The Story of the Great War, Volume 7: American Food and Ships; Palestine; Italy invaded; Great German Offensive; Americans in Picardy; Americans on the Marne; Foch's Counteroffensive.
History
The Story of the Great War, Volume 7: American Food and Ships; Palestine; Italy invaded; Great German Offensive; Americans in Picardy; Americans on the Marne; Foch's Counteroffensive.
World War, 1914-1918
Toward evening a hospital which had been established in Seicheprey was
blown up, along with the doctors and ambulance men. The chief surgeon of
the American regiment engaged hurried to the spot with French and
American ambulance cars. The rescue party passed through a severe
barrage fire, but eventually reached the village, where they tended to
the wounded for many hours under a heavy enemy fire.
The American losses were never clearly known. They were estimated at
200. The Germans claimed 183 prisoners, which would leave only seventeen
dead and wounded on the American estimate. The scope of the battle
showed that the American losses in dead and wounded were much more than
that, hence the number of prisoners the Germans claimed was discredited.
As to the German casualties, a German prisoner put them at 600 killed,
wounded and missing, of these, more than 300 German dead were found in
the American trenches and in no-man's-land. The defeat of the Germans
was sufficiently proved by the omission of the German official bulletins
and the German press to mention the successful counterattack.
The Xivray affair (June 16, 1918) in the Toul sector furnished another
example of American alertness and vigor in an emergency. Xivray was
originally behind the German lines, but they had been penetrated by the
Americans, and the town was in American hands. As was the case in other
engagements, German prisoners betrayed that the enemy's purpose in
raiding the town was to carry off as many Americans as possible with a
view to extracting information from them. The enemy's design, as thus
revealed, was to send a large party without preparatory artillery fire.
They were to take up a position near the American barbed wire, and send
a signal rocket for a box barrage to cover Xivray and the approaching
communication trenches, while heavy artillery bombarded the villages in
the rear.
The American fire apparently precipitated a violent bombardment. It came
at 3 o'clock in the morning and was directed at the American first line
before Xivray, the American batteries, and at villages far in the rear.
An Associated Press correspondent thus described what follows:
"Six hundred men advanced to the attack in no less than a dozen
different columns, led by 200 picked Bavarian storming troops. They came
up on the right flank, on the left, and on the center under cover of
smoke, making a dark night still darker. They crept up the ravines and
slipped through the hollows. The sharp ears of sentries alone prevented
a total surprise.
"Their guns laid down a heavy box barrage that prevented the reenforcing
of the front line. One platoon, led by Lieutenant Doan, got through the
first curtain of fire. Doan even went through the second with some
volunteers, but that was all the help that could be sent to the 225 men
that were holding the line attacked. They were only one to three, but
they fought in a way to surprise and dismay the 600 Germans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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