MILITARY: Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania in the World War, H. G. Proctor, 1919 - Chapter XVI Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Banja jbanja@msn.com Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/1pa/military/ww1/iron/iron-division.htm ________________________________________________ THE IRON DIVISION NATIONAL GUARD OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE WORLD WAR THE AUTHENTIC AND COMPREHENSIVE NARRATIVE OF THE GALLANT DEEDS AND GLORIOUS ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE 28TH DIVISION IN THE WORLD'S GREATEST WAR by H. G. PROCTOR Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, Publishers, 1919 IN THE ARGONNE 241 CHAPTER XVI IN THE ARGONNE SO AWAY they went to the southeast and came to a halt in the vicinity of Revigny, just south of the Argonne Forest and about a mile and a half north of the Rhine-Marne Canal. Here they found replacement detachments awaiting them and once more the sadly depleted ranks were filled. The division was under orders to put in ten days at hard drilling there. This is the military idea of rest for soldiers, and experience has proved it a pretty good system, although it never will meet the approval of the man in the ranks. It has the advantage of keeping his mind off what he has passed through, keeping him occupied and maintaining his discipline and morale. The best troops will go stale through neglect of drill during a campaign, and drill and discipline are almost synonymous. As undisciplined troops are worse than useless in battle, the necessity of occasional periods 242 THE IRON DIVISION of drill, distasteful though they may be to the soldier, is obvious. "A day in a rest camp is about as bad as a day in battle," is not an uncommon expression from the men, although, as is always the case with soldiers, they appreciate a change of any kind. This rest camp and its drills were not destined to become monotonous, however, for instead of ten days they had but one day. Orders came from "G. H. Q.," which is soldier parlance for General Headquarters, for the division to proceed almost directly north, into the Argonne. This meant more hard hiking and more rough traveling for horses and motor trucks until the units again were "bedded down" temporarily, with division headquarters at Les Islettes, twenty miles due north from Revigny, and eight miles south of what was then, and had been for many weary months, the front line. The doughboys knew that something big was impending. They had come to believe that "Pershing wouldn't have the Twenty-eighth Division around unless he was going to pull off something big." They felt more at home than they had since IN THE ARGONNE 243 leaving America. All about them they saw nothing but American soldiers, and thousands upon thousands of them. The country seemed teeming with them. Every branch of the service was in American hands, the first time the Pennsylvanians had seen such an organization of their very own - the first time anybody ever did, in fact, for it was the biggest American army ever assembled. Infantry, artillery, engineers, the supply services, tanks, the air service, medical service, the high command and the staff, all were American. It was a proud day for the doughboys when showers of leaflets dropped from a squadron of airplanes flying over one day and they read on the printed pages a pledge from American airmen to co-operate with the American fighting men on the ground to the limit of their ability and asked similar co-operation from the foot soldiers. "Your signals enable us to take the news of your location to the rear," read the communication, "to report if the attack is successful, to call for help if needed, to enable the artillery to put their shells over your heads into the enemy. If you are 244 THE IRON DIVISION out of ammunition and tell us, we will report and have it sent up. If you are surrounded, we will deliver the ammunition by airplane. We do not hike through the mud with you, but there are discomforts in our work as bad as mud, but we won't let rain, storms, Archies (anti-aircraft guns) nor Boche planes prevent our getting there with the goods. Use us to the limit. After reading this, hand it to your buddie and remember to show your signals." It was signed: "Your Aviators." "You bet we will, all of that," was the heartfelt comment of the soldiers. Such was the splendid spirit of co-operation built up by General Pershing among the branches of the service. To this great American army was assigned the tremendous task of striking at the enemy's vitals, striking where it was known he would defend himself most passionately. The German defensive lines converged toward a point in the east like the ribs of a fan, drawing close to protect the Mezieres-Longuyon railroad shuttle, which was the vital artery of Germany in occupied territory. If the Americans could force a break through in the Argonne, the IN THE ARGONNE 245 whole tottering German machine in France would crumble. Whether they broke through or not, the smallest possible result of an advance there would be the narrowing of the bottle-neck of the German transport lines into Germany and a slow strangling of the invading forces. After the first tempestuous rush, there was no swift movement. The Yanks gnawed their way to the vaunted Kriemhilde line, hacked and hewed their way through it, overcoming thousands of machine guns, beset by every form of Hun pestilence. Even conquered ground they found treacherous. The Germans had planted huge mines of which the fuses were acid, timed to eat through a container days after the Germans had gone and touch off the explosive charge to send scores of Americans to hospitals or to soldiers' graves. To the Americans, not bursting fresh into battle as they had done at Chateau- Thierry, but sated and seasoned by a long summer of campaigning, fell the tough, unspectacular problem of the whole western front. While the world hung spellbound on the Franco-British successes in the west and north, with their great bounds forward 246 THE IRON DIVISION after the retreating Germans, relatively little attention was paid to the action northwest of Verdun, and not until the close of hostilities did America begin to awaken to the fact that it was precisely this slow, solid pounding, this bulldog pertinacity of the Americans that had made possible that startling withdrawal in the north. So vital was this action in the Argonne that the best divisions the German high command could muster were sent there and, once there, were chewed to bits by the American machine, thus making possible the rapid advances of the Allies on other parts of the long front. The Pennsylvania men looked back almost longingly to what they had regarded at the time as hard, rough days along the Marne, the Ourcq and the Vesle. In perspective, and from the midst of the Argonne fighting, it looked almost like child's play. Back home over the cables came the simple announcement that a certain position had been taken. Followers of the war news got out their maps and observed that this marked an advance of but a mile or so in three or four days and more than one IN THE ARGONNE 247 asked: "What is wrong with Pershing's men?" It was difficult to understand why the men who had leaped forward so magnificently from the Marne to the Aisne, traveling many miles in a day, should now be so slow, while their co- belligerents of the other nations were advancing steadily and rapidly. A very few minutes spent with any man who was in the Argonne ought to suffice as an answer. Soldiers who were in the St. Mihiel thrust and also in the Argonne coined an epigram. It was: "A meter in the Argonne is worth a mile at St. Mihiel." The cable message of a few words nearly always covered many hours, sometimes days, of heroic endeavor, hard, backbreaking labor, heart-straining hardship and the expenditure of boundless nervous energy with lavish hand, to say nothing of what it meant to the hospital forces behind the lines and to the burial details. September 4th, division headquarters of the Twenty-eighth moved up to a point less than two miles back of the front lines, occupying old, long-abandoned French dugouts. That evening Major-General Charles H. Muir, the division commander, appeared unexpectedly in the lines and walked about 248 THE IRON DIVISION for some time, observing the disposition of the troops. He was watched with wide-eyed but respectful curiosity by many of the men, for the average soldier in the ranks knows as little of a division commander as of the Grand Llama of Tibet. Frequently he cares as little, too. The General cast a contemplative eye aloft, to where countless squirrels frolicked among the foliage of the great old trees, chattering in wild indignation at the disturbers of their peace, and birds sang their evensong upon the branches. The Iron Division now was completely assembled, functioning smoothly and efficiently, every unit working as a cog in one great wheel. The artillery brigade, which had made its bow to modern warfare in the Vesle region, was established on the line well to the rear of the infantry. It had rushed at top speed from the Aisne plateau, making some record hikes. The guns were moved only by night and each day the weapons were camouflaged, usually in a friendly patch of woods. One night they made thirty miles, which is covering ground rapidly, even under the most favorable circumstances, for an organization IN THE ARGONNE 249 with the impedimenta of an artillery brigade. There were times, in those long night marches, when the little natural light from a moonless sky was blotted out by woods through which the roads passed, and the artillerymen moved forward in absolute blackness. To have a light of any kind was dangerous, because of the frequent night forays by enemy flyers, and therefore forbidden. Patrols went along in advance to "feel" the road, and the men with the guns and caissons followed by keeping their eyes on the ghostly radiance from illuminated wrist watches worn by officers with the advance patrols. When it came to the work of placing the guns for the preparatory bombardment of the offensive, the position assigned the Pennsylvania regiments was in a forest so dense that to get an area of fire at all, they had to fell the trees before them. But concealment of battery positions in a surprise attack is a vital consideration, and to have cut down hundreds of trees would have been an open advertisement to enemy observation planes of the location of the batteries. 250 THE IRON DIVISION To overcome this difficulty, the trees which it was necessary to remove were sawed almost through and wired up to others, which were untouched, in order to keep them standing to the last moment. In order to get their field of fire, it was necessary for the men of some batteries to cut and wire as many as a hundred trees. In this way everything was prepared for the opening of the bombardment save the actual felling of the trees, and not the keenest eye nor the finest camera among the Boche aviators could detect a change in the character of the forest. At dusk on the night of Wednesday, September 25th, the artillerymen cut the wires holding the trees with axes and pulled the monarchs of the forest crashing to the ground to left and right of the path thus opened up, leaving the way clear for the artillery fire. A total of more than a thousand trees were felled in this way for the three regiments.