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CHAPTER XIX
"JULY 18TH" – THE TURN OF THE TIDE

Through the steady growth of Marshal Foch's reserves, by the speedy arrival of American forces, the fourth German offensive of 1918, the personally directed effort launched by the Crown Prince on May 27th, had been brought to a standstill.

The German thrust toward Paris had been stopped by the Americans at Château-Thierry and in the Bois de Belleau. It would be an injustice not to record the great part played in that fighting by the French Army attacked, but it would be equally unjust not to specify as the French have gallantly done, that it was the timely arrival of American strength that swung the balance against the enemy. For the remainder of that month of June and up to the middle of July, the fighting was considered local in its character.

The German offensive had succeeded in pushing forward the enemy front until it formed a loop extending southward from the Aisne to the Valley of the Marne. This salient was called the Château-Thierry pocket. The line ran southward from a point east of Soissons to Château-Thierry, where it touched the Marne, thence eastward along both sides of the river to the vicinity of Oeuilly where it recrossed the Marne and extended northward to points beyond Rheims.

Château-Thierry was thus the peak of the German push – the apex of the triangle pointing toward Paris. The enemy supplied its forces in this peak principally by the road that ran southward from Soissons and touched the Marne at Château-Thierry. To the west of this road and just south of the city of Soissons, is the forest of Villers-Cotterets. The enemy occupied the northern and eastern limits of the forest and the remainder of it was in the hands of the French.

This forest has always been considered one of the sentinels of Paris. It was located on the right flank of the German salient. It was a menace to that flank, and offered a most attractive opportunity for an Allied counter offensive from that direction. The Germans were not unmindful of this.

The enemy knew that in the forest of Villers-Cotterets it would be possible for Marshal Foch to mobilise his much-feared reserves by taking advantage of the natural screen provided by the forest. That Foch reserve still remained a matter for enemy consideration in spite of the fact that the successive German offensive since March 21st had met with considerable success with regard to the acquisition of territory. The Germans, however, had been unable to ascertain whether Foch had been forced to bring his reserves into the fight.

The situation demanded a full realisation by the enemy of the possible use of this reserve at any time and they knew that their lines in Villers-Cotterets Forest offered an ever present invitation for the sudden application of this reserve strength. Their lines at that point were necessarily weak by the superiority of the Allied position and, as a consequence, the Germans guarded this weak spot by holding in reserve behind the line a number of divisions of the Prussian Guard.

For the same reason, the enemy maintained constant observation of the French position. Their planes would fly over the forest every day taking photographs. They sought to discover any evidences indicating that Foch might be preparing to strike a blow from that place. They made careful note of the traffic along the roads through the forest. They maintained a careful watch to ascertain whether new ammunition dumps were being concealed under the trees. Their observers tried to ascertain whether any additional hospital arrangements had been made by the French at that point. Any of these things would have indicated that the French were preparing to strike through the forest but the Germans found nothing to support their suspicions.

Nevertheless, they maintained their lines at maximum strength. A belief existed among the German High Command that an attack might be made on July 4th, out of consideration to American sentiment. When the attack did not develop on that day, they then thought that the French might possibly spring the blow on July 14th, in celebration of their own national fête day. And again they were disappointed in their surmises.

This protracted delay of an impending blow worried the enemy. The Germans realised full well that they were fighting against time. Their faith in the capacity of their submarines to prevent American strength from reaching the line, had been abandoned. They now knew that every day that passed meant just that many more American soldiers arriving in France, and the consequent strengthening of the Allied forces during a season when the Germans, through their repeated offensives, were suffering terrible losses and were consequently growing weaker.

So, on July 14th, when the Allied counter-offensive had still failed to materialise, the German forces, by the necessity for time, moved to a sudden and faulty decision. They convinced themselves that they had overestimated the Allied strength. They accepted the belief that the reason Foch had not attacked was because he did not have sufficient strength to attack. With this, then, as a basis for their plans, they immediately launched another offensive, hoping that this might be the one in which they could deliver the final blow.

This action began on Monday morning, July 15th, and extended from Château-Thierry eastward along the valley of the Maine, northward to Rheims and thence eastward. By a remarkable coup, one small patrol of French and Americans deprived the enemy of the element of surprise in the attack. On the morning of the previous day, this patrol successfully raided the enemy lines to the east of Rheims and brought back prisoners from whom it was learned that the Germans intended striking on the following morning. The objectives of the offensive were the French cities of Épernay and Châlons. The accomplishment of this effort would have placed the Rheims salient in the hands of the enemy and brought the German lines southward to positions straddling the Marne, down the valley of which they would thus be able to launch another offensive on a straight road to Paris.

The Germans needed considerable strength for this new effort. To muster the shock divisions necessary for the attack, they had to weaken their lines elsewhere. The first reserves that they drew for this offensive were the Prussian Guard divisions which they had been holding in readiness in back of the weak spot in their line in the Villers-Cotterets Forest. Those divisions were hurriedly transported across the base of the V-shaped salient and thrown into the attack to the east and the southwest of Rheims.

The Germans found the Allied line prepared to receive them. Their attacking waves were mowed down with terrific machine gun fire from French and American gunners, while at the same time heavy artillery barrages played upon the German back areas with deadly effect in the massed ranks of the reserves. The fighting was particularly vicious. It was destined to be the Germans' last action of a grand offensive nature in the entire war.

On the line east of Rheims, the German assault was particularly strong in one sector where it encountered the sturdy ranks of the Rainbow Division of United States National Guardsmen, drawn from a dozen or more different states in the Union. Regiments from Alabama and New York held the front line. Iowa and Ohio were close in support. In the support positions, sturdy youngsters from Illinois, Indiana, and Minnesota manned the American artillery.

The French general commanding the sector had not considered it possible that this comparatively small American force could withstand the first onslaught of the Germans. He had made elaborate plans for a withdrawal to high ground two or three miles southward, from which he hoped to be able to resist the enemy to greater advantage. But all day long, through the 15th and the 16th and the 17th of July, those American lines held, and the advancing waves of German storm troops melted before our guns. Anticipating a renewal of the attack on the next day, General Gouraud issued an order on the evening of July 17th. It read:

"To the French and American Soldiers of the Army.

"We may be attacked from one moment to another. You all feel that a defensive battle was never engaged in under more favourable conditions. We are warned, and we are on our guard. We have received strong reinforcements of infantry and artillery. You will fight on ground, which, by your assiduous labour, you have transformed into a formidable fortress, into a fortress which is invincible if the passages are well guarded.

"The bombardment will be terrible. You will endure it without weakness. The attack in a cloud of dust and gas will be fierce but your positions and your armament are formidable.

"The strong and brave hearts of free men beat in your breast. None will look behind, none will give way. Every man will have but one thought – 'Kill them, kill them in abundance, until they have had enough.' And therefore your General tells you it will be a glorious day."

And so the line held, although the French General had in preparation the plans for withdrawal. When, at the end of the third day, the American line still occupied the same position, the French General found that his labour in preparing the plans for withdrawal had been for nothing. He is reported to have thrown his hands up in the air and remarked, "There doesn't seem to be anything to do but to let the war be fought out where the New York Irish and the Alabamans want to fight it."

There was one humorous incident worthy of record in that fighting. Great rivalry existed between the New York regiment and the Alabama regiment, both of which happened to be units of the same brigade. Both the New Yorkers and the Alabamans had a mutual hatred for the German but, in addition to that, each of them was possessed with a mutual dislike for the other. There had been frequent clashes of a more or less sportsmanlike and fistic nature between men from both of the regiments.

On the second day of the fighting, the Germans had sent over low-flying airplanes which skimmed the tops of our trenches and sprayed them with machine gun fire. A man from Alabama, who had grown up from childhood with a squirrel rifle under his arm, accomplished something that had never been done before in the war. From his position in a trench, he took careful aim with his rifle and brought down one of the German planes. It was the first time in the history of the Western Front that a rifleman on the ground had done this.

When the colonel of the New York regiment heard this, he was wild with envy and let it be known that there would be trouble brewing unless his regiment at least equalled the feat. So, on the following day, an Irishman in the ranks stood up and brought one German plane down to the credit of the old Sixty-ninth.

To the southwest of Rheims, Germans, who succeeded in breaking through the lines at one place on the south banks of the Marne, encountered American reinforcements and were annihilated to the number of five thousand. At no place did the enemy meet with the success desired.

The Germans had launched their attack at six o'clock on the morning of July 15th. At Vaux their demonstration was considered a feint, but along the Marne to the east of Château-Thierry, between Fossy and Mezy, the assaulting waves advanced with fury and determination. At one place, twenty-five thousand of the enemy crossed the river, and the small American forces in front of them at that place were forced to retire on Conde-en-Bire. In a counter attack, we succeeded in driving fifteen thousand of them back to the north bank, the remaining ten thousand representing casualties with the exception of fifteen hundred, who were captured.

Further eastward, the Germans established bridgehead positions on the south bank of the river at Dormas. The enemy enjoyed a minor success in an attack on the line near Bligny to the southwest of Rheims, where Italian troops fought with remarkable valour. Everywhere else the lines held solid and upon the close of that first night, Marshal Foch said, "I am satisfied —Je suis content."

At dawn the following day, the enemy's futile efforts were resumed along the river east of Château-Thierry. The Germans suffered appalling losses in their efforts to place pontoon bridges at Gland and at Mareuil-le-Port. St. Agnan and La Chapelle Monthodon fell into the hands of Americans on the same day.

On the 17th, the enemy's endeavours to reach Festigny on both banks of the river came to naught, but to the southeast of Rheims, his assaulting waves reached the northern limits of Montagne Forest. The Germans were trying to pinch out the Rheims salient. This was the condition of the opposing lines on the night of July 17th, – the night that preceded the day on which the tide of victory turned for the Allies.

Foch was now ready to strike. The Allied Commander-in-Chief had decided to deliver his blow on the right flank of the German salient. The line chosen for the Allied assault was located between a point south of Soissons and Château-Thierry. It represented a front of some twenty-five miles extending southward from the valley of the Aisne to the Marne. Villers-Cotterets Forest was the key position for the Allies.

It was from out that forest that the full strength of the blow was to be delivered. To make the blow effective at that most vital point, Marshal Foch needed a strong and dependable assaulting force. He needed three divisions of the hardest fighting soldiers that he could get. He had a considerable army to select from. As Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied armies, he was in command of all of the British army, all of the French army, all of the American army, the Italian, the Belgian, – all of the military forces of the Allied nations of the world. Marshal Foch's command numbered eleven million bayonets.

The Commander-in-Chief had all of these veteran fighting men from which he could select the three divisions necessary to deliver this blow upon which the civilisation of the world depended.

The first division he chose was the Foreign Legion of the French army. In four years of bloody fighting, the Foreign Legion, composed of soldiers of fortune from every country in the world, had never been absent in an attack. It had lived up thoroughly to its reputation as the most fearless unit of shock troops in the French army.

And then for the other two divisions that were needed, Marshal Foch selected, from all the eleven million men under his command, the First and the Second Regular United States Army Divisions. The Second Division included the immortal Brigade of United States Marines, that had covered themselves with glory in the Bois de Belleau.

It was a great distinction for those two American divisions to have thus been selected to play such a vital part in the entire war. It was an honour that every officer and man in both divisions felt keenly.

I have in my map case a torn and much folded little piece of paper. I received it that night of July 17th in Villers-Cotterets Forest. A similar piece of paper was received by every officer in those two American divisions. To me this piece of paper represents the order which resulted in victory for the Allied world. It reads:

Headquarters Third Army Corps American Expeditionary Forces,

France, July 17, 1918

Memorandum:

The Third Corps of the American Expeditionary Forces has been created and consists of the 1st. and 2nd. Divisions, two divisions that are known throughout France.

Officers and men of the Third Corps, you have been deemed worthy to be placed beside the best veteran French troops. See that you prove worthy. Remember that in what is now coming you represent the whole American nation.

R. L. Bullard,

Major General,

Commanding 3rd. Corps.

The German planes flying high over Villers-Cotterets Forest all day during the 17th, had seen nothing. The appearance of all the myriad roads that cross and recross the forest in all directions was normal. But that night things began to happen in the forest.

For once at least, the elements were favourable to our cause. There was no moon. The night was very dark and under the trees the blackness seemed impenetrable. A heavy downpour of rain began and although it turned most of the roads into mud, the leafy roof of the forest held much of the moisture and offered some protection to the thousands of men who spent the night beneath it. Thunder rolled as I had never heard it roll in France before. The sound drowned the occasional boom of distant cannon. At intervals, terrific crashes would be followed by blinding flashes of lightning as nature's bolts cut jagged crevices in the sombre sky and vented their fury upon some splintered giant of the forest.

The immediate front was silent – comparatively silent if one considered the din of the belligerent elements. In the opposing front lines in the northern and eastern limits of the forest, German and Frenchmen alike huddled in their rude shelters to escape the rain.

Then, along every road leading through the forest to the north and to the east, streams of traffic began to pour. All of it was moving forward toward the front. No traffic bound for the rear was permitted. Every inch of available road space was vitally necessary for the forces in movement. The roads that usually accommodated one line of vehicles moving forward and one line moving to the rear, now represented two streams – solid streams – moving forward. In those streams were gun carriages, caissons, limbers, ammunition carts and grunting tractors hauling large field pieces.

In the gutters on either side of the road, long lines of American infantry plodded forward through the mud and darkness. In the occasional flash of a light, I could see that they were equipped for heavy fighting. Many of them had their coats off, their sleeves rolled up, while beads of sweat stood out on the young faces that shown eager beneath the helmets. On their backs they carried, in addition to their cumbersome packs, extra shoes and extra bandoliers of cartridges.

From their shoulders were suspended gas masks and haversacks. Their waists were girded with loaded ammunition belts, with bayonet hanging at the left side. Some of them wore grenade aprons full of explosives. Nearly all of them carried their rifles or machine gun parts slung across their backs as they leaned forward under their burdens and plunged wearily on into the mud and darkness, the thunder and lightning, the world destiny that was before them. Their lines were interspersed with long files of plodding mules dragging small, two-wheeled, narrow gauge carts loaded down with machine gun ammunition.

Under the trees to either side of the road, there was more movement. American engineers struggled forward through the underbrush carrying, in addition to their rifles and belts, rolls of barbed wire, steel posts, picks and shovels and axes and saws. Beside them marched the swarthy, undersized, bearded veterans of the Foreign Legion. Further still under the trees, French cavalry, with their lances slung slantwise across their shoulders, rode their horses in and out between the giant trunks.

At road intersections, I saw mighty metal monsters with steel plated sides splotched with green and brown and red paint. These were the French tanks that were to take part in the attack. They groaned and grunted on their grinding gears as they manœuvred about for safer progress. In front of each tank there walked a man who bore suspended from his shoulders on his back, a white towel so that the unseen directing genius in the tank's turret could steer his way through the underbrush and crackling saplings that were crushed down under the tread of this modern Juggernaut.

There was no confusion, no outward manifestations of excitement. There was no rattle of musketry, shouting of commands or waving of swords. Officers addressed their men in whispers. There was order and quiet save for the roll of thunder and the eternal dripping of water from the wet leaves, punctuated now and then by the ear-splitting crashes that followed each nearby flash of lightning.

Through it all, everything moved. It was a mighty mobilisation in the dark. Everything was moving in one direction – forward – all with the same goal, all with the same urging, all with the same determination, all with the same hope. The forest was ghostly with their forms. It seemed to me that night in the damp darkness of Villers-Cotterets Forest that every tree gave birth to a man for France.

All night long the gathering of that sinister synod continued. All night long those furtive forces moved through the forest. They passed by every road, by every lane, through every avenue of trees. I heard the whispered commands of the officers. I heard the sloshing of the mud under foot and the occasional muffled curse of some weary marcher who would slip to the ground under the weight of his burden; and I knew, all of us knew, that at the zero hour, 4:35 o'clock in the morning, all hell would land on the German line, and these men from the trees would move forward with the fate of the world in their hands.

There was some suspense. We knew that if the Germans had had the slightest advance knowledge about that mobilisation of Foch's reserves that night, they would have responded with a downpour of gas shells, which spreading their poisonous fumes under the wet roof of the forest, might have spelt slaughter for 70,000 men.

But the enemy never knew. They never even suspected. And at the tick of 4:35 A.M., the heavens seemed to crash asunder, as tons and tons of hot metal sailed over the forest, bound for the German line.

That mighty artillery eruption came from a concentration of all the guns of all calibres of all the Allies that Foch could muster. It was a withering blast and where it landed in that edge of the forest occupied by the Germans, the quiet of the dripping black night was suddenly turned into a roaring inferno of death.

Giant tree trunks were blown high into the air and splintered into match-wood. Heavy projectiles bearing delayed action fuses, penetrated the ground to great depth before exploding and then, with the expansion of their powerful gases, crushed the enemy dugouts as if they were egg shells.

Then young America – your sons and your brothers and your husbands, shoulder to shoulder with the French – went over the top to victory.

The preliminary barrage moved forward crashing the forest down about it. Behind it went the tanks ambling awkwardly but irresistibly over all obstructions. Those Germans that had not been killed in the first terrific blast, came up out of their holes only to face French and American bayonets, and the "Kamerad" chorus began at once.

Our assaulting waves moved forward, never hesitating, never faltering. Ahead of them were the tanks giving special attention to enemy machine gun nests that manifested stubbornness. We did not have to charge those death-dealing nests that morning as we did in the Bois de Belleau. The tanks were there to take care of them. One of these would move toward a nest, flirt around it several minutes and then politely sit on it. It would never be heard from thereafter.

It was an American whirlwind of fighting fury that swept the Germans in front of it early that morning. Aeroplanes had been assigned to hover over the advance and make reports on all progress. A dense mist hanging over the forest made it impossible for the aviators to locate the Divisional Headquarters to which they were supposed to make the reports. These dense clouds of vapour obscured the earth from the eyes of the airmen, but with the rising sun the mists lifted.

Being but a month out of the hospital and having spent a rather strenuous night, I was receiving medical attention at daybreak in front of a dressing station not far from the headquarters of Major General Harbord commanding the Second Division. As I lay there looking up through the trees, I saw a dark speck diving from the sky. Almost immediately I could hear the hum of its motors growing momentarily louder as it neared the earth. I thought the plane was out of control and expected to see it crash to the ground near me.

Several hundred feet above the tree tops, it flattened its wings and went into an easy swoop so that its under-gear seemed barely to skim the uppermost branches. The machine pursued a course immediately above one of the roads. Something dropped from it. It was a metal cylinder that glistened in the rays of the morning sun. Attached to it was a long streamer of fluttering white material. It dropped easily to the ground nearby. I saw an American signalman, who had been following its descent, pick it up. He opened the metal container and extracted the message containing the first aerial observations of the advance of the American lines. It stated that large numbers of prisoners had been captured and were bound for the rear.

Upon receipt of this information, Division Headquarters moved forward on the jump. Long before noon General Harbord, close behind his advancing troops, opened headquarters in the shattered farm buildings of Verte Feuille, the first community centre that had been taken by our men that morning. Prisoners were coming back in droves.

I encountered one column of disarmed Germans marching four abreast with the typical attitude of a "Kamerad" procession. The first eight of the prisoners carried on their shoulders two rudely constructed litters made from logs and blankets. A wounded American was on one litter and a wounded Frenchman on the other.

A number of German knapsacks had been used to elevate the shoulders of both of the wounded men so that they occupied positions half sitting and half reclining. Both of them were smoking cigarettes and chatting gaily as they rode high and mighty on the shoulders of their captives, while behind them stretched a regal retinue of eight hundred more.

As this column proceeded along one side of the road, the rest of the roadway was filled with men, guns and equipment all moving forward. Scottish troops in kilts swung by and returned the taunts which our men laughingly directed at their kilts and bare knees.

Slightly wounded Americans came back guarding convoys of prisoners. They returned loaded with relics of the fighting. It was said that day that German prisoners had explained that in their opinion, the British were in the war because they hated Germany and that the French were in the war because the war was in France, but that Americans seemed to be fighting to collect souveniers.

I saw one of these American souvenier collectors bound for the rear. In stature he was one of the shortest men I had ever seen in our uniform. He must have spent long years in the cavalry, because he was frightfully bowlegged. He was herding in front of him two enormous German prisoners who towered head and shoulders above him.

He manifested a confidence in his knowledge of all prisoners and things German. Germans were "foreigners." "Foreigners" spoke a foreign language. Therefore to make a German understand you, it was only necessary to speak with them in a foreign language. French was a foreign language so the bowlegged American guard made use of his limited knowledge.

"Allay! Allay! Allay veet t'ell outer here," he urged his charges.

He was wearing his helmet back on his head so that there was exposed a shock of black, blood-matted hair on his forehead. A white bandage ran around his forehead and on the right side of his face a strip of cotton gauze connected with another white bandage around his neck. There was a red stain on the white gauze over the right cheek.

His face was rinsed with sweat and very dirty. In one hand he carried a large chunk of the black German war bread – once the property of his two prisoners. With his disengaged hand he conveyed masses of the food to his lips which were circled with a fresco of crumbs.

His face was wreathed in a remarkable smile – a smile of satisfaction that caused the corners of his mouth to turn upward toward his eyes. I also smiled when I made a casual inventory of the battlefield loot with which he had decorated his person. Dangling by straps from his right hip were five holsters containing as many German automatic pistols of the Lueger make, worth about $35 apiece. Suspended from his right shoulder by straps to his left hip, were six pairs of highly prized German field glasses, worth about $100 apiece. I acquired a better understanding of his contagious smile of property possession when I inquired his name and his rank. He replied:

"Sergeant Harry Silverstein."

Later, attracted by a blast of extraordinary profanity, I approached one of our men who was seated by the roadside. A bullet had left a red crease across his cheek but this was not what had stopped him. The hobnail sole of his shoe had been torn off and he was trying to fasten it back on with a combination of straps. His profane denunciations included the U. S. Quartermaster Department, French roads, barbed wire, hot weather and, occasionally, the Germans.

"This sure is a hell of a mess," he said, "for a fellow to find himself in this fix just when I was beginning to catch sight of 'em. I enlisted in the army to come to France to kill Germans but I never thought for one minute they'd bring me over here and try to make me run 'em to death. What we need is greyhounds. And as usual the Q. M. fell down again. Why, there wasn't a lassoe in our whole company."

The prisoners came back so fast that the Intelligence Department was flooded. The divisional intelligence officer asked me to assist in the interrogation of the captives. I questioned some three hundred of them.

An American sergeant who spoke excellent German, interrogated. I sat behind a small table in a field and the sergeant would call the prisoners forward one by one. In German he asked one captive what branch of the service he belonged to. The prisoner wishing to display his knowledge of English and at the same time give vent to some pride, replied in English.