Edward C. Lukens had left the University of Pennsylvania law school to serve as a lieutenant in the Third Battalion, 320th Infantry, 80th Division. In A Blue Ridge Memoir, written in February–March 1919 and published in 1922, Lukens would recall the opening hours of the Meuse-Argonne offensive. The attack on September 26, 1918, ignited forty-seven days of fighting in which 26,000 Americans were killed and 95,000 wounded.
WE DEPLOYED in an open field in front of Dead Man’s Hill, guiding the moppers-up on the support companies of the battalion ahead. We had about six squads, which we placed at intervals with the corporal in charge of each one, while Lieutenant Titus and I each took the command of three squads. Less than an hour remained after we had completed our dispositions until the advance should begin. Titus and I sat down together for a few minutes and shared a jelly sandwich that I had carried with me for the last two days and shook hands to our mutual luck; then we went to our own sections, and I attached myself to the middle squad of the three, as it was too dark to hope to see them all. Meanwhile our barrage had been going on in great intensity, lighting up the sky in back of us and creating a tremendous racket as it burst only a few hundred yards in front. Combined with the smoke which the artillery put down in addition to their H.E.’s was a considerable natural fog, and a few minutes before “H Hour” it became so thick that one could hardly see five yards ahead of him. We looked at our watches frequently and awaited 5.30.
“Going over the top” is an expression that has lasted from the trench days when the British troops climbed out of the trenches by ladders on the appointed minute, and there was a sharp and sudden break from the security of the trench to the exposure on top of the parapet. With us it was a misnomer. There was no “top” to go over. We were already deployed in an open field with only a few scattered shell holes in it. The outposts had been withdrawn to avoid our own barrage; the boundaries of “No Man’s Land” were not clearly defined. In fact, in one sense we really deployed in No Man’s Land, under the protection of our artillery. “H Hour’’ was chiefly remarkable for its failure to be dramatic or intense.
Five-thirty came. I could see just eight men and could not tell whether the rest of the outfit was starting or not. We started forward as a “combat group” (single file) depending on my compass, for we were as much cut off from the others as if we had been alone at sea. We kept walking forward at a moderate pace, constantly wondering whether the other groups were going faster or slower. Soon some of our shells began to hit too close in front of us, and we slowed down a little. We did not know whether they were exceptionally short, or on the normal barrage line, for the air was too thick to see where the rest were bursting. The first living thing that I saw was a rabbit, coming through the smoke from the Boche lines like greased lightning. All kinds of game birds were also started, and flew about bewildered. Then we saw a Boche coming toward us with his hands high in air and the most terrified look in his face that I have ever seen in mortal man, running almost as fast as the rabbit. We let him go on by, laughing at him as we passed, and we knew that the companies up ahead had begun to do business.
We came to a gully about ankle deep in water, and crossed it at a leap. We didn’t know that this was Forges Brook, which we had been told was deep enough to require bridges, and kept on wondering when we would come to it. Some of the Engineers made the same mistake, for we had gone several hundred yards beyond it when there loomed up out of the fog, going diagonally, a crowd of about twenty men carrying a bulky wooden structure which they told us was a bridge for Forges Brook. Soon we began to meet parts of other outfits, generally striking on slightly different angles from our own, for very slight compass errors make a big difference when a little distance has passed. It became apparent that the different companies had already become pretty badly intermixed, and as for the moppers-up, I didn’t have the slightest idea where any of my other squads were. The smoke and fog were fatal to any hope of keeping organizations in their proper place and formation, but in spite of that it was a tremendous life-saver, for the front waves had gone over and flanked the first row of machine gun nests before the Boche gunners had hardly a chance to fire a shot, and our casualties were almost nothing as long as we were hidden. I began to run into other officers that I knew, and we exchanged “good mornings” and cigarettes as though we were meeting on a city street. I could not make head nor tail of where I was with reference to the companies, for I kept getting mixed up with the Second Battalion, whom I was supposed to follow, and then whenever we would be delayed a little we would find ourselves crowded on by L Company whom we were supposed to keep ahead of.
Meanwhile there was the “mopping-up” to do, although the assault companies had pretty well finished the job themselves. We were supposed to work from left to right on our sector, but this beautiful theory didn’t work in practice, for the rest of the detachment was now entirely out of my control, and I had to trust to them to take care of the ground in front of them while my squad confined themselves to what was in our sight. To have attempted to go much to the flank with such a small group would have left us hopelessly behind, and spoiled any chance of our making the way clear for our battalion. So we ran along the top of the trenches, heaving bombs into all dugouts that might contain hidden gunners or snipers, looking at scattered wounded Germans to assure ourselves that they were safely out of action, ready to kill them if they should show any signs of treachery, and making the prisoners who were not badly hurt run faster to the rear. The old-fashioned way of “mopping-up” was to kill everything, and there is no possible doubt but that it was necessary in the days of closer personal combat and greater danger of treachery, but in the new open style of fighting, and with the Boche’s general willingness to get safely to the rear as fast as he could, it was unnecessary and almost impracticable. Furthermore, we had been ordered to take prisoners whenever possible, because the Boche will stop shooting sooner to go to the rear than when he knows he is in for sure death. One of our companies that morning had the experience of opening fire on a group of Boche coming forward to surrender, and having them return to their guns and hit several of our men before they were again subdued. But it was often hard to tell just when a Boche was safely out of action and we heard later of a case in our sector where one had slipped back to a buzzer station after being wounded, to be found and killed a few minutes later, so it is probable that if anything, we should have been even rougher than we were.
The first dead Yank I saw was lying directly in front of a machine gun in a shallow trench, not more than two yards in front of the muzzle, and the Boche behind the gun was also dead. They must have got each other at almost the same instant. We lost comparatively few men in this first stage of the drive, and had hardly any shelling at first because the sharpness of the attack kept the Boche busy moving his guns back. Company H almost ran into a gun as it was being moved, and shot the horses and drivers before they could escape.
One of our men’s faults was their curiosity and their craze for souvenirs. I came upon a whole group of them gathered around a few prisoners, accepting presents of iron crosses and buttons which the frightened Boche offered doubtless as bribes for their lives, our men apparently forgetting that there were more enemies close at hand. By this time I had lost all my original men, as they would be delayed at some little job and be absorbed into the companies in rear, so I broke up the souvenir party and thereby recruited a dozen or so new moppers-up. I saw a lone American lying on the ground shooting his Chauchat, so ran over to see what the fuss was, and had no sooner dropped down beside him than he curled up with a bullet in the stomach. I took his gun while another fellow picked up a few magazines. The wounded boy did not seem to be suffering, but talked in the voice of a sleepy child protesting against my taking his gun away, and I had to humor him as you would a child, and tell him I would give it back in a minute, in order to get it out of his grasp. We crawled rapidly around the flank of the hostile nest, but by the time we got to it someone had already crippled the single Hun with a shot from the other flank. By this time we were too far onward for me to leave my job and go back to the wounded man and I don’t know whether he lived or not, but I believe he soon went painlessly to sleep still murmuring about the loss of his beloved gun.
Our soldiers in this drive walked ahead for the most part as nonchalantly as though they were on a route march. Only when something was actually encountered was the atmosphere in the least intense. In fact sometimes they were too easy-going, apparently too innocent to realize what sudden crises might arise. They were all hungry by this time, and out came the bread and hardtack, though we did not stop. I think this attitude “got the German’s goat” even more than intense ferocity, which they better understood. One Boche officer who was captured said he had seen many kinds of soldiers in many kinds of fighting, but he had never before seen soldiers advancing against the enemy with their rifles slung over their shoulders and bread and jam in their hands. I have been asked whether it was true that the Yanks went forward shouting “Lusitania!” They did not, in our outfit. They went forward eating, smoking cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and when they did holler at the Boche it was invariably a less romantic and more vulgar word that they yelled.
By about eleven o’clock we had reached our preliminary objective, where we were to reform our lines and wait thirty-five minutes while the barrage was again laid down ahead of us. Our artillery this time was weaker and less accurate, either because of the more extreme range or because some of it was moving up, and we also got a little desultory shelling from “Jerry.” My own company came up, and I found most of my detachment had already rejoined them, so as the mopping-up job was about over, I decided to go back to I Company and try to get my own platoon into shape.
A large group of prisoners came over the hill on our left, and as we didn’t see any guards with them, some officers thought it was a counter-attack coming, so I Company started over to meet them, and narrowly averted shooting them up by suddenly seeing some Americans with them. This move had put us too far over to the left, and when we started forward again, I and K Companies were separated from the rest of the regiment. However, as there had been a gap between us and the 4th Division, it probably was just as well in the end.
We advanced by ourselves in a double skirmish line over the next hill, with apparently no sign of trouble, and the right flank of the company was approaching a small patch of woods, when a burst of machine gun fire suddenly splattered the ground about our feet, slightly wounding one man in the leg. We dropped instantly, and hugged the ground close until some men from the other end of the company, who were not in direct range, had time to work into the woods from the flank, for it is an inevitable cause of needless casualties to advance frontally on a machine gun nest if it can possibly be flanked. Then we crawled around until we could also get into the woods, and a regular man-hunt developed. The woods was grown thick with laurel, penetrated by many intersecting paths, and two or three men would sneak up each fork to hunt out the prey. About eight of us, keeping on the main path, came to a small clearing which contained two small wooden shanties. We approached cautiously, watching the trees for snipers, and glancing sharply around on all sides. We found the buildings deserted, and then saw near one of them the entrance of a dugout. I peered down, and saw something moving down in the darkness, so I pulled a bomb out of my pocket and struck the cap against my tin hat. At the sound of the hissing fuse, there came from the dugout the most unholy conglomeration of yells that I ever heard from human throats—screams of terror and abject pleading. But six seconds is too short a time to negotiate a surrender; they had kept hidden too long and could not possibly claim to be regarded as prisoners. The fuse was already going and down the hole went the bomb. I jumped back from the mouth and in an instant there was a terrific explosion and a cloud of dust and smoke came up. Why it didn’t kill them all, we couldn’t imagine, but no sooner had the smoke cleared than the cries started again, and we could distinguish the words “No more” in English. This time we waited with our guns ready, and out piled eight Boche, apparently without a scratch, but as scared as men could well be. There was something ludicrous and at the same time contemptible in the way they screamed for mercy. A short five minutes ago, they had almost killed us, and now they were yelping “Kamerad,” and giving us their pistols and even offering their personal belongings with the attitude of whipped curs. We didn’t kill them, but we didn’t want any of their “Kamerad” stuff either, and we scarcely knew how to express our disgust at their offer to shake hands with us for sparing their lives. It was this same feeling of loathing that kept me from wanting anything they had as souvenirs, though two of the men got beautiful Luger revolvers and various other articles. Most of the men were souvenir-crazy, but in fairness it must be remembered that whatever they took was purely as souvenirs, and I don’t believe any of the prisoners’ stuff was ever taken for its money value. I contented myself with a small wooden sign on the shanty, which proved that we had captured a battalion headquarters, and I lost that soon afterwards. We also found a whole bag full of maps and documents, which we sent back to the Intelligence Officer, though I never heard whether they proved of any value. The eight prisoners were started back over the hill and sent running to the rear with an “Allez!” and perhaps a kick, and after searching the woods a few minutes more, we rejoined the company.