The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War Part 12

Pennsylvania Guardsmen attacking a German position in the Soissons-Rheims pocket. A bombing squad leads to blow up the German wire and open the way for the infantry waves which are seen following close, headed for the holes in the wire network.]

There was the usual hara.s.sing fire from enemy machine guns and snipers, especially to the east, but these were silenced after a time and the 112th romped into the southern edge of the town. Then ensued a repet.i.tion, on a larger scale, of the street and house fighting that had been experienced before in other villages and towns.

Scouts crept from corner to corner, hiding behind bits of smashed masonry, working through holes in house walls and into cellars. A haze of dust kicked up by the sh.e.l.ls hung in the bright sunlight.

Every open stretch of street was swept by rifle and machine gun fire from one or both sides. Americans and Germans were so mingled that sometimes they shared the same house, firing out of different windows on different streets, and varying the procedure by attempts to kill their housemates.

As the Americans crept slowly forward, always toward the river, the Germans showed no slightest inclination to follow their comrades to the north bank, and it became apparent that they were a sacrifice offered up by the German command to delay, as long as possible, the progress of those terrible Americans. They had been left behind with no hope of succor, simply to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Quite naturally, they fought like trapped wolves as long as fighting was possible. When convinced they had no further chance to win, they dropped their weapons and squalled: "Kamerad!"

Two American officers and some wounded men worked their way into one of the houses. Inside, they found two unwounded men from Pittsburgh. Almost as the two parties joined forces, one of the unwounded Pittsburghers, venturing incautiously near what had been a window, stopped a sniper's bullet and fell dead. The wounded were made as comfortable as possible to await the stretcher-bearers and the two officers and one enlisted man started to investigate the house.

They were crawling on all fours. They came into a dismantled room and raised their heads to look over a pile of debris. They looked straight into the eyes of two Germans. One had a machine gun, the other a trench bomb in each hand. These German trench bombs were known among our soldiers as "potato mashers," because they are about the size of a can of sweet corn, fastened on the end of a short stick. They are thrown by the stick, and are a particularly nasty weapon--one of the worst the Germans had, many soldiers thought.

The German with the bombs was slowly whirling them about by the handles, exactly like a pair of Indian clubs, as one of the Americans described it afterward.

For the time you might have counted ten, there was not a movement on either side, because the men were so surprised, except that the German with the bombs kept whirling them slowly, around and around. The other German stood like a statue, but making funny, nervous noises--"uck-uck-uck"--in his throat. The Americans, telling about it later, frankly admitted they were too scared to move for a few moments, expecting every second the man with the "potato mashers" would throw them.

The remarkable tableau ended with the crash of a rifle. The American private soldier had fired "from the hip." The German with the bombs bent forward as if he had a sharp pain in his stomach, but he did not come up again. He kept on going until his head hit the pile of debris, as if he were salaaming or kowtowing to the Americans. Then he collapsed in an inert heap on the floor, still holding his bombs.

The other turned and ran, stumbling through the wreckage, out through the little garden in which flowers and green stuff still struggled through the broken stone. As he ran, he cried in a curious, whimpering, m.u.f.fled tone, like a frightened animal, his big helmet crushed down over his ears, a grotesque figure. He got out into the street, out into the open where machine guns and rifles still called from corner to corner and window to window. He was drilled in a dozen places at once and collapsed like a heap of dusty rags.

There were innumerable instances of individual gallantry and of narrow escapes. In days of fighting when virtually every man performed a hero's part, it was impossible for anyone to keep track of all of even the more outstanding cases, and many a lad's deed went unnoticed while another's act brought him a citation and the coveted Distinguished Service Cross, the difference being that one was observed and reported and the other was not. A very small proportion of the deserving deeds were rewarded for this reason.

Among the narrow escapes from death, probably Lieutenant Walter A.

Davenport, formerly of Philadelphia, established a record. A machine gun bullet struck his belt buckle, was deflected and ripped a long gash in the muscles of his abdomen. He returned to duty before his regiment, the 111th, had finished its work in Fismette, a few weeks later, and was slightly ga.s.sed.

It was at Fismes that Captain John M. Gentner, of Philadelphia, acting commander of the first battalion of the 109th, was wounded. He had been commander of Company C, but took over command of the battalion when Captain Gearty was killed in the Bois de Conde, below the Marne. After he was wounded, Captain Gentner was made the subject of a remarkable tribute from men of his battalion. They wrote for newspaper publication a letter of eulogy, in which they said:

"The influence of Captain Gentner is still leading on the men of his battalion. None speak of him but in admiration and thankfulness for having helped them to be good soldiers. Daring, even brilliant, he led his men into seemingly hazardous attacks, and yet we felt a sense of safety. Other commanders say: 'I wouldn't send a man where I wouldn't go myself,' but Captain Gentner wouldn't send men where he would go himself. We looked upon him as a father. He has brought in wounded men from places where no one else would venture. He delighted in dangerous patrols and often regretted that his position prevented him from leading combat patrols. In places where food came to us rarely and in small quant.i.ty, he would claim that he had eaten when we knew that neither food nor water had crossed his lips for twenty-four hours. He was filled with admiration for his men--men who willingly would have followed him through the gates of h.e.l.l, just because no trouble, no privation was too great for him to make his men comfortable."

What a difference between that relations.h.i.+p of officer and enlisted man, and the sight our men saw of German soldiers being kicked and beaten with sabres by German officers in an effort to drive them forward into battle while the officers remained behind out of harm's way!

With their never-failing sense of the dramatic and their natural tendency to picturesquely appropriate nomenclature, our men named the valley of the Vesle "Death Valley" after the desperate fighting they encountered there.

And so they took Fismes, these gallant American daredevils. Slowly but surely they went through it, mopping it up in a scientific manner. It was costly--such warfare always is--but they wiped out one German post after another, driving the Huns to the very edge of the town on the north, where they held on desperately for a few days until the American occupation was complete, and the last German foothold was gone from the Soissons-Rheims pocket, which for two weeks had been the focal point for the eyes of the world.

Even before the operation was complete, and in callous disregard of the men they themselves had left behind to impede the American advance, the Germans cut loose with a hot artillery fire from the heights north of the river.

They are not unlike the chalk cliffs of Dover, only not so high, these elevations along the Vesle. There were several high points on the north bank on which the Germans had observation posts, from which they could look down upon Fismes and the surrounding country as persons in a theatre balcony view the stage, and it was a terrible fire they poured in.

Already their big guns had been withdrawn to the line of the Aisne, which is only five miles to the north and therefore well within range.

Lighter pieces in great number crowned the high ground nearer the Vesle, and machine guns held their usual prominent place in the German scheme.

Once more they brought flame projectors into play, using them in this instance at what is believed to have been the greatest distance they tried to operate these weapons during the war. They accomplished little with the "flamenwerfer," however.

Night and day the gun duel continued. The French and American batteries methodically set about to break up the concentration of Hun fire.

Monday, August 5th, the sh.e.l.ling became so violent that observation virtually was impossible and maps had to be used, the American gun commanders picking out German positions that had been marked down earlier.

German 105's and 155's (about four and six inches) hurled their high explosive sh.e.l.ls. Shrapnel sprayed over the entire territory, and the American positions in the rear were heavily pounded and deluged with gas. The Germans sh.e.l.led forests, crossroads, highways, clumps of trees and all other places where they thought troops or supplies might be concentrated or pa.s.sing.

Every position in the American lines which ordinarily would have been good from a military viewpoint became almost untenable from the fact that the Germans, having so recently been driven out, knew the terrain and the positions accurately. It was as safe in the open as in the supposed shelters.

No sooner had the occupation of Fismes been established completely than the Americans calmly prepared to cross the river and take Fismette, regardless of the German resistance. For some reason still unexplained, since after developments have made it clear the Germans had no real hope of stopping short of the Chemin-des-Dames, north of the Aisne, they made the taking of Fismette almost a first-cla.s.s operation, even driving the Americans back across the river after they once had established themselves, and counter-attacking repeatedly.

Presumably, they had been unable to get away their vast quant.i.ties of munitions and supplies between the Vesle and the Aisne, and needed to hold up the pursuit while these were extricated.

As a first step in the crossing of the river, Major Robert M. Vail, of Scranton, commanding the 108th Machine Gun Battalion, operating with the 55th Infantry Brigade, sent over two companies of machine gunners. They waded the river, which was nearly to their armpits in places, holding their weapons above their heads. Others carried ammunition in boxes on their heads. They went over in a storm of sh.e.l.ls and bullets, which took a heavy toll, but they established a bridgehead on the north bank and, fighting like demons, held it against tremendous odds while men of the 103d Engineers, ordered up for the work, threw bridges across the stream.

It was in this work that units of the engineer regiment, particularly Company C, of Pottsville, were badly mauled. Working swiftly and unconcernedly in the midst of a tornado of almost every conceivable kind and size of sh.e.l.l, most of the time sustaining the discomfort of their gas masks, the engineers conducted themselves like veterans of years of service, instead of the tyros they actually were. Officers and men of the other organizations, watching the performance, thrilled with pride at the outstanding bravery of these heroic young Americans. Their own officers were too absorbed in their task to appreciate the work of the men until afterward, when they had also to mourn their losses.

Methodically, working in water above their waists, many of them, the engineers thrust the arm of their bridge across the stream. Sh.e.l.ls raged about them, churning the water to foam and throwing up geysers of mud and spray. Now and then a flying fragment of steel struck one of the toilers, whereupon he either dropped and floated downstream, uninterested in the further progress of the war, or struggled to the bank for first aid and made his way to a hospital.

The first bridge was nearly completed when a big sh.e.l.l scored a direct hit and it disappeared in a ma.s.s of kindling wood. Patiently and tenaciously, the engineers, deprived by their duties of even the satisfaction of seizing a rifle and trying to wreak a little vengeance, started to rebuild the structure.

Hampered by the German fire, the bridge building was slow and, the machine gunners having made a good crossing, infantry was started over the ford. The process of throwing men across was greatly hastened when at last the first bridge was completed. Other spans soon were ready, but the engineers knew no cessation from their task, for all too frequently Hun projectiles either tore holes in the bridges or wrecked them altogether.

CHAPTER XIII

STARS OF GRIM DRAMA

In Fismette, the Pennsylvanians ran into a stone wall of resistance. The enemy made desperate efforts to dislodge them and drive them back across the river. One counter-attack after another was met and beaten off by the valiant little band of Americans, supported by the roaring guns on the heights to the south.

The Pennsylvanians had the double satisfaction now of knowing their own artillery brigade was mingling its fire with that of the other American and French batteries. On August 8th, Brigadier-General William G. Price, of Chester, rode up to regimental headquarters of the 109th Infantry and greeted his friends among the officers. He informed them that his brigade was immediately behind and that he was hunting division headquarters to report for action. A guide was a.s.signed him and the General left in his motor car. Word soon spread through the infantry regiments that all the Pennsylvania gunners at last were in the fight.

The weather turned wet again, varying from a drizzle to a heavy downpour, but never quite ceasing.

The penetration of Fismette went slowly but steadily on, in the face of strong resistance, the Germans reacting viciously at every point of contact. Here, as elsewhere along the front between Soissons and Rheims, the action consisted of a series of sharp local engagements, with considerable hand-to-hand fighting, in which American bayonets played an important role.

Amid the fever of battle and not knowing what moment may prove their last, men move as if in a trance. Hours and days pa.s.s undistinguished and unrecorded. With the fundamental scheme of existence shattered and with friends of years and chums of months of campaigning killed between sunrise and sunset, it is no wonder that men's minds become abnormal and their acts superhuman.

In quiet, peaceful homes it is impossible to understand this psychology.

One may comprehend the mental shock sustained when a relative or neighbor or close friend falls victim to accident or disease, but that feeling is but distantly related to the effect upon the soldier when he realizes that a dozen, possibly half a hundred, of his comrades and close a.s.sociates of weeks of work and recreation have been wiped out of existence in an hour--men with whom he had talked daily, possibly was talking at the time of dissolution.

The same experience is repeated day after day with deep effect upon his mental, as well as his physical, state of being. Even in civil life, one learns that loss of sleep in time acts like a drug. After twenty-four or thirty-six hours without sleep, it becomes increasingly easy to do without further, until the limit of human endurance is reached and the victim collapses. Also, infrequent food and drink may be borne at increasingly long intervals. The condition is not infrequently described, accurately enough, as being "too hungry to eat," or "too tired to rest." Inevitably the reaction comes, and the longer the relief is postponed, the worse is the reaction. For this reason, the first day in repose for soldiers after a long campaign is usually worse than the campaign itself.

But while the deprivation of sleep, food and drink continues, it is undeniable that, though the physical being may support the loss with decreasing discomfort up to the point of collapse, the effect upon the senses is almost that of an opiate. Men lose their sense of proportion.

Everything ordinarily of prime importance recedes into the background.

The soldier is imbued with but one overmastering aspiration--to go on and on and on.

It is no wonder that, in such case, he feels that his own fate is a small matter, as it is liable to be sealed at any moment, in the same way as that of his comrades; no wonder that he faces death with the same indifference as a man at home faces a summer shower.

This, then, is the state to which our Pennsylvania soldiers had now been reduced, and in consequence their deeds of personal heroism began to multiply. This was the period when individual men achieved most frequently the great glory of the service--citation and decoration for bravery in action. They had overstepped, individually and collectively, all the bounds of personal fear of death or injury.

The Germans hurled one fresh regiment after another into the inferno which was Fismette, in a determined effort to dislodge that pitiful handful of Americans which had found lodgment on its river edge. Five times fresh, vigorous forces, with hardly a lull, were hurled at the position. All the time the guns kept up an incessant cannonade, both of Fismette and Fismes and the back reaches of the Allied front, while the attacking forces were strongly supported by airplanes, artillery and machine guns.