Alvin York: A New Biography of the Hero of the Argonne

6. Prelude to Battle

67 6 Prelude to Battle The Military Situation Before York’s Battle [The American soldiers looked like] Tommies in heaven. I pressed forward . . . to watch the United States physically entering the War, so god-like, so magnificent, and so splendidly unimpaired in comparison with the tired, nerveracked men of the British army. —English nurse Vera Brittain, on seeing the Americans arrive in France in April 1918 On 26 September 1918, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) launched the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The AEF initially had the support of one hundred thousand French soldiers, encompassing six of their divisions. These men reverted to French control after additional American units arrived from St. Mihiel. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the first of four Allied attacks that spanned some two hundred miles of the Western Front. This broad attack was designed by Field Marshal Foch, the Allied generalissimo, to bring the war to an end in 1918. This offensive, and the events that followed, would elevate Alvin York to fame. Foch’s grand strategy looked much like American Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s “en echelon attack” that he used on 2 July 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg.1 The point of an en echelon attack is to launch a series of assaults across a front to not only fix enemy units, but also to draw away reserves, so that by the time the later attacks occur, the enemy has little to no reserves remaining to bolster the newly threatened sectors. The key to success in an en echelon attack is forcing the enemy to weaken portions of his front, creating a vulnerability that the attacker can then exploit. With this in mind, Foch ordered the AEF to spearhead the offensive on 26 September 1918. Map 2. The Western Front and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, September 26, 1918. 1 1 N O V. (A.M.) B E L G I U M F R A N C E A i r e A i r e R i v e r River Grandpré Apremont Varennes Verdun Forges Beaumont Brabant Sivry Consenvoye Montfaucon Meuse River A r g o n n e F o r e s t S e i n e Marne R i v e r Riv er R i v e r R i v e r Somme River O ise R iver Aisne Meuse Ghent Metz PARIS Sedan ChateauThierry St. Quentin Amiens Soissons Rennso Ypres Lidenburg Liége Brussels Hirson Moris Cambrai Lille Arraso Nancy St. Mihiel U.S. First Army V Corps I Corps 77 28 35 79 80 33 Fr. 18 Fr. 10 F r . 1 5 D . I . C . D. I. C. French XVII Corps 4 37 91 III Corps French Fourth Army xx xx xx x x x x x x x xx xx xxxx xxxx xxx x British Belgian French F r e n c h U.S. L IN E LI N E O F OF SEPT. 26 (A.M.) N N 1 0 2 4 5 3 6 7 8 9 10 Miles 0 Jump-off Line Front Line 28 Sept. Army Boundary Corps Boundary Numerals indicate divisions xxx xxxx 25 50 75 Miles Boundary between Armies Arrows indicate directions of main attacks xxxx Ground gained by American units 12-16 Sept. 1918 Ground gained by American units 26 Sept. - 11 Nov. 1918 Mérénes Prelude to Battle 69 The design of Foch’s grand plan was that on 27 September—the day after the American assault—the First and Third British Armies were to strike, led by the Canadian Corps, against Canal du Nord, west of Cambrai. After this, King Albert’s Belgians would advance north of Ypres on 28 September. The last attack would occur on 29 September, a Franco-British assault near St. Quentin. These four Allied hammer blows were to be sustained attacks that would overwhelm the German lines.2 Being the first to attack, the AEF would receive the most attention from Germany’s Field Marshal Hindenburg , who later said: In the following days [after the German spring offensives failed], we essentially held the front against the enemy attacks. However, the situation changed with the expansion of the enemy offensive against Champagne on 26 September [the day that the American Meuse-Argonne Offensive commenced], which expanded the threat from the coasts to the Argonne. There, [in the Argonne region] the Americans penetrated our lines...