Average Americans Part 6

Private Jones would imagine he saw a German patrol approaching him, fire all his hand grenades at them, and send in a report to the effect that he had repulsed a raid and that there were three or four dead Germans lying in front of his part of the line. Investigation would prove that an old stump or a sandbag had received all his attention.

The division had fairly heavy casualties in this sector. The Germans staged a couple of raids. Also there were heavy artillery actions very frequently. Generally these would start around three o'clock in the morning. First would come the preliminary strafing. During it the higher command would call up and ask what was going on, to which you replied N.

T. R.--(nothing to report). Then the sh.e.l.ling would commence in earnest and all connections would go out at once. From then on, runners were the only method of communication until everything was over. One could never be sure that each strafing was not the preliminary to an a.s.sault.

Strafing like this was very picturesque. Generally I got into position where I could see as much of the front as I could. It is possible to guess by the intensity of sh.e.l.ling just what is getting ready, while hand grenades and rifle fire mean that an attack is taking place. First a few flashes can be seen, which increase until on all sides you see the bursts of the shrapnel and the noise becomes deafening. Then it gradually dies away and a thick acrid cloud of smoke lies over everything.

During one of these actions a runner came in to report that the captain of the right flank company had been severely hit. The second in command had not, in my opinion, had quite enough experience, so I sent my scout officer back with the runner to take command. They got to a bit of trench where sh.e.l.ls were falling thick.

"Lieutenant, you wait here while I see if we can get through," said the runner to the officer.

"Why should you go rather than me?" asked the lieutenant.

"Well," came the reply, "you see you are going to command the company.

I'm just a runner. They can get lots more of me."

A very good sergeant of mine, Ross by name, had his hand blown off in this sector.

He was making a reconnaissance with a view to a patrol, when a German trench mortar sh.e.l.l that had been imbedded in the parapet went off under his hand. As he pa.s.sed me he simply said: "Major, I am awfully sorry to leave you this early before the real game begins."

Here we captured our first German prisoner. I doubt whether any German will ever be as precious to any of us as this man was. We had patrolled quite a good deal, but the Germans had either stopped patrolling in the sector in front of us or we were unfortunate in not running into any of them. We felt at last that the only way to get a prisoner was to go over to the German trenches and pull one out.

One night Lieutenant Christian Holmes, Sergeants Murphy, McCormack, Samari (born in southern Italy), and Leonard, who was called Scotty and who spoke with a p.r.o.nounced Irish brogue, were designated to raid a listening post. They crawled on their bellies across No Man's Land, got through the maze of wire, and ran right on top of a German listening post. A prisoner was what they wanted, so Lieutenant Holmes, who was leading the party, leaped upon one of the two Germans and locked him in a tight embrace. The German's partner thereupon endeavored to bayonet Lieutenant Holmes, who was struggling in two feet of water with his captive, but was prevented by a timely thrust from Sergeant Murphy's bayonet. They seized the German, who was shrieking "Kamerad" at the top of his lungs, and dragged him back across No Man's Land at the double.

When they came in with him we were as pleased as Punch. Indeed, we hardly wanted to let him go to the rear, as we had a distinct feeling more or less that we wanted to keep him to look at. He was a young, scrawny fellow, and gave us much information concerning the troops opposite us. Lieutenant Holmes and Sergeant Murphy received the Distinguished Service Cross for this work; and well deserved it, for they showed the way and did a really hard job. Holmes told me afterward that they had all agreed that they would not come back until they had got their prisoner. They had decided that if they did not find him in the first front-line trenches they would go back as far as necessary, but they were going to find him or not come back.

We began here also for the first time to play with that most elusive of all military amus.e.m.e.nts, the code. In order that the Germans, in listening in on our telephone conversations, might not know what we were about, everything was put in code or cipher. The high command issued to us the Napoleon code. The Napoleon code is written entirely in French.

Only a few of us could read French, with the result that only a few could send messages. General Hines, then colonel of the Sixteenth Infantry, realized that this was a poor idea, so he made up a code of his own. This code went by the name of the Cauliflower Code, and the commanding officer, his adjutant, etc., in every place were given distinctive names.

Conversation ran something like this--"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, I want Hannibal.

Hannibal is not there? Give me Brains. Brains, this is the King of Ess.e.x talking. Sunflower. No balloons, tomatoes, asparagus. No, No. I said _no_ balloons! Oh, d.a.m.n. My kitchens haven't come. Have them sent up."

When we received rush orders to leave this sector, I tried to mobilize my wagon truck by telephone. The supply officers all went by the name of Sarah in the code. I would start off, "h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo. This is the King of Ess.e.x talking. I want little Sarah. Little Sarah Van." Lieutenant Van, my supply officer, would reply from the other side, "h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, is this the King of Ess.e.x talking?" "It is." "Well, Major Roosevelt," then the connection would be cut. After much labor I got him again. I had just begun, "Balloons, radishes, carrots" when we were cut off again.

The next time we got the connection we said what we had to say in plain English and quickly.

One evening just after we had arrived in the front-line trenches, after a rest in the support position, the telephone buzzed. The adjutant leaped to it. "Yes, this is Blank. What is it? Yes, yes. The Napoleon code." And then for some thirty minutes, during which time the trench telephone ceased to work, was cut off, or simply went dead, the Adjutant took down a long string of numbers. At the end of that period he had a sheet of paper in front of him which looked for all the world like the financial statement of a large bank. He rushed to our portfolio where the sector papers were kept, yanked them out, ran over them in a hurry, and then turned to me with a blank look of grief: "Sorry, sir, we have left the code behind." We thought for a moment, then called back the sender, and said, "Sir, we have forgotten our code." He remarked blithely from the other end, "If the message had been an important one, I would not have sent it in code. I'll give it to you when I see you to-night."

Our first real experience with gas came in this sector. As I said before, we had been taught how to put on and take off our gas masks, how gas was used by the ancients, what methods had been used and abandoned in the present war, what the chemical components were, what the effects were, but not how to detect it when it was present in dangerous quant.i.ties. The result was that everyone was thoroughly apprehensive of gas and afraid he would not be able to detect it. We had all sorts of nice little appliances in the trenches to give the alarm.

They consisted of bells, gongs, Klaxon horns, and beautiful rockets that burst in a green flare. A nervous sentry would be pacing to and fro. It would be wet and lonely and he would think of what unpleasant things he had been told happened to the men who were ga.s.sed. A sh.e.l.l would burst near him. "By George, that smells queer," he would think. He would sniff again. "No question about it, that must be gas!" and blam! would go the gas alarm. Then from one end of the line to the other gongs and horns would sound and green rockets would streak across the sky and platoon after platoon would wearily encase itself in gas masks. One night I stood in the reserve position and watched a celebration of this sort. It looked and sounded like a witches' sabbath.

After a certain amount of this we worked into a practical knowledge of gas. We found that there were only two methods of attack we had to fear: one was by cylinders thrown by projectors, and the other by gas sh.e.l.ling by the enemy artillery. With the former, an attack was often detected before it took place by our intelligence, and it was possible to tell by a flare that showed up along the horizon on the discharge of the projectors when the attack commenced. With the latter, after a little practice, it was perfectly simple to tell a gas sh.e.l.l from a H. E.

sh.e.l.l, as it made a sound like a dud. The difficulty with both types of attack was not so much in getting the gas masks on in time, as there was always plenty of time for that, but rather in holding heavily ga.s.sed areas, where burns and trouble of all sorts were almost impossible to avoid.

It was in this Toul sector on March 11th that my brother Archie was severely wounded. The Huns were strafing heavily and an attack by them was expected. He was redisposing his men when he was. .h.i.t by a sh.e.l.l and badly wounded both in the left arm and left leg. Major A. W. Kenner, M.

C., and Sergeant Hood were sh.e.l.led by the Germans while they were moving out the wounded, among them my brother, when, because of the stretchers they were carrying, they had to walk over the top and not through some bad bits of trench. To Major A. W. Kenner, M. C., and Captain E. D.

Morgan, M. R. C., is due great credit, not only in this operation, but in all the work to come. They never shrank from danger or hards.h.i.+p and their actions were at all times an inspiration to those around them.

CHAPTER VII

MONTDIDIER

"And horror is not from terrible things--men torn to rags by a sh.e.l.l, And the whole trench swimming in blood and slush, like a Butcher's shop in h.e.l.l; It's silence and night and the smell of the dead that shake a man to the soul, From Misery Farm to Dead Man's Death on a nil report patrol."

KNIGHT-ADKIN.

By the end of March we were veteran troops.

All during the latter part of the month rumor had been rife about the proposed German drive. After nearly four years of war, Germany had crushed Russia, Rumania, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania; had dealt Italy a staggering blow, and was about to a.s.sume the offensive in France. On March 28th the blow fell, the allied line staggered and split, and the Germans poured through the gap.

The news reached us, and at the same time came orders to prepare for an immediate move. At once the Twenty-sixth American Division moved up in our rear, and with hardly any time for reconnaissance they took over from us. My battalion moved out and marched twelve kilometers to the rear; the last units checked in to where our trains were to meet us at about 5 A.M., and by 6 A.M. we were on the march again to the vicinity of Toul, where the division was concentrating.

Here we were told that we were to be thrown into the path of the German advance. By this time all types of rumor were current. We heard of the Englishman Cary's remarkable feat, how he collected cooks, engineers, labor troops from the retreating forces, formed them into a fighting unit, and stood against the German advance, and how his brigade grew up over night. Cary, because of this feat, became, from captain in the Q.

M. C., general of infantry. We heard of the thirty-six hours during which all contact was lost between the French left and the English right, when a French cavalry division was brought in trucks from the rear of the line and thrown into the gap, and on the morning of the second day reported that they believed they had established contact with the English.

The next few days all was excitement. We formed the men and gave out our first decorations to Lieutenant Holmes and Sergeant Murphy. At the same time we told them all that we knew of our plans. They were delighted.

Men do not like sitting in trenches day in and day out, and being killed and mangled without ever seeing the enemy, and this promised a fight where the enemy would be in sight.

We had a large, rough shack where we were able to have all the officers of the battalion for mess. Lieutenant Gustafson, an Illinois boy, who had, in civilian life, been a head waiter at summer hotels, managed the mess. We had some good voices among the officers, and every night after dinner there was singing.

Our supply officer, meanwhile, was annexing everything in sight for the battalion in the most approved fas.h.i.+on. One time his right-hand man, Sergeant Wheeler, pa.s.sed by some tethered mules which belonged to a green regiment. He hopped off the ration cart he was riding, caught them, and tied them behind the cart. A mile down the road some one came pounding after them.

"Hey! Where are you going with those mules?" Wheeler was equal to the occasion. "Are them your mules? Well, what do you mean by leaving them loose by the road? I had to get out and catch them. I have a good mind to report you to the M. P. for this." Eventually Wheeler compromised by warning the man, and giving one of the mules back to him.

Then the trains arrived. We had never traveled on a regular military train before. A military train is made up to carry a battalion of infantry; box cars holding about forty men or eight animals each, and flat cars for wagons, kitchens, etc. We entrained safely and got off all right, though we were hurried at the last by a message saying the schedule given us was wrong, and our train left one half hour earlier than indicated.

We creaked off toward the southwest. We didn't know where we were going, but by this time we had all become philosophical and self-sufficient and believed that if the train dropped us somewhere far away from the rest of the division, we would manage to get along by ourselves without too much trouble.

After a day's travel we stopped at a little station. The only thing that we had to identify us was a long yellow ticket scratched all over with minute directions, which none of us could read. Here I was informed by a French guard that this was the regulating station and the American regulating officer was waiting to see me. I hopped off the train and ran back, finding Colonel Hjalmar Erickson, who afterward became a very dear friend of mine and later commanded the regiment. He was busy trying to figure things out with the French _chef de la gare_, an effort complicated by his inability to speak French.

"My lord, Major, why aren't you the Seventh Field Artillery?" was Colonel Erickson's greeting.

As he was giving me the plans and maps I heard a whoop from the train outside. I ran to the door and found that, for some reason, best known to himself, the French engineer had started up again and my battalion was rapidly disappearing down the track. I started on the dead run after them. Fortunately some of the officers saw what was happening, and by force of arms succeeded in persuading the engineer to stop the train.

That night we detrained a couple of days' march from Chaumont-en-Vexin, where division headquarters were to be. We hiked through a beautiful peaceful country, the most lovely we had yet seen in France, billeting for the night in a little town where a whole company of mine slept in an old chateau. At Chaumont we stayed for some few days, maneuvering while the division was being fully a.s.sembled.

From Chaumont we marched north for four days to the Montdidier sector. I never shall forget this march. Spring was on the land, the trees were budding, wild flowers covered the ground, the birds were singing. Our dusty brown column wound up hill and down, through patches of woods and little villages. By us, all day, toward the south streamed the French refugees from villages threatened, or already taken, by the Hun. Heavy home-made wagons trundled past, drawn by every kind of animal, and piled high with hay and farm produce, furniture, and odds and ends of household belongings. Tramping beside them or riding on them were women and children, most of them dazed and with a haunted look in their faces.

Sometimes the wagons would be halted and their occupants squatted by the road, cooking a scanty meal from what they had with them.

To us in this country, thanks to Providence, not to our own forethought or character, this description is only so many words. Unless one has seen it, it is impossible to visualize the battered village, the column of refugees that starts at each great battle and streams ceaselessly toward Paris and southern France, the apple orchards and gardens torn beyond recognition, the desolation and destruction seemingly impossible of reparation.

Nothing would have been better for our countrymen and women than for each and every one of them to have spent some time in the war zone. When I think of men of the type of Bryan and Ford, when I think of their self-satisfied lives of ease, when I think of what they did to permit disaster and death to threaten this country, it makes me wonder more than ever at the long-suffering kindness of humanity which permits such as they still to enjoy the benefits of citizens.h.i.+p in this great land which they have so signally failed to serve.

When we took over the Montdidier sector it was not, nor did it ever become, the type found in the parts of the front where warfare had been going on without movement for more than three years. Trenches were shallow and scanty, and dugouts were almost lacking. Indeed, from this time on, with one exception, the division never held an established sector. The line at Montdidier had been established shortly after the break-through by the Germans, by a French territorial division which was marching north, expecting to relieve some friendly troops in front of it. They suddenly encountered, head on, the German columns that were marching south. Both sides deployed, went into position, and dug in where they were. The First Division took over from these troops.

The first morning we were in the Montdidier sector the Huns sh.e.l.led us heavily. Immediately after they raided a part of our front line held by a platoon of D Company, commanded by Lieutenant Dabney, a very good fellow from Louisville, Ky. The Germans were repulsed with loss. We suffered no casualties ourselves except from the German bombardment. The next evening we picked up the body of the German sergeant commanding the party, whom we had killed.

We staged a very successful raid ourselves at about this time. The raiding party was composed of eighty-five men of D Company, under the command of Lieutenant Freml. The section of German trenches selected as the objective of the operation lay in a little wood about one hundred yards from our front line. Our patrols had reported that this part of the German line was particularly heavily held. In the first light of the half dawn the raiding party worked up into position, pa.s.sing by through the mist like black shadows. At the agreed time our artillery came down with both the heavies and the 75's, and the patch of woods was enveloped in clouds of smoke through which the bursts of the H. E. showed like flashes of lightning. In ten minutes the guns lifted and formed a box barrage, and the raiding party went over. So rapid was the whole maneuver that the German defensive barrage did not come down until after the raiding party had reached the enemy trenches.