Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne)Palmer, Frederick
History
Our Greatest Battle (The Meuse-Argonne)
Palmer, Frederick
Argonne, Battle of the, France, 1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front
On the northern bank of the Aire, about half a mile beyond its sharp
turn toward Grandpré, is the village of Saint-Juvin. The river
bottoms here are broad and swampy between the slopes which draw
together to form the walls of the gap. From the fronts of the 1st and
32nd Divisions the fragmentary trench system of the Kriemhilde ran
northeasterly to a point just opposite the bend. Beyond this to the
west the Germans depended upon the westward course of the river and
upon the naturally strong positions on its northern side, culminating
in the heights above Grandpré. The 77th's sector was extended slightly
to the east to include Saint-Juvin, in order that the 82nd, which had
taken over some of the front of the 1st, might undertake a movement
against the Kriemhilde on the 1st's flank east of the river bend,
passing Saint-Juvin on the east.
For four days the 82nd had been throwing its men into charges from the
river bottom against heights, and wrestling against counter-attacks.
Though it had conquered the trough of its northern course, the Aire
river was still the nightmare of its evolutions. The left regiment
remained facing the westward bend. The center regiment was to cross
the northern course of the river, south of the bend, at Fléville, and
join the right regiment, which was already across. This it did under
heavy fire on the morning of the 11th, and, deploying, swung west in
protecting the flank of the right regiment from the heights north of
Saint-Juvin.
The 82nd had already received enough shocks to be called a "stonewall"
division, and had given enough to be called a shock division. It was
not surprising, then, though wonderful, that the left regiment made
two miles in face of the heights; or that the right regiment made a
half mile more and by 8 A.M. had reached the Kriemhilde Stellung. Their
exhaustion, instead of staying the All-Americas, appeared to give them
a delirium of valor. When front lines were riddled by casualties, the
second line "leap-frogged," and charged on into the machine-gun fire.
One battalion had all its commissioned officers killed or so badly
wounded that they could not move; another all but one. Non-commissioned
officers continued the attack; but there was no hope at present of
taking the Kriemhilde, with its fresh waiting machine-gunners in their
interlocking positions supported by artillery, as the 32nd on the
82nd's left had found. The part of it in front of the 82nd was not to
be taken in the general attack of October 14th--not until the final
drive of November 1st. Exposed in a salient under cross-fire, the
survivors of the right regiment were ordered to withdraw even with
those of the center regiment, where, still under flanking fire in face
of the heights, they held their ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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