The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War Part 16

CHAPTER XVII

MILLION DOLLAR BARRAGE

At eleven o'clock that night, September 25th, a signal gun barked far down the line. The gunners of every battery were at their posts, lanyards in hand, and on the instant they pulled.

That has become known in the army as "the million dollar barrage,"

because enlisted men figured it must have cost at least that much.

Whatever it cost, no man in that great army ever had heard the like. It ranged from the smaller field pieces up to great naval guns firing sh.e.l.ls sixteen inches in diameter, with every variety and size of big gun in the American army in between. There had been talk in the war of a bombardment "reaching the intensity of drum fire." No drums the world ever has heard could have provided a name for that bombardment. It was overwhelming in the immensity of its sound, as well as in its effect.

There were 3,000 guns on the whole front.

Toward morning, the twelve ugly, snub-nosed weapons of the 103d Trench Mortar Battery, under Captain Ralph W. Knowles, of Philadelphia, added their heavy coughing to the monstrous serenade which rent the night.

They were in position well up to the front, and their great bombs were designed to cut paths through the enemy barbed wire and other barriers so the infantry could go forward with as little trouble as possible.

Zero hour for the infantry was 5.30 o'clock on that morning of September 26th. Watches of officers and non-commissioned officers had been carefully adjusted to the second the night before and when the moment arrived, the long lines went over the top without further notice.

The former National Guard of Pennsylvania was but one division among a great many in that attack, which covered a front of fifty-four miles from the Meuse clear over into the Champagne and which linked up there with the rest of the whole flaming western front. The American army alone covered twenty miles of attacking front, and beyond them extended General Gourard's French army to the west.

The full effect and result of the artillery preparation was realized only when the infantry went over the top. The early stages of the advance were described by observers as being more like a football game than a battle. The route was virtually clear of prepared obstructions, although there was hardly a stretch of six feet of level ground, and the German opposition was almost paralyzed.

The whole field of the forward movement was so pitted with sh.e.l.l craters as to make the going almost like mountain climbing. Over this field a part of the great battle of Verdun in 1916 had been fought and the pits scooped out by the artillery of that time, added to those due to the constant minor fire since, lay so close together that it was utterly impossible for all the men to make their way between. The craters left from the Verdun battle could be distinguished by the fact that their sides were covered with gra.s.s and that once in a while a few bones were to be seen, melancholy reminder of the brave men who died there.

Seen from observation posts in the rear, the advancing soldiers presented an odd picture, dropping suddenly from view as they went into a hole, then reappearing, clambering up the far side. They jumped over the edges, often into a pool of stagnant water with a bottom of slimy mud, and the climbing out was no easy task, burdened as they were with equipment.

It was now the season of the year when the days are still fairly warm, but the nights are keen and frosty. The men started out in the chill of the morning with their slickers, but as the day advanced they began to feel these an unbearable impediment in the heat and rush of battle and they discarded them. When night came they bitterly cursed their folly, for they were wretched with the cold.

The early morning was gray and forbidding. A heavy mist covered the land, hampering the air force in their work of observation, but overhead the sky was clear, giving promise of better visibility when the sun should heat the atmosphere and drive the mists away.

The infantry, with machine gunners in close support, went forward rapidly. They came to the first German trench line and crossed it almost without opposition. A surprising number of Germans emerged from dugouts, hands up, and inquired directions to the prison cages in the American rear. The Pennsylvanians were just beginning to feel the effect of the loss of morale in the enemy army.

To the surprise of our doughboys, the artillery opposing them was weak and ineffectual. To this fact is attributed the great number of what are known as "clean" wounds in the Argonne fight--bullet wounds which make a clean hole and heal quickly. In view of the great number of men struck during this campaign, it is extremely fortunate that this was so. Had the German artillery been anything like what it had been in other battles, our casualty lists would have been much more terrible, for it is the shrapnel and big sh.e.l.ls that tear men to pieces.

Beyond the first German line, which was just south of Grand Boureuilles and Pet.i.te Boureuilles, on opposite sides of the Aire river, the German defenses had not been so thoroughly destroyed and the resistance began to stiffen. Out from their shelters, as soon as the American barrage had pa.s.sed them, came hordes of Germans to man their concealed machine gun nests. The lessons of the Marne-Aisne drive had been well learned by the Pennsylvanians, and there were few frontal a.s.saults on these strong points, many of which were the famous concrete "pill boxes"--holes in the earth roofed over with rounded concrete and concealed by foliage and branches, with narrow slits a few inches above the surface of the earth to permit the guns to be sighted and fired.

When the infantry came to one of these that spat flame and steel in such volume that a direct attack threatened to be extremely costly, they pa.s.sed around it through the woods on either flank and left it to be handled by the forces coming up immediately in their rear, with trench mortars and one-pounder cannon, capable of demolis.h.i.+ng the concrete structures.

The infantry pa.s.sed beyond the area in which the artillery and trench mortars had wiped out the barbed wire and ran into much difficulty with the astounding network of this defensive material woven through the trees. The Germans had boasted that the Argonne forest was a wooded fortress that never could be taken. American troops proved the vanity of that boast, but they went through an inferno to do it. The wire was a maze, laced through the forest from tree to tree, so that hours were consumed in covering ground which, but for the wire, could have been covered in almost as many minutes. The men had literally to cut and hack their way through yard after yard.

The towns of Boureuilles, great and small, were cleaned up after smart fighting, and the advance was continued up the beautiful Aire River valley in the direction of Varennes.

The Pennsylvania infantry was advancing in two columns. The 55th Brigade, including the 109th and 110th Infantry regiments, was right along the river, and the 56th Brigade, made up of the 111th and 112th, went through the forest on the left, or west of the river. On the right of the Twenty-eighth Division was the Thirtieth Division, consisting of National Guard troops of North and South Carolina and Tennessee, and on the left was the Seventy-seventh Division, selected men from New York State.

The town of Varennes stands in a bowl-shaped valley, rich in historic significance and, at the time our men reached there, gorgeous in the autumnal colorings of the trees. It was at Varennes that Louis XVI was captured when he attempted to escape from France.

Coming up from the south to the high ground surrounding Varennes, the Iron Division forged ahead faster than the troops on their right could move through the forest. Before the officers and men of the liaison service could apprise the Pennsylvania commanders of this fact, they discovered it for themselves when a hot fire was poured in on their flank from German "pill boxes" and other strong points.

It was decided, since the troops were rolling onward in fine style, not to halt the division while the other division caught up, so Major Thompson was sent off to the east with a battalion of the 110th to look after that flanking fire. The battalion disappeared into the woods, and in a little while a sharp increase in the sound of the firing from that direction indicated that it was hard at work. After some time it came back into its position in the line. The other division had easier going for a time as a result of the efforts of the four companies of Pennsylvanians, and the embarra.s.sing fire from the right flank was silenced.

After a number of the German "pill boxes" had been reduced and entered by the Pennsylvania troops, it was discovered that they were, like so many other German contrivances and devices of the war, largely bluff. In instance after instance, where the intensity of the fire from these places had led our men to expect a garrison of a dozen men they found only one. The retreating Germans had left a single soldier with a large supply of rifles to give the impression of a considerable force manning the fort. Prisoners said their instructions had been to fire as rapidly as possible and as long as possible and to die fighting, without thought of surrender.

When the Pennsylvanians forced their way to the lower crest of the ridge looking down into the valley where Varennes lies, the edge of the Argonne forest to the westward still was occupied by enemy machine gunners. Officers of the division stepped out from the shelter of trees and looked over the ground with their gla.s.ses to plan the next phase of the attack. German snipers promptly sighted them and in a moment bullets were singing through the trees above their heads and to both sides, but they remained unperturbed.

"Get me an idea of what is over in that wood," said General Muir to his aides, and Lieutenant Raymond A. Brown, of Meadville, Pa., and Captain William B. Morgan, of Beverly, Ma.s.s., started out on the risky mission.

Lieutenant Brown's pistol was packed in his blanket roll. He borrowed a rifle and a cartridge belt from a private soldier. Three hours later they returned and made reports upon which were based the next actions of the troops. They told nothing of their experiences, but Lieutenant Brown had added a German wrist watch to his equipment and Captain Morgan showed a pair of shoulder straps which indicated that the troops opposing them were Brandenburgers.

As they went down the far side of the hill toward Varennes, the Pennsylvania soldiers saw an amazing evidence of German industry. The whole slope was painstakingly terraced and furnished with dugouts in tiers, leading off the terraces. The shelters of the officers were fitted out with attractive porticos and arbors.

As evidence of the hurried retreat of the Huns, who apparently had not dreamed the Americans could advance so swiftly through their leafy fortress, a luncheon, untouched, lay upon a table in an officer's dugout. At the head of the table was an unopened letter.

In another dugout was an upright piano, which must have been looted from the town and lugged up the hill at the cost of great labor. But, most astonis.h.i.+ng of all, upon the piano was sheet music published in New York, as shown by the publisher's name, long after America entered the war. Our officers puzzled long over how the music could have got there, but found no solution.

CHAPTER XVIII

"AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION"

Varennes itself was virtually a wreck by the time our men reached it.

Most of the buildings were cut off about the second story by sh.e.l.l fire.

An electric plant, installed by the Germans and which they had attempted to wreck before leaving, was repaired by Pennsylvania mechanics and soon was ready to furnish illumination for the Americans.

Crates of live rabbits, left behind by the Germans in their flight, were found by the Pennsylvanians and turned over to the supply officers, and in the evening an officers' mess sat down to a stewed rabbit dinner in the open square of the ruined town, in the shadow of the gaping sides of the wrecked church. In addition to the army ration issue, the meal and others for some days were helped out by a plentiful supply of cabbage, radishes, potatoes, cauliflower, turnips and other vegetables, taken from the pretty little gardens which the Germans had planted and carefully nurtured.

While the Pennsylvanians were at Varennes, a great automobile came roaring down the hill from the south and slithered to a halt where a group of our soldiers had been lolling on the ground resting. They were not there by the time the car stopped. Instead, they were erect and soldierly, every man at attention and hands jerked up to the salute with sharp precision. For the flag upon the car bore four stars and it was all the men could do to keep from rude "gaping" at the tall, handsome man inside, who called to them pleasantly:

"What division is this?"

Most of the men were tongue-tied with surprise and embarra.s.sment, but one responded:

"The Twenty-eighth, sir."

"Ah! You have an enviable reputation," was the reply from the man in the car. "I should like to lunch with your division today."

Which he thereupon proceeded to do. As the car pa.s.sed on, a group of very red-faced private soldiers looked each other in the eye in a startled way and one voiced the thought of all when he said:

"And that was General Pers.h.i.+ng! And he spoke to us! Gee!"

The 103d Engineers again were covering themselves with glory in this Argonne drive. Time after time they were sent out to repair existing roads and construct new ones, often working right on the heels of the infantry, for only after they had performed their work could supplies be brought up to the fighting troops and the artillery maintain position to continue the barrage in advance of the infantry and machine gunners.

The 103d Supply Train, too, performed its work under incredible difficulties. Doughboys rarely thought to give a word of praise to the men of the big camions. More often their comment was: "Gee! Pretty soft for you fellows, riding around in a high-powered truck while we slog through the mud!"

But to those who knew of the trying night drives in utter darkness over roads which not only were torn to tatters already by sh.e.l.ls, but which were subject at any time to renewed sh.e.l.ling; of the long stretches without sleep or food or drink; of the struggles with motors and other parts of the trucks which fell heir to every kind of trouble such things are liable to under great stress--only to that understanding few, and to the supply chaps themselves, were their activities regarded as subject for praiseful comment. Had the supply train "fallen down on the job" and "chow" not been ready at every opportunity--which truly were few and far enough between--Oh, then the doughboys would have howled in execration at their brothers of the big lorries.

The same kind of credit was due as much and given as rarely to the 103d Ammunition Train, which kept all the fighting men supplied without stint and without break with the necessary powder and steel to keep the Hun on the run.

Even the men of the four field hospitals found themselves nearer the front than such organizations usually go. So well had the plans been laid for that opening a.s.sault that it was realized the hospitals would have to be well forward to avoid too long a carry for the wounded after the first rush had carried our men well beyond their "jumping-off-place."