The Second Battle of the Marne

SIX The Allies Strike, July 18–21

s i x The Allies Strike, July 18–21 Men on both sides knew how badly the German offensive of July 15 had failed. Only the Allied high command, however, knew the full details of the next step that was to come. In order for the Allies to take maximum advantage of their success on the battle’s first day they would need to move quickly. They could not afford to give the Germans time that they might use to resume the offensive either in Champagne or in Flanders, nor could they expect to maintain the secrecy of their preparations for much longer. In order to be successful, they would need to get their final pieces in place in a matter of hours. The resulting constant shuffling of Allied units back and forth across the Marne salient, while unavoidable, caused a great deal of confusion in Allied ranks. Orders had been given and countermanded so often that troops might have been forgiven for wondering if the staffs had any idea at all what they were doing. The men of the American 2nd Division, for example, had marched for 50 hours in a 72-hour period in order to arrive at their designated place in the line west of Buzancy. Even after just the first day of this exhausting march one soldier had written, “Hiked all day . . . the boys sure are tired.” Still he and “the boys” had two more hard days of marching ahead just to get in position to fight.1 The American 26th Division did not even receive orders to move until 10:15 pm on the rainy night of July 17, leading to a frantic scramble to get in line through the mud and darkness.2 Owing to the need for The Allies Strike, July 18–21  119 secrecy and the driving rain, the men of the American 1st Division had to complete a forced march to the front with no hot food, leaving them “in a state of mind to fight anybody.”3 The rain at least had the welcome advantage of reducing the number of German planes overhead. The confusion and chaos of the front line existed in the rear as well. Railway stations were a mass of frenetic activity as men detrained, looked for the buses that would take them forward, and searched for their ration carts. When the roads ended or became too crowded, soldiers began marching through wheat and corn fields, often at night to avoid the peering eyes of German pilots. Civilians were moving, too, in the opposite direction, “clearing out as fast as possible with . . . crazy carts they were able to find for the transportation of their worldly possessions .” Cities such as Epernay and Châlons quickly became ghost towns. “Not a soul was to be seen,” noted a British soldier who passed through Epernay, which had theretofore avoided the worst the war had to offer.4 The confusion created by the refugee exodus and the advance of armies caused terrible traffic jams and considerable disorder, especially among men who had never even seen the terrain over which they were moving. Moving to the front with no maps was “trying beyond description ” for the men of the American 4th Division, especially given the windy, rainy weather and roads “cluttered with transport—wagons, trucks, automobiles, mounted men, [and] front [line] troops” moving in all directions.5 Because of the confusion, some regiments arrived at the front without the weapons they needed. Only four of the American 1st Division’s twenty-four howitzers were in place to fire when the division attacked; many regiments were also without their light 37mm field guns, which were stuck somewhere in the massive traffic jams in the rear areas.6 Nevertheless, in retrospect, it is remarkable both that sufficient resources got to the Allied front lines as needed and that the Germans did not suspect the size and scope of the coming Allied attack. Many German soldiers, grown confident from four months of attacking almost at will, blithely dismissed the threat to their flanks. One German war diary dismissed the possibility of an Allied attack because “there was so much to argue against it,” presumably the expected difficulty of concentrating sufficient firepower.7 If the Germans could have seen the massive Allied effort opposite them, they might well have opened their eyes a bit wider. 120 The Second Battle of the Marne On the...