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
Army Headquarters wanted information from the three Corps Headquarters.
Each Corps wanted information from its three Division Headquarters,
which in turn were not modest in asking questions of the weary fellows
at the front. Exactly where was your line? What was the morale of the
men? Were they receiving ammunition and food? When would the guns be
up? What identifications of the enemy forces in your sector? Had many
machine-gun nests been located? Was the enemy fortifying, and where?
What was the character of his shell-fire? The high command had to
consider the corps summaries of the answers in relation to its own
news from other sources, communications from the French staff, reports
from Army aviation and artillery, conjectures of the enemy's strength
and probable intentions, and the general situation of transport in the
Army area and the flow of supplies from the rear.
The lack of information on some points was no more puzzling than the
abundance of contradictory information on others. Staff heads must work
into the small hours of the morning. They might rest after they had
arranged their program for the morrow. The men at the front who were to
carry it out were supposed to rest at night to refresh themselves for
another effort at dawn. This was a kindly paternal thought, but how,
even in the period of daylight saving, they were to find the time for
sleep in the midst of re-forming their line and answering all those
questions was not indicated. Whether they slept or not, whether their
shields and food were up or not, they were supposed to fight from dawn
to dusk on the 27th.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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