With Their Bare Hands

Sergeant James Meehan of Company G, 313th Infantry Regiment, remembered the first moments of the attack:

[O]rders came down the line to move out and in two minutes No Man’s Land was full of men pushing ahead through barbed wire, jumping trenches, and across shell holes, there being a heavy fog or mist which made it very hard to see ahead. We had scarcely gone one hundred yards when our first man went down with a bullet in [his] leg, being Bernard Repp, an automatic gunner.¹

As it happened, the Germans manning the forward outposts, following their doctrine of defense in depth, had withdrawn to the Main Line of Resistance once they had warned of the imminent attack. Except for a few bodies, the first trench line the Americans reached was empty. A corporal in the same company, Oscar Lubchansky, later wrote to his father:

I have a hazy recollection of a hazy march, a cold night in a trench, an ear splitting artillery barrage. Our company was in reserve, our duties calling on us to mop up and clean out machine gun nests that our other waves had passed up. I can tell you it is some sensation. We had the whole of Malancourt Woods to traverse. Our artillery had torn everything to pieces, but the inevitable snipers and machine gun rats still remained. As I said it is some sensation to hear a rifle crack and bullet wiz [sic] past your ear and you not knowing where it comes from.²

The 313th, under Colonel Claude Sweezey, held the left half of the 79th Division’s sector, with his 2nd Battalion on the left and his 3rd Battalion on the right.* Despite the almost zero visibility and the lack of resistance in the German front line, enemy artillery and machine guns further up the slope quickly began to take a toll. Corporal George Evans was ordered to go forward and locate the platoon leaders of Company B. “In doing so I stumbled across something which I thought was a sand bag on the edge of a little trench. Stooping down to rest my hand on it, I felt something soft and wet, and looking closer I saw it was the disfigured face of a doughboy. I was told later that it was [Private Frederic] Prettyman.”³ In the fog and smoke, men lost track of their units and of each other. The formations in which they had been so briefly trained—columns of half-platoons, companies in assault echelon—dissolved. The haze rendered the men largely invisible to their opponents, but neither could they see enemy positions until they practically tripped over them. It hardly mattered—to preserve secrecy, Pershing had banned raiding and had limited patrolling before the attack, so no one in First Army had current intelligence on the enemy’s positions. The experience of Lieutenant Miller Johnson of Company K was typical of the confusion. His platoon did not get far into the woods when “suddenly what seemed like a million German machine guns opened on us.” As he recalled soon afterward:

Every time we would raise our head “Tut, tut, tut” would go the German Maxim ... I raised my head to see where we were, when lo and behold I was looking into the muzzle of a German gun two feet in front of me, manned by two Germans who had sickly grins; and one of them said “In kommen,” which I readily understood. I did not stand up for fear of being hit by my own guns, because bullets were flying in all direction. I took a look around to see where my men were, and found that I was deserted.

Just as I was about to enter the shell hole, which held two Huns and their machine gun, I heard, “Keep down, Lieutenant. There she comes,” and bang, with a cloud of smoke, was the explosion of a grenade. When I recovered from the shock, I found that both Germans had been severely wounded and the machine gun knocked about five yards out of place. Immediately I decided that I was not deserted, as I had thought, but found later that the men had learned my predicament and had relieved me of an embarrassing position. The one German soon died and we left the other to his fate and pressed on.⁴

Johnson reorganized the platoon and discovered that, of the 50 men with whom he had started, ten remained. A few had been killed or wounded; most had simply lost contact in the fog and underbrush, some of them becoming caught up in their own small battles unknown to Johnson. Continuing forward, he encountered little resistance save a few snipers who, camouflaged and firing from the trees, brought down some more of his men.

Bigger problems were brewing. Heavily laden, the men of the 313th got tangled in the old wire, underbrush, and shell holes of the Bois de Malancourt. Gradually the rolling barrage, the moving line of shell fire that was supposed to neutralize their opponents, drew away from the advancing men. If the exploding line of shells got too far ahead of the infantry, the defenders would have time to emerge from their dugouts, set up their machine guns, and fire into the advancing ranks. This was not an immediate crisis because the Germans had largely abandoned the wood; but it would soon count for a lot. A similar problem plagued Company A of the 311th Machine Gun Battalion, assigned to support the advance of the 313th. The carts in which they carried their weapons and equipment quickly bogged down in the rough terrain. Abandoning the carts and carrying by hand their .30-caliber water-cooled machine guns, tripods, and ammunition, the gunners rapidly fell behind the infantry. Not for many hours would they catch up.

Trouble arose from yet a third source. Coming up in the rear of the 313th was the 316th Infantry Regiment. Its orders were to stay 1,000 yards behind, cleaning up bypassed German positions and standing ready to rush reinforcements forward if needed. Jumping off at 7:00 a.m., the 316th passed through the remains left by the regiment ahead of it. Captain Carl Glock, the regimental adjutant, recalled his journey up a communication trench that led through the Bois de Malancourt:

At a turn in the [trench], as the head of the column approached, there lay a group of grotesquely huddled figures in American O.D. [olive drab]. The man in the lead putting his hand to the shoulder of one of these figures drew it away sharply in swift enlightenment—murmured a barely audible, “Dead!” and stumbled on. The column followed. It was the 316th’s first sight of grim horror.⁵

The two lead battalions at first kept their proper distance. But, as with the regiment in front of them, officers quickly lost track of their units. Worse, neither the commanders nor the men seemed to understand their mission. In their inexperience and their eagerness to join the combat, the men of the 316th would not adhere to the slow pace set by the leading wave. Many rushed ahead, forgetting to mop up bypassed machine gun nests, which opened fire on their flanks and rear. This not only caused unnecessary casualties, it demoralized the men, who did not understand why the Germans were not put out of action once the front line had passed. Attached to the 316th was a French observer, the wonderfully named Captain Richard Feuardent. Frustrated by the regiment’s dangerous lack of discipline, the captain decided to lead by example. Pulling his revolver, he plunged into a dugout and reappeared moments later with three Germans, their hands up and crying, “Kamerad!”⁶ (His exploit so impressed the officers of the 316th that it was later recounted by the regimental and division historians as well as in the reports of the French liaison mission.) But the officers of the 316th fundamentally misunderstood their purpose. A field message sent by the leader of Company K to his battalion commander complained, “313th & Attached MG Co. holding us up. We cannot advance without blanketing their fire.”⁷ The idea that the regiment was to stay 1,000 yards behind the 313th, not advance on its own, had apparently made no impression.

Sometime between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. the German 11th Grenadier Regiment, defending Montfaucon, detected a brief pause in the attack. They used it to evacuate the wounded, reposition their units, replenish their ammunition, and plug gaps with reserves or machine guns. But the quiet didn’t last. The American artillery opened up again, trying to overwhelm the defenders and clear the road to Montfaucon. The fog, however, made it impossible for them to observe their fire, so it was ineffective, except for a few hits on the German artillery, whose positions were already known to the Americans.⁸

By 9:00 a.m. the 313th emerged from the Bois de Malancourt into the Golfe de Malancourt, the triangular clearing nearly a mile wide and somewhat less from bottom to top. Halfway up was the German Haupt-Widerstands Linie, the main line of resistance, a row of trenches looking down on the approaching Americans, heavily wired and studded with machine guns. More machine guns were sited in the Bois de Cuisy, which dominated the Golfe from the north. Of the 2,000 or so men with which the two lead battalions of the 313th had started that morning, only 300 remained in the front line; some had become casualties, but most of the rest were scattered in the foggy woods behind. Companies of the 313th repeatedly staged frontal attacks on the nearest machine gun nests, but the only result was to pile up their own dead and wounded. Among these were two battalion commanders, Major Benjamin Pepper of the 2nd Battalion, killed by machine gun fire, and Major Jesse Langley of the 3rd, wounded in both legs. A detachment was sent to the left, into the sector of the 37th Division, to circle the enemy positions; one platoon was able to overwhelm a machine gun nest and take 22 prisoners, but still no forward movement was possible. At 11:45 a.m. Colonel Sweezey sent an urgent request back to General Nicholson at 157th Brigade headquarters asking artillery to pound the German trenches and the woods beyond; shortly afterward he sent a telephone message: “Request that tanks be sent forward. I am suffering severe losses from M.G. fire apparently from south east of [Montfaucon]. We have no artillery barrage.”⁹ Nicholson relayed the message to Division headquarters, adding that he had no contact with the artillery, because he had moved forward from his PC of that morning and was out of communication with them.

By this time the 316th had caught up and mingled with the 313th, further disorganizing the front line. Sweezey did not have the authority to order the regiment behind him to slow down and keep its distance, nor could he ask Nicholson, his brigade commander and immediate superior, to do so, because the 316th belonged to General Robert H. Noble’s 158th brigade. At some point Sweezey sent a message to Lieutenant Hurley on Nicholson’s staff who, at 12:30 p.m., relayed it upward to Kuhn’s headquarters: “Col. Sweezey is being held up ... He complains that he is being pushed by elements of Col. Charles command [the 316th]. In some places the companies are almost intermingled.”¹⁰ To reply, Kuhn had to order Hurley to get word to Noble to order Charles to disengage his men from the 313th. It is not clear from the records whether Charles ever got Kuhn’s order or, if so, when. The convoluted chain of command, caused by Kuhn’s column-of-brigades attack formation, was preventing officers from controlling the men they nominally led. In the words of Major Paul Allegrini, the French observer attached to Kuhn’s headquarters, “At that moment the division was not a body of troops but a mob.”¹¹

Sweezey’s request for tanks would not be easy to meet. A company of the 304th Engineers, part of the 79th Division, had been sent to build a road across No-Man’s Land for the tanks, which could not negotiate the shell-cratered terrain. But as described by the commander of the French 14th Tank Battalion, assigned to support the 313th:

By 9 a.m. the tanks were engaged in the Malancourt wood but the work on the trail was extremely slow; the laborers of the American engineering units, too scarce and having already undergone great exertion, made no headway ... [A]s the work on the [trail] made no progress, the tanks remained, in fact, a very long time immobilized in the Malancourt wood.¹²

As for the guns, two battalions of the 147th Field Artillery Regiment, assigned to support the advance of the 157th Infantry Brigade, began to move forward once they had completed their barrage mission. At first they tried to use the road being built for the tanks, but got nowhere. Next they traveled west to Avocourt. From there the map showed a road angling northeast toward the village of Malancourt that could bring the regiment up behind the advancing 313th. But the road had been obliterated long before so the artillery was stalled, unable to fire a shot for the rest of the day. Not knowing this, Sweezey and the 313th waited.

In the right sector of the 79th, the 314th Infantry Regiment jumped off at 5:30 a.m. with its 3rd Battalion to the left and its 2nd Battalion to the right, each with one company in the lead and one company in support; they were accompanied by machine gun and trench mortar units. (The regiments’ other infantry companies were allocated to brigade and regimental reserve.) From a height just behind the jumpoff line, Second Lieutenant John Kress of the regiment’s Machine Gun Company got a clear view over the fog:

The first sight of Montfaucon was appalling. From the top of the hill above Esnes, about five miles from Montfaucon, one could see the city itself standing out against the skyline. It was one great belching spout of dirt and dust as the heavy shells entered and burst among the buildings. This continued for hours, until the infantry had advanced so far it was necessary to stop the artillery fire.¹³

The infantry immediately ran into trouble. In some places the wire had not been properly cut, so it took more than the allotted 25 minutes to get past it. Then they had to cross Forges Brook, on the map an insignificant blue hairline but in reality a swampy morass with no banks or borders. Neither task was helped by the fog which, as with the 313th, concealed both the attackers and the positions they were attacking. At least they did not have to deal with trees and underbrush because this part of the sector, unlike that of the regiment to their left, faced mostly cleared farmland and small woodlots rather than continuous forest. The terrain, although badly shot up in four years of fighting, was less convoluted than that experienced by the 313th on their left—the 314th was attacking up the spine of the Barrois ridge, from which eroded valleys extended to the left as well as to the right, where the 4th Division was on their flank. Perhaps for these reasons, the companies of the 314th do not seem to have become disorganized as quickly or as badly as in their neighboring regiment. Nonetheless, the men gradually fell behind the rolling barrage, which proceeded up the hill at the inflexible rate of 100 meters every four minutes as Pershing had commanded in Field Order No. 20.

Once past the brook the men made good progress; here too the German outpost line had been abandoned. By 10:00 a.m. the leading companies had passed the ruins of the hamlet of Haucourt and were between Malancourt village on their right and Hill 277 on their left. But their progress was deceptive; many machine gun positions and sniper posts, undetected in the fog, remained in their rear as well as to their front and flanks. The situation became startlingly clear as, at about that hour, the fog lifted and gave way to a clear blue sky. The effect was like turning on a light in a dark and crowded room—much more of a problem for the Americans, who were in the open, than for the Germans, who were in concealed positions. In one incident related by Private Casper Swartz of Company C, his unit found itself pinned down inside a semicircle of German riflemen; every time one of the men looked up, bullets whizzed by. Private Swartz told the man next to him to keep down, but the man said, “I’ll get them with this Brownie Automatic.” He got to his knees and, as he was aiming his BAR, a bullet pierced his helmet and he fell backward, dead. Swartz never knew who he was.¹⁴

Machine gun fire poured into the American ranks from all directions, especially from the ruined village of Malancourt, where the German guns were dug in with overlapping and mutually supporting fields of fire. Fortunately, the men were well spread out. Colonel William Oury, commander of the regiment, wrote in his report, “In one case in particular our men found themselves right by a nest of machine guns, saw a machine gunner before he could traverse his gun, threw a bomb, and the gunner came out and surrendered with his whole crew. The lieutenant then took the man at the point of a gun, made him point out several other nests, and by this operation they were able to capture some 15 or 16 guns.”¹⁵ The regiment’s own machine guns should have been there to suppress the opposition. But the torn-up ground was too much for the gunners, who were carrying their heavy weapons after abandoning their carts in the mud and could not keep up. One company was able to get far enough forward to silence several German machine gun nests. But the major commanding the battalion saw that the machine guns would not be able to negotiate the rugged terrain ahead and sent them back to the jumpoff point to await further assignment. The divisional artillery, still stuck on the road back at Avocourt, would be no help either.

The fight at Malancourt quickly became a struggle to preserve the advance of the 314th. As described by a participant, “The place was a village in name only. Years of bombardment had torn the tiny hamlet to fragments, until all that remained were some walls which had somehow escaped being struck by shells, a few trees with splintered trunks and dead limbs, and a great quantity of debris.”¹⁶ The battle quickly devolved into a series of local fights against machine gun positions. Typical was the experience of the automatic rifle squad of Company F, led by Sergeant John McCawley. Dispatched to work around a group of machine gun nests, it got within 50 yards and opened fire on three of them, wiping them out. But the action attracted the attention of other Germans, who commenced to fire on McCawley’s squad. The sergeant was killed instantly, and almost every man in the patrol was killed or wounded. Wrote the divisional historian, with the sang-froid typical of divisional historians, “The sacrifice saved many, for it enabled the company to advance, while the patrol attracted the enemy fire.”¹⁷ Lieutenant Robert Christie of Company A led the scouts who reconnoitered ahead of the main body. He described the death of one of his men in a letter to the widow:

We had passed through a difficult bit of woods under a heavy fire and were working out into the open to avoid snipers located in trees, when we were stopped by the fire of a large number of machine guns ... I ordered several scouts to move to my flank, over ground I had traversed, and Clarence P. Ferguson was the first to obey. I told him what he should do and he complied fearlessly and promptly. He passed beyond me, advancing deliberately. I was attracted by a faint gasp which indicated that he had been hit. He turned round, sat down and then lay flat for protection, as I thought. Not a word was said and there was no indication that he desired assistance. One man was shot fatally just behind me, another scout was shot through the foot and another through the shoulder in quick succession. When I reached Ferguson he was dead, killed, I suspect, by a shot which was intended for me.¹⁸

Despite their losses and disorder, the men were slowly advancing. Soldiers who had separated from their units formed ad hoc combat groups.¹⁹ Here and there parties of Germans began to surrender, more than willing to trade mud and machine gun fire for a warm meal and a safe cage behind the American lines. A private in the Machine Gun Company captured 22 of them in two groups, for which he was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Sergeant Edward Davies was in Company B of the 315th Infantry, following behind the 314th. He wrote in his diary, “I shall never forget the first German prisoner I saw. He was a splendid big fellow with light curly hair and very good looking. His right arm had been torn off at the shoulder, but he was walking with a steady step with his captor. I couldn’t help but admire his nerve.”²⁰ But other Americans found their captives to be “middle-aged, dirty, miserably dressed, and apparently glad to be alive no matter what the cost.”²¹ For a few of the prisoners the cost was greater than they bargained for. Some of the Americans took the German resistance personally, especially if they had been shot at from behind. Second Lieutenant Arthur Joel of Company F in the 314th heard another lieutenant order a private to escort two captured men to the rear. The man returned almost immediately. “What did you do with the prisoners?” the lieutenant asked. “I tended to them, Sir,” was the reply. In Joel’s account, “His sheepish glance told better than words what had happened. Such occurrences were not uncommon on either side.”²²

Having reached Malancourt and Hill 277, the advance of the 314th began to bog down. The regiment had become disorganized. Companies mixed together; some were missing most of their men, others had extra. Soldiers found themselves with unfamiliar units. Two companies of the 315th Infantry, advancing too fast behind the 314th, barged into the front line. With bypassed enemy positions behind them, it was not always clear where the front line was; Colonel Oury’s Headquarters Company, normally well in the rear, found itself attacking a machine gun nest, from which it captured five gunners.²³ An officer on the staff of the Inspector General, observing the field, later wrote:

At 10:00 o’clock there was considerable congestion of troops in Malancourt and on the south side of Hill 277. The movements of these troops resembled the actions of a reserve [i.e., staying put and awaiting orders] ... One company formed under cover of Malancourt, took the trench at the southeast edge of the Bois de Coude, northwest of Malancourt, and another trench in the Ravine de Fontenille, taking prisoners in both works. Arriving abreast [Hill] 269 this line came under heavy machine gun fire and fell back to cover. This was the only demonstration of aggressive leadership observed during a period of over five hours.²⁴

Despite local successes against German positions, in Oury’s words, “There still remained enough machine gun activity to more or less demoralize the command.”²⁵ Not wanting to waste time, Oury ordered the advance to continue without pausing to reorganize; but it was hopeless. Around noon, barely half a mile north of Malancourt, the 314th ground to a halt. For several hours they traded fire with machine guns further up the hill, to little effect. By 4:00 p.m. the infantry was showing signs of panic, and a few men started to move back without orders. Oury, his staff officers, and Lieutenant Poulaine, the French observer with the regiment, stopped the movement and sent the men back to the lines; but no further advance would be possible that day.²⁶ The advance had cost Oury’s regiment two officers and 52 men killed.²⁷

Why were there no tanks to overrun the machine gun positions, no artillery to pulverize them from afar? One reason was that, throughout the division, communication was falling apart. Even before the attack began, Colonel Charles of the 316th had lost contact with his battalion commanders and with brigade headquarters. Kuhn received no word from the 314th as to whether they had reached their assigned jumpoff position; he had to send officers to find the regiment, which they did only after the attack had begun. V Corps immediately lost contact with the 79th because the division had been given the wrong kind of telephone wire—cotton-insulated, for indoor use, rather than rubber-insulated for the field—which soon short-circuited in the damp earth. V Corps operated all day with no reliable information on the whereabouts of the 79th Division.

Much had been expected of the 6th Balloon Company assigned to the 79th; their four balloons were to report the position of the front line and spot targets for the artillery. But when the fog lifted German planes attacked them; three balloons were shot down in flames, one of them burning the observer to death as he descended in his parachute. By 11:30 a.m. all contact with the Balloon Company had been lost and it remained out of communication the rest of the day.²⁸

The 214th Aero Squadron, a French unit, was supposed to perform a function similar to that of the balloons. The plan was for infantry units to spread colored panels on the ground that would indicate their position to the airmen and convey messages such as requests for artillery fire or ammunition. The fliers would also look for German points of resistance and drop messages to the artillery telling them where to fire. The squadron got off to a bad start. Lieutenant de la Chapelle, the commander, received Kuhn’s plan only three hours before the attack began and was never able to establish contact with division headquarters, remaining ignorant of Kuhn’s intentions throughout the battle. According to de la Chapelle, the infantry almost never signaled its locations or its needs. Even divisional headquarters often failed to display their panels, so that pilots had to guess where to drop their messages.²⁹ Although the squadron took excellent aerial photos of the battlefield, these could not be developed and delivered until the next day, when they did no good. The little aerial intelligence that the division did receive was mostly inaccurate, such as the report of an American pilot who flew over Montfaucon on the morning of the attack taking low-altitude photographs. Upon landing, he described seeing no Germans in or around Montfaucon or within ten kilometers of it; only Americans were visible in the town. When the photos were examined long afterward, they showed German infantry south of the town and many targets nearby.³⁰

Information from other sources was hard to come by. The 157th Brigade, the 314th Infantry, and the 316th Infantry were out of communication with the division’s headquarters for most of the day. The 316th Infantry could not reach the 158th Brigade PC from the jumpoff until the morning of the 27th. The situation led to a flurry of increasingly worried messages, of which these were typical:

Line to you reported out of order. Report not verified. Report situation at once by bearer and keep me informed by mounted messenger at frequent intervals.

Signal men say tanks are destroying their wire. They are now working on wires forward from line. Pearson unable to locate Col. Oury—he will extend runner chain ... I will try from here to secure any information of his front line and flanks. Please advise by return runner.

Following message dated 0725 from PC at 13.5–72.4 from Incite One (313th Regt) reports advance progressing without halt but cannot get any communication with Bn. Commanders.³¹

Throughout, General Kuhn was ignorant of his division’s position. As he wrote late in the day in the midst of a long, angry message to General Nicholson (of which more later), “Have been without information all day regarding 313th Regiment and in the dark as to my front line.”*³²

* In fact, the 313th sent several messages to brigade and division headquarters reporting its position; they appear in the files of V Corps and 79th Division headquarters in the National Archives. The problem may have lain less in neglect by Sweezey or in the communication link itself than in how Kuhn’s inexperienced staff received and collated the information and presented it to him.

Lack of information was compounded by actual misinformation reaching the senior commanders, which grew as the day progressed. Around 10:15 a.m. V Corps reported to the operations staff of First Army, “79th Division reports they have reached their objective.”³³ This vague message could have meant that Montfaucon had fallen, or that the division had reached the Corps Objective nearly two miles beyond. Whether it was taken seriously is not known, but other examples started piling up. At 2:15 p.m. the V Corps message center received a report, ostensibly from the 79th Division, stating that “our troops (79th Div.) advancing north of Montfaucon.”³⁴ Late in the afternoon of the 26th and long into the evening—at 7:15, 7:30, and 10:15 p.m.—V Corps kept sending messages up the line saying that the 79th was north of Montfaucon. The division was, in fact, stuck just over a mile below the town until the next morning.†

The lack of reliable information led to a more insidious and far-reaching failure. The divisional artillery was, as we have seen, immobilized and unable to fire. But the corps and army artillery were still available and although they were well behind the front, many of their large guns were within range of the German strong points. The problem was that corps headquarters were getting conflicting, optimistic, and unreliable information about their divisions’ locations. Regiments tended to report where they ought to be, not where they actually were. At 12:30 p.m., for example, the 79th reported to V Corps that it had reached Fayel Farm, which was on the southeastern slope of Montfaucon hill.³⁵ In fact, it was stuck in the Bois de Malancourt, two and a half miles to the south. Not knowing where the divisions were, but believing them to be well north of their true positions, corps and army gunners feared to open fire lest they hit their own soldiers. In the early afternoon army artillery at the request of the two corps ordered: “All firing south of line 282.50 to cease.”³⁶ That line was two and a half miles north of Montfaucon and a little more than half a mile north of Nantillois and included the territory the 79th was desperately trying to conquer. Until the divisional guns could free themselves from the muddy roads, neither the 79th nor any other division in V and III Corps could expect assistance from any artillery at all. Various versions of this order were renewed over the next four days, the stop line generally corresponding to the location that, in the words of the historian of the army artillery, “it was hoped the troops would reach.”³⁷

All of the problems recounted above—failing to keep up with the barrage, mixing of units, haphazard communication, poor aerial surveillance, faulty artillery support—could have been worked out during divisional training maneuvers. These were precisely the kinds of issues such exercises were intended to find and remedy. But there had been no maneuvers—there was no time. Nor had there been time to learn from the experience of the divisions involved in the St Mihiel offensive, who had faced the same obstacles. The 79th would learn on the job or not at all.

Maneuvers would not have helped overcome a huge difficulty faced by the 79th and all of the other divisions in the Meuse–Argonne: the roads. In the words of historian Rexmond C. Cochrane, “Ground plowed by some ten million shells during the previous four years could not be repaired in hours or days.”³⁸ Furthermore, the 79th was constrained in its use of the roads that existed. On the 24th the divisional staff had requested authorization from III Corps to use the road from Esnes north to Malancourt; they were refused.³⁹ The road from Avocourt to Malancourt was, as we have seen, a road in name only.

The obvious need, as the chief engineer of the 79th reported to his superior at V Corps, was to rebuild the road from scratch. To this duty were assigned the companies of the 304th Engineering Regiment, reinforced by infantry, engineers, and pioneers from other regiments. By 11:15 a.m. it was clear that this force was insufficient and a company of the 310th Engineers and two companies of the 52nd Pioneers, all borrowed from V Corps, were added. German prisoners, some under their own NCOs, were thrown into the effort; they were happy to do physical labor if it kept them away from the worst of the fighting.⁴⁰ Despite the additional force, the work proceeded fitfully. Company A of the 304th was in the lead and was so far forward that it came under German machine gun fire, which forced it to drop its tools. Taking up combat formation, the company attacked and captured the position, coming away with the gun and eight prisoners. Supplies of paving material were insufficient. At first, stone could be taken from shell holes, but as the engineers advanced the topsoil got deeper and no stone was available.

By mid-morning the road situation was becoming critical. A seemingly permanent traffic jam developed at Avocourt that effectively throttled any transport to or from the front line.

The pioneer regiments provided the physical labor in an attempt to keep the traffic moving. Broken-down trucks were pushed into the ditch. “Many a French truck driver was compelled to move forward at the pistol’s point.”⁴¹ Fortunately, the Germans concentrated their artillery on the American infantry rather than on the congested roads. Nevertheless, an impressive and increasing accumulation of bodies of men and horses and wreckage of trucks and wagons showed that the Germans were not wholly ignorant of the situation behind the American lines.

We left Colonel Sweezey and his 313th Infantry looking up at the Golfe de Malancourt and, beyond it, the Bois de Cuisy. The landscape was pitted with machine guns nests and swept by German artillery, which continued to exact casualties among the men huddled in the northern reaches of the Bois de Malancourt. For five hours they lay there. Company B of the 311th Machine Gun Battalion, ordered forward from brigade reserve, joined the regiment in the wood. Around 2:00 p.m., a company of tanks clattered up from the rear.* By then, Sweezey realized that no artillery would be coming to his aid; given the remaining daylight and the distance yet to go, he resolved to continue the attack without it. Halfway up the Golfe, the 313th was stopped by a previously undetected barbed wire obstacle and went to ground, waiting for pioneers to cut the wire. Many men fell dead or wounded. Worse from a strictly operational (certainly not a human) point of view, so did many officers. Captain Harry Ingersoll, commanding Company H, was hit in the throat and in the groin. Captain Effingham B. Morris, leader of Company K and Ingersoll’s law partner before the war, crawled over and stayed with him until the wires were cut and the attack resumed. Ingersoll was evacuated to a field hospital but died of his wounds. Along with Ingersoll, Lieutenant William Fraley of the same company was mortally wounded. Even the division chaplain became a casualty. John Carroll Moore, a Catholic priest, was accompanying the attack, ministering to the wounded and dying. Following one group of men into a captured trench, Chaplain Moore saw a grenade land among them. He seized it and hurled it out of the trench; as it left his hand it exploded, wounding him severely. Chaplain Moore received the Distinguished Service Cross for his exploit.

* These were from the 13th (French) Tank Battalion, assigned to the 37th Division, which the 79th had asked for assistance. The division’s own tank battalions, the 14th and 15th, were still stuck on the road being built above Avocourt and did not catch up with the leading regiments until late in the evening. They took no part in the day’s actions.

At this point accounts of the capture of the Bois de Cuisy diverge. In the words of General Kuhn, written after the war (and consistent with other descriptions from within the division), “The light tanks having opportunely arrived, Colonel Sweezey organized another attack, using the tanks and a supporting machine gun barrage. This attack was launched about 2:00 p.m. and eventually drove the Germans from the wood.”⁴² A military artist witnessed the opening of the assault:

A thrill went up my spine as I saw the tanks come out, strange lumbering creatures, crawling one after another, Indian file, rocking like ships in a heavy sea, but steadily creeping forward on their caterpillar feet toward the machine-gun nests hidden in the woods, that are their special prey. Shells with a lurid, saffron-colored smoke—the new antitank explosive—began to burst over them, and I could plainly see the hail of molten lead that shot directly downward from the ball of ruddy smoke.⁴³

Lieutenant Colonel D.D. Pullen of the Corps of Engineers, who, along with Lieutenant H.J. Ellis of the Tank Corps, was accompanying the French tanks, had a different version of events. I quote it here at length:

When we reached the point A [about half-way up the Golfe de Malancourt, at the wire obstacle] we found the leading Infantry Brigade was held up by a few snipers and one machine gun in the B. de Cuisy. The French refused to advance any further as they said that their orders were to proceed through the B. de Cuisy and not take part in any fighting until after the Infantry had taken B. de Cuisy. The Infantry apparently was very disorganized, as they made no attempt to go forward. After conferring with the French I requested them to fill their gas tanks and be ready to fight. They did this but refused to proceed further without written orders from the Brigade Commander. As the Brigade Commander could not be found I finally got hold of Captain Gaitan Liaras of the 13th Battalion. Upon being asked whether he would fight or not without written orders from the Brigade Commander his answer was, “I do not need any written orders; I will fight anybody at any time.” Lieutenants Ellis and Sonstelie had gone ahead and located the resistance. Captain Liaras was given the information as to the direction of the resistance and he deployed his 5 tanks, the only ones he had available, personally took command of the 5, accompanied by Lieutenant Ellis and walked on foot and took his tanks up to the edge of the B. de Cuisy and drove the Germans out of the edge of the woods. He then entered the B. de Cuisy with his 5 tanks, lost 2 of them in large shell holes, proceeded with the other 3 with Lieutenant Ellis and a few engineers and surrounded 7 Germans who had been holding the edge of the woods. Captain Liaras killed 2 Germans, the tanks killed one and the others were taken prisoners by Lieutenant Ellis and the Captain. As soon as the Infantry saw the 5 tanks enter the woods the whole brigade came up out of the trenches and entered B. de Cuisy. No infantry commander could be found, so all the troops were gathered together and instructions were given to form skirmish lines on both sides of the road marked in red. After the Infantry were deployed and ready the 3 remaining tanks advanced straight up the road with the Infantry on either flank. The far edge of the woods was reached, point B on the map) and no further resistance was encountered until we started out of the woods. We halted at the edge of the woods sent back for more infantry, got them in the north edge of the woods in B. de Cuisy.⁴⁴

Once the southern edge of the Bois de Cuisy had been won, the Germans began to withdraw, but resisted stubbornly in rear-guard actions with the result that there was much hand to hand fighting. At the northern edge of the Bois de Cuisy, immediately opposite the heights of Montfaucon, the 313th was again checked by machine gun fire. Under its cover, the retreat of the enemy infantry was rapid to the comparative safety of Montfaucon. By now it was 16h and Colonel Sweezey paused to reorganize.⁴⁵

We were nearly ready to advance from the north edge of the woods when 40 Germans came out of the woods about 100 yards to the right. The Infantry was ordered to open fire and the Tank Commander was asked if he would start after them. He replied he would and the Tanks and Infantry started after the Germans who were running for a trench northeast of the B. de Cuisy. We had advanced about 150 yards when we were met by severe machine gun fire from the northeast. The Tanks stopped to open fire and all of the Infantry laid down and made no attempt to advance. As soon as the tanks had stopped a 77[mm] gun using H.E. shell opened fire on us from Montfaucon. As soon as the 77 opened fire the Infantry all got up and fled into the woods to our rear. This left the Tanks in a very precarious position, so the Tank Captain was directed to get his Tanks to the edge of the woods while the Infantry were being rallied. Upon entering the wood all the Infantry was found in full retreat; most of the men were double-timing to the rear down the road. Lieutenant Sonstelie was sent to the rear with orders to stop the retreat and a guard was posted on the road with orders to shoot any man who went to the rear. The Infantry were brought up again, organized in the edge of the woods to resist possible counter attack and runners were sent out to try and find some Infantry Commanders. It was very difficult rounding up the Infantry in the woods as they were wholly disorganized and no one knew where any of their units were and what few Lieutenants could be found did not have the least control over any man. The whole situation can best be described by calling them a disorganized mob. After most of the Infantry in the woods had been located and brought forward Colonel Sweezey of the 313th Infantry arrived and took charge. At this time we had 2 Tanks ditched in the B. de Cuisy, 2 knocked out by shell fire in front of the B. de Cuisy and 5 ready for action. Colonel Sweezey was informed that the 5 Tanks would support him in any action he desired to take. After a great deal of delay in organizing for the attack an attempt was made to advance from B. de Cuisy, but this was repulsed again by the machine gun fire from the northeast.*⁴⁶

* Colonel Pullen’s account is somewhat substantiated by an officer of the 37th Division, who witnessed what happened to the tanks: “The two tanks had hardly left the shelter of the woods when well directed shots fired at point-blank range by a battery of German seventy-sevens, reduced them to a pile of junk. The shells, striking the tanks squarely in front, smashed the steel armor like an egg-shell and converted the interiors into a shambles of machinery, control apparatus and human flesh.” (Ralph D. Cole and W.C. Howells, The 37th Division in the World War, 1917–1918, 2 vols (Columbus, OH: The Thirty-Seventh Division Veterans Association, 1926), p. 208.)

The events are too distant for us to be able to disentangle the conflicting versions. No doubt the officers of the 79th understated the disorganization, verging on panic, of their troops. Pullen and Ellis, who could see only their small portion of the sector and who were under fire themselves, and who clearly in Pullen’s report wanted to emphasize their point, may have exaggerated it.

By 4:00 p.m. the 313th had reached the northern edge of the Bois de Cuisy, facing the hill of Montfaucon. Many stragglers from the earlier fights had by now rejoined the regiment and Sweezey called a halt to reorganize. Captain George Burgwin of Company E was given command of the 2nd Battalion, replacing Major Pepper; Captain James Lloyd of Company L took over from Major Langley. But the men were so scattered and the units so intermingled that Sweezey was unable to restore cohesion.⁴⁷

Earlier in the afternoon Pershing’s staff noticed that the 79th was far behind schedule and concluded that Kuhn and his men weren’t being aggressive enough. General Cameron at V Corps headquarters relayed to Colonel Ross, the divisional chief of staff, a peremptory message from Pershing: “The 79th Division is holding up the whole Army. The Army Commander desires that the 79th Division move forward at once.” The same message gave the position of the 4th Division, to the right, as being two kilometers north and east of Montfaucon, or about four kilometers beyond Kuhn’s front line.⁴⁸

On the map, it certainly looked as if the 79th Division was the laggard. Virtually every other division had reached or approached the Corps Objective, which generally meant an advance of five to six miles. (It was a considerably shorter distance to the Corps Objective on the extreme left of the line, where the 77th and 28th Divisions were expected to run into heavy resistance in the Argonne Forest.) Even the 35th Division, which virtually collapsed a day later, had moved three miles forward. The 79th had managed only two and a half.⁴⁹ But what really held the army up was Pershing’s instruction to his divisions to wait at the Corps Objective line until all of them had reached it before continuing the advance. This forced divisions that were perfectly capable of continuing the attack to stop in their tracks, allowing the Germans to reinforce their line unmolested, as we shall see. Here is where Pershing’s open warfare dogma—“comparatively little regulation of space and time by the higher command ... variable distances and intervals between units and individuals ... and the greatest possible use of individual initiative”—would have paid large benefits.⁵⁰ Did the general himself order a halt at the Corps Objective or did someone on his staff, fearful of losing control of the advance, do it without his knowledge? Either way, it was a striking violation of Pershing’s doctrine.*

* Early the following morning Foch, as if to emphasize the folly of First Army’s plan, sent Pershing a message that read, in part: “[A]ttacks must be incessantly sought to produce break-through, organizing for this purpose groups of infantry and artillery directed toward objectives, the possession of which will guarantee the crumbling of the enemy front. It is therefore necessary: in army corps—to select and assign distant and important objectives; in divisions—to select intermediate objectives; and, in small units (regiments or battalions)—to maneuver, rapidly and decisively, against machine gun posts which temporarily delay them. From now on, the fate of the battle rests on the decision of corps commanders, and on the initiative and energy of division commanders.” (Conrad H. Lanza, “The End of the Battle of Montfaucon,” Infantry Journal 23, July–August (1933), p. 351.) This must have infuriated Pershing, who always maintained that he taught open warfare to the French, not the other way around. But not until October 4 did the Americans abandon the everyone-straight-ahead attack formation, after Pershing had promoted Hunter Liggett to command First Army; see Chapter 15 and Smythe, Pershing, p. 205.

Pershing’s order for the divisions to wait at the Corps Objective line also exposed the fundamental illogic in Pershing’s “holding up the whole army” message to the 79th. For the 4th Division to “turn Montfaucon,” as prescribed in his Field Order No. 20, the 4th would, by simple geometry, have to be several miles beyond the town at a time when the 79th would still be in front of it. That is exactly what was happening. But Pershing either forgot his original intent or, more likely, did not follow the implications of his order to their logical conclusion.

At about 2:00 p.m. Ross forwarded Cameron’s message on to Nicholson, who sent a runner to Sweezey with a direct order: “Corps directs that the attack be pushed to its fullest vigor that nothing must hold up army is dependent on action of the 79th Division. You will push attack and let nothing stop you.”⁵¹ This unhelpful message reached Sweezey just as the 313th was regrouping in the Bois de Cuisy. He was dismayed:

I could not understand, as the regiment had been doing its utmost throughout the day. I deemed that an attack on Montfaucon without any artillery preparation and after dark when we could not see the barbed wire entanglements, against a position held by a large number of machine guns and heavy guns whose fire could be brought to bear on it, would be extremely inadvisable.⁵²

But orders were orders. With the 1st Battalion—hitherto in support—in the front line and aided by two of the French tanks, the regiment advanced down into the valley that lay between the Bois de Cuisy and the hill of Montfaucon. All went well for about 200 yards; then the Germans opened up with machine guns and artillery from ahead and above. Major Israel Putnam, named for his famous Revolutionary War ancestor and commanding the 3rd Battalion, was immediately shot through the head. Sweezey had now lost all of his original battalion commanders. The advance became a series of short rushes. The tanks, no longer able to see targets in the dark, withdrew.* As night descended, the regiment had gotten to the bottom of the valley but no further.† Sweezey ordered his men back to the Bois de Cuisy, the nearest position that offered shelter.

* Of this part of the engagement Sweezey later wrote, “The tanks I expected much from, due to the extensive laudation of them which I had seen in the daily press. The tanks with this regiment, as used by the personnel with them, with one possible exception ... were of little use.” (C.B. Sweezey, “Report of Operations of 313th Infantry from September 25, 1918 to November 11, 1918, Inclusive,” November 18, 1918, RG 120, 79th Division, Box 16, 33.2, NARA, pp. 2–3.)

† The historian of the German 11th Grenadiers recorded Sweezey’s attack thus: “A forceful infantry attack supported by tanks followed at around 5 pm, and was repeated continuously until dusk. There were moments where the front seemed to falter, but the brave grenadiers held their ground.” ([no first name] von Prittwitz und Gaffron, [no first name] Peschek, H. Mende, H. von Schweinichen, and G. Gieraths, Geschichte des Königlich Preußischen Grenadier-Regiments König Friedrich III. (2. Schles) Nr. 11 und seiner Grenzschutzformationen von 1914 bis 1920 (Berlin: Verlag Tradition Wilhelm Kolk, 1932), p. 239.)

A minor drama attended the withdrawal of Company K. It had advanced on the left end of the line, where a continuation of the Bois de Cuisy provided dense cover, and had immediately fallen out of contact with the rest of the regiment. Passing through the woods, the company came out on a rising slope and started up it. The German machine guns and artillery here were poorly directed and overshot the Americans, who got part way up the slope of Montfaucon itself, only to find themselves enfiladed by German fire. Darkness descended. Captain Morris, the company commander, told his men to dig in and they quickly fell asleep. But the captain was bothered by the lack of any indication that the rest of the regiment was advancing, so he sent a man back to find out what was going on. The runner returned with the news that Sweezey had called off the attack for the night. In the dark Captain Morris threaded his way back over the battlefield, found the regimental PC, and asked permission to bring his men back from their exposed position. Permission was granted, and the company withdrew without alerting the Germans. Had they remained on the exposed slope when the sun rose, they would have been slaughtered.

At 7:30 p.m. Sweezey conceded defeat for the day. Seven of his officers and 79 of his men were dead. By pigeon he sent a message to Nicholson: “Made an attack on Montfaucon but failed. Heavy machine gunfire, coordinates 11.0–77.4. Troops exhausted and have suffered heavy casualties. Am holding position edge of woods 11.4–77.3. Believe that Montfaucon cannot be taken by infantry fire alone.”⁵³ There is no record of whether the message was received.

Unknown to Sweezey, the forces that repelled his evening attack did not belong only to the 11th Grenadiers. By 6:00 p.m. the position had been reinforced by reserves hastily called up from the rear. When Sweezey had started his advance from the Bois de Cuisy, Montfaucon was defended by only one weak battalion and a Minenwerfer company. By the time he quit, it was occupied by two full (albeit understrength) German regiments.⁵⁴

* There was no attempt at the time to count the wounded, many of whom were left unattended on the field, made it to aid stations on their own, or died of wounds later. In 1960 Rexmond Cochrane estimated from medical records that the division lost at least 222 wounded. (Cochrane, “79th Division,” p. 21.) As a typical ratio of wounded to killed in battles of that time was three to one, Cochrane’s number looks low.

Back in division headquarters, General Kuhn had problems of his own. His command had lost 13 officers and 211 men killed (although he did not know these numbers) and he was far short of his objective.* By 3:00 p.m. telephone communication with the division PC at Hill 309 had failed, so he moved nearly two miles forward to the advanced information center at PC Zouave, where the Esnes–Malancourt road crossed Hill 304, leaving Tenney Ross at the old location. It was about then that Cameron’s “Move forward at once” order came in to Ross, who tried to forward the message to General Nicholson, whose 157th Brigade still led the division’s advance. Also, Kuhn had received word from General Hines, commander of the 4th Division, that the latter would be sending a brigade into the sector of the 79th to try to outflank Montfaucon; Nicholson needed to know this. But there was a problem; Nicholson had disappeared. At some point in the afternoon he had moved his PC forward without informing the division staff. Private James M. Cain, an orderly (and, in civilian life, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun), was sent out with another soldier to find him. He did, and Cameron’s order was delivered and relayed to Sweezey. When Cain found him Nicholson was about to move his PC forward again, so Cain followed in order to report the new location back to Kuhn. But it took Cain several hours to get back to 79th Division headquarters, and Kuhn remained out of touch.⁵⁵ By nighttime the general was desperately trying to learn the positions of his regiments. The phones were dead. The French 214th Aero Squadron, which was supposed to observe the situation on the ground, filed no reports. The balloon company assigned to the 79th tried to communicate by having its officers deliver messages by hand, but that was too slow to be useful. The only remaining method was by runner or staff officer. Colonel Oury eventually sent a message reporting the front line position of the 314th; it arrived early the next morning. But no amount of effort seemed able to raise Colonel Nicholson. Kuhn was furious:

Your advance from P.C. Gascogne to new P.C. has created a serious situation in that you did not provide for liaison with Div. Commander while making change. This is to advise you that CO 4th Divn. is sending forward a brigade in the direction of Cunel–Romagne to protect his left flank and to assist advance of 79th Divn. This movement may bring neighboring troops in front of our right and unless our troops are warned may result in casualties due to friendly troops being taken for enemy ... Have been without information all day regarding 313th Regiment and in the dark as to my front line ... You are directed hereafter not to move to a new P.C. until same is established and liaison maintained.⁵⁶

Private Cain had found Nicholson’s PC the previous night, so Kuhn handed the message to him hoping he could repeat the achievement. It didn’t happen.

Kuhn’s problem became an emergency at 6:27 p.m. when a message arrived at the division PC from Cameron at V Corps:

4th Division reports that they are N. of Nantillois ... They will halt for the night near Nantillois and their outposts will extend eastward [sic—should be westward] into the sector of the 79th Division. Notify your people to watch for these outposts after they pass Montfaucon. You must get by Montfaucon tonight.⁵⁷

Itasca 1 [Kuhn] directs that you drive forward as fast as you can so that you will catch up with the divisions on our right and left and so that you will take Nantillois tonight ... It is believed that American troops have taken Montfaucon and therefore the advance of the 157th Brigade should be rapid.⁵⁸