Americans at Sedan

The British chronology of the war records under 6 November 1918 that American troops took Sedan. This did not happen. That day units of the American First Army, pursuing the retreating Germans, reached the Meuse a few kilometres from the town. In the afternoon a battalion of the 77th Division took Remilly on the river, and the 42nd Division was approaching Sedan from the south. The next day the Americans took the heights overlooking the town and the Metz–Sedan–Mézières railway, the main objective of the whole offensive. They did not enter Sedan. This was decided by the Allied high command, and the march on the town itself turned into one of the most chaotic episodes in the history of the American army in this war.

The race for Sedan

Since the breakthrough on 1 November the Germans had been retreating along the whole sector west of the Meuse. Sedan had a special significance for the French and the Americans. It was here in 1870, after the Battle of Sedan, that Emperor Napoleon III had capitulated, and in August 1914 the Germans had taken the town again. Entering the town would be symbolic revenge for 1870, and the American commanders wanted the honour to fall to their soldiers. On the afternoon of 5 November First Army headquarters ordered I Corps, attacking on the left, to take Sedan with the support of V Corps. The next day a memorandum reached the commanders of both corps, according to which General John Pershing desired that the honour of entering Sedan should fall to the First Army. It ended with the sentence that boundaries between units would not be considered binding.

In V Corps the order was taken literally. The 1st Infantry Division of General Frank Parker, which had relieved the 80th Division at dawn on 6 November and reached the Meuse, set off for Sedan, about 16 kilometres away, in the evening between 7 and 8 p.m. It marched in five columns, in rain and mud, straight across the attack sectors of the 77th and 42nd Divisions of I Corps, whose commanders knew nothing about it. During the night its units fought German rearguards in village streets. At 4.30 a.m. on 7 November a battalion of the 16th Infantry Regiment took Pont-Maugis, and before noon the 1st and 42nd Divisions, after heavy fighting, took the German positions on the heights south-west of Sedan. The 16th Regiment got beyond Hill 252, closer to the town than any other American unit. In the rear confusion reigned. Columns of the 1st Division ran into units of the 42nd Division, and on the left wing they also came up against the French 40th Division. Soldiers of the 1st Division even detained General Douglas MacArthur, a brigade commander in the 42nd Division, taking him for a German officer. MacArthur wrote years later that the operation had come close to being one of the great tragedies of American history.

Sedan for the French

The boundary between the First Army and the French Fourth Army was shifted several times during the pursuit by Marshal Ferdinand Foch. On 7 November, when the Americans were already standing on the heights and preparing to attack the town, they received word of the latest change. The left wing of the First Army was now to extend only as far as Mouzon, and Sedan fell to the French. In the afternoon the 1st Division was ordered to withdraw to the south, and during the night of 7–8 November the French took over the positions above the town. According to the American Battle Monuments Commission, during the night of 8–9 November joint patrols of the French and the 42nd Division entered Torcy, a district of Sedan on the left bank of the Meuse. It was the furthest point north reached by American units in this offensive. The main part of the town, across the river, remained in German hands into the last days of the war, and sources differ as to exactly when the French entered it.

For the offensive itself the question of entering the town was of secondary importance. American long-range artillery had already been shelling the railway running along the Meuse valley through Sedan, and from 7 November the Americans commanded it from the heights. The main link between the German armies east and west of the Meuse was thus cut. The same day German emissaries crossed the front line to ask for an armistice. Meanwhile the First Army turned east and until 11 November fought for crossings and heights on the east bank of the Meuse.