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CHAPTER XXI
TEUFEL-HUNDEN

NO branch of service in the American Army was so quick to achieve group consciousness as the marines. To be sure, these soldiers of the sea had a considerable tradition behind them before they came to France. The world is never so peaceful that there is nothing for the marines to do. Always there is some spot for them to land and put a situation into hand. It is no fault of the marines that most of these brushes have been little affairs, and they have found, as Mr. Kipling says, that "the things that you learn from the yellow and brown will 'elp you a heap with the white."

The Navy Department has always been careful to preserve the tradition of the marines. The organization has never lacked for intelligent publicity. "First to fight" was a slogan which brought many a recruit into the corps. Even the dreary work of policing, which falls largely to the marines, has been dramatized to a certain extent by that fine swaggering couplet of their song:

 
"If the army or the navy ever gaze on heaven's scenes,
They will find the streets are guarded by United States marines."
 

The belief that the marines would make a distinctive mark in the great World War was practically unanimous. Army officers couldn't deny it, war correspondents hastened to proclaim it, and the Germans admitted it by bestowing the name "Teufel-hunden" (devil-dogs) on the marines immediately after their first engagement. The marines themselves were second to no one in the consciousness of their own prowess.

"I understand," said a little marine just two days off the transport, "that this Kaiser isn't afraid of the American Army so much, but that he is afraid of the marines."

The boy didn't say whether one of his officers had told him that, but his belief was passionate and complete. However, the marines did not allow their high confidence to interfere in any way with their preparations. They showed the same anxiety to make good on the training-fields that they later displayed on the line. Their camp in the American area was just a bit farther from the centre of things than that of any other organization. Whenever there was a review or a special show of any sort for a distinguished visitor, the marines had to march twelve miles to attend. And after that it was twelve miles home again. But they thrived on hard work. They shot, bayoneted, and bombed just a little better than any other organization in the first division. Sometimes individual marines would complain a little about the fact that they were worked harder than any men in the division, but they always took care to add that they had finished the construction of their practice-trench system days before any of the others. When they mentioned the fact that they had achieved this result by working in day and night shifts it was never possible to tell whether they were airing a grievance or making a boast. It is probable that they were something of the mind of Job, whose boils were both a tribulation and a triumph.

There was no doubt as to the opinion of the marines when it seemed for a time as if they might not get into the fighting. They did not go into the trenches with the first division, but were broken up and sent to various points for police duty. Of course they were bitterly disappointed, but they merely policed a little harder, and it was a severe winter for soldiers who went about with their overcoats unbuttoned, or committed other breaches of military regulations.

Since the marines did hard work well, they were rewarded by more hard work, and this was labor more to their taste. The reward came suddenly. On May 30 a unit of marines was in a training-camp so far back of the lines that it was impossible to hear the sound of the guns even when the Germans turned everything loose for a big offensive. On that same day the Germans reached the Marne east of Château-Thierry and began an advance along the north bank toward the city. That night the marines were ordered to the front.

They rode almost a hundred kilometres to get into the fight. It was late afternoon when they reached a hill overlooking Château-Thierry. French guns all about them were being fired up to their very limit or a little beyond. The Germans were coming on. These marines had never been in a battle before, with the exception of a few who had chased little brown rebels in various brief encounters on small islands. They had never been under shell fire. And this their first engagement was one of the biggest in the greatest war in history. From the hill they could see houses fold up and fields pucker under the pounding of big guns. The marines were told that as soon as darkness came they would march into the town and hold the bridges against the German Army, which was coming on. Somebody asked a French officer some days later how these green troops had taken their experience as they waited the word to go forward. "They were concombres," said the Frenchman. Our word is cucumbers.

Finally, the order came for the advance. It was a dark night, but the marines could see their way forward well enough. The German bombardment had set fire to the railroad-station. The Americans kept in the shadows as much as they could, but they danced around so much that it was difficult. They placed their machine-guns here and there behind walls and new barricades, so that they could enfilade the approaches to the bridges and the streets on the opposite side of the river. One lieutenant with twelve men and two guns took up a position across the river. It was up to him to stand off the first rush.

The shelling from the enemy guns was intensified during the night, but the infantry had not yet reached the town. It was five o'clock of a bright morning when the little advance post of the Americans saw the Germans coming across the open field toward the river. They were marching along carelessly in two columns and there were twelve men in every line. One of the machine-guns swung her nose around a little and the fight was on. At last the American was definitely in one of the major engagements of the war. American machine-gunners were doing their bit to block the advance on Paris. All day long the marines held the Germans back with their machine-guns. And that night they beat back a German mass attack when the Boches came on and on in waves, with men locked arm in arm. They could hear them, for they sang as they rushed forward, and the machine-gunners pumped their bullets into the spots where the notes were loudest.

The next day the Americans were forced to give some ground when the order came to retire, but they had been through, perhaps, the most intensive two days of training which ever fell to the lot of green troops.

The marines did not have to wait long for retaliation. Other units of marines from other camps had been hurrying up to the front, and on June 6 an offensive was launched on a front of two and a half miles. The first day's gain was two and three-sixteenth miles and 100 prisoners were captured. This attack yielded all the important high ground northwest of Château-Thierry. The marines did not rest with this gain. They struck again at five o'clock in the afternoon, and by June 7 the attack had grown to much greater proportions. Four villages, Vinly, Veuilly-la-Poterie, Torcy, and Bouresches, fell into the hands of the French and Americans. The thrust was pressed to a maximum depth of two miles on a ten-mile front. More than 300 prisoners were captured by the Americans. The attack was carried out under American command, Major-General James G. Harbord being in charge of the operation.

As in the Cantigny offensive, the Americans worked with great speed, and showed that they could make the rifle an effective weapon even under the changed conditions of modern warfare. But though they were swift they were not silent. They went over the top shouting like Indians, and they kept up the noise as they went forward. The second attack was carried out by the same men who had advanced in the morning. The early showing had been so promising that it was decided to go on, particularly as the Germans seemed to be somewhat shaken by the violence of the assault. In this new sweep the marines took ground on either side of Belleau Wood. They also captured the ravine south of Torcy. The Germans were not able to organize an effective counter-attack immediately, for they had been too much surprised by the thrust. Also the effective work of the American artillery made it difficult for the Germans to bring up fresh troops.

In the rough country over which the battle was fought there was opportunity for the fight to disintegrate into the little eddies where individual initiative counts for so much. In a fight near Le Thiolet, Captain James O. Green, Jr., found himself cut off by the Germans. He was accompanied by five privates. Back at regimental headquarters Green had already been reported as killed or captured. He proved the need of clerical revision, for he and his men fought their way back to the American lines. At one point ten Germans tried to intercept him, but the six Americans succeeded in killing or wounding every member of the enemy party. A single marine who was taking back a prisoner ran into two German officers and ten men. He fell upon them with rifle and bayonet and disposed of both officers and several of the men. Then he made his escape. Somebody told the marine when he got back to the American lines that he certainly had been "in luck."

"Hell! no," said the fighting man; "they took my prisoner away from me."

Still another marine was captured while dazed by a blow on the head. He recovered in time to deal his captor a tremendous punch on the jaw, and made his way back to the American lines. The favorite slogan of the Americans was: "Each man get a German; don't let a German get you."

Early on June 8 the Germans launched a counter-attack against the American position between Bouresches and Le Thiolet. This attack broke down. The trenches which the Americans held were new and shallow, but the troops were well supplied with machine-guns, and the German infantry never got closer than within a couple of hundred yards of the position. The marines were not yet content with their success. They took the initiative again on June 10 and smashed into the German lines for about two-thirds of a mile on a 600-yard front. In this attack two minenwerfer were captured. The object of the attack was to clean out Belleau Wood. The Germans retained only the northern fringe.

By this time the offensive had ceased to be wholly a marine affair. The 9th and 23d Regiments of infantry, comprising what is known as the Syracuse Brigade, took up their positions on the right of the soldiers of the sea. During the next few days the Germans made several violent counter-attacks, but without success, and on June 26 the Americans pushed their gains still further by a successful assault south of Torcy, in which more than 250 Germans were captured. This victory gave Pershing's men absolute command of the Bois de Belleau, which was the strategic point for which the Germans had fought so hard.

It was after the Château-Thierry offensive that for the first time the American Army won a place in the German official communique. Before that they had been simply "the enemy," and once, upon the occasion of a successful German raid, North American troops. But now Berlin unbent a little and used the term "an American regiment." Germany was prepared to admit that America was in the war. It is just possible that some of their men who broke before the rush of the marines returned to give headquarters the information.

CHAPTER XXII
THE ARMY OF MANŒUVRE

WHILE the American Army was showing its quality in the minor battles of Seicheprey, Cantigny, Château-Thierry, and Vaux, and its quantity was showing itself in leaps of hundreds of thousands of men a month, a destiny was shaping for it, equally in circumstances and in the mind of Generalissimo Foch, which was to be even greater than that it had sacrificed in late March, when it submerged its identity and said: "Put us where you will."

For when, on July 18, the fifth German offensive suddenly shivered into momentary equilibrium and then rolled back, with Foch and the Allies pounding behind it, and when this counter-attack developed into a continuing offensive which was to straighten the Marne salient and throw back the Germans from before Amiens and do the future only knows what else besides, the Allied world said, in one voice: "Foch has found his army of manœuvre, and it's the Americans."

This "army of manœuvre" has always been the king-pin of French strategy. While the Germans were trying two systems – first, the broad front attack which trusted to overbear by sheer weight anything which opposed it, and, second, the so-called Hutier system of draining the line of all its best fighters, and organizing shock troops immeasurably above the average for offensive, while the line was held by the rag-tag and bobtail – the French stuck to their traditional system. This was to hold the lines with the lightest possible number of men, of the highest possible caliber, and to thrust with a mobile force, foot-loose and ready to be swung wherever a spot seemed likely to give way.

It was with the "army of manœuvre," thrown up from Paris in frantic haste by Galliéni, in taxicabs and trucks, that General Foch made the miraculous plunge through the Saxon army at Fère-en-Tardenois, in September, 1914, which saved the first battle of the Marne.

When General Foch became generalissimo, in late March, just after the first German offensive on March 21 had thrown the British back, and when the French were retreating at Montdidier, the expectation universally was that the Allies would begin an offensive, within the shortest possible time. Foch had been quoted all over the world as saying that "defensive fighting was no defense." Yet April, May, and June passed, and part of July, and except for scattering attacks along the Marne salient, and patient rear-guard action when the retreats were necessary, the Allies made no move.

The Austrian debacle came and went. Foch had Italy off his mind, and the Italians were more than taking care of themselves. Still he did not strike. And finally it became clear that he was showing this long patience because he wanted what every Frenchman wants first in every battle, and what he did not surely have until July – his army of manœuvre.

The fitness of the American Army for this brilliant use was dual: first, that its source was virtually inexhaustible; second, that it was better at offensive than defensive fighting.

The American Army had a quality, and the defect of that quality: it wanted to get to Berlin regardless of tactics. And while General Foch was trusting to time to prove to them that, pleasant or unpleasant, the tactics had to be observed, he turned their spectacular fire and exuberance to direct account.

Of course, the American troops in France then ready to fight could not alone make up the Allied army of manœuvre. They were the core of it, however, and their growing numbers guaranteed it almost indefinitely, so that the attack of which it was to be the backbone could safely be begun. Some of the troops originally intended for welding with the British and French Armies were kept in the line without change.

But in the main the statement was true: the American Army was to rove behind the Allied lines till Foch discovered or divined a German weakness to strike into.

In the second battle of the Marne, begun that July 18, when the Allies took the offensive again for the first time in more than a year, the crown prince and his army of approximately half a million were tucked down in the Marne salient, driving for Paris. The German line came down from Soissons to Château-Thierry, ran east from Château-Thierry along the Marne River, then turned up again to Rheims. In a space about thirty miles square the crown prince had imprudently poured all his troops, which, for the fifth offensive, begun July 15, included about a third of the man-power of the western front.

The Allied troops lying around the three sides of this salient were French and American on the western side, Americans across the bottom, east from Château-Thierry, and French, British, and Italian from the Marne up to Rheims. While the French and British were squeezing in the two sides at the top, it was the American job to keep the Germans from bursting out from the bottom, and, if possible, to break through or roll them back.

The Americans began the attack east of Château-Thierry, where the Germans had crossed the Marne and lay a few miles to the south of it. There had been lesser actions here for several days, in the process of stopping the enemy offensive, and by the morning of the 18th the Americans dominated the positions around the Marne. The first day of the counter-offensive had magnificent results. The Germans were forced back on a 28-mile front, for a depth varying from 3 to 6 miles, and the Americans captured 4,000 prisoners and 50 guns. Twenty French towns were delivered, and the Germans began what appeared to be a precipitate retreat. Foch's attack was mainly on the flank of the crown prince's army, which had been left exposed in the rush toward Epernay and Châlons, far south of the Marne.

The infantry attack was made with little or no artillery preparation. The German general, Von Boehm, was plainly caught napping.

The communiqués of both sides were for once in agreement. The French said: "After having broken the German offensive on the Champagne and Rheims mountain fronts on the 15th, 16th, and 17th, the French troops, in conjunction with the American forces, attacked the German positions on the 18th, between the Aisne and the Marne on a front of forty-five kilometres [about twenty-eight miles]. We have made an important advance into the enemy lines, and have reached the plateau dominating Soissons … more than twenty villages have been retaken by the admirable dash of the Franco-American troops… South of the Ourcq our troops have gone beyond the general line of Marizy, Ste. – Genevieve, Hautvesnes, and Belleau."

The German communiqué said: "Between the Aisne and the Marne, the French attacked with strong forces and tanks, and captured some ground." Later in the same communiqué the conclusion was drawn: "The battle was decided in our favor."

On the second day, while the march under Soissons continued, and there were scattering gains on the Marne side, the number of Allied prisoners grew to 17,000, and the number of guns captured to 360. Nobody could tell, at this point, whether the crown prince's army was retreating voluntarily or involuntarily. In many places the Germans were taken by American soldiers from the peaceful pursuit of cutting wheat behind the lines. Some high officers were nabbed from their beds. On the other hand, the fact that the German rear-guard actions were chiefly with machine-guns seemed to indicate that they were moving their heavy pieces back in fair orderliness.

On the third day the Germans were thrown back over the Marne, and the crown prince, having sent an unavailing plea to Prince Rupprecht for new troops, suddenly showed fight with the crack Prussian guards.

These guards had their worst failure of the war when they met the Americans. It is difficult to prevent the statement from sounding offensively boastful. It is, none the less, true. The Germans, having decided that their retreat was wearing the look of utter rout, and that they must resist fiercely enough to stop it, risked a British break-through to the north by throwing in Ludendorf's prize soldiers above the Marne. And although the American total of prisoners around Soissons had risen to nearly 6,000, and though they did force back the Prussian guard, they did not make prisoners from their number. One American after another told, afterward, with a sort of reluctant admiration, that the Prussian guard had died where it stood. This fighting near the Ourcq, and fatally near the vitals of the encircled crown prince, was the most desperate of the second Marne battle.

On July 21 Château-Thierry was given up by the Germans, and the pursuing Allies, French and American, drove the enemy beyond the highroad to Soissons, and threatened the only highway of retreat, as well as the German stores. The supply-centre within the salient was Fère-en-Tardenois, and it was being raked by Allied guns from both sides of the salient.

The character of the fighting changed again, so that again it was impossible to make sure if Von Boehm intended to stand somewhere north of the Marne and put up a fight, or if he intended to make all speed back to a straight line between Soissons and Rheims. The resistance was by machine-gun, so that Americans, having their first big experience with the enemy, insisted that he had nothing but machine-guns to trust to. It is, of course, possible that the crown prince and Von Boehm knew no more than anybody else whether they were going to clear out, men and supplies, or whether they would stop again and fight face foremost.

On July 22 the German command answered the question at least partially. On a line well above the Marne, they brought the big guns into play, and poured in shock troops. Airplanes from the Allied lines discovered, however, that the Germans were burning towns and store-houses for many miles behind the line.

The pressure on the Germans was being brought from the south, where the Americans were six or seven miles above Château-Thierry, and from the west and north, where the Franco-American troops were flaying the exposed side.

The stiffened resistance and the German artillery slowed, but could not stop, the Allied advance. The eastern side of the salient, from the Marne to Rheims, bore some desperate blows, but did not give way. As the pincers closed in, at the top of the salient, the German command appeared to go back to its original plan of attacking Rheims from the south.

This was the side on which British and Italian troops were co-operating with the French, and the German command got for its pains in that direction a counter-attack which narrowed the distance from battle-line to battle-line across the top of the salient. The French menaced Fère-en-Tardenois, the German base of supplies.

Allied aviators bombed these stores, the long-range guns pounded at them, and what with these and the conflagrations started defensively by the Germans the Marne salient was a caldron which turned the skies blood-red.

On July 24 the ground gained all along the line averaged two miles. The British southwest of Rheims made a damaging curve inward, and the shove around the other two sides was fairly even.

On July 25, one week from the beginning of the offensive, the Americans and French from the Soissons side and the British and French from the Rheims side had squeezed in the neck of the trap till it measured only twenty-one miles. The French arrived within three miles of Fère-en-Tardenois, and although the German resistance increased again, the evacuation of Fère and the removal of stores to Fismes, far up on the straight line, were foreshadowed.

The road leading between the two supply-bases was shelled incessantly, and the difficulties of resistance within the fast-narrowing salient became almost superhuman. But the rear-guard of the Germans "died to a man," to quote the observers, and the rear action held the Allied gains to a few miles daily.

A definite retreat began on the morning of July 27, with what the airmen reported as an obvious determination to make a stand on the Ourcq. The forest of Fère was taken, and many villages, but the fighting was insignificant because, in the language of the communiqués, "our forces lost contact with the enemy." Possibly this is what the famous phrase of the Ludendorf communiqué, "The enemy evaded us," had in mind.

There was a certain psychological stupidity in this German decision to make a stand on the Ourcq. It was on the Ourcq that Joffre and Foch made the fatal stroke of the first Marne battle, and the very name of the river inspired France.

While this retreat was in progress, the swiftest of the battle, the German communiqué read: "Between the Ourcq and the Marne, the enemy's resistance has broken down. Our troops, with those of our allies, are in pursuit."

On the 29th the Germans crossed the Ourcq, with the Americans behind them. The "pursuit" continued. The American troops, with French to the right and left of them, forced the enemy to within a mile of the Vesle, where his halt had no hope of being more than temporary. The brilliant charge across the Ourcq was done by New Yorkers – the "fighting 69th," which refuses to be known by its new name of "165th." Edwin L. James, writing of this charge for the New York Times, said: "There is doubt if any chapter of our fighting reached the thrills of our charge across the Ourcq yesterday. Americans of indomitable spirit met a veritable hell of machine-guns, shells, gas, and bombs in a strong position, and broke through with such violence that they made a salient jutting into the enemy line beyond what the schedule called for."

This American charge cured the Germans of any intention to stay on the Ourcq. The resistance, after that first attack, was sporadic and ineffectual. Village after village was reclaimed.

It became plain that the whole Marne salient was to be obliterated, and that the Germans could not stop till they reached the thirty-six-mile stretch directly from Soissons to Rheims, at which they had strong intrenchments.

One terrific stand was made by the Germans at Sergy, just above the Ourcq. It changed hands nine times during twenty-four hours, with Americans fighting hand to hand with the Prussian guards. Sergy was taken in the first rush over the Ourcq, but a counter-attack by the Prussian Fourth Guard Division, under artillery barrage, gave them the city. Once these guards were in the city, the artillery barrage could no longer play over it, and to the stupefaction of the Germans, the Americans rushed in and fought hand to hand till they cleared the town, while the German guns were powerless. Time and again this process was repeated, till at last the Germans gave it up and joined the general retreat. This counter-attack is believed, however, to have enabled the crown prince to reclaim great stores of supplies in a woods north of the village.

At the end of these two weeks of infantry fighting the artillery took up the task, and the infantry rested for a day, though on August 2 they made a two-mile gain.

The total of German prisoners for that fortnight was 33,400.

The hideous fighting above the Ourcq between the Americans and the picked German divisions continued for days, with each day marking a small advance for the Americans. On August 2 the French regained Soissons.

On August 3 the Allies advanced six miles, retook fifty villages, and reached the south bank of the Vesle. American forces entered Fismes. The salient was annihilated.

On August 4 Fismes fell, and the great supply and ammunition depot became Allied property. The enemy was forced to cross the Vesle, and victory on victory was reported along the line which so lately had dipped into the nerve-centres of France.

The second battle of the Marne had been won.

The part of it achieved by America could not fail to stir her heart to pride and to exaltation. Though numerically the troops were few enough, not more than 270,000, they traversed the longest distance of the salient, from Vaux, at its lowest tip, to Fismes, on the straight line. Their fighting called forth comment from French officers who had been through the four years of the war, which could not be called less than rapturous. "They are glorious, the Americans," rang through France. Clemenceau, speaking of Foch at the end of the battle to which the Americans had contributed so much, said: "He looks twenty years younger." He had both found and proved his "army of manœuvre."

The story of this first battle's heroes must wait, though it will be long enough when it comes, and can include something more heartening than that "a boy from New England did thus and so," and "the army is thrilled by the heroic feat of – of Michigan."

Probably the first death in France in which the whole nation grieved was that of young Quentin Roosevelt, aviation lieutenant, son of the ex-President, who fell in an air fight in the preliminary to the battle on July 17. He was last seen in a fight with two enemy planes. His machine fell within the German lines. Weeks later the onward Allied army found his grave, marked, in English, "Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, buried by the Germans," and an official despatch from Germany stated that he had been buried with full military honors.

Colonel Roosevelt made a brief statement: "Quentin's mother and I are very glad that he got to the front, and had a chance to render some service to his country and to show the stuff there was in him before his fate befell him." The news of his death arrived just a few weeks after the news that he had downed his first German plane. The simple sincerity of this statement, and its courage, gave an example to the mothers and fathers of fighters which no one feared they would fail to come up to. And when the casualty lists from the second Marne battle came in, every bereavement was stanched by the fact that "they had shown the stuff there was in them."

Certainly not least in importance was the fact that they had shown it to the Germans. An official German Army report was captured, July 7, on an officer taken in the Marne region. After giving a prodigious amount of detail concerning the American Army, its composition, destination, and so on, it appended the following opinion:

"The 2d American Division may be classified as a very good division, perhaps even as assault troops. The various attacks of both regiments on Belleau Wood were carried out with dash and recklessness. The moral effect of our firearms did not materially check the advance of the infantry. The nerves of the Americans are still unshaken… Only a few of the troops are of pure American origin; the majority is of German, Dutch, and Italian parentage, but these semi-Americans, almost all of whom were born in America and never have been in Europe, fully feel themselves to be true-born sons of their country."