Lt. Robert Gamble
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On
August 20th the 5th Division was relieved. Orders directed them
to the Arches area above Epinal for rest and further training.
Replacements were received, new equipment issued, and close-order
drill revived to "restore the discipline that had tended
to become lax at the front."
The next assignment would be the first major all-American operation of the war, involving the largest collection of American troops for one battle in history (to that point). It was an attack against the St. Mihiel salient.
The salient had been created almost by accident in the first rush of the war. In late September 1914 during a failed attempt to envelop the fortress of Verdun the Germans captured what Alexander Woollcott later described as "an ungainly snout projecting from the German lines." French commanders called St. Mihiel "the hernia." Overall they had lost 125,000 men in attempts to re-take it. General Pershing's final report to Congress in 1919 described the purpose of the St. Mihiel offensive:
The reduction of the St. Mihiel salient was important, as it would prevent the enemy from interrupting traffic on the Paris-Nancy Railroad by artillery fire and would free the railroad leading north through St. Mihiel to Verdun. It would also provide us with an advantageous base of departure for an attack against the Metz-Sedan Railroad system which was vital to the German armies west of Verdun, and against the Briery Iron Basin which was necessary for the production of German armament and munitions. The general plan was to make simultaneous attacks against the flanks of the salient.
Pershing had to fight to keep the America army intact as a single fighting force. Marshal Foch and his British counterparts tried repeatedly to split up American divisions and subordinate them within existing British and French commands. This was designed to minimize the apparent American contribution to the war effort, with a political eye on the post-war spoils. Up to the very last minute Foch tried to shift American troops away from St. Mihiel. Pershing would have none of it, and fortunately President Wilson supported him.
At
headquarters, Captain George C. Marshall was planning, and revising,
and re-revising the Americans' pincer-attack, using a topographic
reproduction of St. Mihiel covering the entire floor of a building
and accurate almost down to each tree. Meanwhile the 5th Division
was ordered to march from the Arches training area to the hilly
country in the Moselle southwest of Luneville. There on August
30, 1918, the Division History records, preparations resumed with
emphasis on open warfare methods. Exercises of advancing with
only maps and compasses were carried out by companies and battalions;
rifle and machine gun firing was pushed to qualify recruits for
skirmishing. As gas training, every officer and enlisted man was
required to wear a mask half an hour daily.
In his last letter, dated September 5, 1918 and writen from the Vosges Moutains, Gamble wrote: "Something big is going to happen. I am well, happy, and full of confidence."
Final orders came for the 5th Division to move into its assigned sector. They moved in absolute secrecy. Nobody but staff at headquarters knew their destination.
To
preserve the element of surprise the troops marched by night starting
at 8:00p.m. and stopping at 4:00a.m. with all lights prohibited.
No kitchen fires were allowed; not even matches to light cigarettes.
The flame might attract the attention of Boche biplane and balloon
surveillance.
The troops slogged in darkness and rain through mud averaging 18 inches deep on the roads, each keeping his place in line by holding the pack of the man ahead. During the day the troops camped concealed in the woods, ate cold rations, and slept where they could. They marched this way for fifty kilometers.
According to the Division History "those forced night marches stand out most vividly in the mind of every man in the Division. It was the first hurry-up march the troops had undergone; the weather was one continuous downpour of rain; the roads were slippery and wound over steep hills and through wet woods; horses died along the roads. . . Sleep was almost unheard of; the blackness of the nights and the perpetual rain exhausted everybody."
The troops arrived at their destination September 10th "footsore and weary from exposure to the raw weather and loss of sleep." Before them lay the German positions in a "rugged chain of hills heavily wooded and deeply cut by ravines in all directions, admirably suited to stubborn defense."
The surprise was not so complete as the American generals thought. The Germans had been planning since the previous June to defend against a pincer-like attack on the St. Mihiel salient. In the week before the attack newspapers featuring maps of the area reported allied preparations. In the village of Huilecourt a baffled commander of an American artillery battery wondered aloud where they were going. French villagers obligingly dug out their maps and pointed to St. Mihiel. One Swiss newspaper even published the exact date, time, and duration of the Americans' preparatory artillery barrage. When shells began falling right on schedule, a German commander deduced from their pattern precisely where the heaviest attack would come.
Anticipating that the St. Mihiel salient would be indefensible with available forces, the Germans had already begun to withdraw. But because rain and clouds hampered biplane and balloon surveillance and fog blinded observers on the heights, the night marches put the Americans in position to attack forty-eight hours sooner than expected. The retreating Boche were forced to turn and defend themselves. Much of their artillery was caught on the rutted muddy roads, useless and vulnerable.
During the last four years German forces had diligently fortified the area with front line trenches, wire barricades, electrically-detonated mines, and concrete pillboxes, backed up by a second line of similar works. "Deep dugouts, built six meters under the surface" snaked through these woods, and "machine guns were known to be well distributed over the sector" dug in and camouflaged, with interlaced fields of fire. They were targeted knee-high to chop a man off at the knees and catch him again on the way down.
One veteran of St. Mihiel described German machine gunners' tactics:
As the machine gun nest was the backbone of the Boche defense, and as it was one of the principal obstacles that our troops had continuously to battle against . . . it may not be amiss to describe it here. The nest may consist of one or several guns, sometimes set in prepared emplacements, sometimes merely tucked away in bushes or in the ruins of a house. In every case the guns themselves were carefully concealed, and there was usually some form of protection for the crew. The pieces seldom fired to their own front, but were so placed as to rake the front of other nests or of obstacles such as wire belts and woods. When the attackers are held up by machine gun fire, the shooting seldom comes from directly in the foreground, but from some position on the flank which they cannot easily locate. They are, therefore, unable to advance until the nest has been taken by maneuvering around it. This movement, on the other hand, is often also held up by fire from an entirely different nest, and so the whole line is stopped. As machine guns come into action suddenly and their killing power is terrific they cannot be reduced by frontal attacks of waves of infantry, but must be either shelled out or held under our own infantry and machine gun fire until they can be stalked by little groups of determined men. These dash from cover to cover, or work around the emplacements by stealth, getting close enough to put the gunners or the piece itself out of action. To ward off these attacks, the Germans placed snipers and bomb throwers in concealment close by the guns.
Machine gun nests were especially thick in the area where the 5th Division was headed. According to Hallas' book: "[t]he first check of prisoners during the St. Mihiel offensive startled I Corps when they found 57 organizations represented in the haul. There were not supposed to be that many units within a hundred miles. . . . An investigation revealed the Germans had been operating a machine-gun school at Thiaucourt." The village of Thiaucourt was Gamble's company's objective.
The night of September 11th was punctuated by sporadic shelling and the chattering machine guns in relentless cold rain. At midnight Colonel Bennet ordered Major Mahin's first battalion which included Lieutenant Gamble's Company A, into the front combat trenches. The troops filed past their ammunition sergeants drawing extra bullets and grenades. They fanned out at the southern end of the sector, sloshing through flooded dirt alleys often thigh-deep in mud. Officers began removing badges of rank to thwart snipers.
Twelve French Renault tanks had been assigned to smash holes through Boche barbed wire. Battery E of the Twentieth Field Artillery readied shells for supporting fire also to cut lanes for the troops.
