2,711 guns open fire before dawn as America's biggest offensive begins
By September 1918, German troops had held the Meuse-Argonne for years, digging trenches and machine gun nests deep into the forest. At 02:30 on September 26, 2,711 Allied artillery guns opened fire, a barrage that fired more artillery rounds in three hours than either side fired in years of earlier wars, according to the offensive's official ammunition tallies. At 05:30, roughly 1.2 million American troops went over with mixed results: the 35th Division took Baulny and Charpentry, while the 79th Division stalled short of Montfaucon. It was the opening day of what became the deadliest campaign in U.S. Army history.
This was the largest offensive the American military had ever mounted, and its logistical planning fell to Colonel George C. Marshall, who managed to move American units to the front, and whose work here shaped the army he would later build as the general who ran World War II. Captain Harry S. Truman commanded one of the artillery batteries in that opening barrage. A future president and a future five-star general both took part in that single morning.
