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FOREWORD 
 
 T IS easy to forget. And we, it 
 seems, are fast forgetting that hut 
 lately men in thousands were dying, 
 in hundreds of thousands risking 
 &^ death, mutilation, enduring the 
 agony of battle, creating a new tradition of Amer- 
 ican manhood, at our command. Our fine 
 fervor has vanished as the summer mist, souls 
 have gone cold. The lonely limping figure in 
 khaki, still sometimes met on the street, we pass 
 "with careless glance; gold stripes on both sleeves, 
 bit of ribbon on breast, meaningless symbols to 
 us to whom the war meant petty sacrifice, a trifle 
 of discomfort, or even profit. One does not talk 
 of the war nowadays. We are tired of the war 
 and of hearing about it — the most dramatic, stu- 
 pendous fact in our history! The clustered 
 graves overseas, the path of glory that led to them? 
 A tale that is told! 
 
 I, who in unheroic role saw much of what 
 this booklet shall tell, cannot forget. May I set 
 down one reason, one of many reasons that grow 
 more poignant as they recede? 
 
 During the third day before Soissons there 
 was a tiny knoll that, they told me, was taken 
 and retaken six times, at the end remaining in 
 
 it: "^ * 
 
I^OREWORD 
 
 our lines. Toivard nightfall there was a lull in 
 the storm; one could go forward with comparative 
 safety. Just at dusk I came to the slope leading 
 up that knoll. And everywhere I looked the 
 trampled wheat was dotted by recumbent figures. 
 There was one field, two or three acres, on which 
 it seemed you could not have stood ten feet from 
 some one of those figures. They might have 
 been wearied troops that had thrown themselves 
 down to sleep. They slept indeed, the sleep no 
 earthly reveille could disturb. I wish you could 
 have seen that silent company under the summer 
 twilight. It was not gruesome then, and it was 
 not all tragedy. There lay the best of America, 
 not dead nor sleeping, but alive so long as we will 
 it to live. For America, if it is anything lasting^ 
 means what they showed — free, unswerving loy- 
 alty to an ideal. Who shall say that they who 
 died there lacked vision of that ideal, even though 
 on their unschooled tongues it could never have 
 become articulate? They paid to the uttermost 
 for their faith. 
 
 And an even greater thing was found a little 
 beyond — the thin line of the survivors; too 
 weary for words, four days and nights sleepless^ 
 without food save the crusts they had gleaned 
 from the packs of enemy dead, souls lacerated 
 by their ordeal. They had just been told that 
 
 ♦ VI ♦ 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 the expected relief was not at hand, that in the 
 morning they were to leapfrog the first wave and 
 go over again; most of them, they knew it, to 
 join their comrades in sleep. And not a quiver, 
 not a doubt, not a fear, not a regret. They were 
 ready. 
 
 While that spirit endures, America shall 
 live. When America can forget, that spirit will 
 die. 
 
 And so, for remembrance, I am going to 
 tell a story. It is not a military account, it is 
 incomplete, but it is history, the tale of men 
 whose record is one of the epic chapters of the 
 warfaring of all time. It is the story of a 
 division^ in particular of two infantry brigades, 
 nearly all the original members of which now 
 lie under wooden crosses somewhere in France, 
 or bear in their bodies the marks of the price 
 of victory. 
 
 And the division is The Old First. First 
 in France, first in the lines, first in battle and 
 victory; and worthy its place in the van of the 
 army that changed the fate of the world. 
 
 H. R. M. 
 
 ^ VII « 
 
11 
 
 CANTIGNY 
 May 28y 1918 
 
 ic -k ic 
 
 SOISSONS 
 July 18-22, 1918 
 
 ic ir ic 
 
 ST. MIHIEL 
 September 12-13, 1918 
 
 if i^ ic 
 
 ARGONNE-MEUSE 
 October 1-12, 1918 
 
 ir if ir 
 
 ARGONNE-MEUSE 
 
 November 1-7, 1918 
 
 • • • 
 
 '' Honneur aux worts pour la patrie" 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 II 
 
 E FIRST DIVISION was com- 
 posed of the First Field Artil- 
 lery Brigade, First Engineers, 
 First Infantry Brigade (the 
 Sixteenth and Eighteenth Regiments), and 
 Second Infantry Brigade (the Twenty-sixth 
 and Twenty-eighth Regiments), First, Sec- 
 ond and Third Machine-gun and Second 
 Field Signal Battalions, all famous old 
 regular organizations. That is to say, 
 it was made up largely of survivors of pre- 
 war days when to be in the army was not 
 popular and scarcely respectable, when sol- 
 dier material was not "picked" but taken 
 as it could be had, from the wayward, the 
 inefficient, the purposeless, ragtag and bob- 
 tail who drifted into the service because it 
 was easy or offered a refuge; with, of 
 course, a sprinkling of bolder spirits to 
 whom the rough-and-tumble life of the army 
 appealed, and war volunteers to bring it up 
 to the war strength. It did not look 
 
 *3 * 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 heroic. Physically it was less impressive 
 than any other army outfit I have ever 
 seen. In intelligence it was probably a 
 little below the American average, in edu- 
 cation certainly. It spoke a dozen tongues 
 and, I have no doubt, maltreated them all 
 as sadly as it did our own. Its manners 
 were atrocious, its mode of speech appalling, 
 its appetites enormous, its notions of why 
 we were at war rudimentary, to say the 
 least. They were their country's hired sol- 
 diers; their country had an enemy; therefore 
 they would go out and fight him. Un- 
 troubled faith; perfect obedience. 
 
 But that is a first impression which 
 later understanding has almost erased 
 from memory. There were, even in 
 the ranks, men who stood out — fine fel- 
 lows, loyal friends, good minds, earnest 
 patriots; and the Division was officered — 
 in the junior grades from the early civilian 
 training camps — ^by men who brought to 
 their task intelligence, unflagging industry 
 and a courage that was to be given the last 
 
 * 4 * 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 proof. And the day came when they all, 
 officers and men, took a high place among 
 the stalwarts of the earth. 
 
 They reached France in June, 1917. 
 From then until the January following they 
 were drilled incessantly. They were trained 
 in French tactics and British bayonet exer- 
 cise, retrained in the same methods adapted 
 to the American system, and then had to 
 do it all over again on the strictly American 
 plan. They were hiked up hill and down 
 dale, under full pack. They were maneu- 
 vered for days and weeks on end, in heat 
 and cold, in rain and dust, in snow and 
 mud and slush. Scores of men have told 
 me of days of wallowing through the mud, 
 at the end of which, tired, hungry, wet to 
 the skin, they would throw themselves down 
 under scanty cover in freezing billets — and 
 in the morning would light candles to thaw 
 out the wet shoes that had frozen to their 
 feet. It w^as not the least of their ordeals, 
 and not the least of their service. For ihey 
 were working out tactical and training prob- 
 
 m 
 
 ♦ 5 ,► 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 lems of which the great army to come after 
 them should find the solution ready to hand. 
 
 From October fifteen to November 
 fifteen the routine of training was varied by 
 tours in the trenches, under French com- 
 mand, in the Somervillers sector, near 
 Nancy. Here, in a German night raid, the 
 first Americans fell in the Great War — En- 
 right, Gresham and Hay. 
 
 On January fifteen the division as a 
 whole occupied the Ansauvillers sector, be- 
 fore Toul and confronting Montsec of the 
 St. Mihiel salient. On January thirty the 
 sector passed under American command. It 
 was the first American sector. 
 
 America was formally in the battle line. 
 
 It was a quiet sector, in which warfare 
 consisted chiefly in lying cold and utterly 
 miserable in water-filled trenches and gun- 
 pits, with only an occasional night raid or 
 patrol or enemy gas bombardment to vary 
 the monotony. But America may thank 
 high heaven that her great army of a year 
 
 *6 ♦ 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 later did not have to spend a winter in the 
 trenches. 
 
 They were still holding that sector 
 when, on March twenty-one, came rumor 
 that the long advertised Boche offensive had 
 broken loose. All too soon came confirma- 
 tion, with word that Goughs Fifth Army 
 had cracked. The next few days were a 
 succession of heartbreaking reports, of shat- 
 tered lines, recoiling armies, of disaster 
 heaped upon disaster. Then came word 
 that unity of command had been achieved 
 at last, and then that Pershing had gone 
 before Foch and in fine, dramatic phrase 
 placed the American army at his disposal. 
 The First Division drew in its belt and 
 began to oil its rifles. 
 
 Easter morning came orders to prepare 
 to move. That night the Twenty-sixth or 
 "Yankee" Division marched into the sector. 
 By the night of April three, the relief was 
 complete, and the First Division was on its 
 w^ay to the "big show^." 
 
 ^ 
 
 * 7 -^ 
 
[p 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 Two weeks later it was marching 
 through the fair fields of Picardy, whose 
 populace, always in readiness for instant 
 flight, surveyed wistfully but coldly and 
 doubtfully these unimpressive stranger sol- 
 diers. For the Hun was at Montdidier 
 and looking hungrily over their heads at 
 Paris. The First was moving toward Mont- 
 didier, by forced marches. There w^as one 
 hike no one who took part in it can ever 
 forget. From late morning to late after- 
 noon they marched, twenty-five kilometers, 
 halted for supper, were assigned billets. 
 And then, just as everyone w^as turning in 
 for a good night's sleep. First Call blew, 
 and a few minutes later Fall In. From 
 midnight — a night so black you literally 
 could not see the man before you — until 
 dawn they marched, and from dawn until 
 four in the afternoon — forty kilometers 
 more. There can be nothing more delight- 
 ful than a leisurely walking tour through 
 Picardy in springtime. But sixty-five kilo- 
 meters without sleep — under full field equip- 
 
 ♦ 8 ♦ 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 ment — seventy-five pounds of it — fifty 
 minutes' hike, ten minutes* rest, and that 
 ten sometimes reduced to three — it can be- 
 come torture. But it can be done. Those 
 boys — ragtag and bobtail of a land that 
 breeds a stronger manhood — they did it. 
 They grunted, they groaned, they cursed, 
 and then with grim faces and set teeth and 
 staggering step in silence they did it. 
 
 A few days later they took over a 
 sector several kilometers west of Montdidier, 
 near the tip of the salient the German 
 mailed fist had thrust toward Paris. 
 
 It was not "springtime in Picardy" up 
 there. Trenches were mere broken scratches 
 in the earth, scarce waist-deep; dugouts no 
 deeper, and roofed only by a thin sheeting 
 of iron and a layer of sod. No protection 
 here against a direct hit — and direct hits 
 were plenty in a constant strafing that some- 
 times reached the density of a barrage. 
 Broyes, Villers-Tournelle, Coullemelle, were 
 hells in which the fury of the Boche took no 
 rest. They had been villages, they were 
 
 II 
 
 * 9 * 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 now mere shapeless heaps of ruins daily 
 churned anew by exploding shells; always 
 the air tainted by the garlicky odor of mus- 
 tard gas. You lived underground, you bur- 
 rowed deeper where you could. Even un- 
 derground you lived in a constant poignant 
 expectancy — of what you never quite put 
 into words. Often it came — a sudden, ris- 
 ing shriek through the air, a crash 
 calls for stretcher men, or a burial party 
 after dark. Every day, every night, there 
 were additions to the casualty list, some- 
 times scores, sometimes hundreds. In Coul- 
 lemelle one night fell twenty thousand gas 
 shells. Another night Villers-Tournelle — 
 equal to about three city blocks — received 
 ninety thousand shells in tw^o hours. They 
 took out eight hundred casualties that night. 
 There were biisy times at the hospital. They 
 established an American national cemetery 
 in that sector. 
 
 So passed six weeks. 
 
 One day, at an observation post, they 
 pointed out to me a long gray patch across 
 
 *io * 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 a valley and about a kilometer w^ithin the 
 German lines. "That, " they said, "is Can- 
 tigny." I remember the date — May twenty- 
 five. The most critical hour of history was 
 at hand. 
 
 I can think and write only in love 
 of the people of France, whom the 
 world must forever hold in veneration 
 for their service in this conflict. But 
 it is true that during the winter of 1917-18 
 the defeatist propaganda had been viciously 
 at work, undermining the French morale. 
 Why continue a struggle that could have no 
 decisive end? For nearly four years France 
 had been holding on, holding on, always 
 under promise of victory. And what had 
 you? Fat graveyards, a mountain of taxa- 
 tion — and now Germany, freed and triumph- 
 ant on the east, preparing to roll her Jug- 
 gernaut over Paris. Who was to halt those 
 legions fast streaming over from the eastern 
 to the western front? England, that at 
 Cambrai had reached and passed the zenith 
 of her power? France, that had exhausted 
 
 W 
 
 4? Wip 
 
53 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 herself maintaining a deadlock against half 
 the German war machine? America, then? 
 America indeed! Much prating of high 
 ideals, much blowing of wind, but as to the 
 war, just where was America? A handful 
 of half-trained divisions in France, a few 
 kilometers of line held, and, for the rest, 
 some millions of men in America yet to be 
 trained and transported, when the need was 
 in France and now! That great man 
 Georges Clemenceau kept France face to 
 the foe, but the morale of the poilu, the 
 spirit that had given the world a Verdun, 
 was faltering. 
 
 And that at a time when France most 
 had need of his staunchness. In March 
 the German crashed through to Montdidier. 
 In April he was striding through Armen- 
 tieres toward the Channel ports. And now, 
 in late May, shifting his huge reserves, with 
 impressive lack of concealment he was pre- 
 paring to crush the French. Strategically, 
 we came to know, the situation was not as 
 desperate as it seemed, given unshaken 
 
 * 12* 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 French morale, and given America's ability 
 to throw large effectives into the fray at 
 once; the first hung upon the second. But — 
 it is worth repeating — the French morale 
 v/as shaking. And few, friend or enemy, 
 then believed that America could become 
 an important factor on the battlefield of 
 1918. There was needed a demonstration 
 of America's striking power, a demonstra- 
 tion so cleancut and decisive as to leave no 
 doubt of the American's ability to meet and 
 beat the veteran German at his own game. 
 With what care our troops in France must 
 have been scanned for the choice! For 
 there must be no failure. 
 
 The choice fell upon the First Division, 
 and the taking and retention of Cantigny, 
 that gray patch across the valley, was to 
 be the historic test. 
 
 May twenty-seven, the German crashed 
 over the Chemin des Dames, betw^een Sois- 
 sons and Rheims, the blow that was to 
 carry him to the Marne. That night the 
 
 *I3* 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 Twenty-eighth Infantry moved into the 
 trenches opposite Cantigny. 
 
 At three o'clock our guns began a slow^ 
 fire of destruction on the enemy trenches 
 and communications. At four-thirty began 
 the final artillery preparation — an ear-split- 
 ting, earth-shaking inferno, a glorious thing 
 to hear from our side. That lasted an 
 hour, then the guns rose to the measure of 
 a drum played by a master — the rolling 
 barrage. At the same instant — five-thirty in 
 the morning of May tw^enty-eight — the in- 
 fantry leaped from the trenches. 
 
 For the first tim,e A^mericans were go- 
 ing over the top to take and hold territory 
 from the Germans. 
 
 From the observation post you could 
 see most of it. First, the rolling barrage, 
 a wall of whitish smoke, punctured by sharp 
 flashes and spoutings of the Picardy chalk 
 soil. Fifty yards behind, the tanks and 
 first wave of infantry; two hundred yards 
 farther back the second wave; and five 
 hundred yards behind that the third wave. 
 
 * 14^7 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 The enemy put down his counterbarrage. 
 There were a few gaps in the line, but the 
 three waves — three hedges of steel gleaming 
 in the morning sun — went forward at a 
 slow, steady w^alk, just as we had seen them 
 do it at maneuvers. The first German 
 lines were reached — a pause — brisk work 
 here, the enemy taking a first lesson in the 
 terrible Yankee bayonet. Then on into the 
 gray patch across the valley. The bayonets 
 gleamed beyond, disappeared in the woods 
 above. Cantigny was ours! 
 
 But the battle was just begun. Twice 
 the French had taken Cantigny, only to lose 
 it. Could the Americans hold? 
 
 Toward noon the measure of the guns 
 picked up again. Counterbattery work ihis 
 time — the enemy was barraging the new 
 American lines. Then word was flashed 
 back, "The Germans are counter-attacking." 
 A little later came the word, "Counterattack 
 broken!" The guns picked up again. Upon 
 our men in the new lines fell a well-placed 
 hurricane of fire and steel and death. Again 
 
 ♦ 15 * 
 
w 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 the enemy attacked, and again the attack 
 failed. Six times the German, desperate to 
 avert — not the loss of Cantigny — but the 
 moral effect of an American victory at this 
 juncture, came over to retake the lost posi- 
 tion. Six times the attack was crumpled up. 
 The hurricane of death never ceased. Then 
 after a pause a seventh and last attack, the 
 most determined of all, was launched. Un- 
 der cover of a barrage even more dense, 
 two close-packed waves of infantry swept 
 out of a sheltering woods. To us waiting, 
 it did not seem possible that either power 
 or spirit for resistance could survive that 
 storm. The storm swept over the front 
 line. . . . Something did survive, for 
 from our trenches broke out a blaze of rifle 
 and machine-gun fire. The German was 
 brave, he pressed on — the new No Man's 
 Land was littered with gray-green wounded 
 and dead. Our trenches ran red with the 
 blood of those who pmd for the victory. 
 For victory it was! A few Germans reached 
 
 * 16 4? 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 our front lines, but they reached them only 
 to die. Cantigny remained ours. 
 
 America could attack, America could 
 hold. The great test was passed. 
 
 The next morning, beside ne^vs of the 
 German offensive, appeared this brief com- 
 munique: "The Americans, in a brilliant 
 local action, have taken Cantigny, and held 
 it despite repeated determined counterat- 
 tacks." That communique was read to 
 every unit of every French army, and 
 by town crier in every village and 
 hamlet of France, and in England, 
 too. Throughout all France, on the 
 verge of a panic, went a thrill of new 
 hope. The Americans could fight, after all! 
 Most important, the lesson was not lost 
 upon the high command. Cantigny auto- 
 matically made every American soldier in 
 France an immediate fighting asset. The 
 Second Division lay just behind us, waiting 
 to relieve the First. The First was told to 
 hold on awhile longer, the Second was 
 ordered to a point near the Marne. Cha- 
 
 [I 
 
 cfr 17 * 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 teau Thierry, Belleau Wood and Bouresches 
 corollaries to Cantigny, were written into 
 history. France was strong again. America 
 was ready. America was in the war. 
 
 When in early July the First marched 
 out of the Cantigny sector, it was through 
 villages whose people, happy and smiling, 
 came out to meet them. Greetings passed, 
 as from friend to friend. "The Americans 
 have saved France!" And French mothers 
 wept upon American graves. 
 
 For there was a price — there is always 
 the price! For its victory and its stay in 
 the Cantigny sector, the First Division had 
 paid with America's first real casualty list, 
 nearly five thousand wounded and dead. 
 
 4FI8 4^ 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 HERE was a few days* rest in 
 billets, then things began to 
 happen with a rush. There 
 was a sudden move by truck 
 toward the Marne. 
 
 A dramatic ride that. Another and 
 bigger historic hour — one was thrillingly 
 conscious of it — impended, a climax pre- 
 pared by the master mind directing the 
 Allied armies. 
 
 The stage was being set. On every 
 road, as far as the eye could reach, an end- 
 less stream of camions; w^hole battalions of 
 seventy- fives; huge "heavies" drawn by 
 tractors or twenties of horses; cavalry trot- 
 ting across the fields; troops white and black 
 and yellow^ encamped along the roads; an 
 infinite clatter of w^heels and hoofs and 
 orders shouted in a dozen tongues; frantic, 
 sweating M. P.'s fighting to prevent traffic 
 jams at crossroads; the sky hazy with the 
 dust of it. All the world and its engines 
 
 t I9if 
 
w 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 seemed going in the one direction. Last 
 dramatic touch, it was the Fourteenth of 
 July, natal day of Republican France: which 
 day the enemy had chosen for his fifth and 
 final offensive toward Paris. Above the 
 clamor of moving armies rose the thunder 
 of his guns, opening up along the Marne, 
 from Soissons to Rheims. 
 
 On the fifteenth the enemy's infantry 
 struck. He crossed the Marne. He was 
 thrown back — an American division, the 
 Third, did that. By the evening of the six- 
 teenth the word was definite: the German 
 drive had been stopped dead in its tracks. 
 By that time the First had reached Dam- 
 martin Cind left it, and was moving, so the 
 milestones said, toward Soissons. Traffic 
 streams had swollen into rivers, a very tide 
 of power sweeping up toward the German 
 
 Foch's time had come. 
 
 The evening of the seventeenth the 
 First halted, facing the heights southwest of 
 Soissons. 
 
 *20it 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 The so-called Second Battle of the 
 Marne was in reality won on those heights, 
 a w^idc, rolling plateau cut by several deep, 
 ugly ravines and covering the Soissons- 
 Chateau Thierry highway and the Soissons- 
 Oulchy le Chateau railroad — the two ar- 
 teries which fed the salient. Upon these 
 heights the enemy had buttressed his entire 
 Marne position, and during his month of 
 occupancy he had done everything possible 
 to render them impregnable. If Foch's 
 counterstroke of July eighteen was to suc- 
 ceed, those heights must first be taken and 
 those communications cut. To this task the 
 French command assigned what were prob- 
 ably the four greatest shock divisions in 
 the world — the One Hundred Fifty-first In- 
 fantry Division (French), the First United 
 States, the French Moroccan Division, in- 
 cluding the Foreign Legion, and the Second 
 United States. They vsrent into line the 
 night of the seventeenth in that order, from 
 left to right. 
 
 fl 
 
 4r2l 4? 
 
® 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 It rained that night, a steady down- 
 pour, and all through the night the troops 
 of the First — already hungry and in need 
 of sleep from their hasty moves — plodded 
 wearily through the mud. They reached 
 their position, on the slope of the plateau, 
 at five minutes to five. Almost the same in- 
 stant the enemy, apprised of the impending 
 attack, put down an inhibition barrage. At 
 five o'clock all the massed Allied guns, from 
 Soissons to Chateau Thierry suddenly began 
 to thunder — the rolling barrage. The great 
 counterattack was on. With the crash, 
 the infantry rose from the trenches, 
 moved up out of the valley and the mists, 
 on to the plateau, into the sunshine and the 
 enemy's fire. They advanced steadily until 
 nine o clock, then halted to reform their 
 lines. At two in the afternoon they went 
 over again, and when they halted for the 
 night they had achieved an advance of 
 seven kilometers. 
 
 But at a price! 
 
 *22 * 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 Back in the ruined village of Coeuvres 
 was the divisional evacuation station, and 
 back to Coeuvres v/ent the wounded, in 
 ambulances and trucks, on foot, by hun- 
 dreds — too fast for evacuation. They filled 
 the station, lay ranked along street corners, 
 crowded courtyards. Some died for lack 
 of prompt surgical attention. Some lay in 
 white, silent agony. Some chattered cease- 
 lessly in the delirium of pain. Over all was 
 the fetid odor of rotting flesh and stale 
 blood. 
 
 Up on the heights it was w^orse. The 
 roadsides were littered with dead horses, 
 dead men. The trampled wheatfields were 
 dotted with rifles thrust bayonet down into 
 the earth, guides to future burial parties. 
 The .American rifle was always distinguished 
 by a white rag. In that part of the field 
 there were four Germans to every American 
 rifle so posed. 
 
 The Bavarians of that first day, taken 
 by surprise, had fought well but hopelessly. 
 
 ^ 
 
 4^23 4? 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 During the night they were reinforced by 
 two more divisions, crack Prussian Guard 
 units. And in the morning, when our in- 
 fantry went over again, it was against an 
 enemy who resisted to the death. The 
 Prussian machine-gunner was a sturdy sol- 
 dier. Every machine-gun position had to 
 be taken by direct frontal attack. One 
 death-spitting nest was succeeded by an- 
 other. The proportion of the dead changed. 
 Our lines grew thin, but they pressed on 
 and the second night found the division 
 lying diagonally across the Paris-Soissons 
 highway. 
 
 A child, glancing at the field, could 
 have pieced together a story of those first 
 tw^o days. Here a shell had registered a 
 direct hit on an advancing squad, and the 
 squad, fragments of men, lay scattered about. 
 There a machine-gvin nest had held out 
 stubbornly and had to be taken at a price. 
 The price lay where it had been paid. There 
 was a cemetery that the Germans had con- 
 
 *24* 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 verted into a strongpoint. They had emp- 
 tied the vaults of their former occupants 
 and used those gruesome abodes as dugouts. 
 When I came upon it, it was again occupied 
 only by the dead, and a semicircle of other 
 dead lay before it. In the Dommiers ravine 
 had been a fearful grapple; there too, a 
 little later, an aid station had been set up 
 and scores of wounded assembled, and an 
 enemy plane had come over and gotten a 
 direct hit — I have to pass over what I saw 
 there. The advance up the road from Dom- 
 miers had been swift, bayonet outfighting 
 machine-gun terribly. The dead lay in 
 little tangled heaps, gray-green and khaki 
 side by side. There was a tank that had 
 been hit just as it w^as flattening out a 
 machine-gun nest and its occupants; and a 
 German machine-gunner had craw^led into 
 the tank, thrown out the dead crew, set up 
 his gun and from his little fortress swept 
 our advancing lines with horrible ef- 
 fect. The advance upon the highway had 
 
 *2i* 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 been through a storm of lead. Beyond, as 
 the battle continued, it grew worse. . 
 The July sun was blazing hot. There were 
 no burial parties until the fifth day. When 
 the breeze stirred. 
 
 The second night our shattered in- 
 fantry lines were reorganized, most of the 
 reserves were brought up, and in the morn- 
 ing they were up and over again, one 
 division attacking five, in a determined 
 effort to get the whole division across the 
 Paris highw^ay. They were met, on the left, 
 by a violent counterattack. The weight of 
 this attack fell on the Second Brigade, that 
 is, the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth In- 
 fantry Regiments. There followed a hand- 
 to-hand struggle without equal in the history 
 of American arms. All through that day 
 the lines surged back and forth, in attack 
 and counterattack. They fought with bayo- 
 nets, with grenades, with clubbed rifles, with 
 knives. Men fell like dead leaves before 
 the autumn gale. Officers went dow^n in 
 
 *26 ♦ 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 alarming numbers. One battalion com- 
 mander of the Twenty-eighth reported 
 that all his officers were down. The 
 Twenty-sixth lost its colonel, lieuten- 
 ant-colonel, every battalion commander, 
 and found itself under command of 
 a captain of less than two years* service. 
 Some companies melted out of existence. 
 There was some confusion, men became lost 
 from their units. But after every surge for- 
 ward, after every failure, the remaining 
 officers reformed the men nearest them and, 
 when the command, "Attack!" was re- 
 peated, they went at it again. And when 
 the third night fell, what was left of the 
 division lay firmly across the Paris highway. 
 
 The French on our left had been as- 
 signed as their objective Berzy-le-Sec — key 
 to the Marne salient, since it commanded 
 the all-important highway and railroad, fhe 
 French were unable to take it, so on the 
 third night they were relieved by fresh 
 troops. So were the Moroccans on our right. 
 
 * 27 * 
 
w 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 Our Second Division also was relieved. The 
 First, which had suffered most heavily of 
 all, also expected to be taken out. Instead 
 came the astounding order: "In the morn- 
 ing you will attack. Extend your line to 
 the left, and take Berzy-le-Sec!" The brunt 
 of that task, too, would fall on the Second 
 Brigade. There was muttered protest from 
 the command at the front. "Attack! We 
 are too few. The men haven't eaten, they 
 haven't slept, for four days. They have 
 been through hell. It can't be done!" But 
 an order is an order. And so another 
 reorganization was effected. The few re- 
 maining reserves were brought up into the 
 front lines. 
 
 And that night the Hun threw 
 in still another fresh division of Prussian 
 Guards, concentrated against our Second 
 Brigade and squarely in the path to Berzy- 
 le-Sec. If ever troops faced the impossible, 
 it was that Second Brigade the night of 
 July twenty. 
 
 t2& 1^ 
 
^ THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 But at daybreak the waiting Prussian 
 saw the khaki wave rise out of the earth 
 once more and come grimly toward him. 
 He stood to his guns and took his toll until 
 he died. And for a little it seemed that 
 he was going to halt the advance. Then 
 the brigade commander, walking along his 
 lines under direct fire, coolly reformed his 
 shattered battalions, took his place in the 
 first wave and in person led them in another 
 attack. This time the Prussian killed and 
 died in vain. The khaki wave rolled over 
 him and his comrades. Somewhere, some- 
 how, those exhausted boys — flotsam and 
 jetsam of a land that had given them little 
 but this chance to die — found new strata of 
 endurance, new w^ells of courage, to beat 
 down the veteran crack troops of Europe. 
 And when they halted, the smoking ruins 
 of Berzy-le-Sec were theirs, the Marne 
 salient was doomed, and the great allied 
 advance begun which, before winter's snows 
 
 fl 
 
 ♦ 29* 
 
[p 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 should fly, was to bring the black eagle flut- 
 tering to earth. 
 
 The fifth night they were relieved by 
 the Fifteenth Scottish Division. 
 
 We went back a little ahead of 
 them and in the village of Pontarme 
 we made a bit of a party for them — 
 something to eat, something hot to drink. 
 We made rather prodigious preparations. 
 One battalion filed in, was fed and passed 
 out; they scarcely made any impression 
 upon our supplies. Then came the battalion 
 I call my own. They were fed, the line 
 broke, and they gathered around us, a group 
 of boys still dazed by the incredible things 
 they had seen and done. And they barely 
 filled the little courtyard in which we had 
 our plant. That battalion had gone in one 
 thousand strong, with thirty-two officers. 
 About us were less than two hundred, with 
 four officers, two of them wounded. I 
 said to the wounded boy captain in com- 
 
 * 30* 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 mand, "And the others?" He said, "There 
 are no others." 
 
 It was true of both those infantry bri- 
 gades. They had gone in, a few more than 
 ten thousand fighting men. Eight thousand 
 fell. 
 
 The price of victory. 
 
 II 
 
 4f3t« 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 s?ND now another picture, one of 
 •war's rare spectacles. The 
 scene, once again the first 
 American sector. A thrilling 
 panorama. A level valley-plain, perhaps 
 three miles wide, dotted by ruined 
 villages and thick groves with their 
 menace of a hidden enemy, and cut 
 by yellow serrated lines, the trenches of 
 the infantry. On one side the gently slop- 
 ing ridge behind which lurk the Yankee 
 guns. On the other, that series of hills 
 and ridges known as Montsec, in their van 
 and towering insolent over all the landscape, 
 the famous Butte de Montsec. A very 
 Gibraltar, this Montsec, one of the strongest 
 positions in France. Once, so they say, 
 the French lost thirty thousand in ten min- 
 utes in one futile attack. . . . The 
 date, September eleven. On the morrow 
 the First American Army, now four hundred 
 
 ♦ 32« 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 thousand strong, was to try to crush in the 
 St. Mihiel salient, four years impregnable. 
 To the First Division had been assigned the 
 task, supposed to be most difficult, of out- 
 flanking and taking Montsec, and smashing 
 through to the center of the salient. We 
 expected a bloody affair, another Soissons 
 
 or worse. 
 
 It was not, alas, the same division ! The 
 artillery had come practically intact out of 
 the Soissons fighting, a few of the wounded 
 doughboys had strayed back. But during 
 August the infantry had been recruited to 
 full strength with new men, fine, strapping 
 fellows from the draft and the later officers* 
 schools. Their training had been brief, they 
 had never been under fire. But they had 
 heard of the greatness of Soissons, and they 
 were strong in the resolve that the standard 
 there set should not be lowered. The per- 
 sonnel of a fighting division changes; its 
 tradition, its soul, lives on. 
 
 fl 
 
 *33* 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 Nine o'clock, and black as Egypt; rain 
 falling in torrents. Through mud kneedeep 
 — not the kneedeep of poetic license but 
 of cold, disagreeable fact — the infantry 
 plowed forward into position, the first wave 
 in the trenches on the valley floor, the sec- 
 ond and third waves just behind the crest of 
 the Yankee ridge. 
 
 One o'clock; a deep-throated "bootTi," 
 a signal. Suddenly the night was alight 
 and quivering with sound. All the great 
 cannon that for months had lain hidden and 
 silent for this very hour, were belching fire 
 and steel upon Montsec. The wet sky 
 grew red with the blaze of it. Fountains of 
 white flame outlined the enemy ridges. The 
 towering Butte was a cataract of fire. 
 
 But, strange, no answer from the Ger- 
 man guns. 
 
 The rain ceased. Dawn came, gray 
 and cold, a keen wind blowing. A whistle 
 cut faintly through the din of guns. The 
 scattered groups on the ridge stiffened mto 
 
 * 34 * 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 line, the open formation the Americans 
 know and use so well. Over the plain 
 rolled the barrage, the tanks, the first wave, 
 pj'gmylike under the shadow of the hills. 
 Still no answer from Montsec. The second 
 wave topped the crest, and the ominous 
 silence of the German guns was unbroken. 
 Then the w^hole malicious plan dawned 
 upon the marchers. The German would 
 wait until the third wave was over and well 
 down the hill, then put down a box bar- 
 rage and cut the American line to pieces. 
 And he could do it! There were at least 
 three kilometers to go, every foot in full 
 view^ from those frowning heights. Not a 
 man could reach them alive. The third and 
 last wave appeared, coming over the crest. 
 And nothing happened. 
 
 A few scattering shells burst over the 
 first wave. That was all until the woods 
 at the right of the Butte was entered. The 
 Germans were there, and a few machine- 
 gunners — as ever the enemy's best soldiers 
 
 *35 * 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 — tried to put up a fight. The second wave 
 passed over their dead bodies. The rest 
 had but one thought: to surrender before it 
 was too late. The astounding truth became 
 clear. The enemy, overcome by the strength 
 of our preparations, was running aw^ay! 
 This formidable fastness, the taking of 
 which could have been made so costly, was 
 being given up with only such fighting as 
 rearguards could make. 
 
 The marchers' spirits bounded skyhigh. 
 Expecting a shambles, they had found only 
 a maneuver. Wind and exercise dried out 
 wet clothes. One grew warm; one w^as a 
 boy on a holiday; one liked this war. Even 
 the few wounded who trickled back from 
 the first wave took their hard luck as a joke. 
 
 So it went. All that day they marched 
 and maneuvered, moving with beautiful pre- 
 cision from objective to objective. Every- 
 where they found the same thing: for the 
 most part a frightened, docile enemy, here 
 and there a fanatic machine-gunner. When 
 
 *36 * 
 
THE FIRST DrVISION 
 
 such an obstreperous one was met, the 
 doughboys would flatten out, creep around 
 to flanking positions, then pick him off with 
 the rifle or dash in upon him from the sides. 
 Or a tank would lumber casually toward him, 
 spitting fire. Usually he saw the light; if 
 not, so much the worse for him I There 
 was one who, having called "Kamarad," 
 suddenly tried to turn his gun upon his 
 captors. It was very bad for him. 
 The roar of our guns died down; there was 
 no need to waste ammunition on an enemy 
 who would not stand. 
 
 That evening came the news: the left 
 of the First had touched hands with the 
 right of the Twenty-sixth Division, which 
 had smashed through from Les Eparges. 
 The St. Mihiel salient had passed into his- 
 tory. It had cost the First only seven hun- 
 dred casualties — and what are seven hun- 
 dred among so many! Except, of course, 
 that they gave all they had to give. 
 
 fl 
 
 *37* 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 T. MIHIEI. was, for the First, a 
 parade, a maneuver. But it 
 had enormous value. It was 
 
 Ql great training. The new troops 
 
 came out of that affair in superb morale. It 
 was to be needed. 
 
 Two weeks later the division faced a 
 new front. 
 
 The initial pa5rment on the Marne was 
 bearing fruit. Since the morning of July 
 eighteen, the Allied pressure had not 
 ceased. From the North Sea to the Ar- 
 gonne the enemy was recoiling, recoiling 
 under the blows of British, French and 
 American armies in turn. The Hindenburg 
 Line had been broken. And now^, from the 
 west bank of the Argonne massif to the 
 River Meuse, a great American army — 
 nearly all the fighting divisions — had been 
 assembled for the attack. A terrible ter- 
 rain, the most difficult naturally on all the 
 
 *38 * 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 western front: a tangle of hills, narrow de- 
 files and thick forests; fortified through four 
 years by every means the German craft 
 could devise, square miles of intricate wire 
 entanglements, thousands of hidden ma- 
 chine-gun nests, massed guns of all calibers. 
 A maze of death-traps. 
 
 During those two weeks the First had 
 earned the name "Gypsy Division." By 
 day they lived in the woods, bivouacked on 
 the ground, out of sight of enemy planes. 
 Every night they moved — twice by trucks, 
 other times by long, w^earisome hikes along 
 slippery, hilly roads — to some other woods. 
 Much of the time it rained, all of the time 
 it was muddy. They were dirty, vermin- 
 infested, with no chance for bath or change 
 of clothing; there were colds, and much 
 dysentery. . Much of the anecdotal 
 
 stuff written of the American soldier is un- 
 true in the sense that it is not characteristic. 
 But one is bound to note the spirit of those 
 boys in those last days. There was no 
 
 [p 
 
 *39* 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 grumbling, no petty bickering, no fault- 
 finding. Nor was there demonstrativeness, 
 nor sentimentality; they were a bit quieter 
 than usual. But there was an air of 
 friendliness, of thoughtfulness one for an- 
 other one finds only too seldom in this life. 
 How often one had to mark the growth, 
 under stress of common trial, of that spirit, 
 manifested in shy, sometimes awkward, al- 
 ways beautiful generosities, and never so 
 strong as at the last when they faced the 
 supreme trial I 
 
 You see, they were a veteran organi- 
 zation, they could read the signs, and they 
 knew they lived under the shadow of death. 
 For the First was not in the initial attack of 
 September twenty-eight. It lay back as 
 army reserve. That meant that if anything 
 went wrong, if some spent division found 
 itself unable to take a too difficult sector, 
 the First would be thrown into the breach. 
 Hard times lay ahead. 
 
 f^ 40 r&7 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 They listened to the thunder of the 
 four thousand guns that paved the way 
 for the attack. They heard of the first 
 day's brilliant advance, and then of the 
 gruelling work that began as the German 
 set himself for his most desperate defense 
 of the most vital point in his line. 
 
 Something did go wrong. One of the 
 attacking divisions found itself unable to 
 take the heights of Exermont, a key position 
 in the center of the German line. On the 
 night of September thirty-October one. the 
 First took over the sector. There was no 
 fluttering of flags, no playing of bands to 
 announce that a fresh division was going in; 
 only a silent, stealthy approach over shrap- 
 nel-swept slopes, through gas-filled valleys. 
 But news has a way of getting out, even 
 in the army, and it is told that all along 
 that hard-driven American line, the next 
 morning, went a thrill of new confidence as 
 the word passed, "The old First is in before 
 Exermont!" 
 
 4r 41 ttr 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 For three days they held the line, and 
 that in itself was a costly business. On the 
 morning of the fourth they went over the 
 top once more. 
 
 Over the topi A common phrase now- 
 adays. But do we quite get the picture? 
 You lie at dusk on some bleak, 
 shell-torn hillside, clinging to the scanty 
 shelter of your foxhole. Down the line 
 the word passes, "In the morning we go 
 over." There is nothing to do, you are 
 quite ready. You try to sleep, you cannot; 
 there is the long night for thought. 
 A faint glimmer of light shows. A supreme 
 moment. Never did life seem so sweet. 
 Suddenly the air above is filled with invis- 
 ible, shrieking demons, before you a wall of 
 bursting shells — ^your barrage. You see your 
 captain stand, his arm sweep forward. 
 You rise and follow him out from 
 cover. Then to the thunder before 
 you is added another sound, the 
 enemy's shells bursting overhead. Frag- 
 
 *42 * 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 ments whistle about you, strike before you. 
 To your left a man falls, to your right an- 
 other. Your file leader goes down, you 
 step forward into his place. And then 
 still another sound is caught, the sinister 
 **pup-P"P"Pup" of machine guns, rising until 
 it dominates even the roar of shells. The 
 world seems alive with hissing, crackling 
 things. Men go down in groups. You feel 
 terribly alone. But you walk steadily ahead. 
 The idea is simple: to keep on going, in the 
 hope that when the objective is reached 
 enough men will be left to take and hold it. 
 If there are, that is victory; if there are 
 not — well, you will not know it. You come 
 at last to a band of wire only partially shat- 
 tered by your guns. You pick your way 
 carefully through it. And then, as your 
 barrage sweeps over what was a tree-clump. 
 you sight just ahead a black, swaying tube 
 — perhaps, glaring down it, a face. A sud- 
 den red fury, hatred of that thing trying 
 to take your life, comes upon you. You 
 
 ♦ 43 * 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 grip your rifle, fix your eyes on a point just 
 under his chin and plunge forward. 
 
 So they went, that October fourth, over 
 fields dotted by the dead of the division 
 they had relieved, over forested hills, 
 through dark Death Valleys, against an 
 enemy scarcely ever seen. His guns from 
 long range showered the khaki lines with 
 gas, shrapnel and high explosive. His ma- 
 chine-guns, from hidden lairs, swept every 
 approach. But as the old regulars had 
 fought and died on the bloody heights of 
 Soissons, so on the Aire the men of the 
 draft fell and achieved. And when they 
 halted, for the night, the heights of Exer- 
 mont had been taken. 
 
 Then began another historic struggle. 
 Foot by foot the attacking lines hacked 
 forward, fighting and paying for every foot. 
 Close to their heels clung the mobile sev- 
 enty-fives, forgetting that cannon must stay 
 under cover and well behind the infantry; 
 making their own rules; deploying boldly in 
 
 ♦ 44* 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 the open, toiling like Titans that the dough- 
 boys out front might have the last ounce 
 of support. They paid. . . There 
 
 were long v^^aits under fearful artillery 
 fire, while some impregnable position was 
 being blasted out by our big guns, or some 
 impossible machine-gun nest was being out- 
 flanked. There were stealthy, creeping 
 advances, craft matched against craft. There 
 were dashes into the teeth of a leaden fury. 
 There was a hill — Hill 263 — that held out 
 for three days. Three times the infantry 
 swept up its slopes in attack; three times 
 the attacking battalions melted away. But 
 the old Second Brigade was there, and there 
 was a fourth attack, and it did not fail. 
 The line swept over the crest. The German 
 knew now who was in against him, and he 
 concentrated in this sector the machine- 
 guns and infantry of eight of his divisions 
 to stop this one terrible Yankee division 
 that never had been stopped. 
 
 11 
 
 *45* 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 It was Soissons all over again, only 
 Soissons over more difficult ground, far 
 more strongly fortified, and against an even 
 more desperate resistance. And v^ith this 
 difference: victory at Soissons had come 
 through sheer grit, spirit to take punish- 
 ment and keep on going. Here vsras the 
 same sublime courage, and with it the fine 
 skill and cool judgment of a veteran leader- 
 ship, perfect coordination. A green division 
 might not have won through that fastness. 
 
 The German fought his best, and his 
 best is terrible, worthy of a better cause. 
 His artillery was magnificently served. His 
 machine-gunners died at their posts. His 
 infantry counterattacked with reckless aban- 
 don. There was nothing wrong with his 
 morale there. 
 
 But on the morning of the tenth day. 
 a thin, exhausted line uprose once more and 
 flung itself forward in a supreme effort. 
 And when that ended, the Sommerance 
 Road had been taken, the way to the Kriem- 
 
 *46* 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 hilde Line was cleared, and the First Di- 
 vision once more stood upon its final 
 objective. 
 
 On the twelfth night the Forty-second 
 Division marched in, and what was left of 
 the First marched out — haggard, unshaven, 
 inexpressibly weary of body and soul, boys 
 who in twelve days had grown into old 
 men. More than twelve thousand infantry 
 had gone into the lines. A few over two 
 thousand went back. 
 
 The price of victory! 
 
 Replacements were brought up, and on 
 November one the First was in the lines and 
 in the attack again. But this time against 
 a broken enemy; the bloodshed of the past 
 four months was bearing fruit. The enemy 
 fled. The pursuit was swift. He stood for 
 a brief moment before Mouzon, and the 
 First rolled over him like an avalanche. He 
 stood again on the heights before Sedan. 
 The First was rushed by forced marches 
 across two divisional sectors, swept up the 
 
 W 
 
 ♦ ■♦7* 
 
^ 
 
 THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 heights and took them. And there, at the 
 very peak of the American advance, the 
 division that on the red field of Soissons 
 saw that advance begin, was relieved that 
 the French might have the deserved honor 
 of entering the historic city. The fighting 
 of the First was ended. 
 
 I have sought and cannot find a just 
 tribute. Their deeds must speak for them- 
 selves. Since January fifteen they had had 
 only three weeks out of the battle lines. 
 They had taken two hundred enemy guns, 
 more than seven thousand prisoners. They 
 had advanced fifty-one kilometers against 
 enemy resistance, much of it the most des- 
 perate encountered by any of the Allied 
 armies. And they had paid — nearly twenty- 
 five thousand wounded and dead. For the 
 doughboys it v/as even v/orse than that, for 
 of that great company twenty-four thousand 
 came from four regiments whose total fight- 
 ing strength did not exceed twelve thousand. 
 
 •* 48 * 
 
THE FIRST DIVISION 
 
 And so the Armistice found them, their 
 record perfect to the last, a division that 
 never retreated and never failed to take an 
 objective. 
 
 The echoes of the guns are stilled. Other 
 voices^ not less raucous^ not less sinister^ are 
 heard; in the Babel of them cynicism finds its 
 chance. A -phase^ soon -past! What lives? 
 The still small voice of hope whispers on. 
 
 Slowly the scheme of things unfolds. We 
 build as the coral builds. The breed of the 
 strong yet lives, the gift of sight has not been 
 taken away, the will to be true prevails. The 
 fallen but point with rigid fingers our course — 
 out of the valley and mists, on to the heights, into 
 the sunshine — Forward! 
 
 ♦ 49* 
 
LIBRARY OF,,CONGRESS 
 
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