First Over There

On the foggy morning of June 14, 1917, 12 steel-gray transports filled with four regiments of American soldiers weighed anchor at their berth in Hoboken, N.J., and sailed for France. It had been 69 days since the United States entered the world war, answering President Woodrow Wilson’s call to make the world “safe for democracy.” In the weeks since the April 6 war declaration, British and French delegations had come to personally ask Wilson for an immediate U.S. presence on the front, and these dozen transports carried Wilson’s direct answer: America’s first combat troops to voyage “over there.”

The transports were escorted by destroyers for a two-week voyage across the U-boat patrolled Atlantic. They carried the U.S. First Expeditionary Division, composed of four infantry regiments hand-picked by the newly promoted commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, Gen. John Pershing. While a national draft was still being debated by lawmakers, the ranks of this first contingent were Regular Army – veterans of the recent “punitive expedition” for Pancho Villa in Mexico, a few who had fought in the Philippines against the Moro rebels, and a handful who had seen combat in the Spanish-American War. Augmented by a few thousand young men who had flooded enlistment offices in the previous two months, the division infantry numbered more than 12,000 soldiers – “doughboys,” as they were affectionately called – and represented each of the 48 states. 

The transports berthed at Saint-Nazaire, France, and the troops disembarked. Pershing, who with his staff had arrived two weeks before, was present to greet them. The second soldier down the gangplanks, following the division commander, was the newly appointed division operations officer, 36-year-old Capt. George C. Marshall. The man who would one day lead the U.S. Army through a second world war saluted and shook hands with the man who was about to lead the AEF through the first. And as the troops formed up on the waterfront, the First Expeditionary Division – soon to earn the title the “Fighting First” and destined to be called the “Big Red One” – stood as one for the first time. Of the more than 2 million men the United States would send to Europe before the war’s end, these were the first, and their division became the first face of American military might on the global stage.

BY MID-JULY, as a blindfolded War Secretary Newton Baker pulled the first registration number from a jar in Washington, D.C., to begin the national draft, across the Atlantic the soldiers of the 1st Division began their training on the northern French plains. In dummy trenches and mock-up enemy lines on drill grounds near Gondrecourt, the green American infantry trained under their veteran French counterparts. In addition to sharpening their marksmanship with their own Springfield rifles and Colt .45s, doughboys learned how to operate and employ the Hotchkiss machine gun for suppressive and destructive fire, and how to use the Chauchat automatic rifle to provide covering fire. They learned the noise and light discipline required to hold front-line trenches and go on night patrol through no man’s land, how to effectively use grenades and how to launch raids on enemy trenches.

In late October, the division moved up into front-line trenches near Sommerviller under French command. Three field artillery regiments, which had arrived in August and trained under French gunners on 75 mm and 155 mm guns, joined the four infantry regiments to work for the first time as a combined-arms division. And even though 1st Division soldiers were restricted entirely to defensive action, under orders to not go beyond their own barbed wire, the sector immersed them in the realities of trench life, the frustrating helplessness of riding out occasional artillery bombardments and the ever-present danger of enemy snipers. 

With lines unmoved since being originally clawed out in the fighting of late fall 1914, Sommerviller was a relatively quiet sector. But for the German units holding the lines across no man’s land, the propaganda value of inflicting casualties on – or better yet, capturing – American troops proved too great, and in the early morning hours of Nov. 3, 1917, more than 300 German soldiers crossed no man’s land behind the cover of an artillery barrage. The attackers swarmed a short stretch of trench held by a single platoon of the 16th Infantry Regiment, capturing 11 and killing three – the first Americans killed in front-line combat in a world war.

Eleven more were killed and three dozen wounded by the time the 1st Division left the sector in late November. And while the doughboys of three newly arrived American divisions began their own training, the troops of the 1st – now veterans of the front lines – moved to the rear for more training as their ranks swelled with fresh recruits and draftees.  

WHILE AMERICA MOBILIZED and its doughboys trained, the war continued. A costly defeat of the Italian army at Caporetto, and the collapse of the bulk of the fighting on the Eastern Front after Russia withdrew its massive army from the fighting, made Allied prospects bleaker and the urgency of America’s role greater. Pershing understood that Allied pleas to split up and amalgamate American units into veteran French and British forces would only increase, and his resistance to such pressure – thus far stubbornly intractable – depended in large part on American success when U.S. soldiers finally entered battle. And of the growing number of American divisions landing and training in France, Pershing knew the first one to enter battle would be the 1st Division. Thus, Pershing made his first command change of the war, replacing the 1st Division commander – whom he considered adequate for training but not fighting – with Maj. Gen. Robert Lee Bullard.

Bullard, like Pershing, had spent his career as an infantry officer and was a West Pointer (one class ahead of Pershing), but there their similarities ended. Pershing was a stern Midwesterner, known for his fondness of regimented uniformity and distant formality with subordinates. Bullard was a folksy Southerner who sanded off the edges of his words and was known to appear in the front lines with his soldiers to personally ensure their morale was up. Like Pershing had in the Spanish-American War, Bullard had led men in combat in the Philippines, and for all their differences, Pershing was confident Bullard was the man to lead the 1st Division into battle.

Bullard wisely kept Marshall – recently promoted to lieutenant colonel – on as division operations officer and shifted a few infantry commanders. And in a move that would carry lasting consequences for the AEF, he brought in Brig. Gen. Charles Summerall as division artillery commander. As a young lieutenant, Summerall had given Bullard’s infantry effective gun support in combat in the Philippines. Since then, he had studied the hard-won lessons of the French and British in the role of modern field artillery along the Western Front, and most recently earned renown – and stepped on a few toes – urging Pershing and the AEF to update its tactical doctrine to elevate the role of artillery, in line with Allied gunnery advances over the past three years of fighting. 

With his team assembled, Bullard moved the division back into the front lines in the midst of the bitter cold January of northern France, this time near Seicheprey, an active, deadly sector south of Verdun. Doughboys took over muddy trench lines just as the weather began to thaw and entered a harsh schooling under fire. Enemy artillery barrages were frequent, mustard gas attacks daily and casualties high. Bullard ordered his men to respond, to “be active all over no man’s land.” It was here the division earned its name “Fighting First,” as patrols went out to probe German positions almost nightly, Summerall’s artillery kept enemy batteries and trenches under constant fire, and raids on enemy lines captured German prisoners.

Spring broke, and over 100 miles up the Western Front from the 1st Division’s sector, the German army struck. Sixty-four divisions – many recently transferred from the Eastern Front – attacked the British army in the Somme Valley, an offensive aimed at knocking the Allies out of the war before the Americans could arrive in force. Within a week, German troops captured more than 90,000 Allied troops and in some places advanced 40 miles, shocking success on a front thus far frozen in three years of strategic rigor mortis.

In the face of this great crisis, Pershing offered the supreme Allied commander, French Gen. Ferdinand Foch, any military help America could give: “Infantry, artillery, aviation, all we have is yours.” Touched, Foch asked that a U.S. division take over the lines at the point the Germans had pushed furthest west, a small hilltop farming village named Cantigny, and Pershing sent the Fighting First.

As Bullard’s soldiers entered the lines facing Cantigny, the town’s stone buildings, deep cellars and newly dug trenches were thick with troops of the German 18th Army. If the fate of topography can spell fortune or doom, the town’s hilltop position afforded the Germans a dominant – and fortunate – position. One U.S. officer complained, “The Germans could look down our throats.”

Artillery shells – shrapnel and mustard gas – fell into the new American lines almost hourly, enemy snipers took aim at any movement visible above the trench-tops, and casualties mounted. Summerall unleashed his artillery on German lines and known gun positions, but Bullard wanted to take a turn no U.S. troops had yet taken in the war: go on offense.

The objective, approved by Pershing, was simple and limited: take Cantigny and hold it against inevitable counterattacks. Bullard directed his able operations officer, now Lt. Col. George Marshall, to construct the plan. Marshall sent word to the front-line infantry to send out patrols for enemy intelligence, and nightly, dozen-man teams quietly crawled into the dark of no man’s land, cut barbed wire, and went into, and in many cases beyond, enemy trenches. They brought back locations of every machine-gun nest, ammo dump, command post, outpost, dugout and trenchline, all of which Marshall and his team plotted on their map.

Summerall and his staff conceived the artillery’s part – one hour spent destroying every known structure and dugout in and around the village, followed by a protective bombardment fired continuously out in no man’s land, a wall of smoke and flame set to creep forward 100 meters every two minutes, behind which the three waves of infantry would attack until reaching the objective. 

For these ends, the French would supply 37 batteries of additional medium and large-caliber guns (giving Summerall a total of 386 guns), a battalion of 12 Schneider tanks to help dislodge enemy strongpoints, and a platoon of flamethrowers to mop up the village ruins of any Germans who managed to survive the artillery onslaught. The 28th Infantry Regiment, augmented by a company of engineers and three machine-gun companies, was selected for the attack. J-Day was set for Tuesday, May 28, and H-Hour 6:45 a.m. 

Having never participated in a regiment-wide attack closely coordinated with artillery and machine guns, and having never even seen tanks or flamethrowers, the soldiers were taken to a rear area for two and a half days of “battle rehearsal.” Platoon leaders, NCOs, machine-gun teams, automatic rifle squads and individual riflemen practiced their parts until it was muscle memory. After dark on May 27 – J minus 1 – the men were trucked back to the front lines, and by the predawn hours of May 28, they were hunkered in trenches with their weapons and full packs, prepared to jump.

AT 5:45 A.M., the world erupted as 386 guns hurled high-explosive shells at German positions in and around Cantigny. Each gun crew fired at its assigned target – an enemy gun pit, an enemy machine-gun post, a brick home here, a stone barn there – all into a space smaller than a square mile. The explosions were massive, the noise deafening, and by the end of the hour the village was nearly completely leveled. 

At 6:45 a.m. – “zero hour” – the artillery fired a barrage wall out in no man’s land, platoon leaders stepped up on trench parapets and blew their whistles, and the infantry went “over the top” and toward the barrage in three waves. Every two minutes, the barrage leapt forward 100 meters forward, and the men followed, tanks chugging forward among them. 

In the center around the village itself, there was little resistance, as doughboys walked through piles of stone and jumbles of timber all concealing Germans either trapped or buried alive. Tanks pounded strongpoints, flamethrower crews cleared out all deep cellars, and over 250 of the enemy, stunned and shell-shocked, were taken prisoner. But on the north and south, where the bombardment did not hit German lines, resistance was stiff and casualties high, most at the mercy of well-positioned German machine-gun crews. But the doughboys fought forward and by 7:25 a.m., they had taken nearly every objective.

Just as soldiers halted, dropped their packs and began to dig new lines on the east side of the village – in most cases in open fields – the heavy French gun batteries which had helped fire the bombardment and supported the barrage abruptly ceased fire, exited the battlefield and headed south to strengthen Allied defenses where the German army had renewed its offensive. German artillery – no longer under counterbattery fire by the long-range French guns – opened up, and the khaki-clad doughboys lit by the morning sun in open fields made easy targets.

Soldiers of the 1st Division clawed for cover with everything they had: shovels, helmets, even mess tins. In many cases, they leaped into newly blasted shell craters. The high-explosive onslaught only ceased long enough for German infantry – reserve and rest units that regathered in the woods facing the new American positions – to counterattack. 

The Germans attacked the first hour, they attacked again at noon, and they attacked again at 5 p.m. Each time, 1st Division troops fought them back with rifle and automatic-rifle fire. Between each attack, German artillery pummeled the fresh American lines, and each doughboy could do nothing but hug his patch of dirt and hope the next blast was not his.

After dark, 1st Division soldiers buried their dead, and used the cover of darkness to dig their lines deeper to strengthen their defenses for the next onslaught. The second day the Germans counterattacked again, and again that afternoon, and again that night. German artillery kept the fields between Cantigny and the former American lines under constant fire, making medical evacuations perilous and resupply impossible. 

By the third morning, the doughboys had exhausted their rations and water and were desperately low on ammunition. The Germans launched one final counterattack, and 1st Division soldiers – many at the end of their physical and mental tether – repulsed the enemy once again. By that afternoon, Bullard ordered their relief. After dark, soldiers of the 16th Infantry Regiment went forward and relieved the men of the 28th, who staggered back across the former no man’s land and to the rear for well-earned rest. 

There was no flag-raising or grand finale, but the battle’s outcome was unmistakable: the Americans had captured their objective and held it. Pershing effused that the victory had “an electrical effect” on the Allies, and Marshall said it “demonstrated conclusively the fighting qualities of the American soldier.” 

Of the 1st Division, the French Corps commander declared, “You, Sons of America, we are happy to call ‘The Men of Cantigny,’” and soldiers of the 28th Infantry Regiment would forever be named “The Black Lions” after the region’s coat of arms. Across the Atlantic, newspapers coast to coast carried triumphant headlines: “Americans Take Town Alone” and “Yankees Yell As They Take Cantigny.”

It was followed by more American victories, each of increasingly greater consequence to the Allied cause: a brave stand by soldiers at Château-Thierry and Marines at Belleau Wood; American divisions fighting with the French and British in a pivotal victory at Soissons; the first all-American offensive victory at Saint-Mihiel; and the greatest Allied victory of the war – and still the largest American battle ever fought – the Meuse-Argonne, which led finally to the Nov. 11 armistice.

MEASURED BY the proportions of Great War battles – many of which reached massive scales unequaled before or since – America’s first victory was a small skirmish, and the taking of Cantigny was strategically almost inconsequential. But the effect on morale and national prestige was far-reaching, and the village marked the place where American soldiers crossed a historic no man’s land from 19th century muskets and cannons into 20th century warfare of tanks, airplanes, automatic weapons and modern artillery. And many officers who led men in the battle – like Capt. Clarence Huebner, who would command the “Big Red One” at Omaha Beach 26 years later, or Marshall, the architect of the battle plan who would lead the Army through World War II and become famous for a far greater plan – were long informed by their experience in the operation. Thus the mile of French farmland conquered by the “Fighting First” at the hilltop village of Cantigny marked not only America’s first steps toward the armistice but the birth of its modern Army.

World War I is America’s most recent war with no surviving participants. With no doughboy alive to tell the tale, the war has slipped back into a sepia-toned national mythology, somewhere in the dark shadows cast by a spotlight of history so frequently aimed back at another, larger, world war. But fresh examination can prove revealing, and now, from a distance of 100 years, we can see that World War I was a pivotal event, and its final chapter began when a few thousand soldiers of the U.S. 1st Division first stepped out of their trench and brought America onto the world stage to help tip the balance of history.  

Matthew J. Davenport is a criminal defense attorney, former prosecutor, Army Reserve veteran and member of Pitt County American Legion Post 39 in Greenville, N.C. He is the author of “First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America’s First Battle of World War I” (St. Martin’s Press, 2015).