FROM
UPTON TO THE MEUSE WITH THE 307th INFANTRY
by,
W. KERR RAINSFORD
1920
The
Chateau Du Diable
THE CHATEAU DU
DIABLE
THE regiment arrived toward midnight at
Fere-en-Tardenois, groping its way on foot through the
block of traffic in the ruined town to the wooded hill
above, and sleeping broadcast through the bushes where
the German dead bad not yet all been gathered. At dawn of
the twelfth, the Third Battalion marched out to take
position on the as yet undefined Blue Line, or second
line of resistance, along the front of the Bois de
Voizelle. The great French and American counter attack,
launched on July eighteenth along the Marne, bad slowed
down to a check along the Vesle, and, though a bloody way
was yet to fight toward the Aisne, something approaching
definite and organized lines were being established.
"I" Company on the right took position along
the northeast and eastern edge of the woods, overlooking
Les Cruaux; "M" on the left stretched along the
northern edge and over the open through Dole to Les Batis
Ferme, beyond which was the 153rd Brigade. Battalion
Headquarters with "K" and "L" lay in
the Bois de la Pisotte.
"M" Company arrived first on its chosen ground
as tired and hungry as usual, and with an equally
customary lack of prospect of any cooked meal for the
remainder of the day. But there was found a battery of
artillery from another division with headquarters in
these woods, whose officer, with the utmost hospitality,
provided a hot meal for the entire company; and an
organization that could, without the slightest warning,
necessity, or apparent difficulty, off-handedly feed two
hundred extra and hungry men suggested a condition of
ration supply incredible to the minds of the 307th
Infantry.
Save for an unwelcome fieldful of noncombatant, but
increasingly unneutral, horses, and the fickle policy of
their adherent millions of flies, this situation was, for
the two forward companies, at least, very delightful. The
Bois de la Pisotte had been too extensively lived in and
died in by both Germans and horses, and was rather
completely spoiled; but the Bois de Voizelle confined its
relics for the most part to cooking utensils, feather
quilts, and steel helmets, with the latter of which it
was almost paved, that being apparently the article which
the German always first discards when hurried. The
organization of the ground for defense formed a most
interesting task, untrammeled by suggestions or
interference from above, and undertaken in the spirit of
creative art-some-what leisurely, first because it was
known that the ground would never have to be defended,
and second because, when the engineers found time to give
it their attention, they were certain to alter all
dispositions. This they eventually did, and, to the
staunch opinion of all company officers, greatly for the
worse; but, in the meantime, enfilading positions were
dug in echelon, covered approaches arranged, interlocking
belts of fire sighted, and interesting chauchat positions
constructed in the trees to cover bits of dead ground.
The company commander on the left, having convinced
himself that the post of danger lay in the deserted
hamlet of Dole, selected its prettiest and most
rose-covered cottage for his home, furnishing it from the
wide antiquity shop provided in the surrounding orchards.
The weather was immaculate, and had been so almost
continuously for three months past; and at evening one
would sit at the edge of the woods, looking out over the
broad valley, picking out with glasses the new artillery
positions established on the farther heights, and
watching the similar efforts of the German shells,
searching over the grassy slopes or bursting with clouds
of white smoke or pink tile-dust in the hillside village
of Chery Chartreuve or the farms. Occasionally a weird
form of projectile would burst with a mass of black smoke
high in the air, to be followed the next instant by a
leaping fountain of flames from the ground beneath, and
sometimes one that gave vent to two, three, or even four
separate explosions on the ground. Toward sundown the
hostile aeroplanes would come over, in twos or threes,
for an attack on the observation balloons, very often
successful, and would turn back from their flaming victim
scarcely bothering to rise out of range above the
drumming machine-guns; nor did they ever seem to pay the
penalty for their bravado. At night-fall dim columns of
artillery and transport would wind down the hill, with
the gleam of helmets moving ghostlike through a fog of
moonlit dust; the whirr of enemy motors would grow in the
darkness overhead, the swish and shock of falling bombs
with extravagant pineapple forms of fire springing from
the earth; or from the misty valley-bottom, where the
heavy artillery was thundering, would come the red flare
of explosions, hoarse shoutings and the blowing of
claxton gas-alarms. It was a wonderful pageant of war,
spread daily before one's eyes, to be watched with all
the apparent safety of the theater-goer.
Once, at noon, two American planes were seen circling
directly overhead, and, a thousand feet above them, three
Germans against the blue. A faint splutter of shots was
heard, but the distance was far too great for effective
fire, and the danger of the Americans did not seem
imminent when they were seen suddenly to crash together
and the wing of one to shear off at the shoulder. Down it
dropped, dropped, dropped, slowly, swiftly, and then with
appalling speed, gathering impetus with every fathom,
nose first, in one plummeting chute, the sunshine
gleaming on its painted sides and the whirr of its motor
growing to a deafening roar, sliding like a lost soul
through thousands of feet of air, a glistening, living
thing headed for utter destruction; and it struck, in a
pile of crumpled debris, at the edge of the wood. The
other, reeling from the blow, came down in a staggering
spiral, almost under control, fouled in the top of some
cottonwoods below the hill, and turned end-over on to the
ground. Each bad carried only a single man, and
Lieutenants Smythe and Wallace were buried side by side
in the Bois de Voizelle.
The pleasant time of sunshine and ease and almost
disinterested observation was soon over, the pleasanter
in retrospect for it never occurred again. The Division
had relieved both the 4th American and the 62nd French
Divisions on the line, the 305th Infantry taking over at
first the entire divisional front. Four days later the
308th had taken over from it the right half, as forming
the sector of the 154th Brigade; the 28th Division lay on
the right in Fismes. The Red Line, or Line of Resistance,
in this brigade sector followed approximately the crest
of a high ridge along the southern edge of the Bois de
Cochelet-a dense wood of small birch-trees springing from
a subsoil of chalk. Beyond the northern foot of the
ridge, where the woods again ceased, the land stretched
in an open grassy plateau, dotted here and there with
small orchards, to then steep and wooded declevities of
the valley proper. This was perhaps half-a-mile's width
of swampy bottom-land-meadow, marsh, and
willow-scrub-across which the Vesle, a river some thirty
feet broad and six or eight feet deep, looped back and
forth. Beyond the valley to the north the open bills rose
higher toward the Aisne, and beyond it again culminated
in the great commanding ridge of the Chemin des Dames,
for which the French and Germans had wrestled for years.
Everything forward, and a good deal that was back of the
Red Line lay completely open to enemy observation and
fire; the position for the supporting troops formed a
practically insoluble problem; there could be no
reenforcement nor supply of the front except at night,
nor was there any natural cover from the very searching
artillery fire. This, several times a day, would comb out
the length of the valley's rim, where was the only
woodland; and any movement in daylight of even one or two
men across the open table-land would draw a sniping fire
of 77's.
On the night of August eighteenth, the Third Battalion
moved forward, relieving the Third Battalion of the 308th
on the Red Line in the Bois de Cochelet, and itself
relieved by the Second Battalion from Dravegny. The First
Battalion, which had remained in the Boise de Saponay,
above Fere-en-Tardenois, till the fourteenth, was already
in the Bois de la Pisotte. Save once, and then seemingly
by chance, in the woods beside Baccarat, no part of the
Third Battalion had as yet been under shell-fire; and
"K" and "L" Companies, along the
eastern edge of the Bois de Coebelet, were still
comparatively immune; but "M" and
"I", bordering its south on the high ground,
soon came in for their share. Batteries of six-inch
howitzers were in position beneath the fringe of pine
trees under the crest of the bill; and huddled under
their very muzzles the companies dug into the hard chalk.
One platoon of "M" was at first placed in the
little wood between Les Pres and Resson Farms, to
maintain liaison with the 28th Division on the right -a
liaison that was never maintained for more than
twenty-four consecutive hours before it was found that
the latter had disappeared, and scouting parties would be
sent to search for them. The front edge of the wood being
lined with 75's, it was constantly searched by enemy
fire, and the platoon was moved to Resson Farm, whose
medieval vaults, when not filled with water, offered the
only effective shelter of the Red Line.
The woods along the hill crest were indescribably filthy
with the refuse of former occupation, and haunted by
incalculable flies. The narrow rifle-pits and
half-finished trenches of the men, covered with branches
and shelter-halves loaded with chalk, as protection
against shell fragments, being comparatively clean and
cool, did not seem an especially attractive resort for
the fair-minded fly, particularly in view of the lavish
banquet spread broadcast through the woods; but the flies
felt differently about it and were very determined. A man
would crawl into his shelter, with a leafy branch in
either hand, and, lying on his back, would begin
threshing above his face, gradually working down the
length of his body. As the aperture was approached the
flies would become desperate, charging back at the waving
branches, and facing death by scores rather than suffer
ejection. When this process had been two or three times
repeated a sufficient clearance would be effected to
enable the man perhaps to get to sleep before the place
again filled up. At night they hung in black masses over
the walls and roof, noisily propagating their species
through the hours of darkness, and every crashing
discharge of the 155's overhead would bring down an
avalanche of chalk and flies. The yellow wasps were only
really bothersome when an issue of jam arrived, at which
times it was practically impossible to separate the two
long enough to eat one without the other.
Just why the infantry were held, inactive but permanent,
directly under the muzzles of the guns, drawing
observation upon the artillery while the latter drew fire
upon the infantry, was never made evident to either party
of the unwilling combination. The shelling of this area
was systematic but far from severe, and seemed intended
mostly for the batteries. Had it been otherwise,
congested as the men were in their improvised shelters,
the losses might have been appalling. It consisted for
the greater part of three-inch H. E. (high, explosive),
much of it with overhead bursts, and of sneezing gas.
Every precaution was taken to keep the men under cover
during daylight, but the ration details, carrying the two
meals a day from the company kitchens at
Chery-Chartreuve, were a constant source of danger. The
platoon at Resson Farm, alone, however, was under
observation by balloons. A line of trenches had been laid
out on the lower ground of the Bois de Mont St. Martin,
where the thick trees seemed to offer adequate protection
from observation, and work upon them was begun by details
from the four companies. Three German planes were seen
through the leaves hovering high overhead and soon the
shells began ranging in. So accurate was the fire and
efficient the observation that, among the first
half-dozen shells, one broke on the lip of the trench,
wounding four men, who lay prone along its bottom.
Chery-Chartreuve, a mile to the southwest, where the
company kitchens were located, concealing their smoke in
empty barns, came in for its daily bombardment. A fair
description of the place may be quoted from a letter
written at the time:
"There had been shelling as usual in Chery that
morning, and the outhouse next to our company kitchen,
where some of the ration -detail were sleeping, had been
blown to pieces. A runner came up to get replacements for
the detail, and reported that two of the men had been
hurt and a third bad disappeared; the roof had fallen in,
and, though he seemed to feel sure that the missing man
was not under it, he did not speak very convincingly
about it, so I went down to see what I could find. It was
a day of breathless heat, and the white road was padded
with dust. I passed a steep hillslope of empty funk-holes, looking like
a great rabbit-warren, or a village of cliff-dwellers, and in spite of
the two robust-looking horses at its bottom, each with two legs pointing straight to the sky, it struck me as a very
preferable location for our men. The road-side was
littered with chauchat-magazines, carriers, and
cartridge-belts, half hidden in the dust. The village lay
lifeless beneath the sun, a thin white fog of dust from
some recent shelling hanging above it, and the taint of
gas in the air. In the ruined outhouse was a sidecar,
rather badly damaged, beneath which the missing man, an
Italian, was supposed to have been sleeping-though I
couldn't see why he had selected it. It was a relief that
the debris of the tile roof did not look enough to
conceal a man. To make sure, however, we lifted off such
beams as there were, but without raising anything beyond
a cloud of tile-dust mixed with mustard gas.
"There didn't seem to be anywhere else to look for
him, since the surgeon who had dressed the other two knew
nothing of him, and I concluded that eventually be would
be, as eventually be was, reported from hospital through
some unexpected channel; but now as I stood looking up
the blistering way to our hilltop that I had to travel,
my eye was caught at the turn of the road by a long,
roofed, stone-flagged washing-place, such as the French
blanchisseuses use all over the land. In a moment I was
beside it, and in another moment I was in it. It was full
to the brim with clear cold water, four feet deep in the
middle and twenty feet long, and the sheer joy of that
swim I shall never forget. I hadn't seen so much water
together in one place since I left the ocean. After that
the mess-sergeant cooked me a meal with a lot of
delicious fresh vegetables he had gotten from somewhere,
and I went back up what we called Shrapnel Hill with the
feeling of having spent a week-end at the seashore."
Les Pre's Farm, where the first-aid station was
established close under the bill, was subjected to a
constant and accurate fire, so that it became
increasingly a matter of wonder that the place held
together. Almost every day a few were wounded, the sight
of the stretcher-bearers carrying their burdens down the
slope becoming too familiar to cause any comment beyond a
question as to the man's company. Dysentery too became
everywhere prevalent. Water was scarce, and the days were
long and irksome with the glare of heat from the
sun-scorched chalk. But at night a glamor spread over the
mist-filled valley, with its stabbing white flashes of
artillery and red flare of explosions. Once an ammunition
dump of 75's was fired in the open, and continued all
through the night, sending its empty shell-cases wailing
about like banshees through the darkness. Once, on a
still night of midsummer moonshine there passed a strange
flight of projectiles, like a flock of migrating birds,
high, high up in the moonlit silence, coming from one
knew not where, and traveling with a drowsy note and on
even keel to some remote target far in the inaudible
distance.
On the night of August twenty-fifth, the Second
Battalion, leap-frogging the Third, took over the front
line from the 308th. The next day a battalion attack was
ordered for dawn of the twenty-seventh. The front of the
regimental sector at this time ran along the south bank
of the Vesle through the woods due north of Villesavoye,
crossed the river on a footbridge and followed north
along the west edge of the woods to the railroad, passed
under the tracks through an open culvert, the track
itself being swept by enemy enfilade fire of
machine-guns, and occupied the southwest corner of the
woods beyond. A switch line ran east along the track,
and, though not continuously, south along the eastern
edge of the wood to the Vesle once more. Another and
isolated position was held a kilometer to the east at the
Tannerie. Battalion Headquarters as originally taken over
from the 308th was in a dug-out on the steep wooded slope
southwest of Villesavoye, but, on account of the
continuous shelling of this area, was changed to a large
cave on the high ground south of the Tannerie. The
dressing station was in another cave on a bluff south of
Villesavoye, readily distinguished in the distance by the
continuous bursting of shells at its mouth. Very little
inter- communication was possible between the various
portions of the line, and this only by devious routes.
Both flanks were very open and ill-defined, and much of
the ground was debatable. Maps of the region were scarce,
were all of very small scale, and of a particularly
perishable quality of paper. There were some, but not
all, made with two systems of superimposed non-parallel
coordinate lines- all leading to very possible errors in
the locating of positions. An incident in this connection
is worth mentioning when an officer of the Third
Battalion, on August twenty-fourth, previous to the
receipt of the order for the leap-frogging of that battalion by the
Second, going forward to reconnoiter the position of the right forward
company, was provided with a guide supposed, more than any other, to be
familiar with that ground. The guide conducted the officer in broad
daylight into No Man's Land and onto the muzzles of a German machine-gun
nest beneath the concrete signal-house, having previously been
restrained, only by the growing pessimism of the officer, from scaling
the railroad embankment at a point where its opposite side was
afterwards found to be lined with enemy rifle-pits. In justice be it
said, however-for the man was as brave a soldier as he was inefficient a
guide that when lying behind a single bush across only eighty yards of
open meadow from the machine-gun position, with a bullet through the
stock of his rifle, two through the empty ammunition box on which it rested, and another through
his shoulder, his only thought was for redeeming the
trust which be felt he had betrayed; and be continually
urged that he crawl out to the north to draw the enemy
fire while the officer make his escape to the south.
Fortunately a more cheerful solution was eventually
reached.
The order for this attack of the Second Battalion gave
as its purpose the "retaking of all positions lost
by the 308th Infantry," and defined as its objective
the crossing of the railroad with the Rouen-Reims
national highway and the chateau du Diable-ground which,
while in enemy hands menacing the river valley, was
itself dominated by the bills to the north, and was
well-nigh as difficult to hold as it, was to take while
the bills were held in force by the enemy. The two
platoons at the Tannerie, in the few yards of ground
between the road and the river, bad a lookout stationed
immediately north of the national highway, but the latter
itself was swept and commanded by enemy fire from either
flank. The Chateau du Diable rose on a precipitous slope
of woods filled with accordion-wire, dominating the
low--lying swamps and willow-thickets to the south. For
the rest, the whole region had been fought and fought
over by the 4th, the 32nd, and the 28th Divisions. Every
wood and march was filled with cast-off equipment and the
broken wreckage of war; St. Thibault, Villesavoye,
Bazoches, and Fismes, all were unspeakable with the human
debris of unsuccessful or inconclusive attacks-flotsam
and jetsam cast upon the dreary shores where the tides of
victory had ebbed and flowed.
The absence of any clear knowledge as to the enemy's
strength or dispositions-for little of this could here be
gathered from the troops relieved-the very vague and
non-continuous character of the line, and the lack of any
natural position of strength or shelter, from which
assault might be launched, or to which, in case of
unsuccess, withdrawal might be made, rendered the coming
attack, delivered as it was to be within the first
twenty-four hours of occupation of the line, undoubtedly
hazardous. Major Jay, it should be said, threw the whole
weight of his influence toward obtaining at least a
postponement-but other counsels prevailed.
A paragraph of the official report made after the attack
may be quoted at length:
"At a conference held at the forward battalion P.
C. (Poste de Commande) during the afternoon, Major Jay,
commanding the Second Battalion, stated that he did not
feel it was possible for him to reconnoitre and prepare
properly to make the attack on the morning of the
twenty-seventh, as had been suggested, and requested that the hour be
delayed until the morning of the twenty-eighth. An additional reason for
this request was the fact that the supporting artillery of this Regiment
was assisting an operation of the 153rd Brigade on the night of
26th-27th August and would not be available to support an operation in
our sector. It was determined, however, that the attack would be made on
the morning of the twenty-seventh, and Lieutenant- Colonel Benjamin,
commanding the Regiment, received instructions, copies
of which are attached hereto, to that effect. He
immediately notified Major Jay."
A prisoner captured that day by the 112th Infantry at
Fismes brought word that a German general attack along
the sector was preparing for the morning of the
twenty-seventh -which promised ill for the reception of
the Second Battalion. An officer of "Y' Company went
out to reconnoiter the ground for a possible attack upon
the chateau from the Tannerie on the east. He was injured
by a shell, and a second officer volunteered for the
task. But from the east the only way lay over the open
marsh where "C" Company of the 308th had been
cut to pieces in a similar and fruitless attempt, and it
was determined to at-tack from the west.
At about 2 A. M. of the twenty-seventh the Major held a
conference in a little dugout by the railroad culvert,
where their duties were assigned to the four company
commanders. "H," lying north of the tracks, was
to attack the Chateau, "E" to attack along the
tracks to the railroad crossing, "F" to move in
support, and "G" to guard the left from
counter-attack. Zero hour was set for 4:15 A. M.
It was still dark when they started, and low over
Bazoches to westward hung the thread of a dying moon,
while beneath it grew the dull roar of the attack of the
153rd Brigade. Shells were passing overhead, but all
toward Bazoches. Through dense swamp the leading platoons
moved forward in column, and at the edge of the open
meadow deployed in line. Less than a hundred yards of wet
grass in the gray of morning, and beyond it the thicker
darkness of unknown woods. A Very light shot up on the
left, calling for such artillery as was to aid. An enemy
smoke bomb exploded on the tracks in front, blotting out
whatever movement of troops occurred behind, and then the
machine guns opened. From the Chateau to the river the
woods seemed alive with them, for it was not for nothing
that the enemy had prepared their attack upon that very
ground at the same hour, and upon a scale intended to
insure success. A regiment was massed upon that slope of
woods, and with it two extra machine gun
companies-perhaps fifty guns in all and against them
"H" and "E" Companies advanced to the
attack. They did not know the odds against them-it was
not known until after the war-they only knew that they
were struck by such a blast of fire as made life
impossible. That part of "11" which attempted
the open meadow was swept away, while the rest, gaining
only a few rods through the neck of woods, there clung
under a steady bail of bullets.
"E" Company, on the right, not facing the main
position, at first did better. They crossed the first
stretch of meadow to the line of trees and flung one
platoon across the tracks, then, astride the tracks, they
crossed the second meadow. Their leading platoons
disappeared in the woods beyond, and for a while the rest
waited. The fire was appalling, crossing from the hill to
the river and sweeping down the tracks. After a little
the platoon to the south, losing direction in the thick
swamp, reappeared, and, to give it time to reform, its
support platoon attacked through it. Nothing was heard of
that to the north under Lieutenant O'Brien, and of
runners sent to that corner of woods those who returned
reported that there was nothing there but German machine
guns. It was gone, and not a man of it came back. Captain
Adams of "E" and Lieutenant Scudder, starting
in search of it, fell side by side, each shot through the
neck as they lifted their heads above the railroad
embankment. Major Jay, a hundred yards down the track,
dropped with a broken arm, and, after a brave effort to
retain his command, was carried back. Captain Davis of
"Y' then took command, but no one could judge what
was taking place in that inferno of noise in front.
Corporal Halberstadt undertook to find Captain Adams, and
did so, reporting to him when both were prisoners in the
German lines. There was fire from the right and the word
spread that it was chauchat fire-that part of
"E's" right platoon which had lost direction
was shooting on them, and, calling that be was going to
find out, Lieutenant Reed, the Battalion Adjutant,
plunged into the woods there. He was not seen again
except by one man, who reported that he had found him
shot through both legs, and that when be bad tried to
help him back the lieutenant had told him to bring back
the message instead-that it was enemy fire. Then
"H" sent word that they could not hold their
slender gains without reinforcement, and, almost as the
reinforcements from "Y' started out, came a second
message that "H" had withdrawn.
That finished it, for no further effort was possible for
the troops at hand. Another part of "Y' had already
been sent to clear the woods east along the river, and
the danger of a counter-stroke from the west was too
great to allow the withdrawal of "G" from their
position. South of the tracks the line had been advanced
to the strip of trees across the first meadow, but on the
north the former positions were resumed. Long afterward a
few of the dead were found among the fallen poplars at
the base of the Chateau hill, and some even near the far
eastern edge of the woods, but for the most part the
battleground was left in the hands of an enemy who glean
it well.
The price was heavy--of officers, 'three wounded and four missing, of
whom only one, Captain Adams, returned alive after the armistice, and of men, sixteen killed,
eighty-four wounded and forty missing-one hundred and
forty enlisted men, ten from Battalion headquarters,
eleven from "F," twenty-one from "G,"
thirty-five from "E," and sixty-three from
"H." Throughout the action, lasting some two
hours, the heavy artillery had played upon the support
positions south of the river -causing "G" its
losses, but overshooting the rest of the Battalion.
It seems probable that the enemy, taking the attack in
conjunction with that, more costly and scarcely more
successful, of the 153rd Brigade upon Bazoches, had
believed it to be much stronger than in fact it was, and
their artillery sought only to break up the reserves, of
which, fortunately or unfortunately, there were none
present. Perhaps for the same reason no counter-attack
was launched.
The attack of the Second Battalion had failed, in that
neither of its two objectives were for a moment seriously
threatened; and yet, with the clearer knowledge we now
have of that against which the attack was launched, it
may be that its bloody failure should be reckoned
success-a distant and unconscious parallel to the
"Revenge." For the devotion of two companies to
their appointed task held immobile before them a force
perhaps six or eight times their number that was intended
to attack; and the blow they struck against it, however
impotent to achieve their purpose, served at least to
prevent what might have been a disaster to the battalion
and to the line. There can be no estimate of the enemy
loss, though to have so completely paralyzed their
initiative, it must have been heavy.
A feature of the enemy organization, learned through
prisoners of either side, may here be mentioned as of
interest; namely, that each German infantry company
carried with it normally a section of heavy machine guns,
composed originally of eight guns, but at this time
reduced to four-whereas the American infantry company,
unless by special detail, had none; and that the German
company carried also a section, or even platoon, solely
for the evacuation of the dead and wounded of both sides
during an action. These men were seen going about unarmed
upon their task while the attack was at its height, and
their activity will largely account for the constant
feeling in the American lines that little or no losses
were being inflicted upon the enemy. Night of August
twenty-seventh saw the regimental sector practically
unchanged, while on their left the 153rd Brigade had
taken and at terrific cost relost Bazoches, and on their
right the 28th Division had been driven from their scanty
footing in Fismette.