MEUSE-ARGONNE

26 SEPTEMBER–11 NOVEMBER 1918

THE U.S. ARMY 

CAMPAIGNS OF WORLD WAR I

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•••
THE U.S. ARMY CAMPAIGNS OF WORLD WAR I 

COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

Series Editor: Brian F. Neumann

The U.S. Army in the World War I Era

The Mexican Expedition, 1916–1917

Joining the Great War, April 1917–April 1918

Into the Fight, April–June 1918

The Marne, 15 July–6 August 1918

Supporting Allied Offensives, August–November 1918

St. Mihiel, 12–16 September 1918

Meuse-Argonne, 26 September–11 November 1918

Occupation and Demobilization

The Russian Expeditions, 1918–1920

Cover: Firing a 155-mm. howitzer during a gas bombardment 

(National Archives) •••••••••••••••

CMH Pub 77–8
•••

MEUSE-ARGONNE

26 SEPTEMBER–11 NOVEMBER 1918

by

Richard S. Faulkner

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2018

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•••

INTRODUCTION

A century ago, the great powers of Europe became engulfed 

in what was then called the Great War. It signaled a new age in 

armed conflict in which mass armies supported by industrial mass 

production brought an unprecedented level of killing power to the 

battlefield. By the time the United States entered the war in 1917, 

the combatants were waging war on a scale never before seen 

in history. The experience defined a generation and cast a long 

shadow across the twentieth century. In addition to a tremendous 

loss of life, the war shattered Europe, bringing revolution, the 

collapse of long-standing empires, and economic turmoil, as 

well as the birth of new nation-states and the rise of totalitarian 

movements.

The modern U.S. Army, capable of conducting industrialized 

warfare on a global scale, can trace its roots to the World War. 

Although the war’s outbreak in August 1914 shocked most 

Americans, they preferred to keep the conflict at arm’s length. 

The United States declared its neutrality and invested in coastal 

defenses and the Navy to guard its shores. The U.S. Army, 

meanwhile, remained small, with a regiment as its largest standing 

formation. Primarily a constabulary force, it focused on policing 

America’s new territorial possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific 

as it continued to adapt to Secretary of War Elihu Root’s reforms 

in the years following the War with Spain. It was not until June 

1916 that Congress authorized an expansion of the Army, dual 

state-federal status for the National Guard, and the creation of a 

reserve officer training corps.

In early 1917, relations between the United States and Germany 

rapidly deteriorated. The kaiser’s policy of unrestricted submarine 

warfare threatened American lives and commerce, and German 

meddling in Mexican affairs convinced most Americans that Berlin 

posed a danger to the nation. In April 1917, the president, out of 

diplomatic options, asked Congress to declare war on Germany. 

But the U.S. Army, numbering only 133,000 men, was far from 

ready. The president ordered nearly 400,000 National Guardsmen 

into federal service, and more than twenty-four million men 

eventually registered for the Selective Service, America’s first 
•••• 6 ••••

conscription since the Civil War. By the end of 1918, the Army had 

grown to four million men and had trained 200,000 new officers 

to lead them. As it expanded to address wartime needs, the Army 

developed a new combined-arms formation—the square division. 

Divisions fell under corps, and corps made up field armies. The 

Army also created supporting elements such as the Air Service, the 

Tank Corps, and the Chemical Warfare Service. The war signaled 

the potential of the United States as not only a global economic 

power, but also a military one.

In June 1917, the 1st Division deployed to France, arriving in time 

to parade through Paris on the Fourth of July. The first National 

Guard division, the 26th Division from New England, deployed in 

September. By war’s end, the American Expeditionary Forces, as 

the nation’s forces in Europe were called, had grown to two million 

soldiers and more than forty divisions. During 1918, these American 

“doughboys” learned to fight in battles of steadily increasing scale: 

Cantigny, the Marne, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne, 

adding thirteen campaign streamers to the Army flag. Overall, in 

roughly six months of combat, the American Expeditionary Forces 

suffered more than 255,000 casualties, including 52,997 battle 

deaths (as well as more than 50,000 nonbattle deaths, most due to 

the influenza pandemic). The war that the United States entered to 

“make the world safe for democracy” ended with an armistice on 

11 November 1918, followed by a controversial peace. American 

soldiers served in the Occupation of the Rhineland until 1923, before 

withdrawing from Europe altogether. 

The United States will never forget the American soldiers 

who fought and died in the World War. America’s first unknown 

soldier was laid to rest on 11 November 1921 in the Tomb of the 

Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, where soldiers 

still stand guard. The United States created permanent American 

military cemeteries in France, Belgium, and Britain to bury the 

fallen. To this day, memorials to their sacrifice can be found across 

America, and the date of the armistice has become a national 

holiday honoring all those who serve in defense of the nation. 

The last surviving U.S. Army veteran of the war died in 2011. It is 

to all the doughboys, those who returned and those who did not, 

that the U.S. Army Center of Military History dedicates these 

commemorative pamphlets.

JON T. HOFFMAN

Chief Historian
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•••

MEUSE-ARGONNE

26 SEPTEMBER–11 NOVEMBER 1918

On 26 September 1918, the American First Army launched a 

massive attack between the Argonne Forest (Forêt d’Argonne) and 

the Meuse River northwest of the storied French town of Verdun. By 

the time that the Germans agreed to an armistice forty-seven days 

later, the Meuse-Argonne Campaign would gain the distinction of 

being the largest and most costly military operation in American 

history. Over a million American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and 

marines, as well as 135,000 French soldiers, participated in the 

offensive. Although the First Army had committed to this battle 

long before most of its doughboys had mastered the skills required 

to fight a mass industrialized war, the Americans persevered 

and gradually ground down the German units opposing them. 

Unfortunately, this approach came at a high price: 26,277 men 

killed and another 95,786 wounded as the American Expeditionary 

Forces (AEF) learned how to wage a modern war against a skilled 

opponent. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the most important 

American military contribution to the Allied effort during the war. 

The AEF’s hard-won victory materially contributed to the collapse 

of the German Army and achieved President Woodrow Wilson’s 

strategic goal of securing for the United States a major role in 

crafting the peace that followed the Armistice. 

Strategic Setting

The entry of the United States into the conflict and the 

Russian Revolution in 1917 dramatically changed the dynamics of 

the Great War. Russia’s descent into civil war offered the Central 

Powers their long-desired relief from a two-front war, but the 

imminent arrival of hundreds of thousands of fresh American 

troops convinced General Erich Ludendorff, the orchestrator of 

the German war effort, that Germany must win the war in 1918 

or face certain defeat. On 21 March 1918, the Germans launched 

a major offensive that broke through the Allied lines on the 

Somme. By the time the German attack lost momentum, it had 
•••• 8 ••••

pushed the British Expeditionary Force over fifty-six kilometers, 

back to the outskirts of Amiens. The success of the offensive 

sparked a crisis in the Allies’ ranks that led to the appointment 

of France’s General Ferdinand Foch as a General-in-Chief of 

the Allied Armies, or “generalissimo,” to coordinate all Allied 

Army operations on the Western Front. After the conclusion of 

the Somme effort, Ludendorff embarked upon four more major 

offensives in the spring and summer of 1918, striving to retain 

the initiative and force the Allies to a negotiated peace.

When the last of these operations sputtered to a close in 

mid-July, the Germans had suffered nearly a million casualties, 

and Foch had begun to sense that the tide of the war had turned 

in the Allies’ favor. On 24 July 1918, Foch issued a directive to 

AEF commander General John J. Pershing and the other top 

French, British, and Belgian military leaders that laid out his 

vision for the Allied war effort for the remainder of the year. 

Foch’s first goal was to seize the initiative from the Germans 

by launching counterattacks against several salients along the 

Western Front, regaining as much territory as possible and 

securing critical rail lines that the Allies would need to sustain 

a war-ending offensive in 1919. While the French continued 

to reduce the Marne salient, the British would prepare for an 

attack near Amiens, and a multinational force would undertake 

an offensive near Ypres in Belgium.

Foch also intended to utilize the Americans in his operational 

plan. Earlier in July, he and Pershing had agreed that it was time 

to grant the AEF its independence by giving it a sector of the 

front and a major role in implementing Foch’s operational vision 

for 1918. The key questions were where the Americans would 

operate and what mission they would undertake. Since the AEF’s 

arrival in France, Pershing had slowly assembled its support and 

logistics infrastructure in Lorraine with the ultimate intent of 

carrying out operations against the Germans in St. Mihiel and 

Metz. That focus fit nicely within Foch’s initial intent, as the 

reduction of the St. Mihiel salient would open the Paris-Avricourt 

rail line and give the Americans a positional advantage for further 

advances in 1919. With this goal in mind, Pershing established 

the U.S. First Army on 10 August 1918.

As Pershing began planning for an attack against St. Mihiel, 

successful Allied counterattacks at Soissons in July and at Amiens 

in early August led Foch to reconsider his plans. On 30 August, 

Foch met with Pershing to deliver revised guidance for the newly 
•••• 9 ••••

formed First Army. Foch believed that recent Allied achievements 

had weakened the German Army to the point that the Allies might 

win the war in 1918. As such, the generalissimo’s new plan was for 

a massive pincer attack in September—one thrust in the Somme 

and the other in Champagne-Argonne—while the remaining Allied 

armies launched simultaneous sustained offensives across the 

Western Front. This concerted assault would deplete the German 

Army’s manpower to the point of collapse. Under the new plan, the 

Americans would attack in concert with the French Fourth Army 

between the Meuse and Suippe rivers with the intent of cutting 

the rail lines at Sedan and Mézières. This attack would form the 

right wing of the Allied envelopment of the German forces along 

the central portion of the Western Front in northern France. As 

an attack on the German positions at St.  Mihiel would divert 

the AEF from the main Allied effort and drain too much of the 

Americans’ focus and strength, Foch directed Pershing to abandon 

his planned operation against the salient. Furthermore, fearing 

that the Americans lacked the training and experience to plan and 

execute such a large-scale operation in the Meuse-Argonne, Foch 

intended to strip Pershing of several of his divisions to reinforce 

Foch (left) and Pershing (National Archives) •••••••••••••••
•••• 10 ••••

more seasoned French units and to split the American front into 

two segments with a veteran French army wedged in between.

Pershing viewed Foch’s move as a blow to the AEF’s independence and as a diminution of America’s part in the conflict. 

He argued that shifting the location of the joint initiative to the 

Meuse-Argonne would hobble his operations, since it was far from 

the logistics bases that the AEF had established farther south in 

Lorraine. The meeting grew so heated that Pershing later confessed 

that he considered punching Foch in the jaw. In the face of mutual 

intransigence, the conference broke up without resolution.

In the battle of wills between two determined and stubborn men, 

both ultimately had to compromise for the good of the Allied cause. 

Pershing understood that he had President Wilson’s full support 

in forming an independent American army and that the president 

expected the AEF to play a major role in the war effort. He also 

knew that Foch needed fresh American forces to bring his plans to 

fruition. For his part, Foch was certain that Pershing desperately 

wanted to get the American Army into the fight and knew that the 

AEF still needed French artillery, tank, and logistical support for any 

operations. After contentious wrangling, Foch grudgingly consented 

to Pershing conducting a limited attack at St. Mihiel, but insisted 

that the Americans be ready to launch their main attack in the area 

between the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River between 22 and 

26 September. Foch also relented on the issue of a unified American 

sector and gave the AEF independent control over a significant 

portion of the Western Front’s eastern flank. However, his goal for 

the Meuse-Argonne operation remained unchanged; the American 

First and French Fourth Armies would attack toward Mézières to 

break through the German defense in the region and cut the vital 

Metz-Montmédy-Charleville rail line. Foch further intended that the 

Franco-American attack would draw in and destroy the enemy’s 

strategic reserves and turn the Germans out of their defenses in 

northern France, thus setting the stage for the Allied forces to defeat 

the enemy in open battle. Foch believed that the combined effect of 

British attacks on the Somme, French attacks in the Oise, and the 

Franco-American attack in Champagne and the Meuse-Argonne 

would stretch the German Army past its breaking point. In the end, 

the simultaneous Allied offensives would annihilate the encircled 

Germans, or at least force the enemy to abandon the occupation of 

France and Belgium (Map 1).

Pershing’s insistence on going forward with the St.  Mihiel 

Offensive greatly complicated the planning and execution of 
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26 September–11 November 1918

Axis of Allied AttackFront Line, 26 Sep, MorningFront Line, 11 NovAllied Unit Locations

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•••• 12 ••••

the Meuse-Argonne operation. The AEF commander viewed the 

St. Mihiel attack as an opportunity to test his army’s command, 

logistics, and other operational systems, as well as a chance to prove 

to the world that the Americans were capable of fighting a modern 

war. To ensure the First Army’s success in its first independent 

action, Pershing decided to use his most experienced divisions for 

the St. Mihiel operation. Although this move helped to ensure that the 

reduction of the salient went smoothly, the absence of these veteran 

units in the opening phase of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign would 

have grave consequences for the AEF. Furthermore, Pershing’s 

decision to fight at St. Mihiel also meant that the First Army would 

have to engage in one major battle while simultaneously planning 

for a much larger and more complicated operation for which the 

army would have to move its forces and logistics infrastructure 

over sixty-four kilometers to the northwest. The Americans would 

have only ten days between the close of the St. Mihiel battle and 

the start of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign to accomplish this feat.

The German Army in the Meuse-Argonne Region

By the time the Americans began their attack in the MeuseArgonne, their German foes had occupied the region for four 

years. The area had been the scene of fierce fighting in 1914 and 

1915, and the Germans used the region as the staging area for 

their attack on Verdun in 1916. To that end, the Germans had 

constructed fortifications and artillery shelters throughout the 

sector, and built a light rail line and other logistics nodes to support 

their operations in the region. After suffering an unsustainable 

rate of loss during the fighting at Verdun and the Somme, in 

September 1916 Ludendorff ordered a review of German defensive 

tactics and the establishment of a new series of fortifications, 

collectively known as the Siegfried Stellung (or the Hindenburg 

Line to the Allies), along the Western Front. The new German 

doctrine used a defense in depth to husband Germany’s declining 

manpower resources and to counter the growing effectiveness 

of Allied artillery and offensive tactics. The Germans planned to 

use skillfully sited field fortifications and interlocking defensive 

firepower to exhaust Allied attacks and serve as a base for timely, 

powerful counterattacks that would prevent the Allies from 

gaining any major foothold. 

Although the Germans had dedicated less effort to engineering 

the defenses in the Meuse-Argonne than they had on the western 
•••• 13 ••••

sectors of the Hindenburg Line, nature provided them with ample 

defensive advantages to compensate for this shortfall. The western 

boundary of the U.S. First Army’s sector encompassed most of the 

Argonne Forest. The forest itself sat on a plateau bounded by the 

Aisne and Aire rivers. The Argonne was crisscrossed by a range of 

hills and draws running in a generally east-west direction; these 

features, along with dense vegetation, presented grave challenges 

to the mobility, command and control, and artillery support of the 

American attackers. To the east of the Argonne was the valley of 

the Aire River—a natural movement corridor for the Americans, 

but one dominated on the west by the hills of the Argonne and 

on the east by the large buttes of Montfaucon and Vauquois and 

other heights. The center of the American sector was the Barrois 

Plateau, a series of hills and highlands that started in the south at 

Montfaucon, ran to the northeast to Romagne-sous-Montfaucon 

and Cunel, and ended at the Barricourt Heights. East of the Barrois 

Plateau was the Meuse River valley, another natural movement 

corridor flanked by high ground on both banks. As Lt. Gen. Hunter 

Members of the 77th Division viewing the Argonne Forest 

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 14 ••••

Liggett, commander of the U.S. I Army Corps, mused, “The region 

was a natural fortress beside which the Virginia Wilderness in 

which Grant and Lee fought was a park.”

To this “natural fortress,” the Germans added their own 

skills at defense to present the Americans with a formidable set 

of obstacles to overcome. Within the sector, the Germans had 

constructed four major defensive belts arrayed over a depth of 

fifteen to twenty-four kilometers. Most of their engineering efforts 

had gone into strengthening the third position, composed of two 

lateral sections of the Hindenburg Line, the Brunhild Stellung and 

the Kriemhilde Stellung. In the area of the main American advance, 

the line ran from Grandpré on the west across the heights of Côte 

Dame Marie, Romagne, and Cunel, to Brieulles on the Meuse. It 

consisted of warrens of concrete-reinforced shelters and machine 

gun nests, earthen strong points, and support and communications 

trenches. These defensive positions made adroit use of terrain and 

barbed-wire belts to canalize attackers into a web of interlocking 

machine gun fields of fire and preplanned artillery targets. The 

other belts in the sector followed a similar design but made less 

use of hardened fortifications (Map 2).

The German high command had split the defense of the 

Meuse-Argonne region between the Third Army under General 

Karl von Einem and the Fifth Army under General Georg von der 

Marwitz. Each reported to different army group commanders, 

which would hamper German unity of command and effort in the 

opening days of the American offensive. The German Third Army

was responsible for the Argonne Forest and the area running west 

into the French Fourth Army’s sector, while the German Fifth 

Army’s area of operation extended from the Aire Valley to east 

of St.  Mihiel. The Third Army’s Group Aisne placed the 76th 

Reserve Division on the extreme left of the American sector, while 

the Group Argonne had the 2d Landwehr Division and the 1st 

Guards Division in line. The corps was responsible for the defense 

of the Argonne Forest and the area around Varennes. Although 

the Landwehr units had been stripped of most of their youngest 

troops to fill the ranks of the assault divisions for Ludendorff’s 

Spring Offensives, they had been stationed in the Argonne since 

September 1914 and early 1915 and were well acquainted with 

the terrain that they would defend. The 1st Guards Division, 

meanwhile, was an elite unit, but it had been worn down by four 

years of fighting and by being actively engaged in operations since 

March 1918.
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The Fifth Army’s Group Meuse West placed the 117th Division

and the 7th Reserve Division in the line facing the Americans. 

The AEF rated both of these as second-class divisions, and the 

117th was still recovering from the heavy losses it had suffered 

at the Battle of Amiens in early August. When it became clear to 

the German high command that a major Franco-American attack 

was looming in the Argonne region, it sent two more divisions, the 

5th Guards and the 5th Bavarian Reserve, to reinforce the sector. 

The 5th Guards was an excellent but battered unit that had seen 

action against the American 2d Division north of Château-Thierry 

in June. The 5th Bavarian Reserve Division had been spared 

much of the fighting in 1918, but the AEF still considered it to be 

only a second-class unit.

Although all of the German divisions that the U.S. First Army 

would face in the opening days of the Meuse-Argonne were 

understrength, tattered, and tired, their core of experienced 

veterans and leaders intended to make the Americans pay heavily 

for the ground that the Kaiser’s army defended. They also had 

a massive array of firepower. When the German 123d Infantry 

Division entered the Meuse-Argonne sector at Cunel on 11 October 

1918, it had been hammered by fighting the Americans at St. Mihiel 

and was down to only 89 officers and 1,705 men. However, the 

division could still field 198 heavy and light machine guns—one 

gun for every nine soldiers. The German defenders of the MeuseArgonne were likewise well provided with artillery, leading one 

doughboy to bitterly note that it seemed as if “every goddamn 

German there who didn’t have a machine gun had a cannon.” Given 

the daunting terrain and determined enemy in the Meuse-Argonne, 

the doughboys would face a rough fight.

The First Army Plans the Campaign

Pershing’s insistence on conducting the St. Mihiel Offensive 

while preparing for the Meuse-Argonne Campaign gave the AEF and 

the First Army’s staff only twenty-three days to plan and organize 

the largest military operation in American history. The AEF was 

fortunate to draw on the talents of Brig. Gen. Fox Conner, Col. Walter 

S. Grant, and Lt. Col. George C. Marshall for this monumental task. 

The most important challenge was moving and staging the massive 

number of troops required for the operation and for relieving the 

French forces operating in the sector (Map 3). The relief in place 

of the French Second Army by the U.S. First Army would be a 
•••• 17 ••••

complex ballet that would move 220,000 soldiers out of the front 

while simultaneously deploying over 600,000 soldiers and 3,823 

artillery pieces to the sector. To further complicate matters, some 

units earmarked for the start of the Argonne drive were already 

committed to the St. Mihiel operation and had to start moving out 

of the salient before that battle had concluded.

The mass armies of the First World War required extensive 

logistical support to operate in the field, especially when 

conducting major offensives. The size of the AEF’s logistics 

command, the Services of Supply (SOS), dwarfed all previous 

American military logistics efforts. By the Armistice, the SOS 

contained 546,596 soldiers, more men than were in the combined 

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MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

ORDER OF BAT TLE

26 September 1918

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armies of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee in 1864. Despite 

the phenomenal growth of the SOS, the Supreme War Council’s 

decision to give priority to shipping infantry and machine gun 

units to France in the spring of 1918 meant that the SOS was still 

short of the men and special units it needed to properly execute 

its missions. The AEF’s logisticians persevered against great odds 

to establish nineteen railheads; thirty-four evacuation hospitals; 

and fifty-six ordnance, quartermaster, ammunition, petroleum, 

gas warfare, and engineer depots to supply the Meuse-Argonne 

drive. In the seventeen days before the offensive began, the SOS 

also pre-positioned 40,000 tons of shells to support the first five 

days of artillery fire.

The First Army’s operational plan was ambitious. Pershing 

envisioned that the American offensive would occur in four 

phases (Map 4). In the first phase, three American corps would 

attack on a thirty-kilometer front stretching from the Argonne 

Forest to the Meuse River. On the first day of the battle, 26 

September, these corps would drive sixteen kilometers through 

the first three German defensive belts. After breaking through 

the enemy’s main defenses, the Americans would reconnect 

with the other arm of the Franco-American offensive, the 

French Fourth Army, north of the Argonne Forest at Grandpré. 

Pershing’s decision to devote most of his veteran divisions to the 

St. Mihiel Offensive meant that five of the nine divisions slated 

for the Meuse-Argonne’s initial assault had little to no previous 

exposure to combat. Right from the outset, Pershing expected 

a great deal from his inexperienced soldiers. 

The First Army anticipated that the second phase of the 

operation would begin on 27 September with another sixteenkilometer drive to push the Germans back beyond the line of 

Stenay to Le Chesne. In the third phase, the French XVII Corps, 

under American command, would attack east of the Meuse River 

to clear the Heights of the Meuse and protect the right flank of the 

First Army’s drive north. The last phase of the operation would 

carry the combined Franco-American attack to the rail heads of 

Sedan and Mézières.

During the first phase, General Liggett’s I Corps would attack 

down the Aire Valley on the army’s left flank. Working with units 

from the French Fourth Army, the I Corps would clear the Argonne 

Forest. In the center, Maj. Gen. George H. Cameron’s V Corps would 

seize Montfaucon and the other heights of the Barrois Plateau. On 

the right, Maj. Gen. Robert L. Bullard would push the III Corps 
X X

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Vienne-

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Varennes

Cunel

Grandpré

Beaumont

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Dun-sur-Meuse

Brieulles-

 sur-Meuse

Rémonville

Fléville

Apremont

 Sivrysur-Meuse

VERDUN

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

PLAN OF AT TACK

26 September 1918

0 100 200 300 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Axis of Main AttackAxis of Secondary AttackFront Line, Date

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Map 4
•••• 20 ••••

through the valley of the Meuse and rout the Germans from their 

sector up to the town of Brieulles-sur-Meuse.

In carrying out this phase, the V Corps faced the most difficult 

tactical challenges. The German defenses on Montfaucon loomed 

above the corps’ front and had withstood several French attacks 

in 1914 and 1915. To make matters worse, Cameron would have 

to rely on three green units, the 91st, 37th, and 79th Divisions, 

to storm the high ground in his sector. The First Army planners 

recognized the V  Corps’ dilemma and gambled that the rapid 

advance of the I and III Corps on Cameron’s flanks would turn 

the Germans out of their defenses on the Barrois Plateau and thus 

aid the V Corps’ advance.

To help its corps accomplish their missions, the First Army 

dedicated 419 tanks to support the 26 September attacks. Lt. Col. 

George S. Patton Jr.’s 1st U.S. Tank Brigade, with 127 Americancrewed Renault FT light tanks reinforced with twenty-eight 

French-crewed Schneider tanks, was directed to support the 

35th Division in the I Corps’ sector. The First Army also assigned 

250 French-crewed tanks to the 3d U.S. Tank Brigade to assist 

A procession of tanks going into action (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 21 ••••

the V  Corps. General Cameron attached a French regiment of 

light tanks and two groups of St. Chamond medium tanks to the 

37th and 79th Divisions and assigned another French light tank 

regiment with two groups of St. Chamonds to assist the advance 

of the 91st Division.

The First Army planned to ease the way for the doughboys by 

using the fledgling U.S. Army Air Service to shape and support 

the assault. It had 840 aircraft and 13 observation balloons at its 

disposal, giving the Americans a three-to-one advantage in the air. 

Brig. Gen. William L. “Billy” Mitchell, the planner and orchestrator 

of the air offensive, sought to use this advantage to gain and 

maintain American air superiority over the front throughout the 

campaign. Mitchell’s fighter squadrons were to ensure that the 

Americans had unhindered aerial reconnaissance and artillery 

spotting while denying the same capabilities to the Germans. 

American bomber squadrons would attack German supply dumps 

and command posts and seek to interdict the flow of supplies 

and reinforcements into the battle area by striking convoys, road 

intersections, and rail stations in the enemy’s rear area.

The First Army’s planners also staked much on the Americans’ 

ability to achieve operational surprise and to maintain the speed 

of the initial assaults to seize the initiative and keep the Germans 

off-balance. American intelligence officers estimated that once the 

First Army’s attack started, the Germans would be able to rush 

four divisions to the threatened sector on the first day, two more 

on the second, and as many as nine by the third. If the Americans 

could sustain their momentum, these enemy reinforcements would 

not be able to form a cohesive defense. Furthermore, Pershing 

hoped to achieve surprise by conducting most of the unit moves 

into the Meuse-Argonne under the cover of darkness. The First 

Army’s units east of the Meuse River, the French XVII  Corps, 

French II Colonial Corps, and the U.S. IV Corps would carry out 

raids and artillery strikes in the days leading up to H-hour to draw 

the enemy’s attention away from the area of the main attack. To aid 

in this deception, the First Army detached 16 tanks from Patton’s 

tank brigade to conduct two demonstrations and feints east of 

the old St. Mihiel battlefield at Pont-à-Mousson. The First Army’s 

fire support plan also was designed to deceive the Germans. Six 

hours before the attack, the corps east of the Meuse would begin 

intensive bombardments of the enemy positions with the intent of 

diverting the Germans’ attention, and their reserves, away from 

the area of the First Army’s attack.
•••• 22 ••••

Unfortunately, the First Army’s deception plan was only 

partly successful. Although the Germans did focus on French 

operations to the west of the Argonne and on American activities 

around St.  Mihiel, the Americans could not hide their massive 

concentration in the Meuse-Argonne. By 25 September, the 

Germans had divined that a major American offensive was in the 

offing and were moving reserve divisions to the Argonne region.

Operations

Initial Phase of the Battle: 26 September–1 October 1918

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive began at 0230 on 26 September 

1918 when the 2,711 artillery guns supporting the attack between 

the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River began three hours of 

preparatory fires. The First Army’s fire plan was to pave the way 

for the infantry by obliterating barbed-wire obstacles, suppressing 

artillery batteries, crushing field fortifications, and killing or 

neutralizing the defenders. The bombardment was impressive. 

Future U.S. president Capt. Harry S. Truman, an artillery battery 

commander in the 35th Division, admitted to being awed by 

the sight of the barrage, noting that, “the sky was red from one 

end to the other from the artillery flashes.” The continual firing 

was so intense that Truman and his artillerymen were rendered 

temporarily “deaf as a post from the noise.”

At H-hour, 0530, the infantry assault began. The day’s fighting 

was a mixed bag for the First Army. Some divisions performed 

well in battle, while others brought to light the many shortcomings 

in the U.S. Army’s mobilization and training. The First Army 

experienced its greatest success on the first day of the battle in 

the III Corps’ sector. Here, the artillery preparation disrupted the 

German defense. That morning, fog blanketed the front. Although 

the poor visibility hindered the Americans’ command and control, 

it also provided vital concealment from the German defenders as 

doughboys slogged across the marshlands of the Meuse valley to 

reach their objectives. Despite the artillery support, the infantry 

still had to overcome the surviving enemy machine gun nests in 

the Bois de Forges, Bois Jure, and Septsarges.

On the army’s right, Maj. Gen. John L. Hines’ veteran 4th 

Division made the III Corps’ greatest gains of the day, pushing eight 

kilometers into the German defenses before halting on the corps’ 
•••• 23 ••••

objective line. The division’s western brigade even advanced nearly 

a mile past Montfaucon and was in a position to envelop the German 

defenses holding up the V Corps by sweeping into Nantillois. At 

approximately 1400, Hines requested permission from the III Corps 

headquarters to cross into the 79th Division’s sector and attack 

the vulnerable flanks of the German 117th Infantry Division. But 

it was here that the friction of war intervened. To better manage 

the advance of its green units, the First Army attempted to impose 

strict control over the operation. According to the army’s orders, 

once its corps reached their intermediate objective phase lines, 

they were to obtain permission from First Army headquarters 

before moving any farther. Furthermore, the army directed that 

the corps boundaries should not be crossed. (See Map 5.)

Soldiers relaxing in a captured German trench (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 24 ••••

In response to Hines’ request to cross the corps boundary, at 

approximately 1530 the III Corps Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Alfred 

W. Bjornstad, directed the 4th Division to “send out strong patrols 

to the west to seize strong points” in the 79th Division’s sector. 

This push might force the Germans to abandon the defenses that 

were holding up the 79th Division’s advance. By 2000, Hines moved 

his 8th Infantry Brigade into position to launch an attack to the 

west early on the morning of 27 September. Unfortunately, as 

streams of often incomplete or inaccurate reports from the front 

buffeted headquarters at all levels, confusion and uncertainty 

hobbled commanders across the sector. Shortly after midnight 

on 27 September, the III Corps ordered Hines to cancel the 8th 

Brigade’s attack, and the opportunity to outflank the German 

defenses quickly passed.

The V Corps needed all of the help that it could get. All three 

of its assault divisions experienced their first taste of battle on 

26 September. The 79th Division faced the difficult task of taking 

Montfaucon. The approach to the heights was covered with thick 

undergrowth, fallen trees, and shell holes from the previous years 

of fighting in the sector. The Germans had added to these obstacles 

by emplacing barbed wire, pillboxes, and dugouts on the heights. 

The 79th Division would have to carry these defenses in a frontal 

attack. This was much to expect from a unit that had arrived in 

France only in late July 1918. The 79th had been rushed by the 

AEF General Headquarters (GHQ) through less than a month of 

unit training and only ten days of service in the trenches of the 

quiet Avocourt sector before the V Corps committed the division 

to the initial assault in the Meuse-Argonne. Soon after the start 

of the operation, the green unit lost touch with its rolling barrage 

while picking its way through wooded slopes, and its regiments 

were caught in the open when the early morning fog lifted. A storm 

of German fire soon assailed the 79th Division’s men. One of the 

division’s officers, Maj. Charles A. DuPuy, discovered that his 

efforts to outflank the German positions only led his doughboys 

into the path of another well-concealed enemy machine gun. He 

confessed that “it was necessary a great many times to simply 

charge a gun from the front and both flanks, and take it regardless 

of our losses, which, per gun captured, averaged ten to twenty 

men.” Early on, the shell holes, bogs, and woods of the sector had 

stalled the French tanks intended to support the infantry. Without 

effective artillery or tank support, the 79th Division’s strength 

ebbed over the course of the day.
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H I N D E N B U R G L I N E

Aisne R

Aire R Meuse R Bois de Montfaucon Bois de Montrebeau Bois de Forges

Bois

Jure

Bois de

Septsarges

Bois du

Fays

Bois des

Ogons

Bois

de

Cheppy

Le Chêne

Tondu

Butte du

Vauquois

Côte de Châtillon

Côte

Dame Marie

Borne de Cornouiller

Hill 370

Hill 228

to Verdun

Charlevaux Mill

Molleville Farm

La Tuilerie Farm

Nantillois

Montfaucon

Septsarges Épinonville

Exermont

Binarville

Ivoiry

Cheppy

Charpentry

Varennes

Cunel

Grandpré

Beaumont

Romagne-sousMontfaucon

Fléville

Sommerance

Cornay

Châtel-Chéhéry

Consenvoye

Dun-sur-Meuse

Brieulles- sur-Meuse

Cléry-le-Petit

Haumont-près-Samogneux

Sivry-sur-Meuse

Flabas

Crépion

St. Georges Landres-

 et-St. Georges

Bantheville

Champigneulle

Andevanne

Rémonville

Imécourt

Villers-devant-Dun

Montzéville

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

FIRST PHASE

 26 September–1 October 1918

0 100 200 300 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Note: Ground gained shown by unit designation boxes and colored areas

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Map 5
•••• 26 ••••

The corps’ other two divisions made better progress. The 

37th Division managed to clear the Bois de Montfaucon and 

pushed to the southern outskirts of Ivoiry and the western slope 

of Montfaucon itself by the afternoon, but exhaustion and the 

disorder of battle prevented it from offering assistance to the 

beleaguered 79th Division. In the west of the V Corps sector, the 

91st Division advanced eight kilometers, fought through the Bois 

de Cheppy, and briefly took Épinonville before being pushed back 

by enemy counterattacks. Despite these accomplishments, by 

nightfall Montfaucon remained in German hands, and the V Corps 

was far short of its objectives for the day.

In the First Army’s left sector, the I Corps also experienced 

a day of mixed success. On the corps’ eastern flank, the 35th 

Division captured Cheppy and the formidable mine-cratered Butte 

du Vauquois after fierce fighting. Throughout the day, tanks from 

Patton’s brigade aided the division’s attacks. Patton himself was 

wounded during the action around Cheppy while organizing an 

attack on a group of German machine gun nests. After taking 

Cheppy and Vauquois, the 35th Division pushed on to the southern 

environs of Charpentry before nightfall; heavy casualties, and 

leadership problems halted its advance. Five days before the 

battle, the division commander, Maj. Gen. Peter E. Traub, had 

relieved all of his infantry regimental and brigade commanders. 

The replacements were virtually unknown to their soldiers and 

officers when the battle began. To make matters worse, in the 

midst of the first day’s fighting, two regimental commanders were 

incapacitated during the battle. Col. Clad Hamilton of the 137th 

Infantry was found immobile in a shell hole while Col. Henry 

Howland of the 138th—who had been appointed to command the 

regiment only the day before—was injured by German shellfire 

and spent much of the morning sheltering in a crater before being 

evacuated. Both units were essentially without direction for much 

of the day. The desperate fighting had undermined the division’s 

effectiveness, and ultimately its morale.

On the corps’ left flank, the 77th Division slowly and painfully 

fought its way through the labyrinth of ravines, tangled vegetation, 

and German defenses of the Argonne Forest. By nightfall, the 

division had progressed less than two kilometers, lagging far 

behind the other units in the corps, and it had lost contact with 

the French Fourth Army to the west. Liggett had planned that the 

advance in the corps’ center of the veteran 28th Division down 

the Aire Valley would force the Germans from their defenses 
•••• 27 ••••

in the Argonne and allow the 77th Division to quickly clear the 

forest. However, while the 28th Division overran Varennes, it faced 

stiffening enemy resistance north and west of the town as the day 

progressed. German artillery fire from positions hidden in the hills 

and draws of the Argonne slowed the division’s advance to a crawl 

and dashed Liggett’s hope for a rapid maneuver down the valley.

Just west of the I Corps boundary in the French Fourth Army 

sector, the U.S. 92d Division’s 368th Infantry was also fighting to 

break the German hold on the Argonne. This regiment, like the 

rest of the division, was composed of African American enlisted 

men and junior officers, and white field-grade and general officers. 

Liggett had detached the regiment to the French to plug a gap in the 

Franco-American line and to maintain liaison between his forces 

and those of the French Fourth Army. The remainder of the 92d 

Division served as the I Corps reserve. Although far removed from 

the regiment, the 92d Division still had to provide logistical support 

to the unit while it was under French command. The division also 

suffered from Army policies and prejudices that had hampered its 

effectiveness from the outset. Unlike other American divisions, 

the 92d’s units had been spread across several camps while it 

was undergoing mobilization and training in the United States. 

Soldiers from the 92d Division moving to the front 

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 28 ••••

This hindered instruction and the development of unit cohesion 

while the division was in its formative stages. Furthermore, the 

command’s white senior officers often held the racial prejudices of 

Jim Crow–era America, with obvious negative effects on morale.

The French ordered the 368th Infantry to maintain contact 

with the U.S. 77th Division and to seize Binarville as part of the 

French 1st Dismounted Cavalry Division. Much of the zone of the 

regiment’s attack lay within the Argonne Forest. As with the 77th 

Division, the 368th Infantry faced a determined enemy entrenched 

in difficult terrain. Unlike the 77th Division, however, the 368th 

Infantry’s operation in the Argonne was the unit’s first true 

exposure to combat. During its four-day struggle in the Argonne, 

the regiment’s logistics and command and control structure broke 

down under the strain of combat and the unit became ineffective 

in the fight. The French returned control of the regiment back to 

the U.S. First Army on 30 September. Although the four African 

American infantry regiments (the 369th, 370th, 371st, and 372d) of 

the U.S. 93d Division fought with distinction with the French Army 

throughout the war, the AEF leadership used the perceived failure 

of the 368th Infantry as an excuse to keep the 92d Division out of 

the fighting for the remainder of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign.

At the end of the first day, Pershing knew that the American 

attack had fallen well short of his expectations. The First Army’s 

staff was still pondering how to control and support a huge force 

engaged in a complex operation. At this point, the frustrated 

Pershing could do little more than to exhort his corps and division 

commanders to redouble their efforts in the coming days to get 

the operation back on track. To drive home the need to press 

the attack, he threatened his subordinates with relief if they 

failed to accomplish their tasks or did not show the degree of 

aggressiveness he expected.

As the Americans prepared to renew the offensive on 27 

September, the Germans moved to prop up their wavering 

defenses. The 1st Guards Division had taken a beating on the first 

day of the battle, and Einem had been forced to commit his reserve, 

the 5th Guards Division, to restore the front of Group Argonne. 

Further to the east, Marwitz likewise had found it necessary to 

push the 5th Bavarian Reserve Division forward to stabilize the 

front of the battered 117th and 7th Reserve Divisions. Although 

the Germans’ situation was dire, they had been able to prevent the 

Americans from reaching their objectives and had bought enough 

time to rush reinforcements into the beleaguered sector. By the 
•••• 29 ••••

morning of 27 September, three full enemy divisions and part of 

a fourth were on their way to the Meuse-Argonne front.

As the Americans and Germans adjusted their forces, flaws in 

the First Army’s original plan continued to hinder its operations 

from 27 to 30 September. Repeating German General Erich von 

Falkenhayn’s mistake during the opening phase of the battle 

of Verdun, Pershing had not seen the necessity of clearing the 

Heights of the Meuse of enemy artillery. Instead, the First Army 

commander expected that counterbattery fire from the French 

XVII Corps would neutralize the German guns on the high ground 

east of the river. During the first two weeks of the offensive, the 

XVII Corps failed to accomplish this mission, and, in the absence 

of any threat of a ground attack the German artillery on the heights 

pounded both the III and V  Corps sectors, helping to stall the 

American advance. The failed assumption that the French Fourth 

Army and the U.S. I Corps would unhinge the German defenses 

in the Argonne also hobbled the American drive. The Germans 

massed thirteen artillery batteries in the hills of the Argonne, and 

fire from those guns constantly interdicted the American advance 

through the Aire Valley.

Ruins of Montfaucon with destroyed abbey in background 

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 30 ••••

In the face of stiffening enemy resistance, the First Army 

continued to grope forward in the waning days of September 

in an attempt to break through the German lines and reach its 

initial objectives. The 79th Division finally captured Montfaucon, 

and the 35th Division took Charpentry and briefly held Exermont 

before a strong German counterattack pushed it back to the Bois 

de Montrebeau. Unfortunately, both divisions suffered heavy 

casualties in the first three days of the offensive and lost much of 

their cohesion and combat effectiveness in the process. Although 

the I Corps continued to make a slow and costly advance through 

the Aire Valley and the Argonne, the V Corps made little headway 

against the German defenses on the Barrois Plateau. In the east, 

the missed opportunities of the first day of the battle now came 

back to haunt the III Corps. The Germans had taken advantage 

of the pause in the III Corps’ advance to restore their defenses 

and reinforce their wavering units. When the American attack 

resumed, the commander of the 80th Division’s 320th Infantry 

observed, “The enemy intrenchments [sic] afforded every 

advantage in position, concealment and for enfilade fire. Time 

and again rushes were made from the front and flank against 

the nests only to be met by a curtain of lead that was absolutely 

impassable. . . . Here lives were needlessly lost in trying to rush 

through this curtain of lead.” As the III Corps’ divisions battered 

their way through the Bois des Ogons and the Bois du Fays, the 

fighting, as in the other parts of the First Army’s front, assumed 

a seesaw nature as American advances ran into heavy artillery 

fire and German counterattacks.

Across the front, the American infantry routinely did not receive 

adequate support from artillery and tanks. The artillerymen had 

difficulty providing responsive fires given the limitations of the 

era’s tactical communications and the fluid and confused nature 

of the fighting. In the case of the tanks, the absence of support 

was the result of their own vulnerabilities. By the end of the first 

day’s fighting, the 1st Tank Brigade lost over a third of its strength 

to enemy action and mechanical breakdowns. The French tankers 

suffered similar losses in the V Corps sector.

All was also not well in the First Army’s rear area. The 

Meuse-Argonne region had an underdeveloped road network, and 

after four years of fighting and constant traffic the few existing 

roads were cratered and ill-maintained. Heavy rains throughout 

September and October exacerbated the problem. Each corps 

had only one major road artery in its sector to move and sustain 
•••• 31 ••••

its massive formations. Poor road discipline, few military police 

units, and inadequate staff work added to the problem, resulting 

in monumental traffic jams behind the front that nearly brought 

the First Army’s logistics operations to a standstill. As a result, 

the frontline soldiers often complained of being short of rations 

and water, and the wounded faced long and torturous waits 

before receiving medical attention. American medical personnel 

estimated that it took ten to twelve hours for the wounded to 

arrive at the field hospitals. The 79th Division’s inspector general 

reported that it was taking his unit’s ambulances fifteen hours to 

make the five-kilometer trip to the division field hospitals, which 

resulted in “hundreds” of unnecessary deaths.

Reorganizing While in Contact: 1–4 October 1918

With the advance stalled and the First Army’s rear area in 

disarray, by the end of September it had become clear to Pershing 

that he must make adjustments in his organization to reinvigorate 

the First Army’s offensive. His first act was to replace many of his 

corps’ tattered and combat-ineffective divisions with the veteran 

units that had redeployed and recuperated from the St.  Mihiel 

drive. The V Corps underwent a short tactical pause while all three 

of its attack divisions were relieved by the 3d and 32d Divisions. 

In the I Corps, the 1st Division replaced the 35th Division. Only 

the III Corps’ organization remained unchanged.

Pershing planned to resume a general attack across the First 

Army’s front on 4 October. While the reorganization of the army 

and the planning for the 4 October advance were underway, the 

I and III Corps continued to launch attacks within their sectors. 

The Germans, however, also had used the lull in the fighting to 

replace their worn divisions and send reinforcements to the 

Meuse-Argonne. Even though they were under attack along 

virtually the entire Western Front, by 4 October the better part 

of twelve German divisions would confront the Americans. In 

the face of this hardening resistance, the I and III Corps attacks 

made little headway.

This slow advance was doubly the case with the 77th Division 

as it continued to grind its way through the Argonne. During the 

fighting on 2 October, Maj. Charles W. Whittlesey’s 1st Battalion, 

308th Infantry; companies from the 2d Battalion; and elements of 

the 307th Infantry and the 306th Machine Gun Battalion found a 

seam in the enemy lines and pushed deep into the enemy defenses 
•••• 32 ••••

toward Charlevaux Mill. Whittlesey had followed orders from his 

regimental commander, Col. Cromwell Stacey, to press the attack 

with vigor and not to worry about his flanks. Unfortunately, 

the units on his battalion’s flanks had not kept pace with his 

advance, nor had other elements of the division followed up 

behind Whittlesey’s drive. After Whittlesey halted his attack 

on the evening of 2 October, the Germans infiltrated around his 

men and cut them off from the rest of the 77th Division. By the 

morning, Whittlesey and roughly 550 doughboys were isolated in 

a small pocket surrounded by the enemy. The men of what would 

come to be known as the “Lost Battalion” dug in on a hillside to 

hold their ground and wait for relief.

The Attack Resumes: 4–12 October 1918

In the waning days of September, Pershing was under immense 

pressure from Foch to show more results in the Meuse-Argonne. 

After the impenetrable traffic jams in the First Army’s rear area 

prevented him from visiting the American front, French premier 

Georges Clemenceau concluded that Pershing was not up to the 

challenge of commanding an army. He pressed Foch to relieve 

the American commander in chief and even threatened to write 

to President Wilson to request a new leader for the AEF. Although 

Foch managed to dissuade Clemenceau from taking such a drastic 

step, he also held reservations about Pershing’s ability to manage 

such a massive undertaking. On 30 September, he proposed to 

Pershing that the U.S. I Corps be placed under French command 

for clearing the Argonne region. Pershing, unsurprisingly, rejected 

the scheme out of hand, but he also understood Foch’s warning. 

The somewhat rested First Army would redouble its efforts in the 

Meuse-Argonne with a broad frontal attack beginning at 0530 on 

4 October with the goal of cracking the Hindenburg Line.

The First Army’s plan for the resumed attack was clear-cut 

and uncomplicated. Clearing the hills of the Barrois Plateau was 

the key to breaking through the main German defense line. The 

V Corps again received the most difficult mission. The corps was 

to take the Romagne Heights and the high ground in the Bois du 

Moncy and Bois du Romagne. The I and III Corps would assist 

the V Corps in its endeavors by threatening the enemy’s flanks 

on the plateau while also clearing the enemy from their own 

sectors. The I Corps would continue to push through the Argonne 

and the Aire Valley to seize the hills in the vicinity of Cornay, 
•••• 33 ••••

Châtel-Chéhéry, and Exermont; clear the forest of troublesome 

enemy artillery; and establish unbroken liaison with the French 

Fourth Army. By taking the hills north of Exermont, the I Corps 

would weaken the German defenses that the V Corps faced on 

the Romagne Heights. At the same time, the III Corps was to 

capture the heights northwest of Cunel and move on to assist the 

V Corps in seizing the hills north of Romagne. Pershing hoped 

that the infusion of hardened and proven units, such as the 1st 

and 3d Divisions, would provide the impetus that the First Army 

needed to jump start the offensive.

What followed were two of the bloodiest weeks in American 

history (Map 6). Faced with a nearly unbroken line of German 

defenses strengthened by the arrival of fresh reinforcements, 

the American assault degenerated into a series of costly frontal 

attacks. The Germans contested every American advance and 

often deprived the doughboys of their hard-won gains with 

counterattacks that were well supported by artillery. American 

drives in the I and III Corps sectors continued to be hamstrung 

by German artillery fire from the Argonne and the Heights of the 

Meuse. Bullard later described the struggle as “an exhausting, 

heart-breaking, discouraging, ever-continuous operation that 

lasted all the time.” Losses in the back-and-forth fighting were 

heavy. In the first week of October, the First Army suffered 6,589 

battlefield deaths. By the end of the second week of October, over 

12,600 Americans had been killed since the offensive began. These 

losses were greater than those suffered by both Grant’s and Lee’s 

armies in the first two months of the Overland Campaign in 1864, 

and were nearly double the nation’s combined losses in Iraq and 

Afghanistan from 2001 to 2017.

Although the Germans stymied the III and V Corps’ attacks by 

tenaciously clinging to the Romagne and Cunel heights, the I Corps 

made steady if painful progress in its sector. In savage fighting 

from 4 to 7 October, the 28th Division took the high ground of Le 

Chêne Tondu and Châtel-Chéhéry. During the same period, the 

fresh 1st Division drove five kilometers into the German defenses 

and captured Exermont. Unfortunately, the 77th Division remained 

stalled in the machine-gun-swept thickets of the Argonne Forest. 

The success of the 1st Division’s attacks presented Liggett 

with an opportunity to change the fortunes of the I Corps and 

the First Army. The division had driven far enough down the 

Aire Valley to carve out sufficient maneuver space for Liggett to 

wedge the corps’ reserve, the 82d Division, into a position south 
X X

4

X X

1

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3

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80

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33

X X

32

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82

X X

77

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XVII Fr XXXX

FIRST XXXX

FOURTH Fr

1 OCT

1–4 OCT

1 A( M. .)

7–8

8 OCT

O8 CT

7 OCT

8 OCT

1 OCT

7

2–7 OCT

12 OCT

12 OCT

XXX

XXX

XXX

XXXX

XXXX

H I N D E N B U R G L I N E

Ai ns e R

Aire R

Aire R

Meuse R

Bois du Romagne

Bois du Moncy

Bois de

Montfaucon

Le Chêne

Tondu

Côte de Châtillon

Côte Dame

 Marie

Borne de

Cornouiller

Hill 228

Charlevaux Mill

La Tuilerie Farm

Montfaucon

Septsarges Épinonville

Exermont

Binarville

Ivoiry

Cheppy

Charpentry

Cunel

Grandpré

RomagnesousMontfaucon

Fléville

Sommerance

Cornay

ChâtelChéhéry

Consenvoye

Dun-sur-Meuse

Brieulles-sur-Meuse

Cléry-le-Petit

Sasseysur-Meuse

Sivry-sur-Meuse

St. Georges Landres-

 et-St. Georges

Bantheville

Thénorgues

Champigneulle

Andevanne

Rémonville

Imécourt

Briquenay

Villers-devant-Dun

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

SECOND PHASE

1–12 October 1918

0 100 200 300 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Note: Ground gained shown by unit designation boxes and colored areas

Axis of Main AttackAxis of Secondary AttackFront Line, Date

0

0 1

Miles 4 3 2 1

2 3 4 Kilometers

Map 6
•••• 35 ••••

of Fléville and north of the 28th Division’s positions at ChâtelChéhéry. Liggett’s plan was to use the 82d Division to drive due 

west into the northeastern edge of the Argonne Forest at Cornay 

and Hill 223. At the same time, the 28th Division would shift the 

direction of its attack from the north to the west to seize Hill 244. 

Liggett’s goal was to threaten simultaneously the eastern flank 

and the rear of the main German defenses in the Argonne. If the 

plan succeeded, the Germans would be forced to abandon the 

forest or face the eventual encirclement and destruction of Group 

Argonne. In either case, the I Corps attack would relieve enemy 

pressure on the 77th Division, reestablish an unbroken line with 

the French Fourth Army, and aid in the relief of the Lost Battalion. 

However, the plan was not without its risks, as the right flank of the 

82d Division would be exposed to enemy fire and counterattacks 

throughout the operation.

The I Corps gave the 82d Division less than a day to plan the 

assault and move the division’s roughly 28,000 soldiers nearly 

thirteen kilometers through the congested roads that led from 

its assembly areas to its attack positions. (See Map 7.) Although 

the unit had to make the difficult move at night during a steady 

rain, the 82d was in position to launch the attack at the designated 

time of 0500 on 7 October. Both the 82d and the 28th Divisions 

faced the daunting task of assaulting across the open expanse 

of the Aire Valley to capture high ground defended by a resolute, 

well-entrenched enemy. The assault units lost hundreds of men as 

they slogged across the bottomlands to reach the heights of the 

Argonne, but by the end of the day the 28th Division had claimed 

Hill 244 and the 82d had taken Hill 223.

In the midst of this terrible contest, a smaller drama played 

out in the little pocket defended by the Lost Battalion. For nearly 

five days, Whittlesey’s encircled men had endured both American 

and German artillery fire and fought off a series of enemy attacks. 

Fortunately, Liggett’s assault into the German flank had the 

intended effect of unhinging the enemy’s position in the Argonne. 

For the Lost Battalion, the Germans withdrew just in the nick 

of time: when the enemy abandoned their siege of Whittlesey’s 

position on the afternoon of 7 October, 107 of the 550 men in the 

pocket had been killed and another 249 were wounded or missing 

in action. For their courage and leadership during the battle, 

Major Whittlesey, Capt. George G. McMurtry, and Capt. Nelson 

M. Holderman were awarded the Medal of Honor. Two American 

aviators, 1st Lt. Harold E. Goettler and 2d Lt. Erwin R. Bleckley, 
•••• 36 ••••

also received posthumous Medals of Honor after being shot down 

on 6 October while attempting to resupply the pocket from the air.

The relief of the Lost Battalion was a welcome development, 

but the I Corps’ attack had not yet run its course. By nightfall on 

7 October, the 82d Division still had not taken Cornay or cut the 

light rail line that supplied the Germans in the southern portion 

of the Argonne. Although the division fought off repeated German 

attempts to recapture Hill 223, the enemy was still able to use 

heavy machine gun and artillery fires to pin down the Americans 

on the hill and in the lowlands east of Cornay.

When the 82d resumed the attack on the morning of 8 October, 

the soldiers were met with a torrent of fire. To eliminate some of 

the machine gun nests holding up his advance, the commander of 

Company G, 2d Battalion, 328th Infantry, Capt. Edward C. B. Danforth 

maneuvered to attack the German positions. In the confusion, the 

commander of Danforth’s 1st Platoon, Sgt. Harry M. Parson, lost 

contact with the company and on his own initiative ordered acting 

Sgt. Bernard Early to take a reinforced squad of three corporals and 

thirteen privates to flank the enemy machine guns. Initially, Early 

successfully surprised and captured a number of Germans, but an 

alert enemy machine gun crew spotted the Americans and opened fire. 

When the German fusillade killed one corporal and severely wounded 

Early and another corporal, the command of the small detachment 

Members of the Lost Battalion (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
X X

77

X X

28

X X

82

X X

1

XXX

I

XXXX

FOURTH Fr

1–6 OCT

8 OCT

6 OCT

7 OCT

9 OC T

7 OC

8 OCT T

LOST BAT TALION

2–7 OCT

10–12 OCT

11–12 OCT

10–12 OCT

10 OCT

9 OCT

6–8 OCT

10

11–12

6

7–9

XXXX

XXXX

XXX

XXX

H I N D E N B U R G L I N E

Aisne R

Aire R

Aire R

F O R Ê T D ’ A

R

G

O

N

N E Le Chêne Tondu

Hill 223

Hill 180

Hill 244

Charlevaux Mill

Exermont

Binarville

Lançon

Apremont

Chevières

Grandpré

Fléville

Sommerance

Cornay

Châtel-

 Chéhéry

St. Georges

Landreset-St. Georges

Champigneulle

Imécourt

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

I CORPS FLANK AT TACK

6–12 October 1918

0 100 200 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Note: Ground gained shown by unit designation boxes and colored areas

Axis of Main Attack

Axis of Secondary Attack

Front Line, Date

York Action, 8 Oct

0

0 1

Miles 1 2

2 Kilometers

Map 7
•••• 38 ••••

fell to Cpl. Alvin C. York. Under 

intense machine gun and rifle 

fire, York ordered his surviving 

squad members to remain under 

cover while he crawled to a 

position where he could enfilade 

the German defenders. The 

Tennessee marksman managed 

to kill fifteen to twenty-five of the 

enemy facing his squad before 

leading his detachment back 

to the American lines. Along 

the way, York’s squad forced 

the surrender of additional 

enemy units and the Americans 

returned to their regiment with 

132 German prisoners. York also 

captured or destroyed thirty-five 

of the enemy machine guns that 

were holding up the advance of 

his battalion. For these actions, 

York was awarded the Medal of 

Honor and soon became the most 

famous doughboy in the AEF.

Similar acts of valor and 

perseverance by the soldiers of 

the I Corps began to pay off. Faced with the growing threat of being 

cut off by the advance of the 28th and 82d Divisions, and under 

increasing pressure from the French Fourth Army to the west, the 

Germans began to withdraw from the Argonne on the night of 8 

and 9 October. On 10 October, Liggett relieved the battered 28th 

Division and ordered the 77th and 82d to redouble their attacks. 

Liggett wanted to exploit his success in the Argonne by pressing his 

divisions to rapidly pursue the retreating Germans, but the enemy’s 

rearguard defense and his own men’s exhaustion thwarted his 

desires. Pvt. Fred Takes, an infantryman in the 82d Division’s 325th 

Infantry, recorded that his company went into the Meuse-Argonne 

Campaign with 250 men, but nine days of continuous combat had 

reduced the unit to three five-man squads. Despite these challenges, 

the I Corps continued to push back the Germans, and by 11 October, 

Liggett’s doughboys occupied a line running from Sommerance in 

the east to the southern outskirts of Grandpré in the west.

Alvin C. York in 1919 

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••
•••• 39 ••••

The Attacks East of the Meuse: 8–16 October 1918

After the III and V Corps endured weeks of heavy shelling from 

German artillery located on the Heights of the Meuse, Pershing 

ordered the French XVII Corps to launch an attack east of the 

Meuse River to clear the enemy from the hills (Map 8). Général de 

Division Henri Claudel, a decorated and respected officer with four 

years of experience battling the Germans, commanded the corps. 

Claudel committed two French divisions, the 18th and 26th, and 

two American divisions, the 29th and 33d, to the assault. Their 

mission was to attack on line at 0500 on 8 October from just west of 

Consenvoye on the left to Beaumont on the right, seize the Heights 

of the Meuse, and push the enemy back roughly eight kilometers 

to Sivry-sur-Meuse and Flabas. Facing this Franco-American 

attack were the Austrian 1st Infantry Division and the German 

15th Division. The Austrians’ morale was shaky, but shortages of 

manpower on the front had left Group Meuse East with no other 

option than to keep the unit in the line.

At first, the French XVII Corps’ attack went well. Under heavy 

enemy shellfire, the 33d Division crafted bridges across the Meuse 

and moved across the river to take Consenvoye. The division then 

pressed northeast nearly four kilometers toward the western tip of 

the Bois de Consenvoye and the Bois de Chaume. The 29th Division 

also rapidly advanced north three kilometers toward the center 

of the Bois de Consenvoye. The concerted attack by the American 

divisions all but crushed the Austrian division. The veteran 

French divisions east of the Americans moved much slower. The 

Americans would later complain that their French comrades failed 

to cover the doughboys’ flanks and left the hard fighting to U.S. 

divisions. The soldiers themselves failed to appreciate that four 

years of fighting with heavy losses had taught the French to be 

more cautious and judicious than the Americans in their attacks. 

Even so, the French 18th Division took Haumont-près-Samogneux 

and moved forward to Ormont Farm, while the French 26th 

Division gingerly advanced through the Bois des Caures.

In the afternoon of 8 October, the Allied attack began to slow 

as the troops entered the hills and woods of the Heights of the 

Meuse. The German commander rushed his only ready reserve, 

an infantry regiment reinforced with two battalions, to steady 

the wavering Austrian line with a counterattack on Hill 371. The 

Group Meuse East commander also began moving three more 

divisions toward the threatened sector of the front. After German 
•••• 40 ••••

resistance stiffened, the fighting in the Bois de Consenvoye and 

the Bois de Chaume quickly came to resemble the vicious fighting 

in the Argonne.

For six more days, the French XVII Corps battered away at the 

German defenses on the Heights of the Meuse. Gains by the 29th 

and 33d Divisions at Molleville Farm, the Bois de Consenvoye, 

X X

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80

X X

29

X X

Fr 26

X X

Fr 10 DIC

X X

Fr 18

XXX

III

XXX

XVII Fr

8 OCT 9–16 OCT 8 OCT

8 OCT

16 OCT

16 OCT

26 SEP–7 OCT

26 SEP–7 OCT

XXX

XX

XX

H I N D E N B U R G L I N E

Meuse R

Meuse R

Bois de la

Grande Montagne

Bois

de

Consenvoye

Bois

des

Caures

Bois de 

Chaume

Borne de

Cornouiller

Hill 371

Hill 228

H E I G

H

T

S

O

F

T

H

E

M

E

U

S

E

Molleville Farm

Beaumont

Consenvoye

Forges

Dannevoux

Dun-sur-Meuse

Cléry-le-Petit

Haumont-

 près-Samogneux

Sivry-sur-Meuse

Flabas

Crépion

Damvillers

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

HEIGHTS OF THE MEUSE

7–16 October 1918

0 100 200 300 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Note: Ground gained shown by unit designation boxes and colored areas

Axis of Main Attack

Axis of Secondary Attack

Front Line, Date

0

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2 3 4 Kilometers

Map 8
•••• 41 ••••

the Bois de Chaume, and the Bois de la Grande Montagne were 

met with fierce German counterattacks and heavy enemy artillery 

and gas barrages. By 16 October, both American divisions were 

exhausted and the corps’ attack ground to a halt well short of 

clearing the heights and taking Sivry-sur-Meuse. Three years 

after the war, the chief of staff of the German XVI Corps, Maj. 

Hermann von Giehrl, argued that the French XVII Corps’ attack 

“was much too slight to have any influence on the situation on the 

western bank.” Although Giehrl’s assertion had much truth to it, 

the Franco-American drive nonetheless forced the Germans to 

displace some of their batteries from the heights, redirect the fires 

of many of their remaining batteries east of the Meuse against the 

French XVII Corps, and devote more of their dwindling reserves 

to the battle.

A Change of Command for the First Army

By the middle of October, the First Army’s bloody assaults still 

had not carried the Americans to their initial first-day objectives. 

No one felt the stress of this perceived lack of progress more 

than Pershing. Not merely under immense pressure from Foch to 

show more gains in the Meuse-Argonne, Pershing also desperately 

wanted to show the world that the AEF was a competent and 

capable force that was worthy of a true world power. In what was 

perhaps his wisest decision as the AEF’s commander, he admitted 

that commanding the large and far-flung AEF while also directing 

the operations of the First Army was too much for one man.

On 12 October, Pershing ordered the reorganization of the AEF. 

He relinquished direct command of the First Army and divided 

it into two smaller armies. Pershing turned over the First Army, 

which would continue to direct operations in the Meuse-Argonne 

sector and the area of the French XVII Corps, to Hunter Liggett. 

The new Second Army, under Robert Bullard, would be responsible 

for the eastern end of the American sector from Fresnes-en-Woëvre 

to Port-sur-Seille. Pershing was now free to oversee the larger 

business of the AEF and to direct its combat operations through 

his two trusted army commanders. The elevation of Liggett and 

Bullard led to the transfer of Maj. Gen. Joseph T. Dickman to 

command the I  Corps and the promotion of General Hines to 

command the III Corps.

Pershing also used the reorganization to conduct a house 

cleaning of the AEF’s senior commanders. He believed that 
•••• 42 ••••

the V Corps’ lack of aggressiveness in the opening phase of the 

operation had contributed to the First Army’s doleful situation, 

and thus sacked General Cameron. Pershing hoped that Cameron’s 

replacement, Maj. Gen. Charles P. Summerall, would bring to the 

V Corps the same drive and tactical acumen that he had exhibited 

as the commander of the 1st Division. Cameron was not the last 

general to fall. Pershing had established a reputation for not 

suffering fools or failure lightly. As early as 28 December 1917, 

Bullard noted in his diary, “He is looking for results. . . . He will 

sacrifice any man who does not bring them.” Within four days of the 

AEF’s reorganization, Pershing removed 3d Division commander 

Maj. Gen. Beaumont B. Buck after Buck nearly battered the 

division to pieces in six days of ill-supported attacks against the 

Bois de Cunel and its adjacent heights. Similarly, he dismissed 

5th Division commander Maj. Gen. John E. McMahon, who had 

mishandled assaults on the Bois des Rappes and the Bois de la 

Pultière. On 22 October, Pershing also relieved the commander of 

the 26th Division, Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Edwards, with whom he 

had long had a contentious relationship. These removals helped 

to create a climate of fear within the AEF’s senior ranks that 

sometimes led commanders to push their attacks long after the 

hope of success had passed.

Breaking the Hindenburg Line: 14–27 October 1918

When Liggett took command, the First Army was in crisis. 

The grinding attritional struggle to clear the Argonne, capture 

the Heights of the Meuse, and break through the German 

defensive belts had cost the Americans nearly a hundred thousand 

casualties. Liggett estimated that another hundred thousand men 

were straggling behind the lines. Although some of these men 

had deliberately removed themselves from the fighting, most of 

the straggling resulted from systemic problems with the army’s 

training, mobilization, and organization. The huge 250-man 

infantry companies proved difficult for the army’s inadequately 

trained officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) to control 

in the region’s challenging terrain. The failure of the AEF’s logistics 

system all too often meant that the soldiers in combat subsisted 

on a diet of hard bread, corned beef, or canned salmon. Many 

of the soldiers who left the line did so to search for food after 

they had eaten all of even these meager rations. Adding to this 

misery, in early October the weather had turned cold and rainy, 
•••• 43 ••••

and increasing numbers of doughboys came down with influenza 

and dysentery. For example, during the month of October, the 82d 

Division’s chief surgeon reported that an average of 700 soldiers 

from his unit were being hospitalized per day due to influenza, 

diarrhea, or exhaustion.

To make matters worse, the AEF’s unexpectedly high casualties 

in the summer and fall of 1918 led the army to ship large numbers 

of soldiers to France before they had completed their instruction. 

An officer of the Army General Staff Training and Instruction 

Branch was shocked to report on 2 October, that “enlisted men 

have had to be placed in overseas units before being trained; many 

of them receive only three weeks’ training,” which included one 

week spent in the detention camp for quarantine. It is no surprise 

that officers and NCOs in France often complained that their 

replacements lacked the basic skills to fight, much less survive, 

in battle. The commander of the 307th Infantry informed the First 

Army’s inspector general in October that 90 percent of the 850 to 

900 replacements that his unit received just before going into the 

Argonne had never fired a rifle or thrown a grenade. Several officers 

reported that they had to teach their new men how to load their 

weapons and don their gas masks just before the novices went into 

combat. The poor preparation of replacements often led directly 

to tactical failure and unnecessarily high casualties.

In addition to the issues with the infantry, the fighting in the 

Meuse-Argonne also revealed problems with the AEF’s supporting 

arms. At the end of the St. Mihiel Offensive, the French reassigned 

many of the air squadrons that they had attached to the Americans 

for that operation. This left General Mitchell with far fewer 

aircraft to cover the much larger region of the Meuse-Argonne. 

Mechanical problems quickly pared the aircraft available for the 

operation from 840 down to 670 planes. The departure of the 

French further meant that three-fourths of Mitchell’s planes were 

flown by Americans. Many of these men were novices to flying, let 

alone combat. Throughout the campaign, poor weather and rugged 

terrain further hampered air operations. American air observers 

found the weather clear enough to accurately spot or target the 

enemy on only ten of the forty-seven days of the campaign. These 

issues meant that Mitchell’s decision to focus most of the American 

air operations against targets in the enemy’s rear area met with 

only limited success and drew the ire of many American soldiers. 

Although the airmen had some success in air interdiction, they 

could not prevent German air attacks on American ground forces. 
•••• 44 ••••

This is not to say that the American pilots did not try to ease 

the doughboys’ burdens. In the ten sorties flown between 12 and 

29 September 1918 over the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne sectors, 

2d Lt. Frank Luke Jr. shot down fourteen German observation 

balloons and four enemy airplanes. As observation balloons were 

heavily defended and dangerous to destroy, his accomplishments 

were no mean feat. On his last mission, Luke shot down three 

balloons near Dun-sur-Meuse before being wounded and forced 

down behind enemy lines. After landing, he reportedly used 

his pistol to hold off a party of Germans advancing to take him 

prisoner before dying from his wound. For his skills and bravery 

in the air, Luke became the first American aviator to win the 

Medal of Honor.

Luke was not the only American aviator to gain fame in 

the skies above the Meuse-Argonne. Capt. Edward “Eddie” 

Rickenbacker, the commander of the 94th Aero Squadron, 

entered the campaign with eleven aerial victories to his credit. 

Between 28 September and 30 October, Rickenbacker shot down 

five additional German balloons and ten airplanes during his 

flights over the Meuse-Argonne. His twenty-six total kills made 

him the highest-scoring American ace of the war. However, 

despite the valor of aviators such as Luke and Rickenbacker, 

the Air Service obtained mixed results from its air operations 

throughout October. 

The First Army also experienced problems with some of the 

new weapons of ground warfare. Although the army’s tankers 

had provided needed support to the infantry from time to time 

in the opening weeks of the campaign, their lack of training 

and experience in infantry-armor cooperation hobbled their 

efforts. Few infantry commanders understood the new vehicles’ 

capabilities and limitations, or how to work with them to overcome 

German resistance while providing mutual protection for both 

types of units. The fact that many of the American divisions had 

been supported by French tank battalions in the first week of the 

battle only exacerbated these difficulties. American infantrymen 

could at least communicate with their countrymen in an ad hoc 

form of coordination, but the language differences between the 

Americans and French made this almost impossible. High losses 

and mechanical breakdowns also limited the effectiveness of the 

tanks. When Liggett took over the First Army, half of his tanks 

were inoperable, a circumstance not uncommon in those early 

days of armored warfare.
•••• 45 ••••

The tankers’ inability to advance put even greater pressure on 

the artillery to support the infantry. Unfortunately, many divisions 

continued to wrestle with the challenge of properly coordinating 

artillery fires with infantry attacks. This often meant that while the 

AEF’s guns were able to suppress the Germans with preplanned fires, 

the time lag between the bombardment and the American infantry 

attacks generally gave the enemy enough time to emerge from their 

shelters and reestablish their defenses. When faced with unexpected 

enemy resistance, the infantry had difficulty communicating with 

artillery and arranging needed fire support.

Liggett and his staff worked hard to overcome these problems 

by sorting out the American logistical tangle and by putting 

divisions rotating from the line through hasty training programs 

intended to correct shortcomings in the AEF’s tactical skills 

and doctrine. The AEF GHQ also attempted to rectify some of 

the Americans’ shortcomings by publishing Notes on Recent 

Operations to pass on the army’s tactical lessons. The Notes 

Street fighting in Exermont (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 46 ••••

on Recent Operations No. 3 that the AEF GHQ released on 12 

October offered unit commanders from the platoon to the division 

level directions on how to best employ their tanks, artillery, 

machine guns, and logistical assets based upon the experiences 

at St. Mihiel and the first week of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. 

For example, it noted that much of the army’s difficulties in 

tank-infantry coordination stemmed from the fact that infantry 

commanders had failed to give their tanks specific objectives that 

would support the infantry’s operations. Some of the pamphlet’s 

advice, however, demonstrated that the AEF high command was 

still far too wedded to the notions of war that had dominated the 

tactical thinking of 1914. The publication chided commanders for 

being too concerned with avoiding casualties and too reliant on 

artillery fire to destroy enemy machine guns when they should 

have been using rifle fire to overcome this menace. Reflecting 

Pershing’s belief that the Americans needed to be more aggressive, 

it stressed, “It is seldom wrong to go forward. It is seldom wrong 

to attack. In the attack it is much better to lose many men than to 

fail to gain ground.” Given the pace of the First Army’s operations, 

it is unclear how many commanders had the opportunity to read 

the Notes on Recent Operations series, but combat experience 

and Liggett’s efforts to fix what he could in his army’s training 

and operations did lead to slow and steady improvements in how 

the Americans fought.

Despite Liggett’s best efforts, some of the army’s problems 

remained intractable. By early October, Foch’s decision to redirect 

the AEF to the Meuse-Argonne was beginning to have a negative 

impact on the First Army’s operations. Even though the men in 

the SOS worked diligently to keep up with the supply demands of 

combat units, the First Army’s railheads were still too far removed 

from the fighting. It was difficult to move supplies, ammunition, 

and units to the front, and the autumn rains and heavy traffic 

continued to overtax the region’s limited road network and 

to reduce logistical operations to a crawl. Most of the army’s 

supply wagons and artillery were horse-drawn, as were many of 

its ambulances. By 8 October, the First Army was short 50,000 

horses and mules. Sickness, enemy action, and the exhaustion 

caused by pulling heavy loads through muddy roads and difficult 

terrain added to this shortfall in draft animals as the campaign 

dragged on.

Unfortunately, the First Army could not pause while it worked 

out these issues. Liggett understood that he must get the American 
Observing for the artillery (National Archives) •••••••••••••••
•••• 48 ••••

offensive back on track by breaking through the Hindenburg Line 

(Map 9). The army’s renewed attack began on 14 October. The 

objective was to rupture the German lines between St. Georges 

and the Romagne Heights in a double envelopment conducted by 

units of the V and III Corps. After the corps pierced the German 

defenses, they would exploit their success by pushing on to seize 

the Bois de Bantheville. Pershing and Liggett believed that taking 

the heights in the center of the enemy line would render the 

remainder of the Hindenburg Line within the sector untenable 

for the Germans. The I Corps’ mission during the attack was to 

protect the left flank of the V Corps by driving the Germans back 

to a line running from Imécourt in the east to the high ground in 

the Bois de Bourgogne in the west.

The left wing of Liggett’s envelopment was the V Corps’ seasoned 

42d Division. The “Rainbow” Division was to advance through the 

Bois du Romagne and take the heights running from St. Georges 

to the Côte de Châtillon, and then swing east into the Bois de 

Bantheville. On the right wing of the envelopment, the III Corps’ 

3d and 5th Divisions were to clear the Germans from the heights of 

Cunel and the hills east of Romagne before moving to the northwest 

to assist the V Corps in seizing the Bois de Bantheville. The 32d 

Division was positioned at the center of the envelopment. Its mission 

was to attack the Côte Dame Marie to prevent the Germans from 

shifting forces to block the wings of the main assaults. To draw 

attention away from the main attacks and ensure that the Germans 

remained in place, the 32d Division was to launch its attack three 

hours prior to the assaults of the 5th and 42d Divisions.

The attack did not go off as planned. To reach St. Georges and 

Landres-et-St. Georges, the 42d Division’s left flank unit, the 83d 

Infantry Brigade, had to cross a mile of open ground and work 

its way through belts of uncut barbed wire. Repeated surges 

against the enemy line soon decimated the brigade. Even with the 

desperate valor of its soldiers, the German defenses of Landreset-St. Georges proved too strong for the 83d Brigade to overcome.

On the 42d Division’s right flank, Brig. Gen. Douglas 

MacArthur’s 84th Infantry Brigade managed to fight its way 

to the base of the machine-gun-studded slopes of the Côte de 

Châtillon and La Tuilerie Farm by the end of the first day’s 

fighting. MacArthur later claimed that on the eve of the attack 

the V Corps commander, General Summerall, had warned him, 

“Give me Châtillon, or a list of five thousand casualties.” Although 

MacArthur may have exaggerated this exchange, he understood 
X X

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3

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32

X X

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XXX

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XVII Fr XXXX

FIRST

XXXX

FOURTH Fr

16

16

16 16

14

14

14–16

14 14

14

14 14

16

16 16

14

14

12

12 OCT 12 OCT

16 OCT

12–14

12–16 OCT XXX XXX XXX XXXX

H I N D E N B U R G L I N E

Aisne

R

Aire

R

Aire R

M

e

u

s

e

R

Bois du Moncy

Bois

du

Romagne

Bois de

Bantheville

Bois

de

Bourgogne

Bois

des

Rappes

Côte de

Châtillon

Côte Dame

Marie

La Tuilerie Farm

Fontaine des Parades

Magenta Farm

Exermont

Cunel

Grandpré

RomagnesousMontfaucon

Barricourt

Sommerance

Fléville Cornay

Dun-sur-Meuse

Brieullessur-Meuse

Cléry-le-Petit

Sasseysur-Meuse

St. Georges

Landres- et-St. Georges Bantheville

Thénorgues

Buzancy

Champigneulle

Andevanne

Rémonville

Imécourt

Bar

Briquenay

Villers-devant-Dun

Chevières

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

BREAKING THE HINDENBURG LINE

12–16 October 1918

0 100 200 300 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Note: Ground gained shown by unit designation boxes and colored areas

Axis of Main AttackAxis of Secondary AttackFront Line, Date

0

0 1

Miles 3 2 1

2 3 Kilometers

Map 9
•••• 50 ••••

the importance of taking the high ground in his sector. Between 

15 and 16 October, MacArthur’s men painfully clawed the hill out 

of the grip of its resolute German defenders.

The 42d Division’s attack had secured Liggett an opening in 

the Hindenburg Line, but this success had come at a great price. 

In three days of fighting, the division suffered 2,895 casualties. A 

further indication of the intensity of the fighting was the fact that 

in those three days, three soldiers of the division won Medals of 

Honor. One famous recipient was Lt. Col. William J. “Wild Bill” 

Donovan, a battalion commander in the 165th Infantry and the 

future head of the World War II Office of Strategic Services. During 

his regiment’s fight to take Landres-et-St.  Georges, Donovan 

personally led repeated sorties against enemy positions. Despite 

being wounded below the knee by a machine gun bullet, he refused 

to be evacuated, and he organized the withdrawal of his remaining 

troops from their precarious forward positions.

On the right wing of the First Army’s envelopment, the 5th 

Division also encountered grave challenges in carrying out its 

mission. The unit’s march to the front and its relief of the 80th 

Division occurred under constant German artillery fire from 

the high ground around Cunel and Romagne and from the stillunconquered Heights of the Meuse. Worse yet, poor planning and 

the confusion of battle resulted in the 5th Division’s 14 October 

attack lacking sufficient artillery support to cover the infantry’s 

advance. The absence of any meaningful suppressive fires allowed 

the Germans to rain machine gun and artillery fires down on the 

Americans from the front and from both flanks. Yet even in the face 

of this galling assault from above, the division managed to capture 

Cunel and push into the southern edge of the Bois de la Pultière.

During the attack, one act of heroism stood out. A soldier 

involved in the 5th Division’s assault, 1st Lt. Samuel Woodfill, had 

served for over sixteen years in the Regular Army’s enlisted ranks 

and had fought in the Philippine Insurrection before earning a 

commission in 1917. Before the division’s main attack, Woodfill 

led his company on a reconnaissance patrol to Cunel. After his 

unit came under fire from multiple machine guns, Woodfill used 

his marksmanship skills to kill the crews of one gun after another. 

He proceeded to methodically clear the area of Germans, all while 

suffering from the effects of mustard gas. In taking out the last 

machine gun nest, Woodfill killed two gunners with a pick after his 

pistol jammed during the melee. For his conspicuous act of valor, 

Woodfill was awarded the Medal of Honor.
•••• 51 ••••

The bravery of men like Woodfill, however, could not rescue 

the 5th Division from its dilemma. On the morning of 15 October, 

the division resumed its attacks, but again the artillery failed to 

adequately support the infantry’s advance. The division managed 

to fight through the Bois de la Pultière and, after hard and costly 

fighting, its 9th Infantry Brigade reached the northern edge of the 

Bois des Rappes by nightfall. Unfortunately, later that night the 

division commander, General McMahon, received a false report 

that panic had swept the troops of the 9th Brigade, sending the unit 

into a full retreat. McMahon ordered the division to abandon their 

gains and pull back to the Bois de la Pultière without bothering 

to confirm the veracity of the report. Hundreds of soldiers would 

fall over the next four days as the 5th Division battled to take back 

what McMahon had so easily surrendered on 16 October. By the 

time the division pulled out of the line on 22 October, it had lost 

779 men killed in action, 3,108 wounded, and 562 gas casualties.

On the 5th Division’s left, the 32d Division’s attack on 14 

October highlighted the fickle nature of war. Although the unit’s 

advance was intended only as a holding action, its attack succeeded 

beyond expectations and the division cut another breach in the 

Hindenburg Line. Despite being repulsed in several attacks on the 

Côte Dame Marie between 9 and 13 October, strokes of good luck 

accompanied by acts of bravery and tactical good sense allowed 

the 32d Division to not only capture the deadly hilltop on 14 

October, but also surge ahead to seize Romagne. Although the 14 

October attack initially stalled on the left flank and in the center, 

on the right the 128th Infantry, supported by effective artillery 

fires, outflanked the German positions at Romagne and allowed 

the Americans to seize the defenses that had long held up the 

First Army’s advance. The 128th Infantry’s attack unhinged the 

German defenders in the division’s sector and caused a domino 

effect along their lines.

In the division’s center, a small party of eight soldiers from the 

3d Battalion, 126th Infantry, discovered a gap in the enemy defenses 

at Hill 258 on the Côte Dame Marie ridge. This detachment, led 

by Capt. Edward B. Strom, skillfully used the terrain to flank the 

German positions and captured ten machine guns. Here, the fog 

of war worked to the Americans’ advantage. Unaware of the small 

size of Strom’s force, and fearing that they had been surrounded by 

the advance of the 126th and 128th Infantry, many other Germans 

facing Strom’s detachment surrendered or abandoned their 

positions. The slackening of the enemy’s fire on the ridge allowed 
•••• 52 ••••

the rest of the 126th Infantry to surge up the hill. The 126th and 

128th Infantry’s successes in weakening the German defenses 

also allowed the stalled 127th Infantry to move forward on the 32d 

Division’s left flank. The division exploited these successes and 

pushed over two kilometers farther into the German lines before 

the end of the day. Subsequent attacks on 15 October cleared most 

of the Bois de Chavignon and secured the division a lodgment for 

later attacks against the Bois de Bantheville.

Although Liggett now had his breach in the Hindenburg Line, 

much fighting remained to clear the enemy from the rest of the line 

and finally secure the objectives that the First Army had intended 

to reach on 26 and 27 September. To continue the attack, Liggett’s 

first order of business was to rotate fresh units into the fight. The 

4th, 33d, and 77th Divisions had been in the line since the beginning 

of the offensive and were in desperate need of relief. Furthermore, 

hard fighting had reduced the 3d, 5th, 32d, 42d, and 82d Divisions 

to under half their authorized strength of combat soldiers.

While these units were rotated out of the line for rest and refit, 

the First Army launched a series of local attacks both east and west 

of the Meuse from 18 to 27 October to gain relative positions of 

advantage across its area of operation. (See Map 10.) In the I Corps’ 

sector, the fresh 78th Division fought its way into Grandpré, the 

Bois de Bourgogne, and the Bois des Loges. At the same time, 

Road congestion during the campaign (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 53 ••••

the V Corps battled to expand its breach of the German line by 

launching a series of local attacks to clear the Bois de Bantheville, 

the Bois du Romagne, and the Bois de Chavignon. Along the Meuse, 

the III Corps fought a brutal series of engagements to capture the 

Bois des Rappes and Les Clairs Chênes. East of the Meuse, the 

French XVII Corps attempted to restart its stalled effort to capture 

the Heights of the Meuse by launching attacks between Sivry-surMeuse and Crépion from 23 to 28 October. Despite these efforts, 

the corps’ doughboys and poilus made little headway against the 

area’s stubborn defenders.

Preparing for the Final Push: 27–31 October 1918

By 22 October, it was evident to Liggett that heavy casualties, 

troop exhaustion, and tangled supply lines had taken their toll on 

the First Army’s momentum. As he recalled:

The condition in the First Army was such that it was imperative 

to rehabilitate our divisions, get necessary replacements into 

condition for action, gather up a mass of stragglers and return 

them to their proper commands, and while keeping up pressure 

on the enemy, prepare for a powerful, well-coordinated effort . . . 

we needed rest and refit.

Reports from Liggett’s staff and commanders supported this 

observation. During its first two weeks fighting in the MeuseArgonne, the 1st Division had suffered over 9,000 casualties. As the 

storied division’s inspector general noted, “the morale of the unit is 

not nearly as high as it formerly was. This is shown by the general 

demeanor of the men and the lack of snap and spirit which formerly 

prevailed in this unit.” Liggett was convinced that his army needed 

a short operational pause to sort out its problems and to prepare 

for a renewed and redoubled attack on the Germans. He originally 

planned to begin the assault around 28 October, but as General 

Henri Gouraud’s neighboring French Fourth Army also needed 

rest, Pershing and Liggett agreed that the Americans and French 

would resume their coordinated attacks on 1 November. This gave 

the First Army four days to replenish and retrain its depleted ranks 

and to plan and coordinate its all-important artillery and supply 

operations for the upcoming attack.

During this pause, the army’s engineers feverishly labored to 

build new roads and light rail lines and to improve the existing 
•••• 54 ••••

supply routes throughout the army’s sector. Likewise, First Army 

logisticians devoted much of their energies to moving forward 

the mountains of shells that the First Army would need for the 

coming attack. To aid in these efforts, Pershing directed the AEF 

chief of staff, Maj. Gen. James W. McAndrew, and the AEF chief 

of operations (G–3), General Conner, to focus their attention on 

ensuring the smooth flow of supplies from the SOS to the front 

and to correcting the army’s previous lapses in communications 

and in its command and control system.

Although the First Army’s operations greatly slowed during 

the last week of October, they did not stop. Liggett planned for a 

set-piece battle on 1 November and worked to give his forces every 

possible advantage on H-hour. This meant that the army’s corps 

continued to conduct local attacks to secure the best possible terrain 

for launching the main assault. The American front on 31 October 

ran from roughly a kilometer north of Grandpré on the army’s 

western boundary along a line extending east from just south of 

Landres-et-St. Georges and continuing through the northern edges 

of the Bois de Bantheville, the Bois des Rappes, and the Bois de 

Forêt near the left bank of the Meuse. East of the Meuse, the French 

XVII Corps occupied a line that ran roughly a kilometer south of 

Sivry-sur-Meuse, east through the Bois de Chaume and the Bois de 

la Grande Montagne, to just north of Beaumont.

Although the Americans had lost over 22,000 dead and well 

over 100,000 wounded since the beginning of the campaign, Liggett 

believed that the First Army was bleeding the enemy of his last 

reserves of strength. By the end of October, the German Fifth 

Army was in fact struggling to rotate its depleted units out of the 

line. On 31 October, the Americans faced ten German divisions 

west of the Meuse and nine more in the French XVII  Corps’ 

sector east of the river. These numbers did not tell the whole 

story. Major Giehrl admitted that “the disintegrating influence 

of numerous forest combats” and increasingly heavy losses had 

sapped the combat power of most of these units. Sensing that the 

war was coming to an end, the German high command directed 

its subordinates to hold ground at all costs to try to win Germany 

a stronger negotiating position at the peace table. This forced 

commanders in the Meuse-Argonne to launch counterattack after 

counterattack to try to accomplish this task or to stave off tactical 

calamities. These counterattacks hammered the doughboys and 

often deprived them of their hard-won gains, but in doing so the 

Germans continued to hemorrhage their combat power. By the 
X X

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X X

80

X X

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X X

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X X

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X X

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X X

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XXX

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XXX

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XXX

III XXX

XVII Fr

XXXX

FIRST

XXXX

FOURTH Fr

16

16

16

31

31

24

17–24

31 OCT

31 OCT

16–31 OC T

17–31

18 – 2 0

42–12

21–31

23–31

16–22

24–31

30–31

16–20

21–23 23 – 2 9

16 OCT 16

2 3–31 OCT

16–31 OCT

XXX

XXX XX

XXX

XXXX

XX

XX

H I N D E N B U R G L I N E

Aisne R

Aire R

Aire R

ue M es R

Bar R

Bois du Moncy

Bois

du

Romagne

Bois de

Chavignon

Bois de

Bantheville

Bois des Loges

Bois

de

Bourgogne

Bois

des

Rappes

Les

Clairs

Chênes

Bois

 de Forêt

Côte de

Châtillon

Côte Dame

Marie

Hill 228

La Tuilerie Farm

Talma

Farm

Fontaine des

Parades

Magenta

Farm

Exermont

Cunel

Grandpré

RomagnesousMontfaucon

Barricourt

Tailly

Fléville

Sommerance

Cornay

Dun-sur-Meuse

Brieullessur-Meuse

Cléry-le-Petit

Sasseysur-Meuse

St. Georges

Landreset-St. Georges Bantheville

Boult-aux-Bois

Thénorgues

Buzancy

Champigneulle

Andevanne

Rémonville

Imécourt

Bar

Briquenay

Villers-devant-Dun

Chevières

Fossé

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

SECOND PHASE CONSOLIDATION

16–31 October 1918

0 100 200 300 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Note: Ground gained shown by unit designation boxes and colored areas

Axis of AttackFront Line, Date

0

0 1

Miles 4 2 3 1

2 3 4 Kilometers

Map 10
•••• 56 ••••

end of October, the German Fifth Army had already lost nearly 

25,000 men and had no reserves left to throw into the battle. Most 

of its frontline infantry regiments had been reduced to well below 

50 percent of their authorized strengths. To fill the growing gaps 

in its ranks, the Fifth Army had to return its exhausted divisions 

to the battle before they had sufficient time for rest and refit. To 

make matters worse, the news that Austria-Hungary was seeking a 

separate peace led General Marwitz and General Max von Gallwitz 

to remove all their Austrian units from the front line. Simply put, 

the Germans were caught in an unsustainable exchange rate of 

casualties with the Allies.

The Americans were doing their best to unbalance the 

attritional scale. In the first month of the campaign, they had 

failed to adequately coordinate artillery support with infantry 

assaults, but nevertheless the First Army’s French and American 

artillerymen took a devastating toll on the Germans in the 

Meuse-Argonne. Learning by doing was hard-going in the AEF, 

but it was learning nevertheless. As American officers such as 

Summerall, and the First Army’s chief of artillery, Maj. Gen. 

Edward F. McGlachlin, came to master the iron hammer of 

artillery, the Germans could muster no response. In late October, 

an officer in the German 102d Infantry Regiment bewailed the 

“monstrous amount of artillery” that the Americans were able to 

employ against his positions, and other German officers lamented 

the devastating effect that the American artillerymen had on the 

strength and morale of their formations.

The First Army’s plan for the 1 November attack sought to 

capitalize on its strengths and the experience the Americans had 

gained since the start of the offensive. As the First Army began 

its preparations for a renewed assault, Foch pressed Pershing 

to focus the American efforts on the left of their sector in a 

combined attack with the French Fourth Army to clear the Bois 

de Bourgogne. Liggett rejected this approach, as the experience 

of slugging through the Argonne had convinced him that fighting 

in forests was too slow and costly to achieve any decisive results. 

He instead argued that the key terrain in the First Army’s sector 

was the Barricourt Heights. The heights, which ran from Villersdevant-Dun northwest to Fossé, were the linchpin of the remaining 

German defenses south of the Meuse River. If the Americans broke 

through at Barricourt, the Germans would be forced to conduct 

a fighting withdrawal with their backs against the Meuse River. 

Liggett convinced Pershing to support his plan, but the new First 
•••• 57 ••••

Army commander understood that taking the Barricourt Heights 

would be no easy matter. The high ground dominated the American 

avenues of approach and offered the enemy good observation 

and fields of fire for the artillery and machine gun positions that 

studded its hillsides.

To crack this tough position, Liggett planned for an initial 

set-piece battle that would maximize the First Army’s advantage 

in manpower and firepower over the Germans. The V Corps was 

to spearhead the American effort. It had the mission of capturing 

the Barricourt Heights and breaking through the Freya Stellung, 

the last prepared German defensive belt south of the Meuse, by 

nightfall on 1 November. The III Corps would support the V Corps 

in overrunning the Barricourt Heights by seizing the hills north 

and east of Andevanne and by protecting Summerall’s flank from 

German counterattacks. On the First Army’s left flank, the I Corps 

faced strong German defenses running from Talma Farm through 

the Bois des Loges and Champigneulle to St. Georges. Given the 

strength of the enemy’s positions, Liggett ordered Dickman to 

launch only limited attacks with the goal of protecting the V Corps’ 

flank by capturing the high ground south of Thénorgues and fixing 

Engineers repairing a road at dusk (National Archives) •••••••••••••••
•••• 58 ••••

the German defenders in place. Liggett also directed the I Corps to 

prevent German artillery on the heights of the Bois de Bourgogne 

from hindering the V Corps’ attack. The First Army commander 

believed that if the V Corps succeeded in taking the Barricourt 

Heights, the Germans facing the I Corps would have to withdraw 

from their defenses and Dickman could then drive on to capture 

Boult-aux-Bois.

Most of the First Army’s efforts in the last week of October 

were devoted to ensuring that the V Corps’ attack would achieve 

the desired results. At long last, the Americans had recognized that 

tactical success on the Great War’s battlefields rested largely upon 

the ability of the attacker to crush the defender under the weight 

of artillery fire. This was a decisive rejection of Pershing’s focus 

on an “aggressive offensive based on self-reliant infantry.” In fact, 

Summerall went so far as to state in the V Corps’ attack order, 

“It is essential that fire superiority rather than sheer man power 

be the driving force of the attack.” To ensure this superiority, the 

First Army massed 1,576 tubes of artillery on the front, including 

three batteries of 14-inch railroad guns manned by crews from the 

U.S. Navy. To compensate for the loss of some of the First Army’s 

French artillery units since the beginning of the Meuse-Argonne 

Offensive, Liggett’s planners increased the daily shell expenditure 

for each gun. For the 1 November assault, the army would have 

roughly one gun per twenty meters of front and each piece would 

fire 235 shells on average per day.

Liggett also changed the First Army’s tactical approach. He 

rejected the AEF’s previous pattern of setting unrealistic objectives. 

Instead, he planned for relatively shallow advances by the V and 

III Corps on 1 November that would keep them well within the range 

of army, corps, and divisional artillery. The First Army’s initial 

attack would be preceded by a two-hour-long “hurricane barrage” 

designed to paralyze the German command and control and fire 

support system as well as to destroy the enemy’s machine guns and 

strong points. After these preparatory fires, the American artillery 

plan focused on providing maximum support to the infantry by 

maintaining a steady rolling barrage that kept within 1,000 meters 

of the advancing doughboys throughout the attack.

For the first time in the war, the Americans would also 

make maximum use of their chemical warfare assets and better 

coordinate their air effort to support ground operations. Liggett 

specifically directed that heavy concentrations of mustard gas be 

dropped on German artillery units on the Heights of the Meuse, 
•••• 59 ••••

the Bois de Sassey, and on the hills of the Bois de Bourgogne 

to neutralize the enemy’s ability to bring flanking fires on the 

American advance. In the last piece of the “firepower puzzle,” the 

First Army ordered the Air Service to change its approach. The 

doughboys had long complained that American aviators had not 

provided the infantry with enough air cover and direct support 

during the campaign. In response, the AEF’s pilots would now 

refocus their efforts in support of the troops by attacking German 

defenses and artillery in the direct path of the advance and by 

keeping enemy aircraft from harassing the ground troops.

This firepower-centric approach to war also permeated the 

V  Corps’ preparations. Summerall planned to lead his assault 

with the fully rested and veteran 2d and 89th Divisions. These 

units would attack on line in a concerted push to overwhelm the 

Germans on the Barricourt Heights. To accomplish this, Summerall 

intended to crush enemy resistance by massing the overwhelming 

firepower of army, corps, and divisional artillery. He attached the 

field artillery brigades and machine gun units from his reserve 

divisions (the 1st and 42d Divisions) to the 2d and 89th Divisions 

for the initial phase of the attack. While the artillery blasted the 

German defenses and artillery positions, Summerall ordered all of 

the corps’ machine guns to join in with direct and indirect fire to pin 

down the enemy. As the V Corps commander noted, “The barrage 

plan was so constructed that throughout the advance, the entire 

corps front of more than eight kilometers would be covered by a 

sheet of shell, shrapnel, and bullets to a depth of twelve hundred 

meters.” Lastly, Summerall was to use the First Army’s remaining 

fifteen available tanks to assist the 2d Division’s advance.

Although Summerall had done everything possible to tip 

the scales in favor of his assault units, he was well aware that 

attacks in the Great War often bogged down as the strength of the 

attackers waned during the course of the battle. To prepare for 

this eventuality, he ordered the V Corps’ reserve divisions, the 1st 

and 42d, to follow close behind the lead divisions. If the 2d or 89th 

Division attacks stalled, the reserve divisions would maintain the 

tempo of the operation by passing through the forward units and 

resuming the attack.

A Triumph of Set-Piece Battle: 1 November 1918

At 0330 on 1 November, the First Army’s guns began 

their planned devastation of the German defenses. When the 
•••• 60 ••••

doughboys moved forward at 0530, they found that the hurricane 

bombardment had largely worked as planned. As one infantryman 

exclaimed, “What a battlefield! The Kriemhilde Stellung had 

been torn to shreds by the American guns. Upon the fields, along 

every approach, and in the trenches, still lay the [German] dead.” 

The doughboys also noticed a dramatic decrease in the enemy’s 

fires. In prelude to the battle, the Americans dropped over 

forty-one tons of mustard gas on German positions in the Bois de 

Bourgogne, a chemical assault that destroyed or displaced nine 

of the twelve German artillery batteries in the wood. All along 

the line, soldiers noted that they overran enemy machine gun 

nests and artillery batteries whose crews had been killed by the 

opening barrage. Those Germans not killed by the shelling were 

often so pinned down by the American fire that they could not offer 

much resistance. As the V Corps reported, “Many of the prisoners 

captured on the 1st stated that the reason that they were taken was 

that artillery concentrations were so effective as to confine them 

to shelters and to isolate them in small groups. Artillery prisoners 

stated that they were unable to leave their shelters to serve their 

guns.” To a great extent, the Americans had successfully put into 

practice the French military dictum that “artillery conquers, 

infantry occupies.”

The advance in the V Corps’ sector demonstrated that the AEF 

had finally come of age. The 2d Division overcame all resistance 

to its front, and by the close of the day the unit’s marines and 

soldiers had captured the redoubtable German defenses at 

Landres-et-St. Georges and pushed the enemy back over eight 

kilometers to a position just south of Barricourt and Magenta 

Farm. The division was led by the skilled and aggressive Maj. 

Gen. John A. Lejeune, one of only three Marine Corps generals to 

command a U.S. Army division and the only marine to lead one in 

battle. On the corps’ right, the 89th Division strove to keep pace 

with the fast-moving 2d Division. By the end of the day, the 89th 

had advanced over six kilometers, captured Rémonville, and, in 

close cooperation with the III Corps’ 90th Division, seized the 

Bois de Barricourt (Map 11). 

In the III  Corps’ sector, the 90th and 5th Divisions also 

accomplished their allotted tasks. In fact, both units went beyond 

the objective line set by the First Army. On the left of the corps 

sector, the 90th Division advanced nearly four kilometers and kept 

pace with the progress of the V Corps. Their success prevented 

German flank attacks against the army’s main effort.
X X

5

X X

2

X X

89

X X

90

X X

80

X X

78

X X

77

XXX

V

XXX

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III

XXX

XVII Fr

XXXX

FIRST

XXXX

FOURTH Fr

31 OCT

31 OCT

1 NOV

1 NOV 1 NOV

1 NOV

3 1

31 OCT

31 OCT 1 NOV

XXX

XXX

XXX

XXX

XXX

XXXX

H I N D E N B U R G L I N E

Aisne R

Aire R

Bar R

Aire R

Meuse R

Bois de

Barricourt

Bois des

Loges

Bois

de

Bourgogne

Bois

des

Rappes

Les

Clairs

Chênes

Côte de

Châtillon

Côte Dame

Marie

Hill 228

La Tuilerie Farm

Talma Farm

Fontaine des

Parades

Magenta

Farm

Exermont

Cunel

Grandpré

Romagne-sousMontfaucon

Barricourt

Tailly

Beauclair

Halles-sousles-Côtes

Le Champy-Haut

Fléville

Sommerance

Cornay

Châtel-Chéhéry Consenvoye

Dun-sur-Meuse

Brieullessur-Meuse

Cléry-le-Petit

Sasseysur-Meuse

Mouzay

Sivry-surMeuse

St. GeorgesLandres-et- St. Georges Bantheville

Boult-aux-Bois

Thénorgues

Buzancy

Champigneulle

Andevanne

Rémonville

Imécourt

Fossé

Bar

Briquenay

Villers- devant-Dun

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

BREAKOUT

31 October–1 November 1918

0 100 200 300 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Note: Ground gained shown by unit designation boxes and colored areas

Axis of Main AttackAxis of Secondary AttackFront Line, Date

0

0 1

Miles 4 2 3 1

2 4 Kilometers 3

Map 11
•••• 62 ••••

On the army’s left, the I Corps launched limited attacks from 

Talma Farm to St. Georges. Despite heavy enemy resistance, the 

78th Division still managed to push into the Bois des Loges and the 

77th Division advanced to a position southeast of Champigneulle. 

The I  Corps’ greatest success came on its right with the 80th 

Division, which took advantage of the 2d Division’s disruption of 

the German defenses to take Imécourt and push as far north as 

Fontaine des Parades. 

The success of the 1 November assault bore immediate results. 

Capturing the Barricourt Heights placed Sedan and the vital 

German Metz-Montmédy-Charleville rail line within the range of 

the American heavy artillery. As Liggett expected, the breaking of 

the Freya Stellung placed the Germans in an untenable position. 

With no more prepared defensive positions south of the Meuse to 

compensate for the waning strength of their infantry, on the night of 

1–2 November the German Fifth Army ordered its units to abandon 

their remaining defenses in the Freya Stellung between Grandpré 

and Buzancy and begin a fighting withdrawal to the north. The 

Firing a 14-inch naval gun converted to a railroad gun 

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 63 ••••

actions of the U.S. First Army and the French Fourth Army proved 

to be mutually supportive. The French gains eased the burden on 

the I Corps while the success of the V Corps ultimately aided the 

advance of the French Fourth Army by forcing the German Third 

Army to retreat behind the Bar River to prevent a gap from opening 

in the line between it and the German Fifth Army.

Exploitation and Pursuit: 2–11 November 1918

The success of the 1 November attacks gave Pershing and Liggett 

the opening that they had longed for since September. The Germans’ 

wary and weary retreat had, at long last, provided the Americans 

with the opportunity to achieve a breakout into open country. 

Sensing the change, Liggett ordered his corps to pursue the enemy 

with all possible vigor to prevent the Germans from recovering from 

their defeat and reestablishing a coherent defense.

In the V Corps sector, the 2d and 89th Divisions needed no 

encouragement to continue their assaults. On the evening of 1–2 

November, the 2d Division launched night attacks and infiltrations 

of the enemy line to keep pressure on the Germans. Night operations 

were a rarity in the AEF, but the division’s initiative and drive kept 

the enemy off-balance. Unfortunately, inexperienced staffs and the 

friction of war temporarily halted the 2d Division’s advance on 2 

November. The V Corps’ accomplishments on 1 November convinced 

Summerall that his unit could accelerate the First Army’s progress 

by changing the boundary between the I and the V Corps to allow 

the 2d Division to seize Buzancy. This plan did not sit well with 

Dickman, and Liggett ultimately rejected Summerall’s request. 

However, while this high-level wrangling was in progress, the 

V Corps headquarters issued orders to its subordinates to redirect 

the attack and to shift the corps’ reserve forces for the assault on 

Buzancy. By the time that Liggett’s directive reached Summerall, 

the 2d Division was moving its units into place to launch the attack 

specified in the V Corps’ earlier orders. The resulting counterorders 

to stop this move essentially paralyzed the 2d Division for much 

of the day. Despite this confusion, the 89th Division was able to 

push forward three kilometers to capture Tailly and outflank the 

Germans in Barricourt.

While the V Corps sorted out its command tangle, the I Corps 

was quick to capitalize on the Germans’ discomfiture. On 2 

November, the corps surged forward over nine kilometers. On 

the right, the 80th Division captured Buzancy. In the center of 
•••• 64 ••••

the corps’ advance, the 77th Division rushed north against weak 

German defenses to take Champigneulle, Thénorgues, Harricourt, 

and Bar in quick succession. On the corps’ left, the 78th Division 

had slower going as it maneuvered to avoid German positions in 

the Bois de Bourgogne. By the evening, however, the division had 

advanced six kilometers and pushed the Germans out of Briquenay. 

The day’s success put the I Corps in a good position to continue its 

pursuit of the Germans over the next two days. More importantly, 

the corps’ gains came with relatively light losses. On 1 and 2 

November, the 80th Division lost 866 men killed and wounded 

while the 77th Division suffered only 291 casualties. From 1 to 5 

November, the 78th Division lost a total of 680 soldiers.

On the afternoon of 2 November, Liggett issued orders that 

changed the direction of the First Army’s attack from the north 

to north-northeast with the goal of widening the breach in the 

German lines by crossing the Meuse at points all along the 

army’s front and pushing toward the Germans’ vital logistics 

link, the Mézières-Sedan railroad. To prevent the Germans from 

establishing another strong defensive line, Liggett urged his corps 

commanders to aggressively pursue the enemy and seize the 

heights north and east of the Meuse. He ordered the I Corps to seize 

the high ground running from Vaux-en-Dieulet to St. Pierremont. 

The V Corps was to take the heights of Beauclair and Le ChampyHaut and then press on toward Stenay and Beaumont. Liggett 

ordered the III Corps to capture the hills overlooking Halles-sousles-Côtes, Sassey-sur-Meuse, and Dun-sur-Meuse. Once across the 

river, the III Corps would push the Germans from their positions 

on the Heights of the Meuse that had long bedeviled the French 

XVII Corps.

The French XVII Corps would aid the advance of the III Corps 

by fixing the German defenders in place through local attacks 

on Hill 370 and on the Borne de Cornouiller. On 6 November, the 

French XVII Corps also would turn over the control of its sector 

to the headquarters of the French II Colonial Corps. Only two of 

the French II Colonial Corps’ units were French (the 10th and 15th 

Colonial Divisions); the bulk of its organization consisted of the 

U.S. 26th, 35th, and 79th Divisions in line, and the 81st Division 

in reserve.

With new orders in hand, the First Army’s pursuit gained 

momentum on 3 November. Over the next four days of fighting, 

Dickman’s I Corps surged forward to the outskirts of Sedan. The 

77th Division exacted revenge on the Germans for the pounding it 
•••• 65 ••••

received in the Argonne by driving its foes over twenty kilometers 

between 3 and 7 November. Not to be outdone, the 42d Division 

returned to the fight on 5 November and pushed back the Germans 

over seventeen kilometers in just two days of fighting. The advance 

in the V Corps sector slowed due to stiffening German resistance 

and continued logistics tangles behind the lines, but despite these 

obstacles the 2d and 89th Divisions managed to reach the southern 

bank of the Meuse River by the night of 7 November.

The III Corps faced the army’s greatest challenge in carrying 

out Liggett’s new directive. Its eastern border sat on the Meuse 

River and the First Army’s order required the corps to immediately 

launch contested assaults across the water obstacle. The burden 

of this mission fell to the 5th Division. German positions on the 

Heights of the Meuse loomed over the river, and the division had 

to not only attack across the Meuse, but also cross two segments 

of a canal that ran just east of the river between Brieulles and 

Dun-sur-Meuse and from Sassey to Mouzay. On the night of 3–4 

November, a detachment from the 7th Engineers forded the Meuse 

at Brieulles and began building a footbridge across the river. At 

daybreak, the Germans discovered what the Americans were up 

to and promptly began inundating the area with machine gun 

Machine gunners advancing through woods (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 66 ••••

and artillery fire. The American engineers were undaunted and 

quickly moved their operations to a more protected location 600 

meters farther north. After nightfall on the 4th, the division’s 10th 

Infantry Brigade began to cross the Meuse in force. The next day, 

the brigade seized the high ground at the Bois du Châtillon and 

Hill 228.

The river crossing in the 9th Infantry Brigade’s area proved 

much more difficult. On the night of 3–4 November, the division’s 

engineers laid a pontoon bridge across the Meuse at Cléry-le-Petit, 

only to have it shot to pieces by the Germans shortly after the sun 

rose. One of the division’s soldiers recorded that “the whole area 

was drenched with seemingly inexhaustible fire from the height.” 

Despite the enemy’s best efforts, the American engineers kept to 

their task, and by nightfall had bridged the river and the canal, 

allowing the 9th Brigade to cross to the east bank and move on 

to the heights beyond.

With their bridgehead secured, and the subsequent seizure 

of the Heights of the Meuse, the 5th Division’s soldiers broke 

through the German defenses east of the river. Between 4 and 

10 November, the division advanced over 18 kilometers in depth 

and liberated 160 square kilometers of French territory east 

of the Meuse. The success of the 5th Division also allowed the 

III Corps’ other lead unit, the 90th Division, to cross the Meuse. 

Heavy enemy fire and the need to maintain close liaison with 

the V Corps stymied the 90th Division’s earlier efforts at a river 

crossing, but on 9 November the division bridged the Meuse at 

Sassey-sur-Meuse and Dun-sur-Meuse and moved to capture 

Mouzay and Stenay (Map 12).

As his men continued to advance, Pershing believed that the 

First Army’s success in the first week of November vindicated 

his tireless crusade to form an independent American Army. 

However, he still smarted from the criticism leveled on the AEF by 

Britain’s Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and other Allied leaders 

that the American offensive had been too sluggish and costly for 

the gains it had made. Pershing’s desire to burnish his and his 

army’s reputation ultimately led to one of the most controversial 

episodes of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign: the 1st Division’s effort 

to capture Sedan.

Sedan was the site of the humiliating surrender of the Emperor 

Napoleon III and a large French army in 1870 during the FrancoPrussian War. Taking Sedan would remove any lingering Allied 

doubts about the AEF’s fighting abilities. On a visit to the I Corps 
80

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Fr 5 DIC

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XVII Fr

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FIRST

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Aisne R

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VERDUN

STENAY

SEDAN B E LG I U M

F R A N C E

MEUSE-ARGONNE OPERATION

EXPLOITATION AND PURSUIT

1–11 November 1918

0 100 200 300 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

Note: Ground gained shown by unit designation boxes and colored areas

Axis of Main Attack

Axis of Secondary Attack

Front Line, Date

0

0

Miles 5 10

5 10 Kilometers

Map 12
•••• 68 ••••

headquarters on the afternoon of 5 November, Pershing expressed 

to Dickman his desire that the Americans seize the opportunity to 

take the historic city. Later that day, General Conner arrived at the 

First Army headquarters to direct Liggett to execute Pershing’s 

guidance. As neither Liggett nor his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Hugh 

A. Drum, were at the command post at the time, Conner and the 

First Army’s operations officer, Col. George C. Marshall, drafted 

the following order: 

General Pershing desires that the honor of entering Sedan should 

fall to the American First Army. He has every confidence that 

the troops of the I Corps, assisted on their right by the V Corps, 

will enable him to realize this desire. 

Marshall, however, did not want to issue the order before Liggett 

or Drum approved it. When Drum returned to the headquarters, 

he accepted Marshall’s original text, but then added two further 

lines to the order: “In transmitting the foregoing message, your 

attention is invited to the favorable opportunity now existing for 

pressing our advantage throughout the night. Boundaries will not 

be considered binding.” The edited order was then transmitted to 

the I and V Corps commanders.

The trouble started when Summerall chose to use the last 

sentence that Drum added to the order as a license to grab additional 

glory for the V Corps and the 1st Division. Using the very loosest 

interpretation of the order, Summerall directed the 1st Division 

to conduct a forced march through the night of 5–6 November to 

capture Sedan, fully realizing that the division would have to cut 

through the I Corps’ sector to accomplish this mission. The debacle 

that followed not only hindered the operations of the I Corps’ 42d 

and 77th Divisions when the troops of the Big Red One cut across 

their lines of advance and supply, but also caused ill will with the 

French when several 1st Division units advanced so far west that 

they strayed into the French Fourth Army’s sector. Liggett did not 

learn of Drum’s order until 7 November when the French complained 

about the American incursion into their sector. He admitted that 

the news led to “the only occasion in the war when I lost my temper 

completely.” Liggett angrily directed the 1st Division to vacate the 

French and I Corps sectors with all dispatch. Summerall’s escapade 

resulted in confusion and embarrassment among the American 

ranks, and undermined Pershing’s goal of demonstrating to the 

Allies that the AEF had evolved into a smoothly operating machine. 
•••• 69 ••••

In the end, the Americans’ machinations were all for naught as the 

French would not be denied the honor of capturing Sedan. After 

their complaints about the 1st Division’s incursions stopped the 

American advance toward Sedan, the French IX Corps entered 

the city on 9 November.

As the Americans continued to press forward in the second 

week of November, the German war effort collapsed. In October, 

the German government had sent out peace feelers to the Allies. 

By the end of the month, the Germans’ quest to end the war was 

accelerating due to events inside Germany and the withering away 

of their allies. Bulgarian resistance had collapsed on 29 September, 

the Ottomans sued for peace on 30 October, and the long-suffering 

Austro-Hungarians reached a separate peace with the Allies on 

3 November. On 26 October, German chief of staff Field Marshal 

Paul von Hindenburg dismissed Ludendorff, thereby removing 

the last senior German officer opposed to peace. On 29 October, 

sailors in the German High Seas Fleet refused orders to put to sea, 

and their mutiny fueled civilian labor strikes and opposition to the 

government across Germany. On 7 November, a delegation from 

the German government crossed the lines to begin negotiations for 

an armistice. The abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on 9 November 

further hastened the peace process. 

Foch knew that the end of the war was near and wanted the 

Allies to be in the strongest possible position when the armistice 

talks began. On the afternoon of 9 November, he implored Pershing 

and the other Allied senior commanders:

The enemy disorganized by our repeated attacks is withdrawing 

along the whole front. It is important to maintain and hasten our 

action. I appeal to the energy and initiative of [the] Commandersin-Chief and their armies to secure decisive results.

Pershing needed little prodding; in fact, he argued that to 

secure a lasting peace, the Allies needed to push the Germans 

back across the Rhine and crush the remnants of their army 

on German soil. On 5 November, he had ordered Liggett’s First 

Army and Bullard’s Second Army to press the American attacks 

with maximum force “with the ultimate purpose of destroying 

the enemy’s organization and driving him beyond the existing 

frontier in the regions of Briey and Longwy.” Pershing’s message 

was clear: the AEF would not let up on the enemy until the moment 

the Armistice went into effect.
•••• 70 ••••

Pershing’s directive for the AEF to keep fighting right up to 1100 

on 11 November was not without controversy. His orders meant that 

hundreds of American and German soldiers would be killed and 

wounded in the final hours and minutes of the war. Over the last 

two days of the fighting, the V Corps’ 2d and 89th Divisions drove 

across the Meuse in the face of determined German resistance, 

while doughboys in the I and III Corps sector moved forward to 

wrest one last hill or forest from the enemy. The experience of the 

89th Division bears witness to the intensity of the fighting that 

occurred in November. The division lost 2,391 soldiers between 

1 and 11 November. During the same period, five of the division’s 

soldiers won Medals of Honor, with three of these men receiving the 

award for volunteering to swim across the Meuse to locate enemy 

positions and places where their units could cross the river.

The death of American soldiers in the waning hours of the war 

was tragic. Pershing, however, deemed these losses to be a sad 

necessity of war. Both he and Foch maintained that the Armistice 

on 11 November was merely a cessation of fighting and not a formal 

end to the conflict. The Germans could resume combat operations 

at any time. As such, every German soldier that the Americans 

killed or captured in the last days of the war was one less potential 

enemy combatant that they might have to face if the Armistice 

broke down. Given what the Allied commanders knew at the 

time, they had a cold-blooded rationale in their decision to order 

their soldiers to keep attacking to the stroke of the eleventh hour 

of the eleventh day of November. The men did their duty, and the 

fighting continued to the very end. In one tragically fitting episode, 

artillery officer Bob Casey witnessed thirty-four men killed and 

another thirty-nine wounded around him in the last twenty-three 

minutes of the war.

Analysis

Despite the losses and the doctrinal, logistical, and leadership 

challenges that the AEF faced during the campaign, when the 

Armistice came into effect the doughboys had achieved their 

commander’s operational mission and their president’s strategic 

goal. In the forty-seven days of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, 

the Americans pushed the front back over forty-eight kilometers 

at the farthest extent of the First Army’s advance, and caused 

the Germans to commit forty-six of their divisions to the region 

in a vain attempt to stem the American drive. In the process, 
•••• 71 ••••

the Americans inflicted approximately 100,000 casualties on the 

Germans and captured over 26,000 enemy soldiers. The doughboys 

also captured 874 German artillery pieces, over 3,000 machine guns, 

and thousands of tons of other war materiel. More importantly, 

the American First Army had materially contributed to achieving 

Foch’s strategic goals for the fall offensives, by accelerating the 

attrition of German combat power and furthering the decline of the 

enemy’s national will. As Ludendorff had feared at the beginning of 

1918, the wave of fresh, young, and determined American soldiers 

had turned the tide of the war decisively against the Germans.

American and French soldiers shaking hands (National Archives) •••••••••••••••
•••• 72 ••••

This success came at a heavy cost. From 26 September to 11 

November, the First Army lost 26,227 soldiers killed in action and 

another 95,786 men wounded or incapacitated by poison gas. This 

casualty rate gave the Meuse-Argonne the dubious distinction 

of being the costliest campaign in American history. To put the 

losses of the Meuse-Argonne into perspective, in the forty-one 

days of the Ardennes Campaign of December 1944 and January 

1945, the Americans lost approximately 61,000 wounded and 19,276 

killed in action. In the eighty-three days of the campaign to take 

Okinawa in 1945, the U.S. military suffered the loss of 12,281 dead 

and 36,361 wounded.

The Meuse-Argonne Campaign did not go as Pershing had 

envisioned. Rather than achieving a quick breakthrough that 

would force the Germans north of the Meuse River and position 

the Americans to drive them back to the Rhine, from the first day 

of the campaign the fighting in the Meuse-Argonne degenerated 

into a grinding battle of attrition. Five major reasons created 

this reality. First were the systemic flaws in the nation’s wartime 

mobilization. Although the United States pulled off a prodigious 

feat in raising a force of four million men in just nineteen months, 

this was accomplished by shortchanging the training of the Army’s 

officers and soldiers. Most of the AEF's line officers were products 

of hastily established three-month-long Officer Training Camps. 

The instruction in these camps was generally too ill-focused and 

incomplete to properly prepare the AEF’s junior leaders for the 

realities of the Great War’s battlefields. Senior U.S. and German 

officers both noted that American lower-level leaders had great 

difficulty employing their weapons and tactics to their best 

advantage in ever-changing combat situations. These officer training 

problems often resulted in high casualties, eroded the Army’s 

tactical initiative, and bogged down the American attacks. 

The AEF’s enlisted soldiers had equally haphazard training. 

The instruction of the NCO corps was even more ad hoc and 

deficient than that of its officers. The NCOs generally possessed 

only slightly more technical and tactical knowledge than their 

privates, and often were unable to assist their officers with unit 

training or to assume effective command when their units lost 

their officers in combat. As junior officers became their units’ 

primary trainers, the deficiencies in officer training compounded 

the problems in soldier training. These systemic training problems 

only worsened when the German Spring Offensives committed the 

AEF to battle before its leadership could correct the shortcomings 
•••• 73 ••••

in its soldiers’ martial education. The AEF’s unexpectedly high 

casualties in the spring and summer of 1918 further exacerbated 

this problem, as officer, unit, and replacement training in the 

United States had to be shortened in order to expedite the shipment 

of fresh divisions and troops to France. To their credit, those 

soldiers and officers who survived combat gradually developed 

into skilled fighters.

The second major reason that the Meuse-Argonne devolved 

into a “wearing-out” battle was the nature of the enemy and 

the terrain that confronted the AEF. The German forces and 

commanders in the region had long mastered the art of the defense 

in depth. Although the German Army was in precipitous decline 

in the fall of 1918, it remained a cohesive and professional force 

to the bitter end, and used all of the remaining resources at its 

disposal to strike the Americans at every opportunity. The regional 

terrain helped them accomplish this deadly purpose. The heights, 

forests, and waterways of the Meuse-Argonne were well-suited to 

the enemy’s defensive doctrine, and created substantial problems 

for the Americans’ maneuver, logistics, fire support, and command 

and control systems. Even well-trained and experienced soldiers 

would have had difficulty fighting in the region, and the AEF was 

short on both of these. 

Poor command decisions were a third factor that hindered the 

AEF’s operations in the Meuse-Argonne. John J. Pershing should 

be lauded for his efforts in bringing the AEF into existence, but his 

actions in the opening weeks of the campaign demonstrated that he 

had not fully understood and mastered the realities of modern war. 

Although the Meuse-Argonne Campaign was not conducted at a time 

and place of Pershing’s choosing, his conception of the operation 

from 26 September through 12 October was wildly optimistic and 

unrealistic. He discounted the lessons that the Allies had learned 

so painfully since 1914 about defensive strength, and he overstated 

the American forces’ ability to wage “open warfare.” Pershing also 

was far too prickly about the reputation of the American Army, 

which led him to “stack the deck” at St. Mihiel while allocating far 

too many green divisions to the initial phase of the Meuse-Argonne. 

Furthermore, Pershing failed to see the need to clear the Heights of 

the Meuse of enemy artillery during the opening stage of the battle. 

These decisions all but ensured that the Meuse-Argonne Offensive 

would be frustrated from the beginning by allowing the Germans 

the time needed to bring up reinforcements and to blunt American 

attacks with artillery fires.
•••• 74 ••••

Fortunately for the AEF, Pershing also possessed an eye for 

talent and the strength of character to know when to admit that 

he was out of his depth. His most courageous command decision 

was when he recognized that he was not suited to command the 

AEF and the First Army simultaneously, and turned the authority 

of the latter over to General Liggett on 16 October. Liggett had a far 

more sophisticated understanding of the realities of the Great War 

battlefield and was better at harnessing the material advantages 

that the Americans held over the Germans. Liggett’s elevation, and 

Pershing’s ruthless removal of commanders who did not produce 

results, likewise led to the elevation of men such as Summerall and 

Lejeune, who also grasped the fact that the path to tactical victory 

in the war would rest more upon firepower than manpower.

The fourth difficulty that the First Army faced in achieving 

quick and decisive results in the Meuse-Argonne also stemmed 

from the unalterable realities of that time and place in warfare. 

When field fortifications mated with magazine rifles, machine 

guns, and quick-firing artillery, the scales of war tilted in favor 

of the defenders. To overcome this defensive advantage, the 

attacker had to employ massive amounts of artillery to support 

its infantry units. In this intricate infantry-artillery coordination, 

the Americans tried to learn in months what it had taken the 

Allies years to master. Because of technical limitations in 

communications, artillery fires and infantry maneuvers had to be 

synchronized with elaborate planning that left little space for the 

fog and friction of combat. This degree of planning worked best 

in a limited set-piece attack, such as the AEF’s maneuvers on 1 

November, but infantry-artillery cooperation generally broke down 

for all of the war’s combatants when their overstretched tactical 

communication lines failed and the artillery had to reposition its 

guns forward to support deeper infantry advances. This time lag 

often gave the Germans the opportunity to counterattack to retake 

their lost ground or to reestablish a coherent defense.

Finally, logistical constraints also hobbled the attackers in 

the Great War. The armies of the First World War consumed an 

unprecedented amount of ammunition and other supplies. Most of 

these items, especially artillery ammunition, were heavy and bulky, 

and tactical logistics still rested mainly on horse-drawn wagons 

bringing supplies to the front. The fact that artillery dominated the 

war meant that vast swaths of the battlefield were a cratered morass 

that hindered the flow of traffic through the area. Roads and supply 

points were also prime enemy targets for frequent artillery and air 
•••• 75 ••••

attacks. All of the war’s combatants found that logistical constraints 

limited the range and power of their offensive operations, but the 

Meuse-Argonne’s underdeveloped transportation infrastructure 

and the AEF’s equally underdeveloped SOS magnified these 

problems. In fact, as SOS commander Maj. Gen. James G. Harbord 

admitted, “It is certain that if the Armistice had not come when 

it did, there would have been a suspension of hostilities and 

movement until the supply and troop program could be brought 

back into balance.”

There is little doubt that the Meuse-Argonne Campaign was 

far costlier for the results achieved than Pershing or the other 

leaders in the AEF anticipated. The Meuse-Argonne was a case 

of “winning ugly,” but it was still victory. In the brutal calculus 

of war, the Americans could endure a level of attrition that their 

enemy could not match. The campaign hastened the defeat of 

imperial Germany by bleeding away the enemy’s last manpower 

reserves. Without a doubt, the AEF had been committed to the 

Soldiers reacting to news of the Armistice (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 76 ••••

crucible of modern industrial age warfare before it was ready. It 

learned painful lessons at the hands of its unforgiving German 

teachers, yet it gained vital skills and knowledge through its 

harrowing experience. The success of the attacks in November 

1918 demonstrated that the Americans had started to understand 

how to use their firepower and manpower superiority to their best 

advantage.

The U.S. Army entered the Great War as a small constabulary 

force and ended the war in the Meuse-Argonne as a force relatively 

capable of waging a modern industrialized war. The sacrifices 

the doughboys made during the campaign achieved President 

Wilson’s ultimate goal: securing a major role for the United States 

in crafting the peace that followed. In evaluating the Americans, 

German officer Hermann von Giehrl credited the AEF’s victory in 

the Meuse-Argonne to the fact that the naïve and inexperienced 

American soldiers “willingly accepted the hardest losses as 

something quite natural,” and their numbers made the campaign 

“a disproportioned struggle, which turned more and more to the 

disadvantage of the defender.” Although this appraisal has some 

merit, it overlooks the fact that by mid-October 1918, most of 

the soldiers in the AEF had lost whatever naïveté they may have 

had about combat. They had gained experience and displayed 

increasingly impressive tactical ability. In spite of the casualties 

they endured, they continued to attack and ultimately defeated 

the Kaiser’s veterans. In a larger sense, the soldiers, marines, 

sailors, and airmen who fought and died in the Meuse-Argonne also 

ushered in the “American Century.” The campaign demonstrated 

that the United States had the ability and will to project its power 

across the globe to protect or further its national interests. Despite 

the high costs of the offensive and the AEF’s occasional tactical 

and operational missteps, the Meuse-Argonne showed the world 

that the U.S. Army could wage a large-scale modern war.
•••• 77 ••••

•••

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard S. Faulkner is a professor of military history at the U.S. 

Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, 

Kansas. He served twenty-three years in the Army as an armor 

officer and commanded a tank company during Operation Desert

Storm. He has over nineteen years of experience teaching history 

at the college level. He received his Ph.D. in history from Kansas 

State University in 2008. His first book, The School of Hard Knocks: 

Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces,

received the Society for Military History Distinguished Book 

Award for American Military History in 2013. His second book, 

Pershing’s Crusaders: The American Soldier in World War I, 

was awarded the 2017 Norman B. Tomlinson Jr. Book Prize by the 

World War One Historical Association for the best work in English 

on the history of World War I, and the 2018 Richard W. Leopold 

Prize by the Organization of American Historians.
•••• 78 ••••

•••

FURTHER READINGS

Braim, Paul F. The Test of Battle: The American Expeditionary 

Forces in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign. Shippensburg, 

Penn.: White Mane Books, 1998.

Coffman, Edward M. The War to End All Wars: The American 

Military Experience in World War I. Lexington: University 

of Kentucky Press, 1998.

Cooke, James J. Pershing and His Generals: Command and Staff 

in the AEF. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997.

Faulkner, Richard S. Pershing’s Crusaders: The American Soldier 

in World War I. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017.

———. The School of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the 

American Expeditionary Forces. College Station: Texas A&M 

Press, 2012.

Fax, Gene. With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th 

Division, and the Battle for Montfaucon. Oxford, U.K.: Osprey 

Publishing, 2017.

Ferrell, Robert H. America’s Deadliest Battle: Meuse-Argonne, 

1918. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.

Grotelueschen, Mark E. The AEF Way of War: The American 

Army and Combat in World War I. College Station: Texas 

A&M Press, 2007.

Gutiérrez, Edward A. Doughboys on the Great War: How the 

American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Experience. 

Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014.

Lengel, Edward G., ed. A Companion to the Meuse-Argonne 

Campaign. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.

Lengel, Edward G. To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918: 

The Epic Battle That Ended the First World War. New York: 

Henry Holt, 2008.

Smythe, Donald. Pershing: General of the Armies. Bloomington: 

Indiana University Press, 1986.

Trask, David F. The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917–1918.

Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

Woodward, David R. The American Army and the First World 

War. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
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Yockelson, Mitchell. Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing’s Warriors 

Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I. New 

York: New American Library, 2016.

For more information on the U.S. Army in World War I, please 

visit the U.S. Army Center of Military History Web site (www.

history.army.mil).
PIN : 203848-000

MEUSE-ARGONNE 1918