Our Army at the Front Part 16

"Bravo, the young Americans! Nothing in to-day's battle narrative from the front is more exhilarating than the account of their fight at Cantigny. It was clean-cut from beginning to end, like one of their countrymen's short stories, and the short story of Cantigny is going to expand into a full-length novel, which will write the doom of the Kaiser and Kaiserism. We expected it. We have seen those young Americans in London, and merely to glance at them was to know that they are conquerors and brothers in that great Anglo-Saxon-Latin compact which will bring down the Prussian idol.... They do not swagger, and they have no war illusions. They have done their first job with swift precision, characteristic of the United States, and Cantigny will one day be repeated a thousand-fold."

_The Times_ wrote:

"Our allies know the significance of that as well as we do. So, too, do the German generals and the German statesmen. It means that the last great factor between autocracy and freedom is coming into effective play on the battle-field.... There could be no reflection more heartening for the Allies or more dismaying to their adversaries."

"Their adversaries," meanwhile, were doing what they could to keep their dismay to themselves. In the German announcement of the loss of Cantigny there was mention only of "the enemy." The German people were not to know for a while that the "ridiculous little American Army" had got to work.

CHAPTER XXI

TEUFEL-HUNDEN

No branch of service in the American Army was so quick to achieve group consciousness as the marines. To be sure, these soldiers of the sea had a considerable tradition behind them before they came to France. The world is never so peaceful that there is nothing for the marines to do.

Always there is some spot for them to land and put a situation into hand. It is no fault of the marines that most of these brushes have been little affairs, and they have found, as Mr. Kipling says, that "the things that you learn from the yellow and brown will 'elp you a heap with the white."

The Navy Department has always been careful to preserve the tradition of the marines. The organization has never lacked for intelligent publicity. "First to fight" was a slogan which brought many a recruit into the corps. Even the dreary work of policing, which falls largely to the marines, has been dramatized to a certain extent by that fine swaggering couplet of their song:

"If the army or the navy ever gaze on heaven's scenes, They will find the streets are guarded by United States marines."

The belief that the marines would make a distinctive mark in the great World War was practically unanimous. Army officers couldn't deny it, war correspondents hastened to proclaim it, and the Germans admitted it by bestowing the name "Teufel-hunden" (devil-dogs) on the marines immediately after their first engagement. The marines themselves were second to no one in the consciousness of their own prowess.

"I understand," said a little marine just two days off the transport, "that this Kaiser isn't afraid of the American Army so much, but that he is afraid of the marines."

The boy didn't say whether one of his officers had told him that, but his belief was pa.s.sionate and complete. However, the marines did not allow their high confidence to interfere in any way with their preparations. They showed the same anxiety to make good on the training-fields that they later displayed on the line. Their camp in the American area was just a bit farther from the centre of things than that of any other organization. Whenever there was a review or a special show of any sort for a distinguished visitor, the marines had to march twelve miles to attend. And after that it was twelve miles home again. But they thrived on hard work. They shot, bayoneted, and bombed just a little better than any other organization in the first division. Sometimes individual marines would complain a little about the fact that they were worked harder than any men in the division, but they always took care to add that they had finished the construction of their practice-trench system days before any of the others. When they mentioned the fact that they had achieved this result by working in day and night s.h.i.+fts it was never possible to tell whether they were airing a grievance or making a boast. It is probable that they were something of the mind of Job, whose boils were both a tribulation and a triumph.

There was no doubt as to the opinion of the marines when it seemed for a time as if they might not get into the fighting. They did not go into the trenches with the first division, but were broken up and sent to various points for police duty. Of course they were bitterly disappointed, but they merely policed a little harder, and it was a severe winter for soldiers who went about with their overcoats unb.u.t.toned, or committed other breaches of military regulations.

Since the marines did hard work well, they were rewarded by more hard work, and this was labor more to their taste. The reward came suddenly.

On May 30 a unit of marines was in a training-camp so far back of the lines that it was impossible to hear the sound of the guns even when the Germans turned everything loose for a big offensive. On that same day the Germans reached the Marne east of Chateau-Thierry and began an advance along the north bank toward the city. That night the marines were ordered to the front.

They rode almost a hundred kilometres to get into the fight. It was late afternoon when they reached a hill overlooking Chateau-Thierry. French guns all about them were being fired up to their very limit or a little beyond. The Germans were coming on. These marines had never been in a battle before, with the exception of a few who had chased little brown rebels in various brief encounters on small islands. They had never been under sh.e.l.l fire. And this their first engagement was one of the biggest in the greatest war in history. From the hill they could see houses fold up and fields pucker under the pounding of big guns. The marines were told that as soon as darkness came they would march into the town and hold the bridges against the German Army, which was coming on. Somebody asked a French officer some days later how these green troops had taken their experience as they waited the word to go forward. "They were concombres," said the Frenchman. Our word is cuc.u.mbers.

Finally, the order came for the advance. It was a dark night, but the marines could see their way forward well enough. The German bombardment had set fire to the railroad-station. The Americans kept in the shadows as much as they could, but they danced around so much that it was difficult. They placed their machine-guns here and there behind walls and new barricades, so that they could enfilade the approaches to the bridges and the streets on the opposite side of the river. One lieutenant with twelve men and two guns took up a position across the river. It was up to him to stand off the first rush.

The sh.e.l.ling from the enemy guns was intensified during the night, but the infantry had not yet reached the town. It was five o'clock of a bright morning when the little advance post of the Americans saw the Germans coming across the open field toward the river. They were marching along carelessly in two columns and there were twelve men in every line. One of the machine-guns swung her nose around a little and the fight was on. At last the American was definitely in one of the major engagements of the war. American machine-gunners were doing their bit to block the advance on Paris. All day long the marines held the Germans back with their machine-guns. And that night they beat back a German ma.s.s attack when the Boches came on and on in waves, with men locked arm in arm. They could hear them, for they sang as they rushed forward, and the machine-gunners pumped their bullets into the spots where the notes were loudest.

The next day the Americans were forced to give some ground when the order came to retire, but they had been through, perhaps, the most intensive two days of training which ever fell to the lot of green troops.

The marines did not have to wait long for retaliation. Other units of marines from other camps had been hurrying up to the front, and on June 6 an offensive was launched on a front of two and a half miles. The first day's gain was two and three-sixteenth miles and 100 prisoners were captured. This attack yielded all the important high ground northwest of Chateau-Thierry. The marines did not rest with this gain.

They struck again at five o'clock in the afternoon, and by June 7 the attack had grown to much greater proportions. Four villages, Vinly, Veuilly-la-Poterie, Torcy, and Bouresches, fell into the hands of the French and Americans. The thrust was pressed to a maximum depth of two miles on a ten-mile front. More than 300 prisoners were captured by the Americans. The attack was carried out under American command, Major-General James G. Harbord being in charge of the operation.

As in the Cantigny offensive, the Americans worked with great speed, and showed that they could make the rifle an effective weapon even under the changed conditions of modern warfare. But though they were swift they were not silent. They went over the top shouting like Indians, and they kept up the noise as they went forward. The second attack was carried out by the same men who had advanced in the morning. The early showing had been so promising that it was decided to go on, particularly as the Germans seemed to be somewhat shaken by the violence of the a.s.sault. In this new sweep the marines took ground on either side of Belleau Wood.

They also captured the ravine south of Torcy. The Germans were not able to organize an effective counter-attack immediately, for they had been too much surprised by the thrust. Also the effective work of the American artillery made it difficult for the Germans to bring up fresh troops.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Copyright by the Committee on Public Information._

U. S. Marines in readiness to march to the front.]

In the rough country over which the battle was fought there was opportunity for the fight to disintegrate into the little eddies where individual initiative counts for so much. In a fight near Le Thiolet, Captain James O. Green, Jr., found himself cut off by the Germans. He was accompanied by five privates. Back at regimental headquarters Green had already been reported as killed or captured. He proved the need of clerical revision, for he and his men fought their way back to the American lines. At one point ten Germans tried to intercept him, but the six Americans succeeded in killing or wounding every member of the enemy party. A single marine who was taking back a prisoner ran into two German officers and ten men. He fell upon them with rifle and bayonet and disposed of both officers and several of the men. Then he made his escape. Somebody told the marine when he got back to the American lines that he certainly had been "in luck."

"h.e.l.l! no," said the fighting man; "they took my prisoner away from me."

Still another marine was captured while dazed by a blow on the head. He recovered in time to deal his captor a tremendous punch on the jaw, and made his way back to the American lines. The favorite slogan of the Americans was: "Each man get a German; don't let a German get you."

Early on June 8 the Germans launched a counter-attack against the American position between Bouresches and Le Thiolet. This attack broke down. The trenches which the Americans held were new and shallow, but the troops were well supplied with machine-guns, and the German infantry never got closer than within a couple of hundred yards of the position.

The marines were not yet content with their success. They took the initiative again on June 10 and smashed into the German lines for about two-thirds of a mile on a 600-yard front. In this attack two minenwerfer were captured. The object of the attack was to clean out Belleau Wood.

The Germans retained only the northern fringe.

By this time the offensive had ceased to be wholly a marine affair. The 9th and 23d Regiments of infantry, comprising what is known as the Syracuse Brigade, took up their positions on the right of the soldiers of the sea. During the next few days the Germans made several violent counter-attacks, but without success, and on June 26 the Americans pushed their gains still further by a successful a.s.sault south of Torcy, in which more than 250 Germans were captured. This victory gave Pers.h.i.+ng's men absolute command of the Bois de Belleau, which was the strategic point for which the Germans had fought so hard.

It was after the Chateau-Thierry offensive that for the first time the American Army won a place in the German official communique. Before that they had been simply "the enemy," and once, upon the occasion of a successful German raid, North American troops. But now Berlin unbent a little and used the term "an American regiment." Germany was prepared to admit that America was in the war. It is just possible that some of their men who broke before the rush of the marines returned to give headquarters the information.

CHAPTER XXII

THE ARMY OF MANUVRE

While the American Army was showing its quality in the minor battles of Seicheprey, Cantigny, Chateau-Thierry, and Vaux, and its quant.i.ty was showing itself in leaps of hundreds of thousands of men a month, a destiny was shaping for it, equally in circ.u.mstances and in the mind of Generalissimo Foch, which was to be even greater than that it had sacrificed in late March, when it submerged its ident.i.ty and said: "Put us where you will."

For when, on July 18, the fifth German offensive suddenly s.h.i.+vered into momentary equilibrium and then rolled back, with Foch and the Allies pounding behind it, and when this counter-attack developed into a continuing offensive which was to straighten the Marne salient and throw back the Germans from before Amiens and do the future only knows what else besides, the Allied world said, in one voice: "Foch has found his army of manuvre, and it's the Americans."

This "army of manuvre" has always been the king-pin of French strategy. While the Germans were trying two systems--first, the broad front attack which trusted to overbear by sheer weight anything which opposed it, and, second, the so-called Hutier system of draining the line of all its best fighters, and organizing shock troops immeasurably above the average for offensive, while the line was held by the rag-tag and bobtail--the French stuck to their traditional system. This was to hold the lines with the lightest possible number of men, of the highest possible caliber, and to thrust with a mobile force, foot-loose and ready to be swung wherever a spot seemed likely to give way.

It was with the "army of manuvre," thrown up from Paris in frantic haste by Gallieni, in taxicabs and trucks, that General Foch made the miraculous plunge through the Saxon army at Fere-en-Tardenois, in September, 1914, which saved the first battle of the Marne.

When General Foch became generalissimo, in late March, just after the first German offensive on March 21 had thrown the British back, and when the French were retreating at Montdidier, the expectation universally was that the Allies would begin an offensive, within the shortest possible time. Foch had been quoted all over the world as saying that "defensive fighting was no defense." Yet April, May, and June pa.s.sed, and part of July, and except for scattering attacks along the Marne salient, and patient rear-guard action when the retreats were necessary, the Allies made no move.

The Austrian debacle came and went. Foch had Italy off his mind, and the Italians were more than taking care of themselves. Still he did not strike. And finally it became clear that he was showing this long patience because he wanted what every Frenchman wants first in every battle, and what he did not surely have until July--his army of manuvre.

The fitness of the American Army for this brilliant use was dual: first, that its source was virtually inexhaustible; second, that it was better at offensive than defensive fighting.

The American Army had a quality, and the defect of that quality: it wanted to get to Berlin regardless of tactics. And while General Foch was trusting to time to prove to them that, pleasant or unpleasant, the tactics had to be observed, he turned their spectacular fire and exuberance to direct account.

Of course, the American troops in France then ready to fight could not alone make up the Allied army of manuvre. They were the core of it, however, and their growing numbers guaranteed it almost indefinitely, so that the attack of which it was to be the backbone could safely be begun. Some of the troops originally intended for welding with the British and French Armies were kept in the line without change.

But in the main the statement was true: the American Army was to rove behind the Allied lines till Foch discovered or divined a German weakness to strike into.

In the second battle of the Marne, begun that July 18, when the Allies took the offensive again for the first time in more than a year, the crown prince and his army of approximately half a million were tucked down in the Marne salient, driving for Paris. The German line came down from Soissons to Chateau-Thierry, ran east from Chateau-Thierry along the Marne River, then turned up again to Rheims. In a s.p.a.ce about thirty miles square the crown prince had imprudently poured all his troops, which, for the fifth offensive, begun July 15, included about a third of the man-power of the western front.

The Allied troops lying around the three sides of this salient were French and American on the western side, Americans across the bottom, east from Chateau-Thierry, and French, British, and Italian from the Marne up to Rheims. While the French and British were squeezing in the two sides at the top, it was the American job to keep the Germans from bursting out from the bottom, and, if possible, to break through or roll them back.

The Americans began the attack east of Chateau-Thierry, where the Germans had crossed the Marne and lay a few miles to the south of it.

There had been lesser actions here for several days, in the process of stopping the enemy offensive, and by the morning of the 18th the Americans dominated the positions around the Marne. The first day of the counter-offensive had magnificent results. The Germans were forced back on a 28-mile front, for a depth varying from 3 to 6 miles, and the Americans captured 4,000 prisoners and 50 guns. Twenty French towns were delivered, and the Germans began what appeared to be a precipitate retreat. Foch's attack was mainly on the flank of the crown prince's army, which had been left exposed in the rush toward Epernay and Chalons, far south of the Marne.