Blanc Mont, Bloody Blanc Mont!
The Man Ralph Richmond Matteson was born on 26 March 1900 in the community of Chepiwanoxet, in the historical town of Warwick, Rhode Island. This man would be just 1 of 64 Rhode Island men to become a US Marine during the Great War. Interestingly enough is the fact that the first 100 Marines formed for the Continental Navy 130 years before were Rhode Islanders. Rich, as his family calls him, left his job at Brown and Sharpe as a machinist to enlist with the US Marine Corps in Boston, Massachusetts. Like many men, he would enlist because he believed it was the right thing to do. After basic training at Parris Island he boarded a train for New York. From there he was shipped to France. No England. No Ireland. He arrives at Brest, France on August 26th where he boards a passenger train headed to Chatillon, France to undergo intense chemical warfare training. On 11 September 1918 Rich leaves Chatillon in a 40 or 8 for his new unit the Fourth Marine Brigade. Here he will join the 6th Regiment, 83rd Company, 3rd Platoon; he will then march from the railhead to the trenches and prepare for his first taste of combat at the salient in St. Mihiel. After preparing his gear and getting settled he is told that he needs to be ready to move forward. Told to pack a combat packs, the regiment moves out after dark and settles into their new positions just after 0300hrs. Now on the outskirts of Thiaucourt in old trenches not quite deep enough, he receives a taste of what is yet to come; machine gun and artillery. This combination helps him keep his head low in the shallow trench only a couple of hours before "going over". Looking through the trenches he sees an amazing site...men sleeping. Rich has a couple of cigarettes and then dozes off only to be awakened by an artillery barrage...our own. At 0500 hrs on the 12th of September, leaving his trench, he readied for the attack. The artillery continued to form a rolling barrage that cleared the trenches and the bunkers in front of them. He couldn't help but to watch the shells burst. It is an amazing site. As he is watching this he says, “The shells start coming in fast. To fast for me.” He started to have some negative vibes at this point. As he was moving towards Thiaucourt he started to have problems plugging in his bayonet. “Trying to watch the enemy to your front while trying to attach a bayonet is a hard task while artillery and machine gun fire are trying to do you in. I thought I was a dead man...it took quite a while to fix my bayonet but soon found out the enemy didn't wait for the bayonet. Not while the going is good. Surprising how quick one learns to protect himself on the front.” He survives his first major battle which will last 16 days and is then sent to the rear for R&R. On October 1st his unit is moved to positions on the French lines on the Somme. Blanc Mont.
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The Legend Blanc Mont was a ridgeline of white limestone nestled between Somme-Py and St. Etienne. It was taken by the German forces in 1914 and remained occupied until Oct 9th when the last of the Central Powers forces either surrendered or retreated. It had been shelled, machine gunned, bombed, and assaulted. The French threw walls of men at it only to have them cut to ribbons by deeply entrenched Maxim machine guns and artillery. Then the British came. They too failed. Descriptions of Blanc Mont make one wonder why anyone would want to frontal assault this limestone rise in the middle of the Champagne. The killing ground set before the ridge was a gentle downward slope in which the Germans could see every little movement. Trenches interlaced the wood line on either side of the ridge. Machine guns had clear lanes of fire and wide beaten zones and anyone who moved was stopped. This went on for some 4 years killing thousands of men. The French, set in their ways, continued to use infantry tactics from the 19th century. Tactics similar to those used in the American Civil War had been in use in most of Europe since the inception of the firearm. In April of 1917 the US finally started to send troops to the front. Some of the first soldiers weren’t soldiers at all…They were Marines. Prior to the arrival of American reinforcements US Generals preceded their troops to get a grip on what was going on. They were appalled to say the least. The US had changed its Infantry Training Doctrine to include squad and platoon movements it was time to show the allies new tactics. Gone were the days of mass on line formations marching to their deaths. It would also show that trench warfare was about to become obsolete. With the arrival of the American “cowboy” in France along too came their cavalier attitudes and cocky confidence. They didn’t come for the women or the wine though it was a benefit. They came because the Hun needed to be sent home.
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The Orders Needing men to pull off the most daring of missions, General Philippe Petain went to General Pershing and requested three American infantry divisions for what he had in mind. He told Pershing that the men would be needed to augment four of his divisions. Pershing, probably looking at his maps and manpower documents, turned Petain down and countered with 2 divisions one being the 2nd Division. Petain agreed and returned to his headquarters to let his field commander know he had the men. Four years and almost two months to the day after Blanc Mont was taken by the Central Powers. The US Marines, under Major General John A. Lejeune, were going to be tested like they had never been tested before. They were going to take it back. Placed under the French Fourth Army the 2nd Infantry Division (Marine) and the 36th Infantry Division (Army) were going to be broken up and spread out over four French divisions. Lejeune protested the split and showed the French how “his” divisions would do it. Both General Petain and General Gouraud agreed with Lejeune. Lejeune was notified of his assignment to the Fourth French Army. Lejeune met with Gouraud at his headquarters where they discussed the upcoming fight. Gouraud had a large relief map that showed the sector they were going to. In very clear detail Blanc Mont at first must have surprised Lejeune. The gears must have started turning the moment he looked at the map as the minute that General Gouraud had stopped talking General Lejeune indicated that the 2nd Division could take it. It should be understood at this point that the 2nd Division was subject to the orders of Marshal Petain, even though the division would be fighting with the Fourth French Army. Lejeune needed the freedom to move and devised his plan based on his division leading the fight. After formulation of the “Lejeune” plan he brought it to Gouraud and Petain. Petain listened to what Lejeune had to say and agreed that if this was to work right Lejeune would need the freedom to conduct the fight his way. General Lejeune and the 2nd Division were released to the Fourth French Army that day.
Preparations The Central Powers had been working on Blanc Mont for four years. Reinforcing, bunker building, and camouflage had turned Blanc Mont into a fortress that was all but impenetrable. Its limestone bluff looking down on terrain that was trench scarred gave the German Army or any army for that matter the upper hand. The ground before the Germans was a killing field in the literal sense. Hundreds of machine guns had the upper hand as did German snipers and their excellent Mauser* rifles. If my Grandfather’s diary is any indication as to what the Germans had planted on the ridge then the Maxim machine guns averaged one every ten yards or so. Artillery was another matter. The German gunners were good. Not because they were one of the premier artillery builders of the time but because they had four years to identify and set target reference points on the field below them. Accurate and deadly, it tore battalions apart. It did so up until the American’s arrived. The Allied Powers had been planning for this day for four years. Prior to the American divisions’ arrival the French had attempted an assault only to be repulsed by a fierce and deadly German response. The French regrouped and resupplied then decided to wait for the 2nd and 36th Divisions to arrive. They shored up positions, removed the dead and cut down obstacles that would slow them down. The American 75 and 155mm guns were brought forward to assist the in the combined allied assault. General Lejeune reported to Gouraud to commit to his assignments and was told that the division would be broken down into smaller units to support the French. Without protesting, Lejeune explained to Gouraud that if the 2nd Division was assigned the lead roll in the attack they would push forward on a narrow front and take the ridge in one assault. On October 1st and 2nd elements of the 2nd Division moved forward and relieved the forward most French positions. Gouraud took all of his eggs and put them in General Lejeune’s basket. It was now the beginning of the end of the Central Powers stranglehold on France.
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The Assault In the early morning hours of October 3rd some 230 Allied aircraft were called in and bombed the ridgeline with the largest air raid of the war. At 0550 hours 200 US artillery pieces established an explosive wall of fire and steel. Five minutes later the Marines and soldiers of the 2nd and 36th Divisions were up and out of the trenches. The 6th Marines were on the left with the 5th Regiment as support while the 9th Infantry pushed on the right with the 23rd Infantry in support. At 0555 Marines and soldiers surged forward behind the rolling barrage. It was inevitable that men would be hit by their own shell fragments but these men knew that if they “leaned” against the artillery wall they would catch the enemy while they were still under cover. Beside them were French light tanks armed with either the 37mm cannon or the Hotchkiss machine gun to help clear bunkers and machine gun nests. The US Marines had learned a lot from their early start in April of 1917. They learned that small units spread out over a large front had a better chance of reaching their target areas while large masses of men were systematically cut down. Marines in platoon sized elements used the tanks for cover from the fanatical German machine gunners that didn’t drop to cover from the artillery. It stopped them quickly. The artillery rolled over machine gun nest after machine gun nest as the Marines pushed forward eliminating the enemy gunners and spotters. At about 0830 and enduring all kinds of crossfire coupled with artillery and other sporadic explosions the 6th Marines hit the crest of Blanc Mont. The French were no where to be seen. They were the flanking support of the whole push and they were still in their trenches. At this point the Germans made their first counter-attack. Realizing the flanks of the 6th Marines were open the Germans attacked from the Essen Hook after a frontal clash that failed to move the Marines. Seeing this, the 5th Marines moved left to cover the rear flank of the assault. They poured into the German positions and began a hand to hand fight that was both brutal and bloody. Captain Leroy Hunt and the 17th Company not only pushed the Germans back and off the hook they took almost 200 prisoners doing it. He looked back, still no French. The Marines did it. The 6th Marines took the ridge that the French or the British could not take in the previous four years. This was completed in just 3 hours. Casualties were high but the Germans were pushed back. By noon the French had relieved the 5th Marines on the Essen Hook. Unfortunately for the Marines the French would lose the Hook to a German counter-attack exposing the Marines once again to flanking fire. By evening the Marines had dug in for the night. Their flanks still exposed and the French still far behind. Their accomplishments; They had taken a ridge line some 2 miles long, had pushed the Germans back almost as far, had taken 15 machine gun nests, and captured almost 300 men. The *nut was now cracked. It was this assault that defined the Marines as the toughest fighting force in the war. The French were so surprised by them that they were left miles behind on the Marines drive to the ridge. In my honest opinion I believe that the French were expecting Lejeune and his Marines to fail. They were part of the assault yet they were nowhere to be seen except when relieving the 5th on the Essen Hook and at that point they had to be called on by a Marine runner to come forward. The most violent single fight of the war was the one fought on the 4th of October. The 5th Marines pushed fast and furiously out of their trenches, dugouts, and gun pits to repulse a counter-attack that surprised even the German High Command. The Germans wanted the high ground that the 5th occupied so that they could withdraw. The Marines lost the ground but took many Germans with them. My grandfather’s company had taken 23 artillery pieces, 10 machine gun nests, and 200 prisoners. Surprisingly his company had lost no men. By October 9th the Germans had retreated and the Allied Powers had pushed past the ridge and closer to Germany by almost 6 miles.
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