Home | Angelillo Family History - Traffic on the Esnes-Malancourt-Montfaucon Road
This page supplements The 315th Infantry U.S. Army at the beginning of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
The Esnes-Malancourt-Montfaucon Road
From the outset, on the morning of 26 September 1918, there had been only one road available for the use of both the 4th and 79th Divisions. This was the Esnes-Malancourt-Montfaucon Road. But that road was now nothing but a shell-pocked waste of earth and stone, the result of the explosion of thousands of French and German shells during the fighting about Verdun in 1916. It was not a road that could satisfy the transportation needs of two entire divisions, and the morning of 27 September 1918 found the Esnes-Malancourt-Montfaucon Road buried under a hopeless jam of ambulances, artillery, supply trucks, and vehicles of all descriptions. The forward movement of artillery became nearly impossible. (The Official History of the 315th Infantry U.S.A. (Philadelphia, 1920), p. 62-63)
