east of Chateau-Thierry, the enemy succeeded in putting a few men across the river.

Along the south bank of the river at that place, the Paris-Chalons ran through a number of deep cuts and one tunnel. The enemy took shelter in these natural protections. They suffered serious losses from the Allied artillery which also destroyed some of their pontoons across the river, but in spite of this, the Germans succeeded in re-enforcing the units on the south bank to the strength of about a battalion.

Almost at the same time, the French defenders at this place received re-enforcements from the Americans. Units of the 3rd United States Regular Division and the 28th U. S. Division, comprised largely of Pennsylvania National Guardsmen, were rushed forward from training areas, miles back of the line, where they were engaged in fitting themselves for line duty. These incompletely trained American units abandoned their bayonet-stabbing of gunny-sacks and make-believe warfare to rush forward into the real thing.

On June 2nd, these Americans, under command of French officers, began the counter attack to sweep the Germans back from the south bank. By that time the enemy had succeeded in putting twenty-two light bridges across the Marne and had established a strong bridgehead position with a number of machine guns and a strong force of men in the railway station on the south bank of the river opposite Jaulgonne.

This position was attacked frontally by the Americans and French. Our novices in battle were guilty of numerous so-called strategical blunders, but in the main purpose of killing the enemy, they proved irresistible. The Germans broke and ran. At the same time, the French artillery lowered a terrific barrage on the bridges crossing the river, with the result that many of the fleeing enemy were killed and more drowned. Only thirty or forty escaped by swimming. One hundred of them threw down their arms and surrendered. The remainder of the battalion was wiped out. At the close of the engagement the Americans and the French were in full command of the south bank.

But it was in Chateau-Thierry itself that the Germans made their most determined effort to cross the river and get a footing on the south bank, and it was there, again, that their efforts were frustrated by our forces. On May 31st, American machine gun units, then in training seventy-five kilometres south of the Marne, were hurriedly bundled into motor lorries and rushed northward into Chateau-Thierry.

The Germans were advancing their patrols into the north side of the city. They were pouring down the streets in large numbers, with the evident purpose of crossing the bridges and establishing themselves on the south bank.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon of May 31st that those American machine gunners got their first glimpse of real war. That night while the German artillery raked the south bank of the river with high explosive sh.e.l.ls, those Americans, shouldering their machine guns, marched into the city and took up defensive positions on the south bank of the river.

During the night many houses were turned into ruins. Sh.e.l.ls striking the railroad station had caused it to burn. In the red glare our men saw the houses about them collapse under clouds of dust and debris. Under cover of darkness the Germans filtered through the streets on the north side of the river. The American machine gunners went into position in the windows of houses on the south bank and in gardens between the houses, and from these positions it was possible to command all of the bridge approaches and streets leading to the river on the opposite side.

During the night, Lieutenant John T. Bissell, a young Pittsburgher but recently graduated from West Point, started across one of the bridges and reached the north bank with a squad of a dozen men and two machine guns. This little unit went into position in a place commanding the forked highways which converged not far from the northern approach of the iron bridge crossing the river. It was this unit's function to prevent the enemy advance from this direction. The unit was separated from its comrades on the south bank by the river and about two hundred yards. In spite of the fact that the enemy artillery intensified its sh.e.l.ling of the south bank, the American machine gunners remained at their posts without firing and played a waiting game.

With the coming of dawn the Germans began to make their rushes for the bridges. Small compact forces would dart forward carrying light machine guns and ammunition with them. They encountered a terrific burst of American fire and wilted in front of it. Those that survived crawled back to the shelter of protecting walls, where they were re-enforced with fresh units, and again the ma.s.sed formations charged down the streets toward the bridges. The slaughter of Germans increased until the approaches were dotted with bodies of the enemy slain.

On June 1st, the Germans having consolidated positions on the hills commanding the city from the north, they directed a terrific artillery and machine gun fire into our exposed positions on the south bank, as well as the small posts still held on the north bank by Lieutenant Bissell and his machine gunners. Although the position held by the little American group had long been considered untenable, the members of it stuck it out until nightfall, when they received orders to retire to the south bank. At the same time, French colonials which had held a position throughout the day on the north bank on the edge of the town, withdrew in accordance with the same plan. The retirement of both parties was covered by our machine gunners on the south bank, who poured a hot fire into the evacuated areas as the Germans began occupying them.

By 10:30 that night the completion of the movement was signalised by a terrific explosion, as the French colonials blew up one of the stone bridges over which they had withdrawn. But the destruction of the bridge had cut off the little band of Americans and left them almost surrounded by the enemy on the north bank of the river, which was now becoming strongly populated by the enemy. Through the darkness could be heard the sound of shuffling, hobnailed boots, and even above the crack of the guns there came the weird swish of the grey coats as they pushed forward in ma.s.s formations.

The little party of thirteen Americans dismantled their guns and, with each man carrying his allotted piece, they began working their way along the river bank toward the main bridge, where they discovered that the enemy was almost upon them. They immediately went into position behind the stone parapet on the very brink of the river, and, although in constant danger from the American fire that poured out from the south bank, they poured streams of lead point-blank into the advancing German ranks.

The Americans on the south bank were not aware of the plight of the little party on the north bank. In spite of their losses, the Germans continued their grewsome rushes toward the approaches of the iron bridge across which our machine gunners were pouring a devastating fire.

Lieutenant Bissell and his men made one effort to cross the bridge, but were forced to crawl back to shelter on the north bank, carrying with them three of their wounded. They found themselves between a cross-fire.

Then Bissell, alone, approached as near as he dared, and the first intimation that the Americans on the south bank had of the fact that Americans were in front of them was when Lieutenant Cobey heard Bissell's voice calling his name. A cease fire order was immediately given and Bissell and his men rushed across the bridge, carrying their wounded with them.

On the following day the Germans were in occupation of all the houses facing the north bank of the river, and could be seen from time to time darting from one shelter to another. Throughout the day their artillery maintained a terrific downpour of sh.e.l.ls on the positions held by our men on the south bank. So intense was the rifle fire and activity of snipers, that it meant death to appear in the open. The Americans manned their guns throughout the day, but refrained from indulging in machine gun fire because it was not desired to reveal the locations of the guns.

Nightfall approached with a quiet that was deadly ominous of impending events.

At nine o'clock the enemy formations lunged forward to the attack. Their dense ma.s.ses charged down the streets leading toward the river. They sang as they advanced. The orders, as revealed in doc.u.ments captured later, came straight from the high command and demanded the acquisition of a foothold on the south bank at all costs. They paid the costs, but never reached the south bank.

The American machine gun fire was withering. Time after time, in the frequent rushes throughout the night, the remnants of enemy ma.s.ses would reach sometimes as far as the centre of the big bridge, but none of them succeeded in reaching the south bank. The bridge became carpeted with German dead and wounded. They lay thick in the open streets near the approaches. By morning their dead were piled high on the bridge and subsequent rushes endeavoured to advance over the bodies of their fallen comrades. In this battle of the bridges and the streets, our men showed a courage and determination which aroused the admiration of the French officers, who were aware by this time that forty-eight hours before these same American soldiers had seen battle for the first time.

Our machine gunners turned the northern bank of the river into a No Man's Land. Their vigilance was unrelenting and every enemy attempt to elude it met with disaster. There were serious American casualties during that terrific fire, but they were nothing in comparison with the thousand or more German dead that dotted the streets and clogged the runways of the big bridge in piles. The last night of the fight enormous charges of explosive were placed beneath the bridge and discharged.

The bridge was destroyed. High into the air were blown bits of stone, steel, timber, debris, wreckage and the bodies of German dead, all to fall back into the river and go bobbing up and down in the waters of the Marne.

Thus did the Americans save the day at Chateau-Thierry, but it became immediately necessary for the French high command to call upon our young forces for another great effort. In response to this call, the Second United States Division, including one brigade of the United States Marines, the 5th and 6th Regiments, started for the front. The division was then occupying support positions in the vicinity of Gisors behind the Picardy line. At four o'clock on the morning of May 31st the Marine brigade and regiments of United States infantry, the 9th and the 23rd Regulars, boarded camions, twenty to thirty men and their equipment in each vehicle.

They were bound eastward to the valley of the Marne. The road took them through the string of pretty villages fifteen miles to the north of Paris. The trucks loaded with United States troops soon became part of the endless traffic of war that was pouring northward and eastward toward the raging front. Our men soon became coated with the dust of the road. The French people in the villages through which they pa.s.sed at top speed cheered them and threw flowers into the lorries.

Between Meaux and Chateau-Thierry, where the road wound along the Marne, our men encountered long trains of French refugees, weary mothers carrying hungry babies at the breast, farm wagons loaded with household belongings, usually surmounted by feather mattresses on which rode grey-haired grandfathers and grandmothers. This pitiful procession was moving toward the rear driving before it flocks of geese and herds of cattle. On the other side of the road war, grim war, moved in the opposite direction.

The Second Division was bound for the line to the northwest of Chateau-Thierry. On June 1st, the 6th Marines relieved the French on the support lines. The sector of the 6th Regiment joined on the left the sector held by two battalions of the 5th. The line on the right was held by the French. On June 2nd, the hard-pressed French line, weak and weary from continual rear guard actions, over a hard fighting period of almost a week, fell back by prearranged plan and pa.s.sed through the support positions which we held. To fill gaps between units, the Marines extended their brigade sector to between twelve and fourteen kilometres.

As the French withdrew to the rear, hard pressed by the enemy, the Marines held the new first line.

The regimental headquarters of the 6th was located in a stone farmhouse at a cross-roads called La Voie Chatel, situated between the villages of Champillon and Lucy-le-Bocage. There was clear observation from that point toward the north. At five o'clock in the afternoon on that day of clear visibility, the Germans renewed their attacks from the north and northeast toward a position called Hill 165, which was defended by the 5th Regiment.

The Germans advanced in two solid columns across a field of golden wheat. More than half of the two columns had left the cover of the trees and were moving in perfect order across the field when the shrapnel fire from the American artillery in the rear got range on the target. Burst after burst of white smoke suddenly appeared in the air over the column, and under each burst the ground was marked with a circle of German dead.

It was not barrage fire: it was individual firing against two individual moving targets and its success spoke well for the training which that brigade of American artillery had received.

French aviators from above directed the fire of our guns, and from high in the air signalled down their "bravos" in congratulation on the excellent work. At the same time, the machine gunners of the 5th covered the ravines and wooded clumps with a hot fire to prevent small bodies of the enemy from infiltrating through our lines. The French marvelled at the deliberateness and accuracy of our riflemen.

The Germans, unaware that a change had taken place in the personnel that faced them, reeled back demoralised and unable to understand how such a sudden show of resistance had been presented by the weakened French troops which they had been driving before them for a week. The enemy's advance had been made openly and confidently in the mistaken flush of victory. Their triumphant advances of the previous week had more than supported the statements of the German officers, who had told their men that they were on the road to Paris--the end of the war and peace. It was in this mood of victory that the enemy encountered the Marines'

stone wall and reeled back in surprise.

That engagement, in addition to lowering the enemy morale, deprived them of their offensive spirit and placed them on the defensive. The next few days were spent in advancing small strong points and the strengthening of positions. In broad daylight one group of Marines rushed a German machine gun pit in the open, killed or wounded every man in the crew, disabled the gun and got back to their lines in safety.

It was at five o'clock on the bright afternoon of June 6th that the United States Marines began to carve their way into history in the battle of the Bois de Belleau. Major General Harbord, former Chief of Staff to General Pershing, was in command of the Marine brigade. Orders were received for a general advance on the brigade front. The main objectives were the eastern edge of the Bois de Belleau and the towns of Bussiares, Torcy and Bouresches.

Owing to the difficulty of liaison in the thickets of the wood, and because of the almost impossible task of directing it in conjunction with the advancing lines, the artillery preparation for the attack was necessarily brief. At five o'clock to the dot the Marines moved out from the woods in perfect order, and started across the wheat fields in four long waves. It was a beautiful sight, these men of ours going across those flat fields toward the tree cl.u.s.ters beyond from which the Germans poured a murderous machine gun fire.

The woods were impregnated with nests of machine guns, but our advance proved irresistible. Many of our men fell, but those that survived pushed on through the woods, bayoneting right and left and firing as they charged. So sweeping was the advance that in some places small isolated units of our men found themselves with Germans both before and behind them.