The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War Part 10

The American forces swept into the town and drove the enemy slowly and reluctantly out to the north. The usual groups of Huns were still in hiding in cellars and dugouts and other strong points, where they were able to keep up a sniping fire on our men.

Before the positions could be mopped up and organized, the Germans were strengthened by fresh forces, and they reorganized and took the town again. Four times this contest of attack and counter-attack was carried out before our men established themselves in sufficient force to hold the place. Repeatedly the Germans strove to obtain a foothold again, but their hold on Sergy was gone forever. They realized this at last, and then turned loose the customary sullen sh.e.l.ling with shrapnel, high explosives and gas.

While the 110th was engaged in this grim work, the 109th recrossed the Ourcq, marched away down the south bank to the west of Sergy, and crossed the river again. Officers, feeling almost at the end of their physical resources, marvelled at the way in which the regiment--blooded, steady and dependable--swung along on this march.

Like all the other Pennsylvania regiments, food had been scarce with them because of the pace at which they had been going and the utter inability of the commissary to supply them regularly in the circ.u.mstances. When opportunity offered, they got a substantial meal, but these were few and far between. There were innumerable instances of men going forty-eight hours without either food or water. The thirst was worse than the hunger, and the longing for sleep was almost overpowering.

Despite all this, the two regiments set off for the conquest of Sergy with undiminished spirit and determination, and the two grades of men, commissioned and enlisted, neither willing to give up in the face of the other's dogged pertinacity, spurred each other on to prodigies of will-power, for by this time it was will-power, more than actual physical endurance, that carried them on.

The 109th took position in a wood just northwest of Sergy and sent scouts forward to ascertain the situation of the enemy, only to have them come back with word that the town already was in the hands of the 110th, after a brilliant action.

The 109th now came to some of the most nerve-trying hours it had yet experienced, though no fighting was involved. A wood north of Sergy was selected as an abiding place for the night and, watching for a chance when Boche flyers were busy elsewhere, the regiment made its way into the shelter and prepared to get a night's rest.

They had escaped the eyes of the enemy airmen but, unknown to the officers of the 109th, the wood lay close to an enemy ammunition dump, which the retiring Huns had not had time to destroy. Naturally, the German artillery knew perfectly the location of the dump, and sought to explode it by means of artillery fire.

By the time the 109th, curious as to the marked attention they were receiving from the Hun guns, discovered the dump, it was too late to seek other shelter, so all they could do was to contrive such protection as was possible and hug the ground, expecting each succeeding sh.e.l.l to land in the midst of the dump and set off an explosion that probably would leave nothing of the regiment but its traditions.

Probably half the sh.e.l.ls intended for the ammunition pile landed in the woods. Dreadful as such a bombardment always is, the men of the 109th fairly gasped with relief when each screeching sh.e.l.l ended with a bang among the trees, for sh.e.l.ls that landed there were in no danger of exploding that heap of ammunition.

The night of strain and tension pa.s.sed. Strange as it may seem, the Boche gunners were unable to reach the dump.

In the night a staff officer from brigade headquarters had found Colonel Brown and informed him that he was to relinquish command of the regiment to become adjutant to the commandant of a port of debarkation.

Lieutenant-Colonel Henry W. Coulter, of Greensburg, Pa., took command of the regiment.

Colonel Coulter is a brother of Brigadier-General Richard Coulter, one time commander of the Tenth Pennsylvania, later commander of an American port in France. A few days later, Colonel Coulter was wounded in the foot, and Colonel Samuel V. Ham, a regular army officer, became commander. As an evidence of the vicissitudes of the Pennsylvania regiments, the 109th had eight regimental commanders in two months. All except Colonel Brown and Colonel Coulter were regular army men.

The 110th was relieved, and dropped back for a rest of two days, August 1st and 2d. The men were nervous and "fidgety," to quote one of the officers, for the first time since their first "bath of steel," south of the Marne. Both nights they were supposed to be resting they were sh.e.l.led and bombed from the air continuously, and both days were put in at the "camions sanitaire," or "delousing machines," where each man got a hot bath and had his clothes thoroughly disinfected and cleaned.

Thus, neither night nor day could be called restful by one who was careful of his English, although the baths probably did more to bolster up the spirits of the men than anything else that could have happened to them. Anyway, when the two-day period was ended and the regiment again set off for the north, headed for the Vesle and worse things than any that had gone before, it marched away whistling and singing, with apparently not a care in the world.

It was about this time that the first of the Pennsylvania artillery, one battalion of the 107th Regiment, came into the zone of operations, and soon its big guns began to roar back at the Germans in company with the French and other American artillery.

The guns and their crews had troubles of their own in forging to the front, although most of it was of a kind they could look back on later with a laugh, and not the soul-trying, mind-searing experiences of the infantry.

The roads that had been so hard for the foot soldiers to traverse were many times worse for the big guns. The 108th, for instance, at one time was twelve hours in covering eight miles of road.

When it came to crossing the Marne, in order to speed up the crossing, the regiment was divided, half being sent farther up the river. When night fell, it was learned that the half that had crossed lower down had the field kitchen and no rations and the other half had all the rations and no field kitchen to cook them. Other organizations came to the rescue in both instances.

At six o'clock one evening, not yet having had evening mess, the regiment was ordered to move to another town, which it reached at nine o'clock. Men and horses had been settled down for the night by ten o'clock and, as all was quiet, the officers went to the village. There they found an innkeeper bemoaning the fact that, just as he had gotten a substantial meal ready for the officers of another regiment, they had been ordered away, and the food was all ready, with n.o.body to eat it.

The hungry officers looked over the "spread." There was soup, fried chicken, cold ham, string beans, peas, sweet potatoes, jam, bread and b.u.t.ter, and wine. They a.s.sured the innkeeper he need worry no further about losing his food, and promptly took their places about the table.

The first spoonfuls of soup just were being lifted when an orderly entered, bearing orders for the regiment to move on at once. They were under way again, the officers still hungry, by 11.45 o'clock, and marched until 6.30 A. M., covering thirty kilometres, or more than eighteen miles.

The 103d Ammunition Train also had come up now, after experiences that prepared it somewhat for what was to come later. For instance, when delivering ammunition to a battery under heavy sh.e.l.lfire, a detachment of the train had to cross a small stream on a little, flat bridge, without guard rails. A swing horse of one of the wagons became frightened when a sh.e.l.l fell close by. The horse s.h.i.+ed and plunged over the edge, wedging itself between the bridge and a small footbridge alongside.

The stream was in a small valley, quite open to enemy fire, and for the company to have waited while the horse was gotten out would have been suicidal. So the main body pa.s.sed on and the caisson crew and drivers, twelve men in all, were left to pry the horse out. For three hours they worked, patiently and persistently, until the frantic animal was freed.

They were under continuous and venomous fire all the while. Shrapnel cut the tops of trees a bare ten feet away. Most of the time they and the horses were compelled to wear gas masks, as the Hun tossed over a gas sh.e.l.l every once in a while for variety--he was "mixing them." The gas hung long in the valley, for it has "an affinity," as the chemists say, for water, and will follow the course of a stream.

High explosives "cr-r-r-umped" in places within two hundred feet, but the ammunition carriers never even glanced up from their work, nor hesitated a minute. Just before dawn they got the horse free and started back for their own lines. Fifteen minutes later a high-explosive sh.e.l.l landed fairly on the little bridge and blew it to atoms.

The 103d Field Signal Battalion, composed of companies chiefly from Pittsburgh, but with members from many other parts of the state, performed valiant service in maintaining lines of communication.

Repeatedly, men of the battalion, commanded by Major Fred G. Miller, of Pittsburgh, exposed themselves daringly in a welter of fire to extend telephone and telegraph lines, sometimes running them through trees and bushes, again laying them in hastily scooped out grooves in the earth.

Frequently communication no sooner was established than a chance sh.e.l.l would sever the line, and the work was to do all over again. With cool disregard of danger, the signalmen went about their tasks, incurring all the danger to be found anywhere--but without the privilege and satisfaction of fighting back.

Under sniping rifle fire, machine gun and big sh.e.l.l bombardment and frequently drenched with gas, the gallant signalmen carried their work forward. There was little of the picturesque about it, but nothing in the service was more essential. Many of the men were wounded and ga.s.sed, a number killed, and several were cited and decorated for bravery.

CHAPTER XI

DRIVE TO THE VESLE

When the Hun grip was torn loose from the positions along the Ourcq, he had no other good stopping place short of the Vesle, so he lit out for that river as fast as he could move his battalions and equipment. Again only machine guns and sniping rear-guards were left to impede the progress of the pursuers, and again there were times when it was exceedingly difficult for the French and American forces to keep in contact with the enemy.

The 32d Division, composed of Michigan and Wisconsin National Guards, had slipped into the front lines and, with regiments of the Rainbow Division, pressed the pursuit. The Pennsylvania regiments, with the 103d Engineers, and the 111th and the 112th Infantry leading, followed by the 109th and then the 110th, went forward in their rear, mopping up the few Huns they left in their wake who still showed fight.

It had begun to rain again--a heavy, dispiriting downpour, such as Northern France is subjected to frequently. The fields became mora.s.ses.

The roads, cut up by heavy traffic, were turned to quagmires. The distorted remains of what had been wonderful old trees, stripped of their foliage and blackened and torn by the breaths of monster guns, dripped dismally. In all that ruined, tortured land of horror on horror, there was not one bright spot, and there was only one thing to keep up the spirits of the soldiers--the Hun was definitely on the run.

Drenched to the skin, wading in mud at times almost to their knees, amid the ruck and confusion of an army's wake, the Pennsylvanians trudged resolutely forward, inured to hards.h.i.+p, no longer sensible to ordinary discomforts, possessed of only one thought--to come to battle once more with the hateful foe and inflict further punishment in revenge for the gallant lads who had gone from the ranks.

All the time they were subjected to long-distance sh.e.l.ling by the big guns, as the Hun strafed the country to the south in hope of hampering transport facilities and breaking up marching columns. All the time Boche fliers pa.s.sed overhead, sometimes swooping low enough to slash at the columns with machine guns and at frequent intervals releasing bombs.

There were casualties daily, although not, of course, on the same scale as in actual battle.

Through Coulonges, Cohan, Dravegny, Longeville, Mont-sur-Courville and St. Gilles they plunged on relentlessly.

Close by the hamlet of Chamery, near Cohan, the Pennsylvania men pa.s.sed the grave of Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, who had been brought down there by an enemy airman a few weeks before and was buried by the Germans. French troops, leading the Allied pursuit, had come on the grave first and established a military guard of honor over it and supplanted the rude cross and inscription erected by the Germans with a neater and more ornate marking.

When the Americans arrived the French guard was removed and American soldiers mounted guard over the last resting place of the son of the onetime President.

Just below Longeville, the Pennsylvanians came into an area where the fire was intensified to the equal of anything they had pa.s.sed through since leaving the Marne. All the varieties of Hun projectiles were hurled at them, high explosives of various sizes, shrapnel and gas. Once more the misery and discomfort of the gas mask had to be undergone, but by this time the Pennsylvanians had learned well and truly the value of that little piece of equipment and had imbibed thoroughly the doctrine that, unpleasant as it might be, the mask was infinitely better than a whiff of that dread, sneaking, penetrating vapor with which the Hun poisoned the air.

The "blonde beast" had his back to the Vesle and had turned to show his teeth and snarl in fury at our men closing in on him.

The objective point on the river for the Pennsylvanians was Fismes. This was a town near the junction of the Vesle and Ardre rivers, which before the war had a population of a little more than 3,000. Here, in centuries long gone, the kings of France were wont to halt overnight on their way up to Rheims to be crowned. It was on a railroad running through Rheims to the east. A few miles west of Fismes the railroad divides, one branch winding away southwestward to Paris the other running west through Soissons and Compiegne. The town was one of the largest German munitions depots in the Soissons-Rheims sector and second in importance only to Soissons.

Across the narrow river was the village of Fismette, destined to be the scene of the writing of a truly glorious page of Pennsylvania's military history. The past tense is used with regard to the existence of both places, as they virtually were wiped out in the process of forcing the Hun from the Vesle River barrier and sending him flying northward to the Aisne.

The railroad through Fismes and in its vicinity runs along the top of an embankment, raising it above the surrounding territory. There was a time, before the Americans were able to cross the railroad, that the embankment became virtually the barrier dividing redeemed France from darkest Hunland along that front. At night patrols from both sides would move forward to the railroad, and, burrowed in holes--the Germans in the north side and the Americans in the south--would watch and wait and listen for signs of an attack.

Each knew the other was only a few feet away; at times, in fact, they could hear each other talking, and once in a while defiant badinage would be exchanged in weird German from the south and in ragtime, vaudeville English from the north. Appearance of a head above the embankment on either side was a signal for a storm of lead and steel.

The Americans had this advantage over the Germans: They knew the Huns were doomed to continue their retreat, and that the hold-up along the railroad was very temporary, and the Germans now realized the same thing. Therefore, the Americans fought triumphantly, with vigor and dash; the Germans, sullenly and in desperation.