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107 Chapter 6 Côte de Châtillon in the Meuse-Argonne G eneral John Pershing had made a pact with the devil, and now the devil was coming to collect. Pershing had wanted a separate American sector and offensive to prove the AEF’s worth and to keep his army intact. He had also promised the SupremeAlliedCommander,MarshalFoch,thattheAEFcould reduce the St. Mihiel salient, defeat the German forces there, and within two weeks move the entire AEF sixty miles north to join the major Allied offensive planned to begin on September 26, 1918. The devil was not Field Marshal Foch; it was not the Germans; neither was it the sixty miles from one battle area to the other; and it was not the time schedule. The devil was in the AEF itself. Pershing had to move his army—hundreds of thousands of men, a dozen army divisions; mountains of supplies and ammunition; thousands of artillery pieces; hospitals; herds of horses; and a galaxy of carts, wagons, motorized vehicles , and French-built tanks—all along inadequate, congested, muddy, and rutted roads without enough transportation. The devil was the army, and the other factors were his henchmen. Historian John S. D. Eisenhower explained: Thetaskwasstaggering.AttheoutsetPershingandhisstaffconceded that it would be impossible to move the divisions that had fought at St. Mihiel up to the Argonne in time. The artillery, however, would have to make the switch. That meant the displacement of about two 108 Place the Headstones Where They Belong thousand guns and 600,000 tons of supplies and ammunition. A single division’s artillery, seventy-two guns, would occupy about ten miles of road space. The total artillery to be moved would require three hundred miles of road. In addition, nine hundred trucks were needed to move the infantry of a single American division.1 Pershing and his staff wrestled the devil and won. Private ThomasNeibaurandthe42ndDivisionleftthelineatSt.Mihiel on October 1, the same day that the opening phase of the new Argonne offensive stalled. “We were then sent by motor truck to the Argonne,” Thomas wrote.2 The Meuse-Argonne battle area was like a lane in a bowling alley. The two major terrain features are the dominating Argonne Forest and the unfordable Meuse River. As its name suggests, it is a combination of forest on the west and river on the east in a valley bordered by rugged hills. The valley was fifteen to twenty miles wide, with undulating green pasture and farms. The Argonne was an ancient forest, and for thousands of years, its green pines and firs saw Gauls, Romans, Visigoths, Franks, Swiss, English, Napoleon’s Grand Armée, Germans, and now Americans haunt the high ground where two of the most famous exploits of American armed forces of World War I would occur. One of those involved the famous “Lost Battalion,” actually elements of two battalions of the, 308th Infantry of the 77th Division, that was cut off and surrounded for five days, October 2–7, and survived despite great losses after repeated German attacks. The day after it was relieved, Corporal Alvin York of “All American,” the 82nd Division, killed dozens of Germans and, with several other “Yanks,” captured more than a hundred enemy soldiers. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive, fifty-three Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers and a few Marines for gallantry, including Alvin York, several men of the Lost Battalion, and of course, Private Thomas Neibaur.3 The Meuse-Argonne Campaign, September 26–November 11, 1918 The Germans fortified the Meuse-Argonne region with threeseparatebutmutuallysupportingdefenselines,another well-planned defense in depth. The German operational Côte de Châtillon in the Meuse-Argonne 109 planners were clever in their name selection for the defensive lines, named in succession after the three witches in a Richard Wagner opera: the Giselher, Kriemhilde, and Freya Stellungs. “Stellung” means “position” or “line” in German.4 The first defensive line, Giselher Stellung, had concrete emplacements manned with machine guns among multiple trench lines, with wire obstacles covered by mortar fire. Next came the main defense line, six kilometers back, the Kriemhilde Stellung, that ran along the Romagne Heights, a rocky line of hills. It was the strongest line of defense, because of the Romagne hills, which included Hill 288, Côte Dame Marie and the Côte de Châtillon. Kriemhilde Stellung had even stronger manmade defensive measures. Finally, Freya Stellung was eight kilometers behind the Kriemhilde on the base of Buzancy’s Hills, with fewer emplacements, trenches...

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