And they thought we wouldn't fight Part 46

On the west side of the salient the day had gone equally well for us.

The western claw of the pincers had pushed due east through the towns of Spada and Lavigneville. Our men had swept on in the night through Chaillon, we had taken St. Remy and had cleared the Foret de Montagne.

By midnight their advanced patrols had reached the western part of the town of Vigneulles. In the meantime, our forces on the eastern side of the salient were pus.h.i.+ng westward toward this same town of Vigneulles.

At three o'clock in the morning the forces from the east were occupying the eastern part of the town. The pincers had closed; the St. Mihiel salient had been pinched off.

Our forces actually met at nine o'clock on the morning of September 13th. The junction was made at the town of Heudicourt to the south of Vigneulles. We had pocketed all of the German forces to the south of that town. Our centre had moved forward at nine o'clock the night before and occupied St. Mihiel on the heels of the retreating Germans. But the withdrawal was too late. Large numbers of them found themselves completely surrounded in the forests between St. Mihiel on the south and Heudicourt on the north.

We closed in during the afternoon and started to open the prize package. Located in the area, encircled by our troops, was the Bois de Versel, the Bois de Gaumont and the Bois de Woeuvre. Each one of these little forests gave up its quota of prisoners, while much material and rich booty of war fell into our hands.

The princ.i.p.al avenue that had been opened for the Germans to make a possible withdrawal led through Vigneulles and before our pincers had completely closed, the fleeing enemy had poured out through that gap at the rate of several thousand an hour. The roads were blocked for miles with their transportation, and when the American artillery turned its attention to these thoroughfares, crowded with confused Germans, the slaughter was terrific. For days after the battle our sanitation squads were busy at their grewsome work.

In conception and execution the entire operation had been perfect.

Confusion had been visited upon the method-loving enemy from the beginning. By reason of the disruption of their intercommunications, faulty liaison had resulted and division had called to division in vain for a.s.sistance, not knowing at the time that all of them were in equally desperate straits. The enemy fought hard but to no purpose.

One entire regiment with its commander and his staff was captured. With both flanks exposed, it had suddenly been confronted by Americans on four sides. The surrender was so complete that the German commander requested that his roll should be called in order to ascertain the extent of his losses. When this was done, every one was accounted for except one officer and one private.

As his command was so embarra.s.singly complete, the German commander asked permission to march it off in whatever direction desired by his captors. The request was granted, and there followed the somewhat amusing spectacle of an entire German regiment, without arms, marching off the battlefield under their own officers. The captured regiment was escorted to the rear by mounted American guards, who smilingly and leisurely rode their horses cowboy fas.h.i.+on as they herded their captives back to the pens.

Tons upon tons of ammunition fell into our hands in the woods. At one place twenty-two railroad cars loaded with large calibre ammunition had to be abandoned when an American sh.e.l.l had torn up the track to the north of them. But if the Germans had been unable to take with them their equipment, they had succeeded in driving ahead of them on the retreat almost all of the French male civilians between sixteen and forty-five years that had been used as German slaves for more than four years.

The Americans were welcomed as deliverers by those French civilians that remained in the town. They were found to be almost entirely ignorant of the most commonly known historical events of the war. Secretary of War Baker and Generals Pers.h.i.+ng and Petain visited the town of St. Mihiel a few hours after it was captured. They were honoured with a spontaneous demonstration by the girls and aged women, who crowded about them to express thanks and pay homage for deliverance.

One of our bands began to play the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" and the old French civilians who, under German domination, had not heard the national anthem for four long years, broke down and wept. The mayor of the town told how the Germans had robbed it of millions of francs. First they had demanded and received one million five hundred thousand francs and later they collected five hundred thousand more in three instalments. In addition to these robberies, they had taken by "requisition" all the furniture and mattresses and civilian comforts that they could find.

They took what they wanted and usually destroyed the rest. They had stripped the towns of all metal utensils, bells, statues, and water pipes.

The St. Mihiel salient thus went out of existence. The entire point in the blade of the dagger that had been thrust at the heart of France had been bitten off. Verdun with its rows upon rows of sacred dead was now liberated from the threat of envelopment from the right. The Allies were in possession of the dominating heights of the Meuse. The railroads connecting Commercy with Vigneulles, Thiaucourt and St. Mihiel were in our hands. Our lines had advanced close to that key of victory, the Briey iron basin to the north, and the German fortress of Metz lay under American guns.

The battle only lasted twenty-seven hours. In that s.p.a.ce of time, a German force estimated at one hundred thousand had been vanquished, if not literally cut to pieces, American soldiers had wrested a hundred and fifty square miles of territory away from the Germans, captured fifteen thousand officers and men and hundreds of guns. General Pers.h.i.+ng on September 14th made the following report:

"The dash and vigour of our troops, and of the valiant French divisions which fought shoulder to shoulder with them, is shown by the fact that the forces attacking on both faces of the salient effected a junction and secured the result desired within twenty-seven hours.

"Besides liberating more than 150 square miles of territory and taking 15,000 prisoners, we have captured a ma.s.s of material. Over 100 guns of all calibres and hundreds of machine guns and trench mortars have been taken.

"In spite of the fact that the enemy during his retreat burned large stores, a partial examination of the battlefield shows that great quant.i.ties of ammunition, telegraph material, railroad material, rolling stock, clothing, and equipment have been abandoned. Further evidence of the haste with which the enemy retreated is found in the uninjured bridges which he left behind.

"French pursuit, bombing and reconnaissance units, and British and Italian bombing units divided with our own air service the control of the air, and contributed materially to the successes of the operation."

And while this great battle was in progress, the Allied lines were advancing everywhere. In Flanders, in Picardy, on the Marne, in Champagne, in Lorraine, in Alsace, and in the Balkans the frontier of freedom was moving forward.

Surely the tide had turned. And surely it had been America's G.o.d-given opportunity to play the big part she did play. The German was now on the run. Suspicious whisperings of peace began to be heard in neutral countries. They had a decided German accent. Germany saw defeat staring her in the face and now, having failed to win in the field, she sought to win by a bluff at the peace table.

The mailed fist having failed, Germany now resorted to cunning. The mailed fist was now an open palm that itched to press in brotherhood the hands of the Allies. But it was the same fist that struck down the peace of the world in 1914. It was the same Germany that had ravished and outraged Belgium. It was the same Germany that had tried to murder France. It was the same Germany that had covered America with her net of spies and had sought to bring war to our borders with Mexico and j.a.pan.

It was the same Germany that had ruthlessly destroyed the lives of women and children, American citizens, non-combatants, riding the free seas under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. It was the same Germany that had drugged Russia with her corrupting propaganda and had throttled the voice of Russian democracy. This Germany, this unrepentant Germany--this unpunished Germany, launched her drive for peace.

Germany was willing to make any concessions to bring about negotiations that would save her from a defeat in the field. There was one thing, however, that Germany wanted to save from the ruin she had brought down upon herself. That thing was the German army and its strong auxiliary, the German navy. Neither one of them had been destroyed. The army was in general retreat and the navy was locked up in the Baltic, but both of them remained in existence as menaces to the future peace of the world.

With these two forces of might, Germany could have given up her booty of war, offered reparation for her transgressions and drawn back behind the Rhine to await the coming of another _Der Tag_ when she could send them once more cras.h.i.+ng across friendly borders and cruising the seven seas on missions of piracy.

Germany was in the position of a bully, who without provocation and without warning had struck down from behind a man who had not been prepared to defend himself. The victim's movements had been impeded by a heavy overcoat. He had been utterly and entirely unprepared for the onslaught. The bully had struck him with a club and had robbed him.

The unprepared man had tried to free himself from the overcoat of pacifism that he had worn so long in safety and in kindliness to his fellows. The bully, taking advantage of his handicap, had beaten him brutally. At last the unprepared man had freed himself from the overcoat and then stood ready not only to defend himself, but to administer deserved punishment. Then the bully had said:

"Now, wait just a minute. Let's talk this thing over and see if we can't settle it before I get hurt."

The bully's pockets bulge with the loot he has taken from the man. The victim's face and head are swollen and b.l.o.o.d.y and yet the bully invites him to sit down to a table to discuss the hold-up, the a.s.sault, and the terms of which the loot and the loot only will be returned. The bully takes it for granted that he is to go unpunished and, more important still, is to retain the club that he might decide to use again.

The rule of common sense that deals with individuals should be the same rule that applies to the affairs of nations. No munic.i.p.al law anywhere in the world gives countenance to a compromise with a criminal.

International law could be no less moral than munic.i.p.al law. Prussian militarism made the world unsafe for Democracy, and for that reason, on April 6th, 1917, the United States entered the war.

We wanted a decent world in which to live. And the existence of the Prussian army and its conscienceless masters was incompatible with the free and peaceful life of the world. We entered the war for an ideal.

That ideal was in the balance when Germany made her 1918 drive for peace.

Our army in France knew that if peace came with an unwhipped Prussian army in existence, the world would be just as unsafe for Democracy as it had ever been. Our army in France wanted no compromise that would leave Germany in possession of the instruments that had made possible her crimes against the world. Every man that had shed blood, every man that had paid the final price, every woman that had shed tears, every cherished ideal of our one hundred and forty years of national life, would have been sacrificed in vain, if we had condoned Germany's high crimes against civilisation and had made a compromise with the criminal.

Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, spokesman of the Allied world, sounded the true American note when, in his reply to the insincere German peace proposals, he referred the German Government to Marshal Foch, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies. War by the sword was to bring peace by the sword.

And as I write these lines in the last days of October, 1918, unconditional surrender is the song of the dove of peace perched on our bayonets as we march into the dawn of victory.