Blanc Mont.pdf

The Capture of Blanc Mont Between September 12 and 16, the U.S. 1st Army eliminated the St. Mihiel Salient before pivoting north to launch a new attack. On September 26, 1918, Pershing’s troops launched an offensive against elaborate German defenses between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. The Meuse-Argonne battle would prove the longest and bloodiest American action of the war. To support Pershing, the French 4th Army, on the left fl ank of the U.S. 1st Army, attacked through the Champagne Region toward the Aisne River.

The initial French objective was heavily fortifi ed Blanc Mont Ridge, which had defi ed every attack since 1916. In a week of fi ghting, French General Stanislas Naulin’s 21st Corps seized jumping off positions for an assault on the ridge. Unable to break through, he asked General Henri Gouraud, commanding the 4th Army, for reinforcements. In response the high command assigned the U.S. 2nd and 36th divisions to Naulin’s corps.

Major General John Lejeune’s battle-tested 2nd Division, which had a brigade of Marines and another of soldiers, relieved the French in front of Blanc Mont on October 2. The next day it launched an assault against the ridge. In 76 hours of brutal combat, Lejeune’s troops took Blanc Mont, fought off a violent counterattack and advanced to the ridge’s northern base. The cost of this gallant achievement was 5,000 casualties.

71st Brigade to the Front To support the 2nd Division, on the night of October 4, General Gouraud ordered Major General William Smith to move a 36th Division brigade to the village of Suippes (10 miles from the front).

Smith detailed the mission to General Pegram Whitworth’s 71st Brigade (141st Infantry, 142nd Infantry and 132nd Machine Gun Battalion) along with the 111th Signal Battalion. Whitworth’s approximately 6,000 doughboys moved forward in relays of French trucks and were in Suippes before noon on October 5.

The 71st Brigade came under Lejeune’s command that same day. To Whitworth’s surprise, he learned that his brigade would relieve the entire 2nd Division, rather than just one brigade.

Since the 71st couldn’t occupy such a broad front, Lejeune agreed to leave units on each fl ank to maintain liaison with French troops on either side of Blanc Mont.

The 71st marched out of Suippes on the morning of October 6, destined for the village of Somme-Py, fi ve miles to the north. From there 2nd Division guides would lead it to the front.

Along the way the brigade passed over the desolation of two years of previous fi ghting. Bursting shells, enemy planes and German observation balloons announced that, as one Texas doughboy put it, the time was near for the 36th “to make good.”

Upon reaching Somme-Py the relief plan fell apart. Shelling forced the 2nd Division guides to take shelter. They were nowhere to be found when Whitworth’s command arrived. After the guides emerged at nightfall, they contacted the wrong units. Worse, the guides were uncertain of the route back to the battle line because they been driven from the front to Somme-Py. As a consequence, the 141st, 142nd and 132nd wandered through the night under sporadic artillery fi re, following lost guides who didn’t get the units to their proper positions until just before daylight on October 7.

Last Minute Orders General Lejeune was able to give Whitworth and his regimental commanders a verbal briefi ng of the attack plan on the afternoon of October 7. Since the 36th Division’s artillery was still in training, the 2nd Division’s guns would support the assault, as would 50 French tanks. Naulin had not yet set the jump off time. He would relay that vital detail to the attacking units as soon as possible. A shortage of maps hampered preparations, as did muddy roads and continued shelling by an enemy who had observed the Allied assault preparations and prepared accordingly.

Lejeune wasn’t able to issue the fi nal attack order until after dark on October 7. To avoid tipping off the enemy, the Americans avoided using fi eld telephones. Darkness, German fi re and mud delayed the arrival of Lejeune’s instructions at Whitworth’s headquarters until after midnight. It was 3 a.m. before he could send written orders to his regimental commanders and almost 5 a.m. before these were received and transmitted to battalion and company commanders, most of who got a mere 10 minutes’ warning before they had to go “over the top.” Under these extremely diffi cult circumstances, the 36th Infantry Division’s 71st Brigade was about to receive its baptism of fi re.

A Daunting Challenge The 71st Brigade took over a two and a half mile wide front, located a few hundred yards south of the St. Etienne-Orfeuil Road. The 142nd Infantry was on the left, the 141st on the right, with the companies of the 132nd Machine Gun Battalion divided between the two regiments. German-held St. Etienne lay to the west and Medeah Farm to the east. The weather was cool. Fog mixed with drizzle as tired doughboys sheltered in shell craters or dug foxholes. Men tried to rest but enemy artillery, machine gun fi re and strafi ng planes kept everyone on edge while infl icting 16 casualties. Nonetheless, the doughboys were in high spirits.

The preferred practice in the AEF was to place a green division in a quiet sector for several weeks to get accustomed to the front, and then prepare it for offensive action by progressively deploying the unit to more active areas. The needs of the Allied offensive meant that many outfi ts went into the attack absent these preliminary steps. This was true of the 36th Division. General Gouraud ordered an advance toward the Aisne River for October 8. Lejeune urged a postponement to allow the 71st Brigade a few days of combat experience before assaulting the Germans, and to give time for the rest of the 36th time to come up. The insistence of Gouraud’s superiors that he maintain constant pressure on the enemy precluded any change of plan, however.

Opposite the roughly 7,500 American Doughboys and Marines were elements of three understrength German divisions—the 213th, 195th and 17th—numbering perhaps 5,000 troops. The enemy soldiers were tired, as well as short of fuel and transportation, but they had plenty of machine guns, grenades, artillery and ammunition.

German planes dominated the skies over St. Etienne. Dense barbed wire entanglements, machine gun nests (some in concrete pillboxes) arranged in depth and for mutual support, trenches and a labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers built into St. Etienne’s cemetery lay in front of the Americans, who would have to cross open ground to get at the enemy.

After a November 1917 revolution brought communists to power, Russia made a separate peace with

Germany on March 3, 1918. Three weeks later, after the transfer of 50 divisions from the Eastern to the Western Front, the Germans launched a massive offensive that ultimately threatened Paris. At the battles of Cantigny, Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood and the Marne, the U.S. 1st, 2nd and 3rd divisions helped stem the enemy onslaught, and by the end of August, drive the Germans back to their starting point. Following this success the Allies launched a September offensive along the entire front.

U.S. troops move toward the front, 1918.

French FT-17 tanks

Marine Major General John Lejeune, commander of the 2nd Infantry Division in World War I.

Blanc Mont – St. Etienne Zone of Operations

Generals of the 36th Division. Smith, division commander (left); Whitworth, commander 71st Brigade (center) and Hulen, commander 72nd Brigade (right). Courtesy Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

2nd Division troops man a 37mm gun in combat.

Brieulles

FRANCE

Verdun

Givry

Machault

Auberives

Somme-Py

Suippes

Ste. Menehould

Blanc Mont Ridge

Argonne Forest

St. Étienne-à-Arnes

Attigny

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Einem

M euse

A isne

Ardennes Canal

N

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Mudra

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4e

FR

Gouraud

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First

US

Pershing

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Marwitz

Front Line

The Battle for Blanc Mont

THE 36TH INFANTRY DIVISION ENTERS THE LINE