To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [342]
He focused on the beds around him, the unending turmoil of movement and screams, stretcher bearers and nurses. It was the nurses who surprised him the most, women, mostly young, white uniforms stained with the blood of so many men. His brain could not hold on to the chaos, the faces a blur, the talk all of medicine and drugs. But through it all, he could see the nurses, constant motion, swarming like white birds around the beds and the men who filled them.
By the second day, they began to talk to him of moving, of evacuation to the base hospital at Allerey. The couriers came now, messages from Brett and Compton, from Knowles, many of his commanders. He sent messages of his own, replies to the kindness of his officers, mostly inquiring what was happening in the field, what kind of progress was being made in the ongoing fight. The news drifted through the hospital in waves of relief, the reports exactly what Patton hoped to hear. The tanks had led the way, and despite the loss of most of their number, mostly from mechanical exhaustion, the Americans had pressed the enemy hard, and for several days had driven him deeply into his own defenses.
The note came from Rockenbach as well, and there was no scolding, no disputing Patton’s methods, no angry recitation of the rule book. Instead, Rockenbach had recommended that Lieutenant Colonel George Patton be promoted to full colonel, and as well that he be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Despite Patton’s pride in the recognition, and the grateful thanks that he offered Rockenbach, as they moved him to the distant hospital, Patton began to focus on one goal. Heal the wound, and return to his tanks.
OCTOBER 1918
THE GREAT ASSAULT THAT BEGAN ON SEPTEMBER 26 HAD PUSHED the Germans back nearly ten miles. But the German defense stiffened. After four days of relentless assaults, the Americans began to suffer the same fate as so many of the troops who had pushed so hard across no-man’s-land. Pershing’s troops had driven themselves into complete exhaustion. Rather than watch his army destroy itself, Pershing ordered a halt to the attack, to allow time for his troops to consolidate their scattered positions, and prepare for a possible German counterattack. But the Germans were exhausted as well, and for a full day, both sides seemed willing to keep their guns silent.
As Foch’s plan for the great battle unfolded all along the Western Front, the French position west of the American sector had begun to show weakness, many of the French divisions absorbing astonishing casualties as they pushed through the Argonne Forest. Foch had gone to Pershing yet again, a desperate plea for assistance for the French Fourth Army, whose divisions were grinding themselves to pulp against the German defenses. No matter how urgent Foch’s needs, Pershing could not spare any American divisions from the fight that could erupt again at any time along his front. The only available force who could be sent westward quickly, to join the French Fourth Army in their struggles, was the one division resting at Tours. By September 28, the Second Division was again on the move.
Their objective was a ridge nearly two miles wide, the most prominent geographical feature for miles in all directions. It was called Blanc Mont Ridge and, at its highest point, was six hundred feet higher than the ground it dominated, the ground where the Second Division would have to begin its attack. For four years, the Germans had fortified the ridge with a network of trenches and concrete bunkers, a thick web of machine-gun nests and rifle pits. More important to the Germans, the ridge offered a perfect panoramic view of the entire Allied position, a place that served both as a magnificent reconnaissance platform, as well as the perfect location for the observers to direct the fire of their artillery. Behind Blanc Mont, the Germans had deployed some of the