September 30, 1918: Don Martin assesses war situation, and visits recaptured Varennes

           On Monday, September 30, Don Martin sent a cable sent to the New York Herald beginning with his review of the war situation in France, and then reporting on his day at the front in and around Varennes-en-Argonne. It was published on Tuesday, October 1.

ENEMY EXHAUSTED BY FOCH STRATEGY

OF VARIED BLOWS

Enemy Forces Bewildered 

and Never Quite Certain of Plan of Defence

By DON MARTIN

Special Correspondent of the Herald with the American Armies in France

[Special Cable to the Herald]

WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES IN FRANCE, Monday

                 Competent observers who long feared to believe their own convictions are now fully convinced that Germany is in a most serious predicament – not only because of her desertion by Bulgaria, but because of the general military situation on the Western front. To-day this situation is far more favorable to the United States and the Entente Allies than at any other time since the very beginning of the war.

                  I am but repeating what I said last July when I say that the second battle of the Marne, wherein the American forces took such a big part, was the turning point of the war in our favor, since it was then that the initiative was taken from the Germans. With the aid of the American forces Marshal Foch now is conducting an intensive campaign which not only is consuming the German reserves but is destroying those lines of communication which are so essential to the Germans in the movement of troops here and there as military necessity may require.

                 Up to last July German High Command was able to keep dozens of divisions constantly in reserve, and, what was more to the purpose, to move these divisions by means of a gigantic railway system rapidly whenever it was necessary to do so, even from the North Sea to Switzerland.

Reserves Rapidly Dwindling

                 In the allied offensive last July Germany was compelled to draw very hastily on her reserves. The succession of offensives launched by Marshal Foch since July has compelled a most demoralizing shift of troops by Germany from place to place in a vain effort to stem the constantly swelling tide against her. The result has been that the troops upon which the enemy relies to bridge him over the crisis in the war were not equal to the task assigned to them. They are not, in a word, what the German High Command thought and hoped they would be.

                 It has been learned that in the last week Germany has been moving large supply trains and massing troops for an allied attack at points where no thrust was contemplated; that she hastily reloaded these troops and supplies aboard trains without giving the men time for any rest and dispatched them to another point where the enemy expected Marshal Foch would strike – only to find later that the blow had fallen somewhere else in the long line on the western front and that when it fell the Germans were not prepared for it.

                 This is all a part of Marshal Foch’s scheme to demoralize the enemy and he unquestionably is succeeding. It is well known in high circles that the German High Command is deeply exercised at the situation – not so much because of the internal conditions in Germany as because of the actual military situation everywhere, not the least of the dangers of which lies in the Bulgarian defection.

                 The rank and file in the German armies realize the plight in which their fatherland is placed. Seven prisoners captured by the American troops in Montfaucon visibly were exhausted and when questioned declared that they had been constantly on the march for twenty-four hours. They said that when they reached the front at this point they were thrown into the fighting line with little or no rest.

                 Similar statements have been made by many other captives. Everything goes to prove that Germany to-day is very hard pressed to get fighting men to the right place at the right time. As I have said, the question of adequate transportation facilities is the big problem with the German High Command right now, while the thrusts of the Americans, the French, the British and the Belgians are fast–even if but temporarily–exhausting the enemy’s strongest reserves and placing him in the most critical position imaginable.

                 It is impossible now to predict what will be the developments of the next few weeks, but it is fair to expect that the Huns will not get a single moment of rest until the cold rains begin and the mud makes it impossible to carry on military operations on a large scale. Also it is reasonable to expect that all this time the enemy will be very hard pressed by Marshal Foch.

                 The French, always cautious, look at it this way, too. After four long years of the strain of war, with all its bitter woe and suffering, they fear to allow themselves even to think that victory is in sight, for they do not want to cheer themselves with any false hopes. Now, however, many important Frenchmen with whom I have talked freely said that the general situation has changed magically in the last few weeks, and they declared that victory is absolutely certain. However, they were not sure that this victory will come to us quickly.

                 Meanwhile the American First Army, with the courage that is characteristic of our officers and men, are vigorously carrying on the offensive against the Huns northwest of Verdun, and they are having the hardest kind of fighting imaginable. Constantly they are fighting the best picked troops that the Hun can put at the front, but despite this the men are constantly and surely pushing ahead. They are making steady progress and they hold all that they take. However often the Boche may try to come back in counter attacks, he always meets the same thing–a solid wall of steel forged in freedom’s land into sharp pointed bayonets.

                 I have just passed through the region north of Varennes and inspected the German defences from which our men ousted the Huns. I saw wonderful dugouts which had been built for German officers on the hillside. There were hundreds of them. They are constructed of concrete and have concrete floors and are air cooled, with refrigeration and ventilation systems of the most modern kind. Back of them I saw many coops of poultry and rabbits, and these the doughboys are now tenderly guarding, meanwhile dreaming of big ‘eats’ when time allows and the situation here has quieted down a bit.

                 When our troops entered these dugouts behind the fleeing Germans they found thousands of letters which the enemy troops had written to their folks at home and which had not yet been mailed. On every side were indications of precipitate flights. All kinds of personal effects were scattered about and more than a thousand pairs of new German made boots were found. By the way of parenthesis I may say that these boots are now being worn by American soldiers. We also found a large quantity of gloves and uniforms which had never been worn.

                 In Varennes I met Lieutenant Benjamin F. Wyatt, of Chicago, who in the fighting in that vicinity had followed an American manned tank, which proceeded north from that place along a ravine into German held territory. This tank cleaned up more than a dozen enemy machine gun nests, and in the fighting Lieutenant Wyatt killed his first Hun.

                  “The tank lumbered out of Varennes with a detachment of infantry trailing along single file behind it,” he told me describing the incident. “We were not long in coming on a machine gun nest, which we routed out. Quickly we came on another, and when our tank was within fifty feet of it the German machine gunners quite foolishly began to fire at it–foolishly because the bullets couldn’t hurt the tank.

                  “Our men immediately ‘rushed’ the nest while the gun was sputtering. A moment later a Hun rushed our group and made a lunge at me. How he escaped from the brush and the fire we were pouring in is more that I can say. Anyway, he came up and at me. I knocked him to one side and grabbed his helmet as he passed. I knocked him down with it and grabbed the knife which he carried at his belt. He was my first and only Hun. We cleaned up twenty machine gun nests in this vicinity.”