OUR GREATEST BATTLE
(THE MEUSE-ARGONNE)

BY
FREDERICK PALMER
Author of "The Last Shot," "America in France," etc.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919

TO THE READER

During the war we had books which were the product of the spirit of the hour and its limitations. Among these was my "America in France," which was written, while we were still expecting the war to last through the summer of 1919, to describe the gathering and training of the American Expeditionary Forces, and their actions through the Château-Thierry and Saint-Mihiel operations. Since the war and the passing of the military censorship, we have had many hastily compiled histories, and many "inside" accounts from participants, including commanders, both Allied and enemy, whose special pleading is, to one familiar with events, no less evident in their lapses than in their tone.

This book, which continues and supplements "America in France," is not in the class of the jerry-built histories or the personal narratives. It aims, as the result of special facilities for information and observation, to give a comprehensive and intelligent account of the greatest battle in which Americans ever fought, the Meuse-Argonne.

In the formative period of our army, I was the officer in charge of press relations, under a senior officer. I was never chief censor of the A. E. F.: I had nothing to do with the censorship of the soldiers' mail. After we began operations in the field, my long experience in war was utilized in making me an observer, who had the freedom of our lines and of those of our Allies in France. Where the average man in the army was limited in his observations to his own unit, I had the key to the different compartments. I saw all our divisions in action and all the processes of combat and organization. It was gratifying that my suggestions sometimes led to a broader point of view in keeping with the character of the immense new army which was being filled into the mold of the old.

Friends who have read the manuscript complain that I do not give enough of my own experiences, or enough reminiscences of eminent personalities; but even in the few places where I have allowed the personal note to appear it has seemed, as it would to anyone who had been in my place, a petty intrusion upon the mighty whole of two million American soldiers, who were to me the most interesting personalities I met. The little that one pair of eyes could see may supply an atmosphere of living actuality not to be easily reproduced from bare records by future historians, who will have at their service the increasing accumulation of data.

In the light of my observations during the battle, I went over the fields after the armistice, and studied the official reports, and talked with the men of our army divisions. For reasons that are now obvious, the results do not read like the communiqués and dispatches of the time, which gave our public their idea of an action which could not be adequately described until it was finished and the war was over. We had repulses, when heroism could not persist against annihilation by cross-fire; our men attacked again and again before positions were won; sometimes they fought harder to gain a little knoll or patch of woods than to gain a mile's depth on other occasions. Accomplishment must be judged by the character of the ground and of the resistance.

As the division was our fighting unit, I have described the part that each division took in the battle. The reader who wearies of details may skip certain chapters, and find in others that he is following the battle as a whole in its conception and plan and execution, and in the human influences which were supreme; but the very piling up of the records of skill, pluck, and industry of division after division from all parts of the country, as they took their turn in the ordeal until they were expended, is accumulative evidence of what we wrought.

The soldier who knew only his division, his regiment, battalion, company, and platoon, as he lay in chill rain in fox-holes, without a blanket, under gas, shells, and machine-gun fire, or charged across the open or up slippery ascents for a few hundred yards more of gains, may learn, as accurately as my information warrants, in a freshened sense of comradeship, how and where other divisions fought. He may think that his division has not received a fair share of attention for its exploits. I agree with him that it has not, in my realization of the limitations of space and of capacity to be worthy of my subject.

There are many disputes between divisions as the result of a proud and natural rivalry, which was possibly too energetically promoted by the staff in order to force each to its utmost before it staggered in its tracks from wounds and exhaustion. One division might have done the pioneer hammering and thrusting which gave a succeeding division its opportunity. A daring patrol of one division may have entered a position and been ordered to fall back; troops of another division may have taken the same position later. There was nothing so irritating as having to withdraw from hard-won ground because an adjoining unit could not keep up with the advance. Towns and villages were the landmarks on the map, with which communiqués and dispatches conjured; but often the success which made a village on low ground tenable was due to the taking of commanding hills in the neighborhood. Sometimes troops, in their eagerness to overcome the fire on their front, found themselves in the sector of an adjoining division, and mixed units swept over a position at the same time. In cases of controversy I have tried to adjust by investigation and by comparing reports. I must have made errors, whose correction I welcome. To illustrate the full detail of each division's advance would require several maps as large as a soldier's blanket. The maps which I have used are intended to indicate in a general way the movement of each division, and our part on the western front in relation to our Allies.

There may be surprise that I have not mentioned the names of individuals below the rank of division commander, and that I have not identified units lower than divisions. The easy and accepted method would have been to single out this and that man who had won the Medal of Honor or the Cross, and this or that battalion or company which had a theatric part. Indeed, the author could have made his own choices in distinction. I knew the battle too well; I had too deep a respect for my privilege to set myself up in judgment, or even to trust to the judgment of others. Not all the heroes won the Medal or the Cross. The winners had opportunities; their deeds were officially observed. How many men deserved them in annihilated charges in thickets and ravines, but did not receive them, we shall not know until our graves in France yield their secrets.

I like to think that our men did not fight for Crosses; that they fought for their cause and their manhood. A battalion which did not take a hill may have fought as bravely as one which did, and deserve no less credit for its contribution to the final result. So I have resisted the temptation to