With Their Bare Hands

Field Order No. 20 percolated downward to corps and division headquarters, each of which interpreted it for the use of their subordinate units. Brigadier General Wilson B. Burtt, chief of staff of V Corps, issued Major General Cameron’s orders on September 21. The mission for the 79th Division was that:

[by] maintaining close combat liaison with the 4th Division (IIIrd Corps) on its right and the 37th Division on its left, [it] will advance rapidly to the Corps Objective ... It will seize in succession Malancourt, Montfaucon, and Nantillois. The 37th Division and the 79th Division will mutually assist each other in the capture of Montfaucon.¹

[to] maintain close contact with the 79th Division on its right and the 91st Division on its left, and, by proper echelonment in depth ... assist the 79th division in the runing [sic—should be “turning”] of Montfaucon ... It will seize Hill 261, and the village of Ivoiry, pressing forward without delay to the Corps Objective.*²

Burtt informed everyone that “The 3rd Army Corps (US) on the right ... assists the advance of the 5th Army Corps by turning Montfaucon and later by turning the section of the hostile 2nd Position within the zone of the 5th Army Corps.”³ Two days later he clarified his instructions for the advance: “The Divisions will push forward to the ‘Corps Objective line’ ... rendering mutual support, but not delaying their own advance by waiting for each other.”⁴

Burtt’s orders reflected the ambiguity surrounding Pershing’s open warfare doctrine. The combination of independent advance of units and mutual assistance certainly sounded like open warfare, or at least as close as one could get with three divisions lined up cheek by jowl. The formula for artillery support, however, was quite different. Corps and divisional artillery, reinforced to more than twice their normal number of guns, would advance the rolling barrage at the rate of 100 meters every five minutes (about two miles per hour, a slow walk) until it had gotten through the Bois de Montfaucon, then speed up to 100 meters every four minutes. It would pause as the divisions reached each of their objectives to allow them time to capture and consolidate the enemy trenches, then resume until it reached a line one kilometer beyond Montfaucon; then it would end.⁵ As the infantry had no reliable way of communicating its progress to the artillery, its own pace would be regulated by the firing schedule. This certainly was not open warfare.

In a separate memorandum Burtt specified, “Tanks are to assist the infantry in accomplishing their tasks. It is the infantry and infantry alone that take and hold positions ... The general principle may be enunciated that all specialties have but one end and aim, to aid the infantry in getting to that close contact where the ‘will to use the bayonet’ ... can find its expression.”⁶ This did not begin to address the proper use of tanks. As the British and French experience showed, tanks and infantry had trouble coordinating even when the two arms had trained together. The men of the 79th had hardly ever seen a tank, and Burtt’s memorandum did nothing to help them.

General Kuhn based his orders (Field Order No. 6, September 25) on those of V Corps, adding details regarding the assembly points for tanks, tasks assigned to the engineering regiment, and liaison with neighboring divisions.* For the infantry and the artillery to communicate, “Telephone lines will be maintained to infantry units and (should telephones fail) use made of projectors and visual signaling and couriers to maintain constant touch with the front.”⁷ Two features of his orders, however, had dangerous implications for coming events. For the infantry assault Kuhn placed the 157th Brigade in the front line, with its two regiments abreast. The 158th Brigade, also with its two regiments side by side, would follow at a distance of 1,000 meters and would constitute the divisional reserve. This formation was known as brigades in column, and was a workable arrangement for veteran divisions whose officers had served together and knew their jobs. But for inexperienced divisions that had never seen combat, it was guaranteed to cause problems. With each brigade spread out over a two-mile front, commanders would have a hard time communicating with their subordinate units. And while the trailing brigade was expected to support the leading one, the commander of the brigade up front would have no direct control over the rate of advance of the one behind him, the disposition of its regiments, or its mopping-up activities. Control of troops in action was always tenuous at best: telephone lines were quickly cut by shells and the passage of wagons and guns, and runners easily got lost or became casualties. Many officers had recently been detailed to Pershing’s staff school at Langres; this would not help. Kuhn’s dispositions compounded an already serious problem.

* Two sentences in FO No. 6 reveal the army-wide ignorance of how tanks and infantry must cooperate. “If the tanks remain unemployed during the first stages of the infantry attack they will proceed to their second assembly position in the Bois Cunel, where they will arrive at H plus 12H ... Infantry brigade commanders are authorized to call upon the tank commander for assistance while the tanks are at the assembly points or enroute to the second assembly point.” (Joseph E. Kuhn, “Field Orders No. 6,” September 25, 1918, Hugh A. Drum Papers, Box 16; Folder: 79th Division, AHEC, p. 2.) In other words, the tanks had no definite mission and were assigned to no particular infantry units. They would be on the battlefield; if infantry commanders wanted to use them, that would be fine.

Second, Kuhn’s order said that “The 4th Div (III Army Corps) is on our right and is to assist: in turning Montfaucon; and (later) by turning the sector of the hostile 2nd position in our divisional front.”⁸ Clearly Kuhn expected help from the 4th Division within his own zone of operation. Unfortunately, the same understanding did not hold in the 4th itself. General Bullard’s orders described his III Corps’ mission as follows:

To penetrate promptly the hostile second position, in order to turn Montfaucon and the section of the hostile second position within the zone of action of the 5th Corps (center Corps) and thereby assisting in the capture of the hostile second position, west of Montfaucon.⁹

This mirrored the ambiguity in Pershing’s original order—was III Corps supposed to enter the zone of V Corps or not? The question occurred to Major General John L. Hines, commander of the 4th Division. He and his chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Christian Bach, went to Brigadier General Bjornstad, now III Corps chief of staff, and asked. According to Bach, Bjornstad agreed that it would be a proper tactical movement to attack westward into the V Corps zone. Hines and Bach returned to their PC, wrote a divisional order calling for Montfaucon to be encircled from the east and north, and sent it to III Corps for approval. This time, Bjornstad said to change the wording to read, “to provide for assisting the reduction of Montfaucon but only within our own area [emphasis in original]. We were not to go outside of our western boundary.”*¹⁰ Hines accordingly rewrote his order to say:

The Division will assist (if necessary) the Division on its left, by turning Montfaucon; not by an advance into the area of the Division on its left but by steady progression to the front and energetic action by the left combat liaison group or by reserves, against hostile detachments on the left flank [emphasis added].¹¹

Kuhn and Hines, intended by Pershing to cooperate in reducing Montfaucon, would be working at cross-purposes.

Having laid their plans, Pershing’s staff had one more task: to assemble the men, guns, and equipment from their locations scattered over northeastern France. The job was assigned to a brilliant young officer on First Army’s operations staff, Colonel George C. Marshall. The challenge facing him was immense. Two hundred and twenty thousand French troops and their equipment had to be removed from their trenches and 600,000 Americans (15 divisions plus corps and army headquarters, artillery, and supporting units) had to be moved in. Two-thirds of the American troops had to be extracted from the St Mihiel fighting while it was still in progress and sent as much as 50 miles northwest. Some divisions were brought from east of the Moselle River, another 60 miles to the southeast, crossing the rear of the St Mihiel fighting to get to their new positions. Three came from the Soissons area and one (the 79th) from training in the Haute-Marne region. Marshall had only three roads at his disposal. Two he dedicated to combined horse and foot traffic and one to motor transport. Moving only the men of a single division required 1,000 trucks in a line four miles long; adding artillery and supply trains increased the length to 20 miles. Four hundred and twenty-eight thousand men were sent by truck; the rest walked. Three thousand guns and 40,000 tons of ammunition (for the initial bombardment only) were hauled to the attack zone by 90,000 horses. To handle the load, the Army had to set up 19 railheads, 34 evacuation hospitals, and over 80 supply depots.¹²

In a report written shortly after the Armistice, Marshall described the difficulties. All movements had to be at night. Not all tractor-drawn artillery had motorized trains, so their baggage and supplies could not keep up with the guns and had to be sent on separate roads. To maintain solid columns on the roads, portions of different divisions and corps had to be mixed so that their travel speeds matched. Trucks arrived at loading points late, then had to be sent off immediately to maintain the maximum capacity of the system. Many horses were worn out and could not keep to the schedule. Artillery units engaged at St Mihiel had their withdrawal delayed by flare-ups in the fighting and by losses among their horses. The need to avoid having divisions and corps cross paths during the march made it necessary to send some far out of their way; even so, mix-ups in schedules caused marching columns to mingle on the road. Nonetheless, “Despite the haste with which all the movements had to be carried out, the inexperience of most of the commanders in movements of such density, the condition of the animals and the limitations as to roads, the entire movement was carried out without a single element failing to reach its place on the date scheduled; which was, I understand, one day earlier than Marshal Foch considered possible.”*¹³

* A postwar report by the AEF General Staff’s administration section credited the transfer from St Mihiel largely to a Captain Gorju of the French Commission Régulatrice Automobile, reducing Marshall’s role to that of a liaison officer: (“General Staff First Section, A.E.F., “Report B-2: Account of the Argonne-Meuse Operation - 9th September to 11th November - Influence of G-1 Section and Part Taken in the Operation,” 14 January, 1919, RG 120, Entry 24, “Report of Operation, G-1 Section, First Army, 10 Aug - 11 Nov ‘18,” Boxes 3361, 3020, NARA, p. 5.)

On September 8 the 79th Division entrained for the journey to Robert-Espagne, south of the front in the sector of the French Second Army. The Second, commanded by General Auguste Hirschauer, held Sector 304, named for the ill-fated hill that lay just south of Montfaucon. Hirschauer would be responsible for placing the American divisions in the line, after which he would turn over the entire sector to the American First Army.

The scene in the 10th Training Area was controlled chaos. As described by the divisional historian:

[I]n the small towns from Chalancey in the far west to Argillieres in the east, the Training Area was seething with activity, as Town Majors called for statements of claims and damages to settle their accounts; company clerks dismantled field orderly rooms; officers’ trunks and boxes were pushed into far corners of billets to be stored; final instructions were given, packs rolled with care and properly adjusted, and farewells exchanged with the villagers.¹⁴

General Kuhn was everywhere, checking on his troops’ readiness for the trip and hurrying along units that appeared to be slacking. In his diary he noted the names of subordinates who failed to stay with their commands, leaving them leaderless. He complained about the 66-pound packs the men carried, too heavy for a long march and impossible to fight in. “Movement as regards entraining points,” he noted, “[is] made entirely for convenience of railroads and not for convenience of troops who had in many cases to march long distances on short notice.”*¹⁵ When each train embarked, its commander was given the destination; the men were kept in the dark. As the trains of the 79th rolled southeast, the men noticed large volumes of traffic on the rails and on the roads:

Great troop concentration was going on somewhere further east as the Division moved in. Just where and why intrigued the men. Those detraining at Révigny had passed columns of Italian infantry on the road, just coming out of the line, and all the troop trains had been delayed while specials, routed through and laden with Americans of other divisions, passed them bound eastward. On every side were preparations which indicated a big offensive somewhere near.¹⁶

* Once in France, Kuhn continued to impress his subordinates and fail to impress his superiors and colleagues. Samuel W. Fleming, Jr., an officer in the 315th Regiment, wrote of the division’s training period in the summer of 1918: “We had battalion, regimental and brigade maneuvers. Gen. Kuhn, Division Commander, sometimes spoke at the Critiques and I was always impressed by his common sense, clarity and pleasant personality. He had been attached to the German Army as military observer prior to our entry in the War, and thus had the unique experience of serving on both sides in the fighting. Unfortunately he was not in the inner circle of the AEF High Command, why I do not know, but I suppose a carryover of army politics from prewar days. At any rate we looked on him as an excellent soldier and a gentleman, and it was too bad, we felt, that his qualities were not recognized by G.H.Q.” (Samuel W. Fleming, Jr., “World War I Service,” 1960, World War I Survey, Box: 79th Division, 157th and 158th Inf. Brig.; Folder: Fleming, Samuel W., Major, 315th Infantry, AHEC, p. 37.)

On September 12 orders arrived to leave Robert-Espagne and take over a section of the line. The men would travel by bus to their first stop, the towns of Récicourt, Dombasle, and Blercourt, all of them about five miles south of the front; from there they would walk. Strict measures were decreed to preserve secrecy. Unnecessary noises were to be avoided. Smoking at night was prohibited. “No member of the command will, pending arrival at debussing point, furnish any information as to his identity, the organization to which he belongs, his mission or destination, to any person other than an officer of the 79th Division or Military Police personnel.”¹⁷ As the men assembled their supplies and equipment for the move to the front line, they could hear the distant thunder of guns to the east. The reduction of the St Mihiel salient had begun.

Over the next few days the regiments and trains of the 79th boarded their buses, driven by French Annamite (Vietnamese) soldiers “who, bundled in great coats of goatskin and wearing French helmets, tam-o’-shanters, caps or turbans, presented odd spectacles to an American eye. The Anamites [sic] showed no expression on their faces, but soon proved that they could make their camions [trucks] go like the wind.”¹⁸ The convoys, unknown to the men, were traversing the Voie Sacrée that had saved Verdun in 1916. On September 16 the buses carrying the 304th Ammunition Train stopped at the edge of a wood and came under attack from a German plane. The few bombs dropped by the German missed, but if any of the men had been disinclined to observe the secrecy measures before, they weren’t now. As the regiments disembarked at Récicourt, Dombasle, and Blercourt, the officers hurried the men into the woods and away from nosy German aircraft. “As they went, they eyed in awe the sight before them—villages in ruins, fields pitted with shell holes and showing only the rank vegetation which betokened neglect, and mud, mud everywhere, regular quagmires through which they sloshed.”¹⁹ This was the residue of the German bombardments of 1916 that had attempted to destroy the supply lines to Verdun.*

* The accounts originating from the 79th and its component units make it appear as if the transfer from the 10th Training Area to the front went smoothly. The report of Major Paul Allegrini, a French observer attached to the division, reads differently. Loading of troop trucks was disorganized; the Americans did not want to divide up their units, so some trucks left partly empty. The supply system was highly defective—after leaving the Prauthoy departure area around September 8, some regiments did not receive new food supplies until the 15th. In between they ate their reserve rations. Although Allegrini rated the men’s morale as generally excellent, he noted that about 50 men were absent without leave from the 313th Regiment as it went into the line; an officer had to be left at Bar-le-Duc to round them up. (Paul Allegrini, “Rapport Sur La 79e D.I.U.S.,” September 21, 1918, 17 N 128, SHD, p. 1.)

At Récicourt the Machine Gun Company of the 314th Infantry got its first taste of fire. As Lieutenant John Kress recounted:

A shell had crashed into a building in the village. It took only a moment for even the dullest to comprehend what had happened and act accordingly. It’s debatable who took cover first. This shell was followed by about a dozen others—then silence. It was immediately decided to move the company out of the village and into one of the wood camps nearby.²⁰

The 313th Infantry Regiment got to Dombasle on September 13. After spending the day in dugouts under occasional German artillery fire, they sent an advance party forward at night to inspect the trenches that would be their new home. These were held by a unit of the French 157th Division. The soldiers occupying the trenches wore the French Adriane helmet and carried the French Berthier rifle, but they were not French. They were American.

In partial fulfillment of its promise to the American black community the War Department formed two “colored” divisions, the 92nd and the 93rd. As we have seen, Pershing made a rare concession to the Allies’ demands to “amalgamate” American units by parceling out the regiments of the 93rd to the French. (The 92nd served with the AEF as a complete division.) The 371st Infantry was one of them. On September 13 the regiment occupied the left-most part of Sector 304 as part of the French 157th Division. These were the Americans whom the 313th would be relieving.

Pershing’s action in sending four black regiments to the French was not simply a manifestation of the Army racism typical of the time. While a first lieutenant he had commanded a troop of the 10th Cavalry, one of the Buffalo Soldier regiments that enforced Washington’s rule over the Indian tribes.* He developed a sense of respect for his men and their military capabilities. In his memoirs he wrote that his “attitude toward the negro was that of one brought up among them. I had always felt kindly and sympathetic toward them and I knew that fairness and due consideration of their welfare would make the same appeal to them as to any other body of men. Most men, of whatever race, creed, or color, want to do the proper thing and they respect the man above them whose motive is the same.”²¹ Although patronizing, such sentiments were far in advance of the general Army attitude. In France, Pershing took every opportunity to get black troops into combat positions. When the War Department tried to divert colored regiments to stevedore duty Pershing cabled:

[M]ust be some confusion Washington as to employment for Negro regiments referred to your cablegram. These regiments are not be used as labor troops but to be placed at disposition of French for combat service in French divisions. This utilization these regiments already approved by War Department.²²

* It was his association with the 10th Cavalry that won him his nickname. As a young tactical instructor at West Point Pershing, a strict disciplinarian, became known as “Nigger Jack” among the cadets. Reporters eventually softened this to “Black Jack.” (Frank E. Vandiver, Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing, 2 vols (College Station and London: Texas A&M UP, 1977), p. 171.)

When the British rebuffed his offer to place black regiments in their service, he protested to General Haig:

You will, of course, appreciate my position in this matter, which, in brief, is: These Negroes are American citizens. My Government, for reasons which concern itself alone, has decided to organize colored combat divisions and now desires the early dispatch of one of these divisions to France. Naturally I cannot and will not discriminate against these soldiers. I am informed that the 92d Division is in a good state of training and I have no reason to believe that its employment under your command would be accompanied by unusual difficulties.†²³

† Pershing was proud of this letter, which he included in his World War I memoir. (Pershing, My Experiences, vol. 2, p. 45.) The leading book on the black experience in the war (Barbeau and Henri, The Unknown Soldiers: African-American Troops in World War I) does not mention it, although the authors cite Pershing’s memoir in other contexts.

And when the War Department asked him for a statement about black soldiers he cabled:

Exploit of 2 colored infantrymen some weeks ago in repelling much larger German patrol killing and wounding several Germans and winning croix de guerre by their gallantry has aroused fine spirit of emulation throughout colored troops all of whom are looking forward to more active service. Only regret expressed by colored troops is that they are not given more dangerous work to do.²⁴

But Pershing’s respect for black soldiers did not lead him to try to end their systematic mistreatment. The American Army was segregated and bigoted. Humiliation of black soldiers was routine, as witnessed by the crude “darky” jokes published in Stars and Stripes. The few white officers who objected were told not to be so sensitive, they “cannot expect to put the colored man above other Americans.”²⁵

Much different was the reception the black soldiers received in France. With a long tradition of Africans in the military and none of routine discrimination, France was to American blacks a virtual paradise. Captain Will Judy wrote in his diary of a group of black engineers that the 33rd Division passed on the march: “They sang, they laughed, they shouted, they enjoyed their work. All American negroes I have seen in France like their stay here. The French have accepted them almost with equality. I have seen them kissing French girls on the streets; French women everywhere have welcomed them warmly.”²⁶

The French attitude toward blacks astonished and outraged many white Americans, especially the Southerners, who insisted the French ran a serious risk in allowing them into their villages and who accused their hosts of encouraging American blacks to be “uppity” once they returned home. One incident was recounted by Captain de Metz-Noblat, a French liaison officer at Pershing’s headquarters in Chaumont. The cover of the July 27 issue of La Vie Parisienne showed a bearded black soldier seated at table, fez and pipe on the ground, napkin around his neck, flirting with a white waitress. The caption read, “L’enfant du dessert”—the dessert kid. Arriving at mess the captain was accosted by an American officer. “I’ve been looking for you. Have you seen this picture? Your censors are crazy to publish a thing like that; our Negroes will buy it and send it home, and say, ‘Here’s how we’re welcomed in France.’” In vain the captain explained that the soldier was a Senegalese, that the French did not discriminate among soldiers of different color, and that the censors didn’t take account of the sensitivities of the Americans. But the officer continued to harangue him for quarter of an hour, with all of the staff listening.*²⁷ In August 1918 Colonel Linard, then head of the French mission to the AEF, prepared a memorandum to French units that attempted to accommodate the feelings of the white Americans toward their own black soldiers. He made it clear that the measures he proposed were in response to the whites’ prejudices, particularly their fear that the race would degenerate physically and morally if it intermingled with blacks. The French were to refrain from addressing blacks familiarly, from praising black troops, from distributing sweets at their camps, and from all sexual relations between American blacks and French women. The memorandum, which was never circulated, nevertheless caused an uproar when, the day following the Armistice, the deputy from Senegal found out about it and protested to Clemenceau that it was a violation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.²⁸

* To a native French speaker, the humor would have revolved around a pun: L’enfant du désert, child of the desert, would refer to the African soldier. Adding the “s” makes ambiguous who is being referred to and adds a slightly off-color implication. (The American officer, of course, would not have had to understand French, let alone the play on words, to be outraged.) I am indebted to Ms Zehava Sheftel of Newton, Mass., for clarifying this point.

The black units in France had varying experiences in combat. Undertrained and poorly equipped even by the standards of the badly prepared white divisions, officered largely by hostile and often incompetent whites, and subjected to systematic discrimination in the military hierarchy, the 92nd had a mixed performance. It repelled local German attacks in the Vosges Mountains in late August 1918, but its 368th Regiment failed to advance in the Meuse–Argonne (it had not been issued maps or wire cutters, among other reasons). This failure, which allowed the Germans to surround the “Lost Battalion” of the 77th Division, was ascribed to the entire 92nd, although most of its regiments had been in reserve during the battle.²⁹ General Bullard, an Alabaman and the commander of Second Army, to which the division was attached for the last weeks of the war, did his best to denigrate the performance of the 92nd. He exaggerated their failings, called the blacks “hopelessly inferior,” and neglected to acknowledge that by the end of the war 1,700 of its men had become casualties and 21 had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. (More decorations would have been awarded but requests on behalf of black soldiers were often ignored.)³⁰

The four regiments of the 93rd Division suffered from the same deficiencies in training and equipment, favoritism to white officers, and discrimination as did the 92nd. But once assigned to French divisions, they were accepted by their new comrades in a fashion that caused great consternation among the white Americans. All of them ended the war with credit, although some got off to a slow start. The most accomplished among them, the 369th, formerly the 15th New York National Guard, fought well in the Aisne–Marne campaign and in the Meuse–Argonne, capturing a key German-held town. One of its sergeants became the first US soldier to be awarded the Croix de Guerre, for repelling a German trench raid. The 371st, mostly draftees from the Carolina farmlands, patrolled and raided in several “quiet” sectors, including Sector 304, before fighting with the French 157th Division in the Meuse–Argonne. It advanced rapidly and held off a major German counterattack that included gas. In all, the regiments collected three unit Croix de Guerre and 559 individual decorations, either Croix de Guerre or Distinguished Service Medals.³¹

The small advance party of the American 313th Infantry encountered the men of the 371st on the night of September 13. The newcomers “met and talked to the boys we were relieving—American negroes brigaded with the French wearing American uniforms but French equipped. They were closely questioned by the boys and each one agreed that it was a very quiet sector.”³² The next night the 79th relieved the 157th Division and the 313th Infantry moved into the trenches as the 371st filed out. Did the men whisper the usual front-line farewells of parting comrades-in-arms—“Good luck,” “Keep your head down,” and the like? Or did the boys from Baltimore only stare silently at the receding shadows of their black compatriots? No one seems to have recorded the scene.

The 79th began moving into Sector 304, now renamed the Avocourt Sector, on September 13. Private Schellberg of the 313th Infantry wrote to his brother, “Started for trenches 6 PM. Got in trenches 1am. Mud up to your knees. This is supposed to be a quiet sector. Germans were shelling the hell out of us. I was so tired and played out that I wish one of those shells would hit me.”³³ By dawn of the 15th the relief was complete, and as the sun rose most of the men got their first look at the terrain they would be attacking: steep hills, matted with scrub and barbed wire, rising to the pinnacle of Montfaucon, “the white ruins of the village on its crest giving it a curious snow-capped appearance.”³⁴ (Before the war, a large fifteenth-century church had dominated the town and its surroundings. Now its ruined walls were merely the tallest of the “snow-caps.”) The French 157th Division held a two-brigade front stretching from the Bois de Cheppy on the left to the ruined village of Malancourt on the right. The front of each brigade sector was held by a single regiment. As the 79th relieved the French, it copied this arrangement. The 157th Brigade occupied the left sector, putting two battalions of the 313th Infantry side by side in the front line, each with a machine gun company in support. To the right, the 158th Brigade did the same with units of the 315th Infantry. A third battalion of each regiment was held in brigade reserve.

Everything the men saw was new and bizarre. In the words of the divisional historian:

In the outpost lines, the battered, crumbling trenches, oftentimes only waist deep, which zig-zagged through the sea of shell holes, gave visible evidence of the titanic struggles of the past. This evidence was intensified by the unmistakable signs of the death and destruction which existed on every side. Scattered articles of French and German equipment, rusting helmets, broken rifles and bayonets, half-rotted bits of clothing, here and there a bleached bone protruding from the earth, in a word, the flotsam and jetsam of a battle field—all told their own gruesome tale of devastating conflict.³⁵

Not all the novelties in the trenches were dead. Private Schellberg had some fun describing his new bunkmates to his family:

The first time we went up in the trenches we had dugouts to sleep in and we had some unpleasant friends their [sic] to greet us, they were rats and coodies and let me tell you they were rats too they were so big that the first one I saw I thought it was a cat. While you were sleeping they would run over you. I had some reserve rations and I used them as a pillow and while I was asleep they ate part of my rations from under my head ... We had a can of corn beef their and they went as far as to eat through the can and eat that up too.³⁶

Sergeant Ed Davies of the 315th had a more favorable reaction, confiding to his diary:

The Trenches so far are not so bad. Plenty of mud and dirt, but we had good duck-boards to walk on, so we managed to keep dry. About 10 o’clock we reached an open space behind a big hill where our kitchens were located. They had the kitchens in a big dug-out right in the side of the hill. We rested here awhile and had some good hot stew.³⁷

Life was bearable in other ways, too. The health of the men improved. The flu, which had afflicted the 79th in its training camps at Prauthoy and Champlitte, virtually vanished. Trench foot, caused by constant immersion of the soldiers’ feet in stagnant water and a common ailment in the French and British armies, did not make an appearance. The chief danger was drinking sewage-contaminated water, and officers paid close attention to where their men filled their canteens. Mail, the soldiers’ precious link to their loved ones and their former lives, arrived. Davies wrote:

Mail, letters from home—Oh boy I am so happy I could weep. It was an eternity waiting for Sergeant Bowman to sort them out. Out at last, got mine, five of them think of it, the first since I left home. I am going to sneak off in a little corner and read them by myself ... Gone is the mud and slime of the trench, gone are the bursting shells and stinking gas. I am home for just a few minutes. I try to imagine myself home with Sis and the bunch, out with Billy and the boys. Oh, God, what a feeling of loneliness comes over me. Am I to see them again?³⁸

Some soldiers tried to maintain a semblance of normality by observing old traditions. Corporal Oscar Lubchansky of the 313th wrote to his wife:

Tomorrow is the Day of Atonement and I shall spend all my available time reading the bible. I have been doing this for a time now so you can see darling that I am trying my best to do right in every way. I am sorry I cannot fast, but we can never tell whether we can wait for our next meal or not, so you see it is unwise not to eat.³⁹

For a few, however, the tension of awaiting combat was more than they could stand. A postwar roster of men who served with Company B of the 313th reported that Private Harry E. Dellinger:

... was evacuated on the 24th of September, 1918. At that time we had just returned from the sector #304, and were living in pup tents in the woods in the vicinity of Avocourt. He was taken sick immediately after dinner, suffering with vomiting and nervous spells. He was so nervous he could not stand still. They took him from his tent to the ambulance by aid of the Medical Detachment.⁴⁰

Others appear to have taken matters into their own hands. One such was Sergeant Louis Rubin, who:

... accidentally shot himself through the foot on September 25th, the evening before we went over the top. Sgt. Rubin was in his tent when all at once I heard the report of a rifle, and heard him call out he had been shot. There were some first aid men near who bandaged his foot. The bullet passed through his heel. He was afterward evacuated to a Base Hospital.⁴¹

For two years Montfaucon had been a quiet sector to which both sides sent their depleted divisions to rest and recuperate. A live-and-let-live ethic had evolved in which neither side made life needlessly uncomfortable for the other by prolonged shelling, frequent sniping, or aggressive raiding. The outposts as a result were lightly held. To conceal the presence of newcomers, the 79th was commanded not to alter the situation. Raids were prohibited and only limited patrolling was allowed. Nevertheless, the Germans got wind that a relief had taken place. Apart from the differences between the French and American uniforms and the shapes of their helmets, the men behaved like the rookies they were, shooting at shadows and strange noises. It did not take long for German aircraft to react. On the night of September 15 a plane dropped a bomb on the regimental headquarters of the 315th Infantry on Hill 309, killing a corporal, the first combat death in the 79th since it arrived at the front. From then on air activity was common, especially at meal times when the men were assembled in the mess. The men watched German aircraft fly over the front, pursued by antiaircraft shells that exploded with a smudge of smoke and, moments later, a distant “pop.” From the Bois de Brocourt behind Dombasle, the soldiers watched German planes shoot down French observation balloons and dove for shelter when shells landed on hillsides half a mile away—an event they would hardly notice two months later. At night they marveled at the light show, better than a hometown fireworks display, as flares and star shells illuminated the trenches to reveal any raiding parties that might have crossed No-Man’s Land. Desultory shelling—about 50–70 rounds a day in the sector, from the front lines all the way back to Dombasle—kept the men on their toes. This routine was punctuated by an occasional deluge of high explosive and gas shells such as afflicted Company L of the 313th Infantry on the night of September 15, causing several casualties. To most of the men these were mere nuisances, and at times welcome diversions.

Despite the precautions taken by First Army, the Germans noticed the buildup in the Meuse–Argonne sector. Many breaches of the move-only-by-night orders occurred. A German flier spotted one battalion of the 79th getting out of their trucks after daybreak, and the French heavy artillery that moved up behind the division was impossible to miss. To determine who the new troops were on their front, the Germans on the night of September 19–20 made their first trench raid, falling upon Company E of the 313th Infantry, which held the extreme left of the division’s sector. A half-hour melee ensued. In the words of the divisional historian, “The greatest battle ever fought at its very height never offered more terrifying thrills than is offered when twenty or so men, in the pitch dark, scramble around a group of trenches trying to kill and not be killed by twenty or so other men whom they cannot distinguish as friend or foe.” The Germans were driven off but returned two hours later, trying unsuccessfully to recover the body of a comrade who had fallen in the first raid. His papers identified him as Lieutenant Frederick von Freideburg of the 1st Guards Division; he was between 19 and 20 years old. General Kuhn called the affair “a complete victory for the green Americans.”⁴²

On September 20 orders came from Pershing’s headquarters assigning the 57th Field Artillery Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General George LeRoy Irwin, to the 79th. This was the first time the division had had an artillery brigade since it arrived in France. Of course there was no opportunity for the infantry and the gunners to train together, or even to establish communication procedures. The 57th barely had time to emplace its guns and prepare its firing tables; some of its regimental officers didn’t even learn which division they would be supporting until shortly before the attack. At least the 57th had combat experience, having fought in a Franco-American offensive in the Vesle sector for most of August and early September. Other artillery assigned to the 79th included the 147th Field Artillery Regiment, usually part of the 41st Division; nine French batteries of 75mm guns and six of 155s; and two batteries of 9.2-inch guns from the Coast Artillery. All of these were under General Irwin’s command. This assemblage, in principle, gave Kuhn’s men the dedicated support of ninety-two 75s, forty 155s, twelve 6-inch trench mortars, and eight of the massive 9.2s.⁴³

Other supporting units arrived. Two battalions of the French 505th Tank Regiment provided the 79th with approximately 75 light tanks each.* These were Renault FT-17s—small, lightly armed, and thinly armored but relatively fast (for their time) and maneuverable. (They were the first tanks ever to have fully rotating turrets.) Also assigned to the 79th was a “groupe” of 15 St Chamonds, 22-ton monsters each bearing a 75mm gun and four machine guns. They were slow and mechanically unreliable and tended to drive themselves into the mud instead of through it. Also joining were a company of the 1st Gas Regiment, a balloon company, and the French 214th Aero Squadron. The airmen received no plans or orders from the division until a few hours before the attack; one of the tank battalions never did.⁴⁴ The 79th had never trained in working with any of these supporting arms, except for theoretical classroom exercises. The only tanks most of the men had seen were in pictures. Sergeant Davies noted his first impression of them: “Sure were funny little things. Look like little steel houses all painted up.”⁴⁵

* The nominal organization of a French tank battalion called for three companies, each with 25 tanks. In practice this count was rarely achieved due to breakdowns and combat losses. The Renault FT-17 weighed seven tons, had a crew of two, traveled at 4.8 miles per hour, and was armed with either a 37mm gun or an 8mm machine gun.

Early on Sunday, September 22, German raiders returned with a vengeance. Two attacks, preceded by heavy shelling, fell simultaneously on outposts of the unfortunate Company E of the 313th and of Company A at the other end of the regimental line. Four men were killed, two officers and nine men were wounded, and two were taken prisoner. A half-platoon of Company A used their Browning Automatic Rifles to drive off their attackers, who lost three killed and one taken prisoner. The bodies revealed the presence of the 117th Division in the opposing line. The captured German disclosed that the second raid was caused by the failure of its predecessor to come away with prisoners. This time they did better; the men from Company E were evidence that the 79th was in the line. Pershing visited Kuhn’s PC on September 24 and told him that his plan was for the French to maintain the forward positions to prevent such an event as this. But the French, who had managed the transfer, apparently had not complied.⁴⁶

As the day of the attack neared, activity behind the lines of the 79th reached a crescendo. Every night brought convoys of guns to the front, which dispersed to their firing emplacements behind the trenches. Supplies and ammunition flowed into the depots on long columns of trucks. Tanks clattered over the roads to their assembly points. The infantrymen in the reserve units had to change locations constantly to accommodate the newly arrived guns and the mountains of supplies.

On the night of September 22–23 the 79th shortened its front by giving up the left half to the newly arrived 37th Division. This reduced its line from nearly three miles to one and three-quarters, room for a single brigade. Each regiment of the 158th Brigade put a battalion in the front line, but not in the outpost positions. To further confuse the enemy as to which units it was facing, the outposts were manned by a battalion of the 33rd Division, otherwise located at the far right of First Army along the Meuse River.*

* There is confusion in the records as to who was holding the outpost line at this point. The historian of the 79th says it was a battalion of the 33rd Division. Hirschauer’s relief orders say it was units of the French Second Army. (Historical Division, USAWW, vol. 9, p. 60.) Yet the 79th lost men of its own in the German trench raid, who must have been in the forward positions.

On September 25 Kuhn moved his headquarters up from Dombasle to Hill 309, west of Montzéville and three miles behind the front line. General Pershing, inspecting the preparations for the assault, drove over and met with him. That afternoon Kuhn issued Field Order No. 6. Its key sentence read, “The 79th Division, maintaining close combat liaison with the 4th Division (III) Corps on its right, and with the 37th Division (V Corps) on its left, will advance rapidly to the Corps Objective, the line 05.5–77.5, 08.2–80.2, 11.5–81.0. It will seize in succession Mallancourt [sic], Montfaucon, and Nantillois.”⁴⁷ The artillery would bombard the German front line for 25 minutes, then commence the rolling barrage. The barrage would “stand” on the enemy intermediate position—a line running through the “Redoute du Golfe” and north of Malancourt—for ten minutes and on the enemy second position—a line connecting Hill 233 and Fayel Farm, at the foot of the Montfaucon pinnacle—for 20 minutes. In between, it would advance at the rate of 100 meters every ten minutes.† As an officer in V Corps artillery wrote after the war, “According to the plan of attack only 5½ hours was allowed for the Infantry to cut through the first line of resistance, to reduce the Intermediate line, to advance six kilometres in the face of determined opposition, and finally to overcome the enemy on a difficult and well-defended objective.”⁴⁸

† The documents give a confused picture of Kuhn’s intentions for the rolling barrage. Pershing’s original Field Order No. 20 specified a rate of advance of 100 meters every four minutes. Montfaucon was 6.5 kilometers from the front line, so including the “stands” this rate would have brought the 79th to Montfaucon in around five and a quarter hours. Other versions of FO 20, as well as V Corps Commander Cameron’s order, Kuhn’s Field Order No. 6, and a memo by Tenney Ross, give different rates of advance. Which version of the firing plan reached General Irwin, Kuhn’s artillery commander, is not clear. As events unfolded, it didn’t much matter.

The attack was to be led by General William J. Nicholson’s 157th Brigade, which would pass through the 158th to get to the starting line. Nicholson was 62 years old, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and Pershing’s Mexican Expedition. He placed his two regiments side by side, the 313th, under Colonel Sweezey, on the left and the 314th, led by Colonel William H. Oury, on the right, each reinforced by one company of the brigade’s machine gun battalion. Each regiment would have two of its battalions side by side, with the third assigned to brigade reserve. Each battalion would have its four companies in column (that is, one behind the other), the fourth being in regimental reserve.⁴⁹ Nicholson was uncertain about the support he would get from the artillery and the tanks. In a September 23 memorandum to Kuhn’s headquarters he wrote, “It is understood that one battalion of field artillery will be placed at the disposal of each regimental commander,” but he did not know whether additional artillery would be placed at the disposal of the brigade. Regarding tanks he wrote, “The detailed disposition of the forward infantry units will be affected by the number and plan of action of such tanks as may be assigned to this Division,” about as vague a plan for infantry–armor cooperation as one can imagine.⁵⁰ There is no indication that his doubts were resolved before the attack.

In their encampments the men of the 79th prepared to go over the top. Quartermasters’ assistants collected excess clothing and equipment for storage in the divisional dump. Wire-cutting instructions were issued to company commanders, along with admonitions to get their units to the jumpoff trenches on time. Men were issued extra ammunition and rations and were ordered to clean their rifles and bayonets for inspection. Sergeant Davies in the 314th recalled, “Lieut. Pollack called the platoon together about 4 P.M. and gave us quite a serious talk on what was expected of us when we get into action. I knew then that the time was very close ...”⁵¹ Private Kachik and other Catholics attended services in the field. The altar was a couple of big boxes with saplings bent over them to form an arch. He recalled that back home, people complained when their altars weren’t fancy enough. This was the most beautiful altar he had ever seen.⁵²

At nightfall the Avocourt–Malancourt road came alive with movement. Guns, motorized and horse-drawn, moved up to their advanced firing positions while trucks bore ammunition and supplies to the forward depots. Right of way was given to the heavy artillery brigades of the army and corps, which would deliver the opening bombardment. Patrols went forward into No-Man’s Land to cut the German wire, followed by officers who marked the assault lanes with tape. The 313th departed its bivouac in the Bois de Lambechamp and marched five miles to its position in the front line; the last units did not reach their places until 4:10 a.m. The 314th did not receive the order until 7:10 p.m., when it was already on the move. The regiment left its camp in the Hesse Forest and headed for its assigned spot on Hill 304, getting into position only at 4:30 a.m. Not until then could the officers assemble to receive their maps and written orders. The two regiments of the 158th Brigade—those of their battalions not already holding the front lines—followed. Sergeant Davies recounted an incident on the march: “After many delays we entered the reserve trench. We hadn’t gone very far when a poor old mule that had been on top of the trench fell in right in front of us. They couldn’t get him out so they shot him and we had to climb over his body to go on.”⁵³ (From the soldiers’ diaries and memoirs it is apparent that every man who went down that trench remembered the mule to the end of his days.) Wet, cold, and tired, the men of the 79th reached their assault positions; no one got much sleep.

At precisely 11:30 p.m. on the 25th, one-quarter of the army artillery began firing at long-range targets. The 155mm howitzers and the huge 9.2s belched shells onto the main German defensive lines. Private Leo V. Jacks of the 119th Field Artillery described the scene lyrically:

The deep muffled booming of the howitzers sounded like thunder coming out of a Cyclops’ cave. Waves of sound seemed as material as waves of water. We were engulfed in them. They surged, and washed, and echoed from crest to crest in volcanic tones. The great forged-steel bolts passed with a rushing noise like a huge wind. Trees along the slopes of our hills bent heavily, with their branches waving and shaking, and their heads bowing as if a tornado were blowing above them, and little ripples ran along the grass tops as volley after volley raged past.⁵⁴

By then the marching regiments of the 79th had come up level with the positions of the guns. Never having been so close to heavy artillery in action, the men were stunned by the noise, the smoke, and the flashes of light. The historian of the 316th Infantry wrote:

It was the first time these men had been in front of the fire of their own guns. For a dazed moment there was a gasp of something like panic—scores dropped into the gutters beside the road—and then the true nature of all that cataclysm dawned on them, and somewhat sheepishly they rose to view in awe the spectacle unfolded. A thousand gorgeous sunsets—extinguished in a second, recreated in a moment—unceasing rolls of thunder, a night indelibly written in memory.⁵⁵

Three hours later, corps and divisional artillery and the remainder of the army guns opened up on targets within a few miles behind the German lines—artillery batteries, command posts, machine gun nests, crossroads, barracks, strong points. Almost 2,700 guns were firing at once, and their reports blended into a continuous roar. The sky glowed crimson, then a duller red as smoke filled the air. The landscape opposite First Army’s lines lit up with the flashes of exploding shells. On his way before dawn to attack German observation balloons, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker flew over the front: “Through the darkness the whole western horizon was illumined with one mass of jagged flashes ... The picture made me think of a giant switchboard which emitted thousands of electric flashes as invisible hands manipulated the plugs.”⁵⁶ The Germans’ return fire was weak, but a few rounds dropped on the regiments of the 79th as they made their way forward through the communication trenches. One man was killed and several wounded. A corporal in Company B of the 313th remembered the fate of one of his comrades, Private David Rudolph: “His leg was torn by a shell fragment, face badly cut and bleeding freely. I saw him wave his helmet from a shell hole, calling for first aid.” Private Rudolph later died of his wounds.⁵⁷

The day dawned. A thick fog filled the valley between the 79th and the slopes ahead. At 20 seconds before 5:30 a.m., Company D of the 1st Gas Regiment used its 4-inch Stokes mortars to add a layer of smoke to the fog. Exactly on the half-hour the divisional guns directed their aim to the German front line, on which they rained shells for 25 minutes. (In the preparatory fire and the rolling barrage, the 57th Field Artillery would fire a total of 40,000 75mm and 6,000 155mm shells.⁵⁸) The order went out to fix bayonets. The scraping sound of blades clearing their sheaths filtered down the line—or would have, had it been audible over the roar of the guns. As the barrage began, commands rang out:

“Third Platoon, advance! Combat groups about thirty paces. Scouts out.”⁵⁹

The men of the leading battalions climbed the parapet, threaded their way through the gaps in the wire, formed their lines, and stepped off into the smoke and fog.