To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [329]
Across the barbed wire from the engineers, enemy gunners brought their Maxims to life, but the American and French artillery was not yet through. The big guns began a rolling barrage, the carefully aimed shelling that provided a curtain of destructive fire, allowing the infantry to move forward, while the ground two hundred yards in front of them was blasted to oblivion. The infantry knew to press forward at a steady rate, to keep as close to the rolling barrage as possible, advancing as the artillery fire advanced. When the infantrymen reached the barbed wire, the barrage had already begun to silence the Maxims, and now, they understood what the engineers had accomplished. To the stunned amazement of the men, the chicken wire had been unrolled into a thick carpet, laid out in wide pathways, extending up and over the rolls of barbed wire. There would be no need for cutting, no concerns over the artillery’s inability to blast a clear pathway through the tangle. Instead, the infantrymen followed their sergeants up onto the chicken wire, and walked over the great fat coils of rusted barbed wire.
BY THE END OF THE DAY, NEARLY EVERY OBJECTIVE HAD BEEN reached. Though the Germans had offered pockets of sharp resistance, the German High Command had known for some time that the St. Mihiel salient was not a position they could expect to hold in the face of a dedicated assault, especially against the combined force of nearly three-quarters of a million French and American troops. Even as Pershing was finalizing his own plans, and Foch was approving them, the German divisions occupying the salient had been ordered to begin a strategic withdrawal to form a stronger, less vulnerable and straighter defensive line. Though the Germans had not yet fully withdrawn, the speed with which Pershing’s operation was begun caught the Germans by surprise, and many units had received the American attack unprepared for anything but retreat. Throughout the days that followed, Pershing’s goal to reduce the St. Mihiel salient was fully accomplished, though the American troops had been helped by the weakened German defense. French farms and villages that had been firmly in German hands since the first great battles of the war were now back under Allied control. With their objectives realized, the Marines and the infantrymen of the Second Division were ordered away from the front, back to the rest area around Toul, a few miles south of St. Mihiel. All Temple knew was what the rumors said, rumors the lieutenants didn’t dispute. Their rest period would be brief.
The essence of Colonel George Marshall’s concise plan now came fully into play. Armed with Marshall’s detailed instructions for shifting the American forces nearly sixty miles, Pershing communicated to Foch that the Americans were indeed prepared to satisfy Foch’s insistence on a full-scale attack around the Argonne Forest, the grand assault that Foch still insisted would end the war.
SAMPIGNY, FRANCE—SEPTEMBER 15, 1918
HE WATCHED AS POINCARé AND HIS WIFE STEPPED DOWN FROM the road. The couple moved slowly through what had once been a garden, the French president wrapping one arm around his wife’s slender shoulders. The house lay shattered, the roof collapsing onto walls that were reduced to heaps of rubble. Pershing watched as the couple reached the ruins of their home, heard soft sounds, Poincaré cradling her head against his shoulder. Pershing motioned to his aides to stay behind, moved down off the road, picked his way slowly through the shell holes and debris. He stopped a few feet behind them, and Poincaré turned, a slight smile through the man’s tears.
“C’est la guerre, General.”
“I wish I could have done something to prevent this. There was no