Forest of Argonne

With each new engagement with the Germans, America became more involved.

And by late September, more than a million American soldiers drove west from the blood-stained Verdun and through the dreaded Argonne Forest, It was a month of the very worst, awful fighting as Americans, foot by foot and yard by yard, crawled their way, fought their way through the hilly, hardened terrain against Germans who'd spent years fortifying it.

And all the while, French and British troops attacked from the west, driving German troops back to their own border.

On November 1st, American troops broke through, and the French 4th Army was given the honor of recapturing Sedan, a huge moral and psychological win for the Allies.

And yet when the United States called for soldiers to cross the ocean to fight for the preservation of civilization, the Indian left the land of his ancestors to die on foreign soil, fighting side by side with his white brothers under a flag which he had no right to call my flag and for a nation which had denied him the right to call my country.

The warriors of nearly every tribe on the American continent are today sleeping side by side with the khaki-clad Yanks on every battlefield of northern France, from Vimy Ridge to the Argonne Forest.

There were in the Army and Navy of the United States in round numbers about ten thousand Indians.

Of this number over six thousand enlisted as volunteers.

The majority of the officers and non-commissioned officers of the D Company, 114th Battalion of Canada, were Indians of the Six Nations.

These few facts, gathered from the official reports of the United States and Canada, show a part of the help given by the American Indian to the cause of the Allies.

Does it not seem to be the time, after the injustice of more than a century of dishonor, to grant to this patriotic race a place side by side with the white man and the Negro in the affairs of the nation? They were deemed worthy of a place by the side of their white brothers in the battles of Vimy Ridge, the Marne, Chateau Thierry, and in the Argonne Forest.

They have been deemed worthy to sleep the last long sleep side by side with their comrades in khaki in those hallowed spots in France.

It was a march of some seventy miles to the frontier.

So through the lovely forest of Argonne the boys set out, singing and joking as they strode along.

It was pleasant enough at first, a romantic adventure, but with his heavy rifle, his heavy cartridge belt and bayonet, and his musette full of food slung over his shoulder, it was not long before poor Coco began to get weary.

On his back, with his knapsack and his rolled overcoat and his tin bidon and tin gamelle, with the entrenching tool and his share of the company's baggage, he carried fully sixty pounds.

From one of the villages they passed, the boy wrote a brave little letter to his mother on a postcard.

"If anything should happen, well, one knows one's duty, and God will do the rest.

Lovingly, Coco." On, on through the hilly forests of Argonne they marched, making about twenty-five miles a day.

And on that dusty march, food was scarce.

Uh, but you know, my grandfather fought World War I.

He had his eyes shot out in the Argonne Forest, the guy I'm named after, uh, at a place called Verdun.

Uh, and uh, he never talked about anything, uh, to my father, and he died of his war wounds when my father was eight.

Mm-hmm.

If the attack was really coming, this would definitely put a wrinkle in the Germans' plans.

So the night sky from Reims to the Argonne Forest lit up with the violent bursts of light and the pounding of giants' hooves as the guns belched out an explosive rain of iron on the assembling Germans.

The thunder and the lightning of the guns increased in intensity when at 0-10 hours on the 15th of July 1918, the German guns opened up their own artillery on schedule.

While French shells rained down on staging points, supply depots, and flesh, the German rain of artillery fell on largely empty trenches.

This struggle to use our men first as individual replacements and, failing that, by battalions and finally by divisions, was begun by the Allied missions which arrived in Washington shortly after our declaration of war.

It continued until the Argonne battle closed with the armistice.

Despite the danger, and at times almost the certainty of his removal, General Pershing never faltered until an American army, under the American flag, and led throughout by American officers, was at grips on the battlefield with the enemy.

General Pershing was summoned from the Mexican border to Washington to take command and begin to organize the American Expeditionary Force.

This provided that while our regiments would be sent for a month's training with French divisions on arrival, they would then be withdrawn and assembled in American divisions under American officers.

However, despite these apparently definite settlements with the British and the French, attempts to absorb our troops into the armies of our allies, thus preventing the formation of an American army, did not entirely cease until the armistice was signed.

The last attempt was made during the Argonne battle, when it was suggested that American divisions should be distributed between British and French armies along the Western Front.

This because, quote, fuller advantage should be taken of their remarkable fighting capabilities than could be expected when they operated as an American army, end quote.

September 29th, 1918, you are standing in a muddy field somewhere north of the Meuse River in France, and the light is going, that long, golden, horizontal light of a late summer evening in Northern Europe, the kind that makes everything look softer than it is.

Around you, the Argonne Forest is what passes for quiet in the fourth year of a war that has already consumed a generation.

Then the guns start because they always start.

Three German observation balloons are still aloft in the darkening sky to the east, fat and motionless, hanging above the German lines on steel cables.

Then came October 8th, 1918.

We take you to France, the Argonne Forest, where the man's seventeen-soldier patrol came under devastating German machine gun fire.

Six Americans were killed, three were wounded.

With the other non-commissioned officers down, this reluctant soldier took command.