D-Day, H-Hour for the Blue Ridge Division at the Meuse-Argonne

The 80th Division Moving into Opening Position

The assault on September 26 surprised the Germans and disrupted their defense, but this situation was only momentary. From that day on the fighting was probably unsurpassed during the World War for dogged determination on both sides. Each foot of ground was stubbornly contested and the hostile troops took advantage of every available spot from which to pour enfilade and crossfire into the advancing American troops.

American Armies and Battlefields in Europe

Shoulder Patch, 80th Blue Ridge Division 

By Major Gary Schreckengost, U.S. Army, Ret.

Lt. Otto Leinhauser, the son of German immigrants from Philadelphia, PA, and a platoon leader in the division's 313th Machine Gun Battalion remembered the preparations:

At Midnight the artillery opened up and such a night you never saw. We are opposite south of Béthincourt. The horizon, as far as you could see, was just one blaze or continuous line of flashes of every caliber, and the war was terrific. This continued until 0530. when the barrage started, and the infantry left the trench. Just multiply all that racket by about ten and then add more and you will have just the noise the artillery made. Our machine guns, of which there were 120, all opened up at 5:30 A.M. and then hell was let loose. You couldn't hear yourself think.

This epic opening bombardment was fired over a 20-mile front. Some 3,200 French and American artillery pieces delivered a rain of steel upon the German lines—far more than the German artillery preparation for Operation MICHAEL, the early-spring offensive that was to end the war before the Americans arrived in force. As the artillery roared, at 0330 hrs., the battalion commanders read the following message from General Cronkhite to their company commanders:

To the Members of the 80th Division: For over a year we have been learning how to fight. Within the next few hours, we shall have a chance to apply what we have learned. We form part of a vast army, consisting of over 300,000 Americans and an equal number of our French Allies. No enemy can withstand you, men from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. You are fighting for everything that makes life worth living, the safeguarding of your families and homes, and that personal liberty so dearly earned and so tenaciously maintained for over a century. Go at them with a yell, and regardless of obstacles or fatigue, accomplish your mission. Make the enemy know that the 80th Division is on the map: make him know, when he faces you in the future, that resistance is useless.

80th Division at H-Hour, 26 September 1918

At 0430 26 Sept, "H-hour-minus-one," just as the drizzle grew into light rain, sappers from the 305th Engineers, reinforced by soldiers from the reserve battalions of the 160th Infantry Brig. began by crawling forward into "no man's land" through the rusty metal briar patch and into the corpse-lain swamp that had separated the French and the Germans for almost a year now, with wire cutters, picks, and shovels, marking infiltration paths with white engineer tape for the infantry to follow at daylight. They were covered by the artillery, which was still firing interdiction, harassing, or counter-battery barrages north of the Béthincourt-Forges Road.

With the 75s now firing a standing barrage north of the creek, the Gas Regiment laying clouds of masking smoke, and the 155s and machine guns firing interdiction barrages on known or suspected Hun mortar or artillery batteries miles behind the front line, Majors O'Bear and Holt, the respective commanders of the lead attack battalions of the 319th and 320th Infantry blew their whistles to advance. They were echoed by the company commanders and the platoon leaders, who were all holding Browning .45 caliber automatic pistols over their heads and yelling either, "Over the top lads! Over the top!" (just like their British brethren and trainers had done in Picardy) or "Up and At "Em!" which was the American handle and the men climbed from Trenches (or Tranchées) "Alsace" and "Kovel" and advanced into the Forges bottomlands.

The Division's First Obstacle: Forges Creek