FOCH LAUNCHES HIS GREAT COUNTER-ATTACK

By Captain Shipley Thomas, 26th Infantry, U. S. A.

THIS "boldest stroke of the war," begun by Marshal Foch on July 18, 1918, a month before he was made a Marshal of France and after the failure of the Germans in their last desperate drive toward Paris, is thus described by Captain Thomas, in his "History of the A. E. F.," published by George H. Doran Company.

The risk the Allies took was tremendous, the enemy still having a marked superiority in men and guns, but it was an opportunity that Pershing grasped and urged upon the French generalissimo, with an offer of eight American divisions. Two of them, the First and Second, were with the Tenth French Army that was hurled against the foe just south of Soissons. The Germans were "buried" under this surprise attack, ending with the capture of Soissons.

General Pershing reported of his combat troops, "In every trial, defensive or offensive, they have proved themselves equal to any troops in Europe."

AT 4:35 a.m. [July 18, 1918] the stillness of the night was rent with one terrific crash, as every Allied gun from the Aisne to Chateau-Thierry roared with the rolling barrage, and the infantry went over. This was the hour for which every member of the 1st Division had waited so patiently through the grim months of maneuver and trench warfare, for here now, man to man, they were to prove themselves in attack, and to show to all the world that American troops had entered at last on the real mission of hurling back the Germans.

Every step forward was a yard snatched away from the enemy, where yards counted most, for they were closing the neck of a salient.

To General Bullard his promotion had come too soon. He now commanded the Third American Army Corps, and the change had come on the very day before his 1st Division, which he had trained and watched develop under his careful guidance, was to make the attack which would print its name in letters of gold throughout the ages. Brigadier General Charles P. Summerall, who had so efficiently commanded the 1st Field Artillery Brigade of the 1st Division was that night made Division Commander.

There were three objectives laid out in the orders for the attack ; other orders were to follow for the attacks on the succeeding days. It was an anxious moment, that moment of the jump-off, for to every one along the whole battle line the question came how much artillery have the Germans massed behind this sector? The barrage started forward, bursting ahead of the infantry and then up went the rockets and flares from the German front lines calling for their own artillery to put down a protective barrage. On went the Allied barrage and behind it the waves of infantry of the leading battalions. A minute later came the German artillery reply, but it was not strong; it was apparent that they did not have many guns on this front. Forward swung the Allies on a five-mile front, following their barrage, but that day the barrage was not as close protection as it had been at Cantigny, for the gunners did not dare to lay their fire too close to the infantry since they had not fired a single registration shot and were firing solely by map. This gave the Germans time, after our barrage had passed them, to come up and man their machine guns before our infantry came upon them. The Allies passed the front lines without any check. There were no trenches except little shell holes, there was no wire, the front line was not well organized. Evidently the Germans in their two weeks' occupancy of this line had not thought it worth while to dig in, probably expecting to move on toward Paris almost any day.

The Germans certainly had put into practice all the theories of open warfare. That first line was nothing more than an outpost line, thinly held and meant only to check an advance long enough to warn the second line, and get them out of their dugouts and into the positions. But this time there had been no warning. There was no Allied artillery preparation during which the German troops in the second line could be led stoically out of the dugouts and into their fire positions. Also there was no warning from the higher staff that an attack was expected. The Germans were taken completely by surprise. And the Allied soldiers who were making the attack that morning were the first to realize it. The Germans had been outwitted and it would be easy going for the Allies, until the Germans got themselves together and recovered from their surprise. Accordingly to every man it came that he must push on at top speed, that no machine-gun nest which got into action between our barrage and our infantry should be allowed to check that rush, and that the infantry must keep up behind the barrage as close as they could, to prevent this.

Then came the second German defensive line, and that was almost as easy as the first had been. The defenders were few and far between. What machine guns there were in action were silenced by the swift rush the Allied soldiers made to stop them. Sweeping ever forward went the line. Meanwhile the second wave of the leading battalion stopped on the second German line to mop it up. They were well repaid for their pains. That second line was full of Germans in dugouts who had not been notified in time to get out to their positions before the Allied waves were upon them. The moppers-up took a heavy toll of them in German prisoners ten here, fifteen there, fifty in a cellar, a hundred in that cave, so that the score soon ran into the thousands. Usually they came out without any fuss on hearing that unmistakable challenge of the mopper-up. But there was one cave that the leading battalion of the 26th Infantry passed over out of which shots kept coming. The second wave tried to surround the cave and this drew machine-gun firing. Try as they might, no one could get within range of the mouth without drawing a great deal of attention. This was holding up the second wave when one of the big French tanks came along. The officer sent word to the tank to come over and help clean out the cave and in a few minutes the tank was waddling up to the mouth like a huge turtle, while the machine-gun bullets bounced off its thick sides. Down into the mouth of the cave it went firing all its guns. All was silent for a moment, and then the tank backed out, and following it came a column of German infantry, their hands held up over their heads. Six hundred prisoners including a colonel came out of the cave, and a shame-faced lot they were to be caught in a hole like that. But it was still more strange to see the consternation on their faces when they saw the Americans. The surprise of that attack was written on the face of every one of those prisoners, and with it was the dread lest the stories be true that the Americans killed all the prisoners they took.

By 5:35 a.m., one hour after the attack began, the assaulting lines were on their "First Objective," that blue line on the official map where the barrage was to stand for so many minutes, while the assaulting waves were reorganized, the front rank filled up, while the moppers-up were busy cleaning out the German second position. But this time the infantry did not have to "dig in." Very soon the barrage, which was bursting out in front while the heavies were pounding the next line of German resistance, would move on and with it would go the infantry. The Allies had progressed well in that first hour. The Ist (Regular) Division had swung swiftly across that flat plateau, meeting very little resistance, and the Second (Regular and Marine), when it came out of the wood, after its final rush to get in the line, found that it was ahead of the French division on its right and left, and the whole line was moving along as per schedule.

Then the barrage started forward again. The Allied guns were shooting at almost their extreme range now, and the barrage was placed well ahead of the infantry, for the zone of dispersion increases with the range. Then, too, some batteries were not firing, for the Allied artillery was now moving forward, a battery at a time and this thinned down the barrage. Still, the advancing waves pressed on, and now the tanks were there to help them. As soon as a German machine-gun nest opened its fire, word was sent to the nearest tank and it headed for the nest and began firing its sawed-off 75-mm. gun and all its machine guns, and the Allied infantry rushed the spot as soon as the German fire slackened. The German resistance was stiffening but was not yet fully organized. This the attacking troops realized, and they realized also that speed and still more speed would be the salvation of that day. Every yard they went forward meant a yard lost to the Germans, but more than that, every minute that they lost meant stiffer resistance on the German third line which they were approaching. It was the first great attack for the Americans, and to both the French and the Americans there was that feeling that they had been selected from all the Allied strength to make this decisive blow which, as the news spread, would cheer the hearts of millions in all the Allied countries, who the day before were silently wondering when Paris would fall. To be the picked troops, champions of all the Allies, and to be fighting alongside the famous 1st Moroccan Division with its Foreign Legion, was incentive enough to those officers and men of the 1st and 2nd Divisions, from the Regular Army and the Marine Corps, to bring out the greatest qualities of heroism in pushing the line forward.

But not alone to the infantry is the credit for that swift advance due. The field artillery of those three divisions also did heroic work in that attack. Heedless of personal danger, they limbered up the guns and took them forward along the shell-swept roads, across the fields on which the German artillery was beating and went into battery behind the infantry. As soon as the attack began, all attempts at screening of movements, all camouflage for batteries was abandoned. Speed in getting the guns forward so that the infantry should have all the protection that it was possible to give them, speed in bringing up caisson after caisson of ammunition so that those guns should never be silent, and speed in running forward observation officers with telephones, were the watchwords with the artillery that day. The batteries fired from each position until the range became too great; then one by one they limbered up, and went forward at a gallop to the place where the battalion commander, coolly sitting his horse on that shell-torn field, gave them orders to put the battery into action. Swiftly the guns were unlimbered despite the hail of German machine-gun bullets and high explosive ; and the horses were scarcely led away before the guns were in action, so perfect was the teamwork of gunners and drivers. The roads, once the attack started, were a mass of transports moving forward. Every road out of the forest was choked with the trains of a division, while through them all galloped the artillery. It was once more "Forward the Guns," that old cry of open warfare almost forgotten in the three years of trench warfare. To see the guns go forward is a sure sign of victory.