Chapter XVIII: American Achievements on the Western Front (2)

Following the attack by the American army on the Meuse-Argonne line and the 4th French Army on its left with their threat toward the lines of communications, the British and French were to strike the Hindenburg line in the St. Quentin-Cambrai region on September 29, 1918, and on October 2, 1918, the French were to attack to the east of Rheims. Thus a succession of offensives were to broaden the whole front of operations in an effort to break through the old trench line, all the way from the Meuse to the North Sea, and bring the Allied armies into the open where they would be forever free of trench shackles. This was a most audacious enterprise which was warranted by the information which the Allies had of the state of the German army. The Bulgarian army was beginning to disintegrate and the Italians had turned the Austrian offensive on the Piave into a disaster from which the Austro-Hungarian armies could not recover. Throughout the months of August and September, 1918, the Germans had been yielding large numbers of prisoners and an immense quantity of material, while the Allied losses had been comparatively light.

The German cards were now on the table; the number of German divisions in reserve were known; and in the arrival of American divisions the Allies had a vast store of man power. We had become the dependable quantity of a mighty growing reserve force.

Marshal Foch chose to put us in the very hinge of the whole movement and he set for our objective in a swift series of advances nothing less than the heights of Buzancy--the heights of the whaleback itself. Had we gained that within three or four days, we would have threatened the retreat of the whole German army, indeed, the capture of a hundred thousand or more Germans would have been fairly certain. No one considered such a success except in the category of a military miracle until German reserves were more depleted than they were at the end of September.

Ludendorff, on his side, knew that he must hold the hinge of the door. He might yield toward the west, if necessary, but must not yield in front of Mezieres and Sedan. The neck of the bottle must not be closed. The measure of our initial success, whatever the intrepidity of our attack, must depend largely upon how far we were able to take the Germans by surprise, and the depth of our advance must depend upon our ability to bring up our artillery and ammunition and food for our men. To the rear of the line from the Meuse to the Argonne Forest there are literally only two roads of approach. If we attempted to build more, they would immediately be visible to the aeroplane observers of the enemy. We could not build more when our engineers and our laborers were occupied at Saint Mihiel.

If we arranged elaborate dumps of ammunition, these would inevitably be seen by the enemy or their presence would be communicated in some way as past experience had proved. To move long columns of troops and transport by day was equally an advertisement of our plan for an enormous attack which was the thing that we wished to conceal when the success of the attack was to depend upon secret mobilization and a swift blow. If we were to repair the old roads across the broad area of the shell-crushed no-man's-land and through the trench systems after our attack, this also required the assembling of a great deal of material in view of the enemy.

No part of a modern army's arrangements is more difficult than the handling of the necessarily dense vehicular traffic behind the immediate front, even if ample supplies are brought to the railheads. The numbers of motor trucks and ambulances required were incredible. Our Service of Supply, which had been concentrating all its energies and material toward Saint Mihiel, now had to prepare for another equally great offensive. New railheads, new railways, new hospitals, new headquarters, and new routes of transport had to be established. With the certainty that the Saint Mihiel sector, if it became violent, would consume large quantities of ammunition we had to provide for the immense consumption of ammunition which would undoubtedly be required in the Meuse-Argonne.

The continued fighting throughout the summer, with additional and unexpected requirements for the new offensive campaign, had made increasingly heavy drafts upon transport and animals. It was no use to say that more horses were coming from Spain and from America; they were needed now. All the tanks and aeroplanes and the light and heavy artillery which were in the making at home or on the docks at New York would be of no service unless they were in the battle. The lack of sufficient railway lines and shortage of rolling stock required accordingly more travel on the limited roads approaching the area of concentration east and west of Verdun.

When artillery, in course of being withdrawn from the Saint Mihiel front to go to the Argonne front, had their horses killed, the weary survivors who were now to draw the guns could not be forced through according to the usual schedule. They had to cross the streams of traffic running to the Saint Mihiel front. At night all the roads were solid columns of men and vehicles that had to keep at the uniform pace of the slowest of its units lest motor transport, which could go fifteen miles an hour, in trying to pass tractor-drawn heavy artillery that could go three or four, should become imbedded in the mud and thus stall the whole column for hours.

Thus the unprecedented strain of the Meuse-Argonne Battle, which was to endure for six weeks, began with the difficulties of mobilization. During the Chateau-Thierry operations we had had summer weather, when men could sleep in the open with comfort, when it was easy to repair broken roads and when motor trucks which got off the road did not sink into the mud. Now we had already entered the period of chill fall rains which made the ground porous and wet marching soldiers to the skin. Instead of time for reflection and reorganization, in applying the lesions of the Saint Mihiel salient, every officer and man was straining his utmost to make sure by improvisation, when organization failed and by sheer sleepless industry, of meeting with forced smiles each new contingency as it developed.

Our three corps in line were, the first under General Liggett on the left, the fifth under General Cameron in the center, and the third under General Bullard on the right. The corps headquarters were established only four days before the attack. Unfamiliar except in theory, and from what they had learned at Saint Mihiel, with the problems of directing an army in a prolonged battle, they had not a quarter of the time for preparations which they ordinarily should have received even if they had had long experience. They did not know the division commanders or the divisions which were to serve under them, and the divisions did not arrive until the last moment.

Artillery brigades, fresh from the training grounds where they had only received their guns, marched up to be assigned to divisions with which they had never cooperated in action. Batteries that had no horses depended upon batteries that had horses to be drawn into position. The coordination of infantry units for the attack was dependent upon coordination by paper directions rather than previous association.

We had an enormous concentration of artillery and of aviation, thanks to assistance from the French, but our aviation and much of that of the French sent us was new. Our aviators lacked experience as observers in keeping their liaison in directing artillery fire and in informing the infantry of the movements of their units and of the enemy's. Infantry and artillery commanders who had had little previous battle experience, were not always fortunate in their efforts to keep liaison with one another and with the aviation in view of the aviation's inexperience. To say that the American army was ready for such an offensive as that of the Meuse-Argonne would be unfair to the men who began the battle and detracting from the glory of their achievement. Her courage, eagerness, adaptability, and industry were merits which were to overcome the handicaps in a way that made results even more glorious in the greatest battle of our history.

Aside from the fact that two of the divisions in line were going under fire for the first time there was not one of the divisions which was not handicapped in some way for their effort, either for want of artillery or because they had had no time to rest after hard marches or previous battles. In the space of this brief review it is impossible to tell of their actions in detail which reflected credit on each one of the Regular, National Guard, or National Army divisions, and which, taken together, reflected credit upon the army as a whole.

On the right was Bell's 33d Division of Illinois National Guard. At its back was the famous _Mort Homme_, or Dead Man's Hill, where Frenchmen and Germans had struggled in the battle of Verdun, with its shell craters now fringed with weeds. The 33d had to cross the Forges Brook and swing in toward the Meuse River protecting the right flank of the whole movement which rested on the river. On the left of the 33d was the 80th, Cronkhite's Blue Ridge Division, trained at the British front and come from Saint Mihiel. Next in line was the 4th Regular Division, which, coming fresh from the British front, had fought magnificently in the Chateau-Thierry operations. On its left was Kuhn's 79th, the National Army Division from Camp Meade, which had never heard a shot fired until it marched up amidst the roar of guns and artillery preparation. Then we had Farnsworth's 37th, National Guard of Ohio, which with unconquerable persistence was to take the wicked Malancourt Woods; and then the 91st Division of the National Army from the Pacific slope which was to give such a remarkable exhibition of continued and determined advance. Next we had Traub's 85th Division, National Guard from Kansas and Missouri, which was set the dreadful task of taking the heights on the west of the Aire river and of crossing the Exermont ravine. Next was Muir's 28th, or "Iron" Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, which was in the valley of the Aire and faced the wooded heights of the Argonne which were thrust out Gibraltarlike into the valley. Finally, on the extreme left was the 77th, National Army from New York (now under command of Alexander), facing the heart of the formidable Argonne Forest.

Some of these divisions had more difficult obstacles than others to overcome. Their relative position in line was due less to a strategic arrangement, with any view to their experience or to their exhaustion in relation to their objectives, than to the relation of their positions to the roads by which they had had to travel in reaching the front. Up to this time the 4th, the 77th, and the 28th had probably seen the most fighting. They had just come from the Chateau-Thierry operations and in common with all the other divisions, were short of transport and had to make forced marches.

All the men of all the divisions had either been sleeping in box cars on railroad trains or they had been in the miserable crowded billets of small villages, getting what rest, after marching at night, they could during the day, in the midst of the rumble of traffic. No corps, divisional, regimental, or battalion commander, no chief of one of the staff sections who had anything to do with the direction of traffic, could say quite how this was accomplished, except by sleepless vigil and grim, sweating effort, but the fact was that the miracle had happened; for on the night of September 24, 1918, every division was in position, with a thin fringe of the French remaining in the front line in order to prevent the Germans, if they took any prisoners, from identifying the number of American divisions which were present.

Marshal Foch had now postponed the attack until the 26th; this gave the men a day in which to rest as much as they could, and a little more time for the artillery and staff to make its preparation.

General Pershing, who was to direct the battle in person, had taken up his headquarters in the city hall of the village of Souilly on the "sacred road" from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun where the French commanders had planned the defense against the great German offensive of 1916.

On the morning of the 26th, after six hours of artillery preparation, the waves of infantry of these nine divisions which had now assembled in the front-line trenches, relieving the French, went over the top in beginning the greatest battle in American history. The fortifications which they attacked represented the result of all the experience which the Germans, in their antlike industry, had applied in preparing their defenses. No-man's-land had been pummeled by four years of shell fire until the rims of shell craters joined. The weeds which had grown up hid the rims, slippery in the morning mist, and made footing more uncertain on the soft turf. The barbed-wire entanglements were deep, in keeping with the formidability of the German trench system. When they built these works, the Germans rightly considered them impregnable. The story of every battalion that attacked that morning, as well as every battalion that participated in the Argonne Battle, is worthy of a lengthier description than I am giving to the whole operations of the American Expeditionary Force.

It is usual in such attacks that, at many points of the line where the enemy's barbed wire has not been cut by the artillery fire, or where machine-gun nests are strategically placed, portions of the advancing wave of infantry are held up with the result that succeeding portions push on until they are caught in salients in enfilade fire. This leads to confusion and frequently to arresting the whole attack, or at least to interfering with the plan, thus giving the enemy time to bring up his reserves and profit by his opportunity. This had happened in the Somme offensive, at Loos, at Passchendaele and in the fifth and last German offensive and, indeed, in every big offensive on the western front. There was every reason why it should happen this time to the eye of any experienced observer who had not the youthful enthusiasm of our soldiers, who in their ingrained American offensive spirit, attacked in a manner as confident as if they were used to breaking first-line trench systems as a part of their routine of drill.

It was this spirit, on that memorable morning, that carried the fortifications at every point. By every rule, by every precedent, after they had gone through the barbed-wire and in and out of the maze of trenches and then over the shell craters of No-man's-land they ought, even if they had not been under fire, to have lost their uniformity of line and formed into irregular groups. But instead of this they kept on going, overcoming the enemy's machine-gun nests and gathering in prisoners, when sheer fatigue ought to have stopped them. By night some of them had reached objectives five and six miles beyond the front line.

The daring stroke of throwing our army against the Meuse-Argonne line straight at the enemy's communications had already had its reward; although the Germans had been warned of the attack, they had no idea that it would be in such force. They recognized at once that the threat against the Lille-Metz railroad was serious. They must bring up good divisions and enough of them, and sufficient artillery, to make sure that it was arrested.

Our task, now, was the thankless one of continuing to draw more and more divisions against us in the consciousness that every German whom we held or whom we killed or wounded was one more removed from the British or French fronts. We were to have the stiffest fighting of any part of the line, and the value in what we did was not to be reckoned in ground gained, but in damage done the enemy. During the following days we continued to advance while the Germans settled down in strength in front of us and established themselves in the strong trench line of the Kriemhilde Stellung across a series of commanding heights. Our divisions, exhausted after a week or more of fighting, had to be relieved by rested divisions which were called to the front including the 3d and the 5th and 1st Divisions of Regulars. We had to weaken our line a little owing to the necessities of transport.

The embargo on building roads before the attack, and our inability to bring up engineering material, and our lack of labor and sufficient experience in handling traffic, which can only be learned in battle, led to inevitable congestion. The area of shell craters, extending for half a mile or more as well as across no-man's-land, which consisted simply of earth pulverized by four years of shell fire, seemed to have no bottom to the engineers who worked night and day in order to make the passage of the artillery and the heavy motor trucks possible. In the dripping rain and penetrating cold, taking what sleep they might steal in wet clothes, all hands kept ceaselessly at their task while the men in the front line were digging "fox holes" in the seeping slopes of hills among the roots of trees of gassed woods and in ravines. The issue was joined in stubborn and bitter fighting in which it was the American plan always to keep the initiative and the upper hand over the enemy and to force him to put in more and more of his decreasing reserves.

We still had our Second Corps with the British under the command of Major General George W. Read, consisting of O'Ryan's 27th National Guard Division from New York and Lewis's 30th National Guard Division from the Southern mountain States. They had assisted in driving the Germans out of the positions they had won in the Ypres salient in April, 1918. After that they were swung around across the old Somme battle field, and in keeping with the policy of the Allied command, which recognized the confident valor of our men in the attack, they were to be sent against one of the strongest portions of the old Hindenburg line, that of the region over the St. Quentin Canal tunnel. Allied commanders said that the sheer presence of our troops in the offensive inspirited their own. The homesickness of our men who knew that they could not return until they had won the war was an impelling influence to force the issue now that their quick intelligence assured them that victory depended upon pressing the enemy hard.

Though the 27th and 30th Divisions were never to be associated with their own army, on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of September, 1918, they were to know in the company of the British the same kind of fighting that we had in breaking the line in the Argonne, as they charged through the enemy's barrages and against his machine-gun nests for the conquest of the famous positions which had taken the name of Hindenburg, who had given them his especial attention and who had declared that they never could be taken. The 30th made a clean sweep, but it was not in human power for the 27th Division to reach all of its objectives. The gallant men of the 27th had, however, in two days' fighting, immortalized their division before the Australians, coming fresh into the line, took their place according to schedule and completed the task.

Throughout the offensives of August and September, 1918, the German positions in front of Rheims had remained where they were established in September of 1914. On October 2, 1918, in an offensive in this sector, Le Jeune's 2d Division with its brigades of Regulars and Marines, which led all our divisions in the number of its casualties in this war, was joined with the French in an attack to disengage Rheims; and when, after fighting its way through the deep trenches cut in the chalky soil of Champagne, the 2d stormed Blanc Mont, the German guns had fired their last shot at the cathedral and were in retreat. Smith's 36th Division of National Guard, from Texas, which was without its artillery and which had never been under fire, took the place of the 2d, and, after enduring with an amazing equanimity a terrific bombardment from the German guns before they withdrew, pursued the enemy to the Aisne at a rate of travel worthy of Texans and most discomforting to German veterans.

We now return to the Meuse-Argonne Battle, where as I have said, the issue was joined in "hammering it out on this line" tactics, and divisions which had fought with lion-hearted determination until they were staggering with exhaustion and their ranks depleted by casualties, were withdrawn in order that fresh divisions might take their place. Some divisions either for one reason or another were able to remain in longer than others. The harder a division's experience the more it suffered from what is known as "dispersion"; its units, either in their continued advances or in resisting attacks and counterattacks in the midst of continued shell fire, lost their cohesion. How they kept cohesion even for a day was a marvel past understanding. A division which had only a portion of its troops at a time in the front line could last longer than a division that had put all its reserves into action and had worn out the personnel of the whole division.

Much depended upon the division commander and his staff. If he were capable and his division well-trained, he could accomplish results through prompt tactical adaptability to the situation on his front without unnecessary sacrifice of his men. In holding ground against machine-gun fire the fewer men on the front the better. The object was always to gain, of course, the maximum of advantage at the minimum of cost. When our lines settled down in a position it was not to intrench according to the old system, but simply to bide their time for another attack.

There was no thought but the offensive. The days of trench warfare were entirely over. The contact with the enemy was through outpost lines in fox holes and machine-gun positions chosen carefully with a view to interlocking fire that covered every possible path or avenue of approach. With the Germans bringing up fresh artillery and countless machine guns in full realization of the situation it became evident that further advance by piecemeal was impracticable and that another general attack should be made along the old battle front.

Across the Meuse River on our right flank were a series of heights ideal for artillery positions, overlooking not only the valley, but all the ravines, the roads, and open places. Thus our 3d Corps, swinging toward the whaleback, was literally in a trough of fire from the heights of the whaleback in front and in flank and from the heights across the Meuse in flank. On our left flank our 1st Corps was in the same hateful position as our 3d on our right. The 28th Division was fighting against the wooded escarpments which extended from the bastion of the Argonne Forest into the river valley. In the forest itself, the 77th was meeting with stubborn resistance in the thick underbrush, and the French army on its left was as unable as the 28th Division on its right to relieve its situation.

Summerall's 1st Division of Regulars, the oldest of our divisions in France, with its rank full and its spirit high, which had been brought from Saint Mihiel and attached to the 5th Corps, was swung over to the 1st Corps for its part in the general attack set for October 4, 1918. It was evident that no further progress could be made until we had mastered the commanding heights on the eastern wall of the Aire, and for this task the 1st Division was chosen. Fighting with all the experienced skill and courage which was its characteristic, it succeeded in its undertaking in a series of continuing attacks and with a loss of over nine thousand men, which included about half its infantry. In order to spread the wedge which it started, Duncan's 82d, or All-American Division of the National Army, swung in on its left between it and Muir's 28th across the river bottoms against the heights on the other side. With this aid the 28th was able to continue its advance and complete its task before it was relieved, and the 77th Division, the French army now coming up on its left, was able to make a thrilling advance to the northern edge of the forest.

On the right of the 1st, Haan's 32d Division of Michigan and Wisconsin National Guard, with a heroism in keeping with its brilliant record on the Ourcq and at Juvigny, extended the wedge in that direction by repeated assaults upon the stubbornly defended positions which were a part of the Germans' powerful Romagne system. Later Menoher's Rainbow Division, the 42d, relieved the 1st Division, and with a tenacity of purpose in keeping with its veteran reputation continued attacking until its magnificent persistence had its reward. To the east the 3d Division (now commanded by Buck and later by Preston Brown), which had been the stone wall on the banks of the Marne against the fifth German offensive, was fighting against terrific odds. It was to pay for the ground which it gained in the ensuing days with over eight thousand casualties.

Meanwhile, with every advance that its divisions made, the position of Bullard's 3d Corps became more wickedly exposed to the fire from across the Meuse where the German artillery from its heights looked down upon our men as upon the arena of an amphitheater. But here, as elsewhere, there was no cessation of the offensive. Hershey's 4th Regular Division, schooled in the Chateau-Thierry fighting, showed an endurance in keeping with its skill by remaining in line for over three weeks; the 5th Regulars, first commanded by MacMahon and then by Ely, which had learned their first lesson in attack by its taking of Frappelle in the Vosges Mountains, and which had again at Saint Mihiel shown a mettle which promised to make it dependable for any kind of an emergency, had now come in to take the place of Cronkhite's 80th in that trough of hell where it was to begin its long and thrilling career of accomplishment in the great battle. On its right, Allen's 90th National Army from Texas had come in on the left and immediately, though it had not been long in France, proved that it was worthy of the best traditions of its home State by its stoicism under gas and shells and the attacking fervor which were to give it a place of honor until the armistice was signed--after its crossing of the Meuse.

The Germans were now bringing in their best veteran shock divisions and countless machine guns manned by chosen "no quarter" gunners. It is significant that on September 29, 1918, three days after we had begun our Argonne attacks, Hindenburg had informed the German Government that it ought to sue for peace, and on October 3, 1918, after the British assault, which included our 2d Corps, had broken the Hindenburg line and the ferocious attacks against the positions in the Rheims sector had developed, that he informed the German Government that the situation of the German army was hopeless. Therefore the Germans on the Meuse-Argonne front were fighting with the desperation of men with their backs against the wall to save the line of communications for their retreat. Our lack of sufficient fresh divisions in reserve and of sufficient artillery in the second week of October, 1918, for extensive operations may have given them hope of success; but we were gathering our forces for another general attack.

Meanwhile it became increasingly evident that something must be done to stop the flanking fire into our 3d Corps from across the Meuse where the 17th French Corps was calling for American divisions to assist in mastering the heights where the plentiful German artillery was in position. Bell's redoubtable 33d Division of Illinois National Guard had crossed the river from the left bank, after a most remarkable feat of bridge building under heavy fire, and had swung north as a part of a general attack against these heights. Here the fighting was to be equally as fierce and quite as thankless as on the main battle front; for here the Germans were in the area of their old Verdun offensive, and they were perfectly familiar with the ground and had at their backs all the roads and barracks which they had used in 1916. The main line of hills and ridges, and the covering positions of the lesser heights and slopes which they held, were already prepared with dugouts and cement pill boxes, while in place of Wuerttembergers they brought in their best Prussian troops, with ample machine guns, to assist an artillery defense which had the sweep of a half-mile circle east and west of the Meuse, thus enabling them not only to concentrate at any point on our 3d Corps on the west bank of the Meuse, but upon the 17th French Corps on the east bank.

Our approach to these defenses was through the ruined villages of the Verdun battle fields and along the roads which led us into the bottom of a cup, with its rim occupied by the enemy, through a ravine which was truly called "Death Valley." Morton's 29th, National Guard of New Jersey, which was to have its first important battle experience in conquering positions which would have baffled the skill of the most veteran of divisions, advanced on the right of the 33d. Later Edwards's 26th "Yankee" Division, which had known all the kinds of fighting which the American army had to offer, arrived from its drive in closing the Saint Mihiel salient for a period of a remorseless, grinding fighting which was in keeping with its experience. Against pill boxes, woods, and twisting ravines, across open spaces swept by machine-gun fire, repulsed by counterattacks and attacking again, the 33d (until it was relieved), the 29th for a long period, and the 26th had a battle of their own under the 17th French Corps.

The Germans had even stronger reasons for not yielding the heights on the east of the Meuse than they had on the west of the Meuse. Once we had Belleu Wood and Pylon Observatory we looked down on a broad valley and were approaching the last of the hills which separated us from the plain of the Woevre and German soil. Indeed, this portion of the east bank of the Meuse was the very key to the positions where the Germans would have made their stand on a shorter line if they succeeded in withdrawing their army.

October 11, 1918, was memorable in the history of the organization of the American Expeditionary Force, as, on that day, General Pershing appointed Major General Hunter Liggett our pioneer corps commander, to command the 1st American Army, and appointed Major General Robert L. Bullard to the command of the 2d Army which was operating on the Saint Mihiel salient. Both were veterans who had won the additional star of a lieutenant general which they now received for long service in France. General Bullard had commanded the 1st Division; and two other men who had been trained in that veteran school also received promotions. Major General John L. Hines, who had come to France as a major, succeeded General Bullard in command of the 3d Corps and Major General Charles F. Summerall was given command of the 5th Corps in place of General Cameron. Major General Dickman, who had commanded the 3d Division in the Chateau-Thierry operations, succeeded General Liggett in command of the First Corps.

On October 14, 1918, another general attack for the length of the main battle front took place. The Germans could not afford to lose any great depth of ground or their main positions defending the crest of the whaleback would be in danger. All their skill was applied in their maze of machine-gun positions, to utilize every detail of advantage of that monstrously favorable ground of slopes, woods, and ravines. The American divisions, steeled now to this ruthless fighting against a hidden enemy, took machine guns only to find that there were machine guns behind them; they took woods, ravines, and crests only to find that there were more woods, ravines, and crests yet to be conquered. They made vital gains and fought off fierce counterattacks to hold them. And the Germans brought in still more divisions and still more artillery and machine guns in their desperate determination which they set against that unremitting offensive spirit and unyielding will of the Americans. Under cold rain and mist in the soaked earth the grinding continued.

After the 77th Division had come out victorious from its long fight in the Argonne Forest, McCrea's 78th "Lightning" National Army Division had relieved it in that inconceivably hard and thankless task of cleaning up the town of Grand Pre and the positions north of the gap of Grand Pre. Day after day it kept on attacking even when there was a lull in other parts of the line. When Wright's 89th Division came into the line we had in these men of the Middle West, well drilled and in fine fettle, another new force in the battle which was to bring honor to the National Army and the nation. The 89th and the 90th and 5th Divisions and other divisions improved their opportunities in the final week of October, 1918, by taking positions which were valuable for the general attack, now in preparation, which was to take place on November 1, 1918.

With ample artillery and fresh reserves at our command we were determined to gain the summit of the whaleback in a final drive. This was the third phase of the battle, the second having been the long merciless hammering throughout the month of October, 1918, in which the endurance, the nerves and the aggressive spirit of American soldiers were tested as they never were before. Every day we were becoming more skillful in combat and our traffic arrangements were improving in their organization. The line from left to right on the morning of November 1, 1918, was: the 78th, 77th, 80th, 2d, 89th, 90th, and 5th Divisions. Our infantry, protected by the best artillery service which it had ever had, with the exception of some delay at certain points, irresistible in its sweep everywhere, gained its objectives, mastering the heights for which it had fought for six weeks. On November 2, 1918, the German communique made its confession to the German people that the American army had broken the German line.

The battle now became one of skillful maneuvers and rapid pursuit down the apron of lesser heights and slopes toward the Meuse. Behind the 1st Corps in reserve was the 42d Division; behind the 5th Corps in the center the 1st; and behind the 3d Corps on the right the 32d. These three veteran divisions, after their rest from the fearful fighting of the second phase of the battle, now had the opportunity finally, as the movement spread, to join in the glorious final phase which saw that army of regulars, guardsmen, and draftmen, the strongest force America had ever had under arms, as citizens victorious in the cause of democracy.

On November 11, 1918, when the armistice was signed, the 5th and 90th Divisions of the 3d Corps had swung well across the Meuse, taking the heights on the other side. The 89th and 2d Divisions were also across, while the 42d Division had reached the suburbs of Sedan, and the 77th Division was on the left bank. Kuhn's 79th Division from Camp Meade, which had relieved the worn and gallant 29th Division, which had done such lion's work across the Meuse, moving in unison with the operations beginning November 1, 1918, had conquered the heights which had poured their fire down into the trough where the Third Corps had fought. The 26th Division, which had stubbornly kept in line despite its losses and the misery of its position, was able to appreciate, as only such veterans could, the privilege of operating on the 79th's right, in mastering the positions on its front which had so long defied it. These two divisions were both attacking on the morning of the 11th. Before nightfall they had gained the last of the hills separating them from the plain of the Woevre. Thus the rapid daily advances of the American forces toward and across the Meuse, in their capture of the positions upon which the Germans depended for their winter defense line, had been not the least of the arguments which Marshal Foch was offering the Germans for signing the armistice.

We had only two divisions in reserve when hostilities finished. If we had come late into the war, once our legions were prepared, we had not been hesitant in giving them for service. All the resources of our army from the base ports to the front line had been stretched to their limit. Our hospitals were full and our surgeons exhausted. We had broken up freshly arriving divisions when the Service of Supply demanded more labor in order that the demands of the front should be filled at this juncture When the hope had risen in every heart that by a supreme effort we might bring the orgy of the great war to a close. We had fought for six weeks in chill winter rains and in face of fire and of hardships; and in the test of nerves, courage, and devotion we had come out triumphant. And through it all there had been no finer heroism than that of the trained army nurses who kept cheerful when staggering with fatigue in caring for the wounded in our hospitals. Be it aviator or motor truck driver, soldier in the fox hole or stevedore on the docks, all had given their strength and zeal in keeping with the spirit of their errand in France. There remained the task of the organization of the 3d Army, under General Dickman from the veteran divisions, which had the fortune to be in the front line on November 11, 1918, to march through Luxemburg and across the German frontier to the Rhine, where they did their duty as policemen during the peace negotiations; and the further task of reversing the great machinery of the army, in sending the soldiers home in good health after their wonderful experience and splendid service.