The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War Part 15

By September 10th, the pursuit had come to an end, as far as the Iron Division was concerned. The Americans and French were on the Aisne and the enemy again was snarling defiance across a water barrier.

The artillery regiments followed the infantry as far as the high ground between the rivers and there took position to blast the Huns away from the Aisne and send them rolling along to their next line, the ancient and historic Chemin-des-Dames, or Road of Women.

Battery C, 107th Artillery, of Phoenixville, commanded by Captain Samuel A. Whitaker, of that town, a nephew of former Governor Samuel W.

Pennypacker, was the first of the Pennsylvania big gun units to cross the Vesle.

On the night of September 10th, the 107th was relieved by the 221st French Artillery Regiment, near the town of Blanzy-les-Fismes. The French used the Americans' horses in moving into positions. They discovered they had taken a wrong road in moving up and just as they turned back the Germans, who apparently had learned the hour of the relief, laid down a heavy barrage. A terrible toll was taken of the French regiment.

Lieutenant John Muckel, of the Phoenixville battery, with a detail of men, had remained with the French regiment to show them the battery position and bring back the horses. When the barrage fell, Lieutenant Muckel was thrown twenty-five feet by the explosion of a high-explosive sh.e.l.l, and landed plump in the mangled remains of two horses. All about him were the moans and cries of the wounded and dying Frenchmen. He had been so shocked by the sh.e.l.l explosion close to him that he could move only with difficulty and extreme pain. He was barely conscious, alone in the dark and lost, for the regiment had gone on and his detachment of Americans was scattered.

Lieutenant Muckel, realizing he must do something, dragged himself until he came to the outskirts of a village he learned later was Villet. Half dazed, he crawled to the wall of a building and pulled himself to his feet. He was leaning against the wall, trying to collect his scattered senses, when a sh.e.l.l struck the building and demolished it.

The Lieutenant was half buried in the debris. While he lay there, fully expecting never again to rejoin his battery, Sergeant Nunner, of the battery, came along on horseback and heard the officer call. The Sergeant wanted the Lieutenant to take his horse and get away. The Lieutenant refused and ordered the Sergeant to go and save himself. The Sergeant defied the Lieutenant, refusing to obey and announcing that he would remain with the officer if the latter would not get away on the horse. At last they compromised, when the Lieutenant had recovered somewhat, by the Sergeant's riding the horse and the Lieutenant's a.s.sisting himself by holding to the animal's tail. In this way they caught up with the battery.

Having reached the Aisne, the Twenty-eight Division now was relieved and ordered back to a rest camp, which they sadly needed, after about sixty days of almost unremitting night and day fighting for the infantry and approximately a month of stirring action for the artillery.

Thoroughly exhausted, but serene in the knowledge of a task well and gloriously performed, their laurels thick upon them and securely in possession of the manfully earned t.i.tle, "The Iron Division," what was left of our Pennsylvania men turned their backs upon the scene of action and prepared to enjoy a well-earned period of repose and recreation.

It was not to be, however. Disappointments, of which they had been the prey for more than a year, dogged their footsteps. While on the road, moving toward a rest camp as fast as they could travel, orders reached the division to proceed eastward to where General Pers.h.i.+ng had begun to a.s.semble the American forces into the First American Army. The emergency which had led to the use of American brigades under French and British higher command had pa.s.sed and America at last was to have its own army under its own high command, subject only to the supreme Allied commander, Marshal Ferdinand Foch.

The men in the ranks were keenly alive to the fact that they were headed for a rest camp, and when their route and general direction were changed overnight and they set off the next day at right angles to the course they had been traveling, they knew something else was in store for the division. Not an officer or man, however, had an inkling of what time only brought forth--that the thing they were about to do was immeasurably greater, more glorious and more difficult than that which they had accomplished.

Grumbling among themselves, after the true soldier fas.h.i.+on when not too busily engaged otherwise, the men found some compensation in the knowledge that their herculean efforts of the past weeks were understood and acknowledged by the higher authorities. They cherished with open pride a general order issued by Major-General Charles H. Muir, the division commander. It was of special significance because he is a regular army officer, not a Pennsylvanian, and therefore not imbued with local or state pride, and also because before the war the National Guard was held in huge contempt by the average regular army officer. Here is what General Muir's general order told the men:

"The division commander is authorized to inform all, from the lowest to the highest, that their efforts are known and appreciated. A new division, by force of circ.u.mstances, took its place in the front line in one of the greatest battles of the greatest war in history.

"The division has acquitted itself in a creditable manner. It has stormed and taken points that were regarded as proof against a.s.sault. It has taken numerous prisoners from a vaunted Guards division of the enemy.

"It has inflicted on the enemy far more loss than it has suffered from him. In a single gas application, it inflicted more damage than the enemy inflicted on it by gas since its entry into battle.

"It is desired that these facts be brought to the attention of all, in order that the tendency of new troops to allow their minds to dwell on their own losses, to the exclusion of what they have done to the enemy, may be reduced to the minimum.

"Let all be of good heart! We have inflicted more loss than we have suffered; we are better men individually than our enemies. A little more grit, a little more effort, a little more determination to keep our enemies down, and the division will have the right to look upon itself as an organization of veterans."

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 Ca.n.a.l. 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 pa.s.sed 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 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 "Pers.h.i.+ng 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 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 a.s.sembled.

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 sh.e.l.ls over your heads into the enemy. If you are 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 Pers.h.i.+ng among the branches of the service.

To this great American army was a.s.signed the tremendous task of striking at the enemy's vitals, striking where it was known he would defend himself most pa.s.sionately. 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 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 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 asked: "What is wrong with Pers.h.i.+ng'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 hards.h.i.+p 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 24th, 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 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _International Film Service._

BRIEFLY AT REST IN THE ARGONNE FOREST

Periods of rest in the inferno of fighting in the Argonne were not frequent, but this group of Iron Division doughboys was snapped by the camera during a lull, while they were grouped about the entrance to an old German dugout.]

The Iron Division now was completely a.s.sembled, functioning smoothly and efficiently, every unit working as a cog in the 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 circ.u.mstances, for an organization 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.s.signed 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt to enemy observation planes of the location of the batteries.

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 cras.h.i.+ng 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.