John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

“Now and then a man was killed and a wounded man called ‘First Aid’ … but this isn’t bad yet … We are strung out in a trench with the Germans in the woods ahead of us. Every now and then machine gun fire comes our way. A heavy barrage began which plastered around us … On our way up the trench it was evident that other points in the woods had caught it also. Here and there were dead men lying in the trench. Soon we reached the top of Blanc Mont Ridge where the 6th Marines and 9th Infantry had been since yesterday noon. They were dug in in a shallow trench, right on top of the hill but with trees to screen them from the air.”

Out of the welter of sudden death and hairbreadth escape, of men advancing in skirmish lines, pinned down in the muck of old trenches, scuttling out of harm’s way among broken treetrunks, some deeds became legendary.

There was a solemn young man from the Tennessee mountains who, being an elder in his church, and pledged to the Ten Commandments, entered the army as a conscientious objector. An officer at the training camp, noticing that he was a remarkably good shot with a rifle, read the Bible with him and proved to him by chapter and verse that “Thou shalt not kill” did not apply to a just cause and that Jehovah was also the God of battles.

Corporal York was not only a crack shot but an accomplished woodsman. The Argonne was not too different from the Appalachian hills he’d been raised among.

Advancing through the woods with his squad he managed to get around behind a battalion field headquarters of the enemy.

The Germans were startled by the first American volley and threw up their hands and surrendered, but a German machinegunner in front of them slewed his gun around and shouting to the Germans to lie flat killed six doughboys and wounded the sergeant in command.

Taking charge, protected by a tree and a dead buddy on either side of him, Corporal York knocked off every man of the machinegun squad. When he ran out of ammunition for his rifle, he pulled out his automatic pistol and dropped a lieutenant and seven men who tried to rush him.

Then sticking his pistol in the German major’s back he coolly started him towards the American lines. Flushing German machinegun nests from behind as they went the party trooped back to headquarters.

“Corporal York,” he announced, with a precise salute to the startled battalion adjutant who thought it was a German raid when he saw them coming through the trees, “reports with prisoners, sir.”

Asked how many prisoners he had he answered, “Honest, Lieutenant, I don’t know.”

The adjutant counted them as they filed by, headed for the rear. One hundred and two, including a major, two lieutenants, and twentyeight machineguns.

By the end of October the news that filtered through from the rear has begun to tell on even the most disciplined of the German troops.

On October 28 mutiny breaks out in the Kaiser’s battle fleet. When orders come to put to sea the stokers on the battleship Markgraf drop their shovels and go trooping off the ship. When they are arrested by a squad of marines, the whole crew leaves the ship in protest. Other ships strike in sympathy. The sailors parade through the city and are met by red flags and orators telling them of the great part the sailors of the Baltic fleet played in the Russian Revolution. In a short time the whole naval base, almost without resistance from the officers, is in the mutineers’ hands and the revolt is spreading to other ports, to war factories, to Berlin.

At Imperial Headquarters at Spa the Kaiser and von Hindenburg dismiss Ludendorff as Chief of Staff. Almost immediately word comes that as a result of the Italian victory at Vittorio Veneto the Austrian armies have disintegrated; that the Hapsburg government is begging President Wilson for an armistice; that mobs with red flags fill the streets of Vienna; that the Emperor Charles has abdicated and fled.

Meanwhile the Belgians have taken Ghent and its U-boat pens. The British are past St. Quentin and Cambrai. The French have swept through the Chemin des Dames and taken Laon.

Along the Meuse the American First Army, having at last attained a smoothrunning organization under the direct command of a levelheaded oldtimer named Hunter Liggett, stands poised on the heights of the last ridge. Buzancy is behind them. There are American bridgeheads on the Meuse.

On to Sedan has been the watchword. At last the doughboys are ready to bear down on Sedan, but orders keep coming from Foch that send the American divisions slewing off to the east. Word goes around that they never will see the city they have shed so much blood to reach. The honor of taking Sedan will be reserved for the French 40th Division of Gouraud’s army.

Late on November 7 a message is delivered to the commanding generals of the I and V Corps who are nearest to Sedan, at the far left of the American front. The reason they are nearest to Sedan is that Gouraud’s army can’t keep up with the mad pace of their advance. The doughboys are still full of ginger.

The message reads: “General Pershing desires that the honor of entering Sedan should fall to the First American Army … Your attention is invited to the favorable opportunity now existing for pressing our advance throughout the night. Boundaries will not be considered binding.”

Immediately the advance becomes a race. The officers of the Rainbow Division of the I Corps lash up their tired men, their dying horses, their wornout transport and drive due north for Sedan. By morning they are on the heights overlooking the railroad yards and the historic plain, but in territory which Foch has assigned to Gouraud’s army. Having run out of ammunition the 165th Infantry storms the last hill with cold bayonets.

General Summerall, in command of the V Corps, orders his 1st Division also to be in Sedan by morning. The men of the 1st, worn out by long fighting along the difficult fringes of the forest, footsore and short of food and ammunition, take him at his word and march all night at a desperate pace. So doing they tangle with advancing supply columns of the I Corps. With the dawn, more dead than alive, the men pour out on the heights above the city. In the confusion they have marched clean through the Rainbow Division’s rear and come out even further to the left in territory reserved for the French. Everybody is lightheaded with fatigue.

In the course of their rush a 1st Division patrol has captured the dazzling young general just placed in command of the Rainbow, whose name is Douglas MacArthur. On account of his habit of taking the wire out of his cap they took him for a boche when they blundered into his small reconnaissance group studying out the road into Sedan.

At the same time Pétain is raising a storm at the headquarters of the French Fourth Army. The Americans are notified that the French 40th Division may find it necessary to open up with their artillery to clear the sector assigned to them for an advance.

For a few hours the situation is tense indeed.

MacArthur laughs off his capture. The Rainbow Division brings up its field kitchens to feed the men of the 1st who, although orders have come for them to retire, are pronounced too tired to move. Stiffly worded apologies go back and forth between the various staffs.

A French unit breaks the ice by asking an American unit to dinner and invites them to come along with the French into the city. The Americans are constrained to refuse.

Reluctantly Pershing has issued orders that no Americans shall enter Sedan. “Under normal conditions,” he wrote later in his memoirs, “the action of the officer or officers responsible for this movement of the First Division directly across the zones of action of two other divisions could not have been overlooked, but the splendid record of that unit and the approach of the end of hostilities suggested leniency.”