As the long twilight faded into night the confusion was compounded.
“Now it is night in the great Forest of Retz,” wrote Private McCord in his diary, “and dark as a dungeon, and with the darkness comes rain. As we grope in single file we cling each man to a packstrap of the man in front, as blindly, doggedly on we go, in spite of the mud, the heavy packs and the rain that comes down in torrents … Blindly feeling our way, with the help of God and our own intuition, we the lousy infantry, s.o.l. as always, until they get us to where they need us, managed to miraculously accomplish the impossible by getting from the right to the left side of this dark, seething, confusing stream of traffic to follow other lousy troopers, men like ourselves, the other battalions and companies of our regiment, in single file off through the woods to our left …”
Wherever Harbord went, his men told the same story of a weary night ride or endless hike; no information, no maps, no guides, no orders.
The machineguns of the marine brigade were for some reason dumped off at an old château. “When finally located and told the mission of the division, these men,” wrote Harbord, “carried their guns by hand on the long march across fields and muddy roads, getting into position at the last moment. No one can understand exactly what this means unless he has tried to carry a machinegun twelve miles through a ploughed field …
“Seven hours of darkness before the zero hour,” wrote Harbord. “None of my units except the gunners were in place. It rained hard; the forest was plutonian in its darkness: the road, beyond words to describe: trucks, artillery, infantry columns, cavalry, wagons, caissons, mud, MUD, utter confusion … All realized that the task was almost superhuman, but that the honor not only of the division but of the American name was at stake. At 3 A.M. the 5th Marines and the 9th Infantry were forcing their way through the forest … they would be up with about five minutes to spare … The regiments got to the point designated for the assault at double-time.”
The orders were for the Moroccan division to attack in the center with the American 1st on its left and the 2nd on its right. Many men of the 2nd had marched without sleep for two nights.
“The attack began at the appointed hour of 4:55 A.M.,” Harbord jotted in his notes. “It was out of my hands when they went over the top and there was nothing to do but pray for victory and wait for news.”
July 18: “Nearing dawn and stopped raining,” noted Sergeant Carl McCune of the 5th Marines. His battalion halted on a hill about a half a mile from the front line where the men left their blankets and made up combat packs with reserve rations. Then the hike was resumed, the men very quiet and the artillery silent. A French machinegun outfit, bearded men muddy from the trenches, passed by towards the rear. The sergeant noted that they seemed tired and glad to see the marines. There were shellholes everywhere. Woods thinning out. At a farmhouse the men were issued two bandoliers of ammunition and two grenades each.
“A 75 barked suddenly and then began the most terrible barrage ever experienced up to this time. Every caliber of gun, large and small, firing as rapidly as possible, joined in throwing over a wall of steel and iron that was to drive the invader out of the land. The sky was becoming clearer. As we were late we began to double time into position, panting, stumbling, well-nigh exhausted; the men ran quickly through a counter-barrage thrown over by the Germans. Men fell now and then hit by shrapnel … A French sentinel posted at a wire strung across the road, opened it to let the Marines through; shells dropped closer, several men were hit. Big trees cut by artillery fire lay everywhere about the woods. Exhausted, the men dropped into holes constituting the line and paused for breath. Exhausted as they were, the men arose and went over the top to meet the enemy.”
The Germans were taken by surprise. Some units were out in the fields taking in the wheatharvest the French farmers had abandoned in their flight. Their counterbarrage proved spotty. Outposts made little resistance.
The day turned out bright and clear. The sun was hot and men who had drunk up the water in their canteens during the night suffered agonies of thirst. When a man fell dead his comrades snatched for his canteen. Soon they were picking canteens off the fallen Germans.
“We went through barbed wire entanglements,” continued Sergeant McCone. “In front of the advanced posts a machinegun opened up and the men who received the fire halted and lay on the ground, behind trees if possible; our units to the right and left advanced and forced the gun crew to withdraw. We advanced keenly on the alert from tree to tree. Maxims lay scattered about with long belts of ammunition discarded by the Germans in their flight. The barrage roared steadily … The German artillery now dropped shells between the first and second wave which the men avoided by making an encircling movement around the shelled area and reforming when out of range. To the right of the company were captured a four inch gun, a telephone station and several prisoners. We found hot coffee and German warbread and butter which the men devoured after making the prisoners first sample it.”
Marines of another detachment, after storming a ravine, found themselves the possessors of a barrel of sauerkraut. Parched with thirst and starving for food they broached it with a riflebutt. As they continued up through a wheatfield after the retreating Germans each man had his rifle in one hand and a dripping clutch of sauerkraut in the other.
At the same time infantry outfits were storming the village of Vierzy which commanded a heavily defended tunnel on the Soissons-Villers-Cotterets railroad.
“We emerged from the woods,” wrote Lieutenant Marvin H. Taylor of the 23rd Infantry, “upon a broad stretch of wheatfields as flat as a table, which was bounded by a wide deep valley, in the bottom of which was the main position of the town of Vierzy. The houses were built in a series of terraces along the opposite side and each one offered excellent protection for Boche machine guns which opened up a murderous fire upon us, exposed as we were crossing the open fields. Our advance was a quick rush down the slope into the town, then a short delay caused by lurking snipers who were disposed of, after a bit of house to house fighting, and then the arduous climb up to the opposite slope again. There were fences and walls enclosing the grounds of each house and they were still intact. The destruction of war had apparently skipped that little town for some unaccountable reason, and all of these structures made progress extremely difficult. A formation of any sort was quite impossible, and we struggled forward in groups made up of men of all outfits, infantrymen, marines and Moroccans, in a strange hodgepodge …
“At the summit we came upon a strange scene. There on the very edge of the hill, somewhat concealed by shrubbery, a German machinegunner had been engaged in taking advantage of an unobstructed field of fire as we crossed through the wheat. But now retribution had been meted out and the German gunner was dead at his gun. Seated as in the act of firing, his finger on the trigger, his head bent forward on the breech, a bullet hole in the forehead and gaping bayonet wound in the throat. I never thought I would reach a point where I would glory in death but the sight of that fellow positively caused a thrill of exaltation to sweep over me and tired as I was I laughed aloud … When I laughed every man in the platoon caught the spirit of it and laughed a grim short laugh.”