HISTORY
OF THE 304th FIELD ARTILLERY
by
James M. Howard
1920
CHAPTER
X
THE ARGONNE DRIVE: "D DAY"
AND "H HOUR"
Great operations like the one in which we were about to
engage were planned, of course, by the supreme command of
the Allied Armies. Each separate army was given its
definite task in the general scheme, and each commander
was responsible for working out the plan of attack for
the various corps under him. The corps commanders in turn
laid out the work for the divisions, and the division
commanders planned in the minutest details just what each
brigade had to accomplish. From the brigade headquarters
the regiments received their orders, which stated the
precise method and schedule of every move that was to be
made for days in advance. Thus the whole battle was
conducted in accordance with a vast and intricate scheme
in which every officer in command of a unit knew exactly
what was expected of him. The infantry had certain
definite objectives which must be reached within the time
prescribed, and beyond them second and third objectives,
all of which must be taken according to schedule. The
artillery's work, some of which was controlled by the
corps commanders, and some, like our own, by the division
of which the regiments were a part, was all related to
what the infantry was to do
In this particular operation, the artillery was to
prepare the way for the infantry, first by pouring a fire
of preparation for several hours on specified targets, so
as to harass and demoralize the enemy as much as
possible, and then when the hour for attack arrived, by
laying down a barrage in front of the infantry as they
advanced and thus clearing the ground before them. Every
conceivable detail, including the length, of time for
each phase of the work, the kind of ammunition to be used
and the number of rounds per minute for each gun, was all
carefully worked out and given to the battery commanders
a day or two beforehand. The only information lacking was
the day on which the attack was to be launched, known as
"D Day," and the hour at which it was to begin,
called "H Hour." Shortly before the offensive
was to be set: in motion, a message would be delivered to
the regimental commanders giving them these two all
important facts, which would be transmitted to the
battalion and battery commanders in time for them to
comply with the orders.
The 77th Division, for the Argonne drive, was assigned to
the 1st Corps, under the command of Major-General
(afterward Lieutenant- General) Hunter Liggett. There was
at that time but one American army-the First-of which
General Pershing himself took command. Our division
occupied the extreme left of the American sector, and its
lines extended from the western edge of the forest about
two-thirds of the way across the Argonne. The eastern
part was held by the 28th Division (Pennsylvania National
Guard), who had already been our neighbors on the Aisne.
Our task was to advance through the heart of the forest,
clear the enemy out of his strong concrete defenses, and
shove him out into the open ground at the north where the
Aire River flowed through St. Juvin and Grand Pre. His
troops were not very numerous, but, in addition to his
heavy fortifications, he had the advantage of a series of
thickly wooded ravines which offered admirable cover for
machine guns, and he had interlaced the underbrush with a
vast network of barbed wire. The initial attack was to be
made across a veritable wilderness of shell holes, mine
craters, abandoned trenches, wire entanglements and
blasted trees -the No-Man's-Land of four years' position
warfare-and against a series of trench fortifications
which had been constantly improved year by year.
September 24th and 25th were busy days f or our regiment.
The gun positions were prepared, arrangements
for ammunition supply were perfected, a liaison system
was installed with runners and telephones for quick
communication, and the firing data were' calculated and
checked. Reconnaissance officers and non commissioned
officers went forward, in French uniforms, to the front
lines to locate observation posts. The most novel feature
of the work was the preparation of the trees for felling
in order to clear a field of fire for the guns. For two
days the sound of saws and axes rang through the woods.
Every tree which in any way obstructed the passage of
shells was cut through so far that a few more strokes
would bring it down. All along the ridge where the
artillery was massed the splendid beeches which furnished
such perfect concealment before the battle were to be
demolished. They were like a drop curtain on a stage: the
audience looks at the forest scene; then the stage is
darkened for a moment, and when the lights are turned on
the forest had disappeared, and the guns that have been
hidden are revealed.
There was with the regiment a man who had never yet been
in ac-tion at the front, Mr. Newberry, the regimental Y.
M. C. A. secretary. He had joined us the day after we
left the Vesle sector. An account he has written of his
experiences at the beginning of this drive will help here
to give a fresh and vivid picture of the events which
took place. "It was my first battle," he
writes. "For three nights my sleep had been broken
by the creaking and grumbling of guns and caissons hauled
up the long hill past the echelon had heard that there
were hundreds-some said thousands-of cannon being placed
in positions beyond us.
"On the afternoon of the 25th Chaplain Howard asked
me if I wanted to go with him to the front. 'Bring along
your money order book,' he suggested. 'The men always
want to send their money home when they are going into
action.'
"We walked through an autumn wood, calm and peaceful
in the afternoon sun. Beside the road was a shrine and a
little chapel which had been used by French troops, and
we stepped inside for a few moments. Farther on was a
graveyard behind stone walls, its garlands of artificial
flowers old and broken. All was quiet. Even the road was
deserted save for an occasional truck or wagon or a
passing group of soldiers.
"It did not seem possible that battle was imminent
in this great grove of beech and pine. The nets of
camouflage that stretched across the road overhead (a
device for preventing accurate observation of the
highways by aviators) moved gently in the soft wind.
Birds flitted through the trees or sang from the bushes.
"As we turned into the road that led up from La
Chalade there was another and grimmer aspect before us.
Here were the guns in position, French and American
cannon of all sizes from 75's to siege guns. Almost hub
to hub they stood among the trees, above and below the
road. Their crews in khaki and horizon blue, an
occasional group of red tufted French sailors to add
variety, sat or lay about the guns or worked with ax and
saw in the woods. . . .
"Arrived at the batteries of our Second Battalion, I
exchanged receipts f or the money our men were anxious to
place in less hazardous situation, and dusk had fallen
before I realized it. The Chaplain, returning from a
visit to the P. C., suggested that we spend the night at
the guns and hear the battle's opening.
"The battle starts at dawn?' I asked. I had heard
the rumor.
" 'H Hour is 5:30,' the Chaplain confided. 'The
artillery begins at half-past two. We might be of use, he
continued. 'There may be wounded.'
"I was willing if I would not be in the way, so
together we walked on in the gathering darkness to the
First Battalion, where, after a hasty supper in Captain
Doyle's dugout, I was escorted to the first-aid station
of the battalion, which was installed in the same dugout
as Captain Lyman's P. C. The Chaplain, saying there was
no need for us both to be in the one place, made his way
back through the night to the Second Battalion.
"I felt woefully big, awkward and obstructionable in
that little square hole in the earth. It was too small to
cover its needs even without me. In one corner at a crude
table under a window doublecurtained by a blanket was
Captain Lyman with his executive, Lieutenant McVaugh.
They were figur-ing and checking the data for the firing
which was to be done in the morning. A telephone on the
desk buzzed frequent irritating interruptions, which
necessitated the intrusion of orderlies and runners
through the curtained doorway of the cave and the further
crowding of the room. I wondered how so tiny a place
could possibly house a hospital.
"But the surgeon, Lieutenant Sams, was establishing
one. In the farther corner, on a bunk, he had laid out
his instruments and rolls of gauze and bandages, and the
stretchers were leaned against the wall. Then he sat down
on a blanket in his corner and began conversation.
Lieutenant Sams was from Georgia and was a hunter, and we
compared experiences in low voices that might not
interfere with the Captain's calcula-tions or his
executive's check.
Lieutenant Sams was young; so was Lieutenant McVaugh; but
Captain Lyman seemed nothing but a boy. He called in his
four section leaders to hand them the written orders for
fire, One of these non-coms on whose shoulders so much
responsibility was placed was apparently still in his
teens, so I asked his age. 'Twenty-one' was the answer,
'older than any of these others.' It was not a
reassurance as to wisdom or profound judgment, as I
remarked to the Captain. The latter added his own age to
my indictment-twenty-three! 'A young man's war.' So it
has been called, and so I admitted it that night. We men
of mature age and experience were too slow of decision
and action-we must sit in the corner of the du-out and
try to keep out of the way.
"The sound of shell fire, always in evidence at the
front, became brisker and nearer. 'Incoming,' remarked
McVaugh, reentering from above after a look outside.
"A moment later they were bursting over us. A
peculiar odor began to creep in, and instinctively, even
before the warning word Gas!' I was fumbling into my
mask. It was adjusted and I had begun smothered breathing
before the Klaxon outside confirmed the alarm. When I had
cleared my eye holes and looked around every man was a
glaring gargoyle. I would have smiled at the grotesque
faces if I had not been afraid of losing my mouthpiece.
Captain Lyman was leaning over his desk, his mask almost
touching it, still calculating deflections and ranges.
Lieutenant Sams, his helmet perched over his mask, was
burning bits of paper close to the floor. McVaugh had
gone out again, pulling the curtain carefully shut behind
him. The runners stood against the wall and breathed
slowly through the respirators.
"Captain Lyman lifted his mask and sniffed. Then he
re-moved it. 'Safe enough now,' he said, and we
cautiously lifted and sniffed. McVaugh breezed in.
'Nobody hurt,' he de-clared, and began the checking of
the captain's data.
"I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past
twelve. 'Crack! Crack! Crack!' Seemingly just outside our
door three shells broke. Then a number more distant. I
reached for my mask, but neither the captain nor his
lieutenant glanced tip from their work. The Boche was
sending them over in quantities now. Their crashing
explosions sounded like a bombardment, and I was certain
that our surprise plans had become known to the enemy and
that he was anticipating our attack by a couple of hours.
I expected a show of excitement, hurried orders brought
and given, a certain tenseness of dramatic crisis, but
Captain Lyman went on reading: 'Target number 3 -base
deflection left fifteen, range two seven hundred, twelve
rounds sweeping-- and McVaugh would reply, 'Check.'
"Again the Klaxon sounded and we held our breaths
while we adjusted masks. On the tail of its mournful
sound an orderly burst into the room. 'A shell in the gun
pit, sir, and a man badly wounded, he reported. Captain
Lyman and Lieutenant McVaugh hurried out while Lieutenant
Sams, gas mask on, prepared for action.
"In a few moments the stretcher bearers brought in
the form of Private Clarence Manthe, wounded so seriously
that one glance told me the only issue. Captain Lyman
knelt beside him and soothed him by words of well earned
praise, while the surgeon worked to make the last hour of
the lad less painful.
"There were other wounds now to be dressed and a gas
case to be doctored. I sat beside Man the to ease his
passing, pressing my canteen to his lips when the fever
burned. You are going over, boy, I said softly. Is there
a message I can take?"
"My mother-tell her I died like a soldier," he
whispered.
"I voiced a prayer, the captain kneeling alongside,
and Manthe closed his eves for the last sleep. A few
minutes later I nodded to the surgeon. He felt for pulse
and heart, then placed a tag with penciled date and hour
upon the breast and drew a blanket over the dead.
"Sergeant Young had been wounded in the wrist by a
shell fragment but insisted on going back to his gun.
'Stay here,', his captain ordered, and the sergeant could
but obey. The wound seemed slight, but the surgeon saw
that it was a dangerous one with the
possibility-afterward an eventuality of serious
complications; yet when, later in the day, I rode with
the boy on the ambulance I was forced to use argument and
finally diplomacy and coercion to make him go to a
hospital.
"The gas case, Private Broderick, was apparently
much more serious, for he was an extremely sick man with
blinded eyes, a hacking cough and a nausea which was
pitifully ineffectual of relief. But he improved rapidly
under treatment and afterwards recovered quickly at the
hospital. We all absorbed too much Boche gas that night.
I picked up a cough which lasted me several months. There
were weak and watery eyes for days afterwards."
While these things were taking place in A Battery, the
other organizations were having a more peaceful time.
Nowhere else was any one hit with incoming shells. The
German fire was evidently laid down somewhat at random,
the gunners aiming for the road without any exact
knowledge of where the guns were located. At the Second
Battalion the Chaplain paid a visit to the aid station
which Lieutenant McCaleb had established in a deep
dugout, and asked to be called if any wounded should be
brought in. Then he went to the only place where there
was room for him-the dugout shared by the three battery
commanders and while the officers figured their data he
went to sleep on Captain Perin's bunk.
About ten o'clock in the evening the order was given to
fell the trees doomed to sacrifice. Details of men went
out with axes to give the final blows. There was a
grating, crunching sound, then a terrific crash, and the
first great monarch of the forest plunged head foremost
down the hill. From that moment on, the woods reechoed
with the swishing and crashing of falling trees, until
the roar was so great it seemed as if the enemy must hear
it. Toward midnight the work was all but finished and the
sound died down; and then for some time, save for the
hit-or-miss shelling by the Germans, the quiet was
unbroken.
About two o'clock there was a stir all along the ridge as
the gun crews, alert for the hour for attack, busied
themselves with their final preparations.
While our men were thus engaged, there began a rumble of
guns far off to the left. Nearer and nearer it came, as
bat-tery after battery all along the line received the
command to fire. Then the heavy guns all about us burst
forth with a roar that echoed down the ravines and
rattled the doors and win-dows in the dugouts. The whole
forest seemed to rock with the concussion, and the sky
was ablaze with flashes of light. At their guns our
cannoneers stood eagerly waiting, while the section
chiefs, watch in hand, counted the minutes as the hands
moved toward two-thirty. Then, at a nod from the section
leader, each number two picked up a shell and shoved it
into the breech of his gun. Number one closed the breech
with a bang and took hold of the lanyard. There was a
tense mo-ment of waiting. Then, 'Fire!' In an instant
every gun in the regiment leaped on its carriage and sent
its shell hurtling over the tops of the trees in the
valley below. Now the whole mass of artillery was
crashing forth its storm of destruction into the trenches
and dugouts and ravines on the other side of
No-Man's-Land. The roar of the guns, the tinkling of the
empty shell cases as they were tossed aside, the voices
of the officers and section chiefs as they gave their
commands the whizz of the departing shells all mingled in
one vast racket and confusion of noise that no pen can
describe.
While the opening of the battle was dramatic enough for
those who were actually at the guns, in the dugouts of
the battalion and battery commanders the momentous hour
came and passed almost unheeded. Mr. Newberry was
disappointed. "I expected excitement and
movement," he writes. "Certainly the Cap-
'We've silenced them!' I exulted.
"'More likely they've turned them all on the
infantry," he
replied. 'They know by now that something big is coming.'
"I glanced at my watch: 5:20. 'Nearly time for the
start," I said.
" 'The barrage begins in ten minutes. Come and see
what has been done by our fire."
"We made our way through fallen trees to the brow of
the hill to find that heavy smoke and fog in the valley
made any observation impossible, and came back to the
dugout. Captain Lyman, hatless and smiling, stood on the
stairs breathing in the morning. 'Any view over there?'
he asked. The lieutenant shook a negative.
"There had been no perceptible cessation in our
fire, but now it increased in force and intensity. It was
a monstrous kettle-drum with sticks in the hands of the
god of war who rattled out noisy death.
"They'll go over now," yelled McVaugh above the
roar.
" 'God help 'em!' answered the Captain. 'Let's get
breakfast. "
While these officers refreshed themselves with bacon,
bread and coffee, and others, tired out with their
night's labors, lay down for a snatch of sleep, and the
cannoneers, working in shifts, continued their toil, the
infantry went over the top. There was no wild charge with
flashing bayonets and yelling fighters. Out of their
trenches they filed through the fog and had been captured
lay several miles of unbroken forest where the Germans,
now fully awake to the magnitude of the offensive, would
undoubtedly reinforce and fortify themselves anew in
their well prepared positions and settle down for a stiff
resistance to any further advance.