This division wasted little time and few words on sentiment. The hardships of war had become a matter of course to its survivors. Recruits who filled the gaps from death, as they were rapidly inculcated into its standards, absorbed the professional spirit. "You belong to the 1st, Buddy. And this is the way we do things in the 1st"--was the mandate of initiation into a proud company, which was facing its second winter in France. The only way to escape another winter in France was to win the war; and the way to win the war was by hard fighting. The regular field officers had been trained in a severe school; five out of six of the company officers were reservists. It was one of these young lieutenants, later killed in action, who characterized the views of the division when he said: "This is a mean and nasty kind of war, but it's the only war we've got, and I hope it's the last we'll ever have. The right way to fight it is to be just as mean and nasty, and just as much on the job, as the mean and nasty Boche."
In command was Major-General Charles P. Summerall, who had led the 1st in the drive to Soissons. He is a leader compounded of all kinds of fighting qualities, a crusader and a calculating tactician, who, some say, can be as gentle as a sweet-natured chaplain, while others say that he is nothing but brimstone and ruthless determination. "As per schedule" are the first words of his divisional report, which is as brief and cold prose as I have seen, describing as hot action as I have ever known. He might be called "per schedule" Summerall, and the 1st the "per schedule" division.
Another veteran division was to form the right side of the wedge: the 32nd, National Guard of Michigan and Wisconsin, under Major-General William G. Haan, a leader whose fatherly direction and "flare" communicated team-play and enthusiasm which an iron will could drive to its limit in battle. Iron was needed now: the iron of the spearhead, which would not blunt. The 32nd knew open warfare from its storming of the heights of the Ourcq in the Château-Thierry operations; and working its way over trench warrens from its three days' fighting as a division attached to Mangin's Army in the Juvigny operation north of Soissons. Sent from its first hard battle to its second without time for rest or replacements, it marched away from Juvigny, after losses of seven thousand six hundred men in the two battles, with half its requisite number of infantry officers and its infantry companies reduced to one hundred men. When it went into camp at Joinville, it had eight days, hardly enough to recuperate from its exhaustion, in which to train in its veteran ways five thousand replacements, before, with only two hundred men to the company--and half recruits, be it remembered,--and with each company short three officers, it was started for the Meuse-Argonne area. But it was considered--it must be considered--veteran by the Army command for this emergency, which was to give it a front of three miles in the place of the relieved 37th and 91st Divisions. The Arrow division, as it was called, which had twice pierced the German line, was to pierce it a third time before it was withdrawn again.