Doughboy Diaries from WWI

2010-02-19T19:05:00.001-08:00

RAINBOW DIVISION FIGHTING STORIES

The Rainbow (U.S. 42nd Division) got hit with a gas attack shortly after they moved in and a man who was there remembered later a doctor tearing off his mask to operate on a casualty, and later "…men were going blind one after another and being ordered to the hospital. Often by the time they got to the ambulance, the man leading was himself blind and both got into the ambulance together….By ten o'clock in the morning fully two thirds of the company had been blinded." For variety, high explosives could come over instead of gas. A doughboy was in a dugout when a shell "hit very nearly in the center of the roof. Forty feet of earth poured in as if from a tunnel. The men in the center of the room were covered by it almost immediately. After the first roar of falling timber and earth subsided, I heard someone ask Norman how he was. Norman answered, "I have a plank through my stomach'….he did not die immediately, I could hear him in a constantly weaker voice giving comfort to those who were dying near and with him." The narrator himself was buried in dirt up to his chin with more filtering down all the time. "I was terribly frightened. I prayed. I prayed for my father and mother individually and collectively. I prayed for all I knew. I recited the Lord's Prayer. I made my peace with God and was unafraid….It was only by shoving…earth over my left shoulder…that I kept from being completely buried." He was trapped twelve hours before two buddies found him and scooped him out with their helmets. The ultimate in Germanic attentions was a raid. First came a bombardment. "Suddenly, with the instantaneity of a lightning flash, the whole north seemed to rise up in flames and hurl itself forward…there is no need to waken anyone; air and earth tremble with the concussion of bursting shells…terrified bodies come rushing, flipping, stumbling, splashing to the dugouts, dodging bits of flying debris, ducking showers of dirt, their faces lighted by flashing explosions." When the barrage lifts, the men are ordered back up into the trenches to face the Germans following close behind their shelling and firing as they come. "Six of them reached our dugout just as its four occupants had started up the steps. Without the slightest warning, a grenade burst in the midst of the Iowans and hurled them all to the bottom. Private Byron Van Raden fell dead…[the rest]…were badly wounded." Less seriously, it fell to two of the Yankee Division to by convoying a large can of doughnuts to the forward positions one night when they were set upon by seven German raiders. The Yankees returned the fire, killed one doughnut snatcher, and arrived in the line with the report, "Never lost a doughnut."

Doughboy in Battle

2009-11-29T14:35:00.001-08:00

THE NEW MAJOR

"The advent of the new Major was unannounced and by no means welcome. His predecessor was a known factor and a man well liked whereas it appeared at once that there were possibilities of surprise in this new arrival. A tall, spare, and businesslike figure, he wore laced thick-soled boots that evidently had seen service somewhere. Bedford cord breeches that really fitted, and a British enlisted man's coat like the ones many of us were using then for wear in the field. He had a short-clipped moustache, a clipped accent, and a voice that could purr and shout in the same breath. We knew he was there as soon as he appeared among us. It was one of those French wintry days so often unhappily chosen for division field exercises. Frozen shoes cut your flesh in the morning and the midday thaw drenched your feet with icy water. The troops moved along mechanically or stood idly, enduring dumbly and obediently, but supremely uninterested in anything except getting it over. The new Major spoke aloud, unconscious that he did so. "They're not learning anything," he said; "they're suffering!" But then he shouted "Keep the formation there! Go through that wood with a fine tooth comb! There's bound to be Boches in a place like that!" As wood gave away to plain and plain to wood, a whole series of orders and explanations from him followed. We were at once astonished, galvanized into action, but made a little resentful. But in any event we began to warm up with interest and exercise, and to our own surprise found ourselves in the end hunting imaginary enemies all over the whole terrain. The whole afternoon passed quickly. "You've done this kind of fighting in earnest, Major?" we asked diffidently as recall was blowing. "Two years up with the Canadians," he briefly replied. "And now, gentlemen," he added, "before we start the march home issue a rum ration and give the men hot tea—scalding hot!" We compromised on slum and coffee, both very hot. And with this touch of humor from the new Major at the end of a long day we marched cheerfully the six miles home to our billet wondering what would be happening next. Actually a remarkable thing was about to happen—our own transformation from a miserable, dispirited outfit into a confident, united family—a battalion in reality as well as in name. We were a little apprehensive, but nothing happened for several days except the Major ceaselessly observed, inspected—and kept his comment to himself. And then he summoned all of his officers to a conference, after which action followed action so fast it took our breaths. "Our object," said the Major, "is to develop a first-rate fighting battalion. We've got all the elements, but we haven't got the battalion." "True," he went on, "there are serious shortages of things we need badly. There are many difficulties to overcome. Things aren't cushy. But we can do a lot if we make the most out of what we have." And now was the time to do it, for once we got in the line it might be too late, and failure now meant failure then. "The first thing to do is to make the men comfortable and happy." We had good officers, he said, good men, good basic discipline. With spirit of the kind that was in us we could get things done. But we couldn't depend on anyone else. We had to do it ourselves. Now, what to do? Stoves? Make the best use of what we have. Give up those small rooms where a new NCO's and lucky soldiers toasted themselves while the rest of the troops got chilblains, and put more stoves in the larger places. Repairs? We can use the old lumber laid away in the village. It will do in a pinch. Shore up the roofs where they need it, patch the leaks, calk the cracks. Put a few expert men on the job to go over all the billets, make them ship-shape, and see that the stoves draw properly. He'd knocked around in many a place—Mexico during the revolution for one, and he'd seen what handy men could do for comfort with little enough for materials. Firewood? No use sending whole companies of green men to the woods to pile up green wood and make the French holler about damage to their forests. A few good men could do the job right. There must be some woodsmen in the battalion. Every man must know exactly what his authority is, and for the higher command to hold him responsible only to the extent of that authority. The system begins with the squad. It has a commander, but it also has a collective responsibility. Every man in the squad should be rated second, third, fourth-in-command, and so on down to the last man. Then the squad will always have a leader. Moreover, when an offense against good order occurs the offender must automatically be disrated to the bottom of the list. And then every other man in the squad becomes his commander and responsible for guiding his steps back into the straight and narrow way. And since the whole squad is involved whenever a man goes wrong, the way of the transgressor is hard. So, few men go wrong and few troubles ever occur that cannot be settled privately—some of them very privately—within the squad. Suppose—the Major kept on—that a man falls in unshaved in the morning, or is late or absent. Next day the whole squad sees to it that he is up and dressed a half hour early, with plenty of time to do what he needs to do. The section leader also gets up to check him. And if both his sections are involved, the platoon leader also arises early to supervise. After a little, the supervising system can be reduced; only one sergeant per company and one officer per battalion need then rise to attend defaulters' formation. A little while more and there will rarely be such a formation for anyone to attend. A battalion built up in close-knit units formed on this model is a tough-fighting outfit. "It can stand fifty percent casualties or more," said the Major. "It can come out, fill up, and go in again in a hurry. It takes that kind of battalion to do the work in a war like this. The secret of it is that the men quickly form new squads, sections, and platoons even in action, and new men who come into such units catch the spirit and settle into harness faster than you would think possible." If something goes wrong in a company the battalion commander doesn't merely say to the captain, "You're guilty!" That's easy enough, but it doesn't work. And it makes bad feeling, leaves a sense of rankling injustice. The thing to do instead is to trace the fault down to see who was actually responsible because of something he did or neglected to do. With good officers, like ours, you could usually trace the fault to the inner workings of some section or squad. And when you have placed the responsibility where it belongs, the rest of the men soon let the guilty ones know what they think of them, for a platoon is small enough to make its public opinion felt. And when it has "platoon spirit" it makes its opinions effective. Every commander down to the squad, continued the Major, would be given definite authority to deal with certain offenses, and no such dereliction was to be referred up for action unless the circumstances were exceptional. No one would expect any of his commanders to do things that were obviously impossible. Expectations must be based on what is reasonable, considering all the conditions. And about the overcoats. They must be cut off at once. No nonsense about so many inches below the knee. Cut them off well up above the mud, but at the place best suited to the size and shape of the man. Any woman would know. So the captains should engage a seamstress to alter the coats at the rate of one franc per garment. Just say to your seamstress, "Madame, make my soldiers look their best!" It would be surprising if the results were not good. (They were excellent). As to money, he put this up to the company commanders. He would himself contribute 1000 francs if it were needed. Unless he was much mistaken, the captains could handle this or any other matter that he had to refer to them. Company and platoon barber shops would be set up at once; price of a haircut, one franc. But barbers were forbidden to shave the men; that was an individual matter. Cut the hair short. No prison haircuts, but those pompadours had to go. "Lice love long hair." Washing. He had purchased boilers and other containers. Pay when you could. A hot bath for every man at least once a week. Company mechanics would make wash-boards, and clothes washing would be a platoon formation. Every working day, after work was over, each platoon would form under its commander to wash feet and change socks. This custom would prevail wherever we might be at the time, for nearly everywhere could be found a canal, a stream, a pond, or some kind of water. If any man's feet were in bad shape this would thus be found out so special treatment could be given. A shave in the morning, a foot-wash at night—every day. Public drunkenness had to stop. The wobbly soldier intent on quietly getting home would be assisted; but noisy drunks would be tied up in rear of quarters and "soused" till they became unsoused. (This also became routine and even pools of rain water were used for the purpose.) Closing cafes ought to be unnecessary. (It soon was unnecessary). There had been some fights over women. This was absurd. In war women might be expendable, but good soldiers are not. He supposed that no one but a fool would attempt to dictate personal taste in such matters, and for his part he didn't care an emphasized damn what any man did with his spare time as long as he wasn't a filthy beast. But with a war on the battalion had to come first. And in war nothing else mattered so much as the comradeship of fighting men. The men would learn to value each other far above any minor affairs of the heart. There was a leave system, too, for use along this line. Well, use it right, he urged, for men who really need it. No damned silly routine following of a roster. Some of our men, unless his eyes were failing him, wouldn't want to leave our own town even to go on leave. Others were in a different situation. "You must be able to talk to your men heart to heart. Make proper use of that sort of thing." The next few days would be spent in cleaning up. Inspect. Repair. Scrub. Think up improvements. The adjutant would issue detailed orders. If the battalion supply officer couldn't supply what was needed, improvise. If that wouldn't work, come to see the battalion commander. And present the platoons for his inspection as soon as they were ready. If they didn't come hunting him in two days he would come hunting them. It would be pleasant to say that the results of this directive were immediate. But it is not enough to simply desire high standards; you have to know how to go about attaining them. Our battalion had to learn that the new regime ordered nothing that was impractible, but expected the enforcement of every order that was issued. Many men lost their early-morning sleep until they learned that to shave every morning meant just that. A few "lice-farmers" actually wept when sent back to be shorn of their fancy locks. It was some time before clothing presented the appearance desired. But a twelve-mile march by nigh for every man who appeared at a certain inspection with his spare shoes carrying old mud under fresh dubbin left no man unconvinced that halfway compliance would not be enough—the more so since every corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant who contributed a man to the march accompanied the column. But standards rose visibly, and courts-martial cases declined in numbers. The Major had some novel and even startling ideas as to substitute measures to take the place of trials and the public opinion of the battalion supported him fully. Reveille soon went back to six o'clock; but even after it did there were only a few defaulters who ever had to attend that assembly. Serenity replaced fuss and flurry. The supply situation was still bad, and the Major exerted himself to the limit to get what was needed. He had some personal collisions with supply functionaries who attempted to wave him away, deceived by the USR on his collar. He had to tell one or two plainly that they could talk to him about military procedure once they had done some real soldiering. He inspired interest in himself, and not a little respect, but all supplies we needed were simply not forthcoming. The Major knew that in battle the slightly wounded would far outnumber other casualties—which we know now is true enough. "A nice cushy wound is a free ticket to the hospital." (A certain brightening of the eye and moistening of the lips on the part of the troops). "But a good man comes back as soon as he can to help out in the line." No one worth his salt wants someone else to do his fighting for him." Then the welfare policy. "You gentlemen let me know if the men seem to want sports or theatricals. I rather think they get all the exercise they need, and they're keyed up to get ready to fight. As to recreation, they seem to find their own among the population." From which it is to be inferred that if there had been much free time, or if the incentive to get ready to fight had not been enough, or if the population were not to be fraternized with—all of which was true later on in Germany—the Major would have gone in strongly for a battalion recreation program. You can see that he fitted his method to conditions. "This competition idea needs watching. It can lead to bad feeling, it can damage esprit de corps instead of helping it." So he pitted his men against obstacles to progress, but not directly against each other. Then finally came the confidence born of unity—the sense of being one no matter what betide. "Captain," from Private Jones (or whoever it was), "I heard this man here talking furrin blah-blah to another fellow." The Major said, "No more of that! They're to talk United States or keep their lips buttoned up." "Sir," this confidentially from Private Angelini when Private Jones, his stand approved, had gone out. "I was talking to Private Muscatti, my cousin, from my own home town—in New Jersey. We forgot about speaking English. It was wrong. We won't do it again." Then the appearance of the "platoon spirit," so strong that it needed counterpoise: You'd make so-and-so company runner. He'd say, "I like the platoon, sir." "You'll come to company headquarters. That's a real platoon, too!" "Sir, I'll report out to the Corporal, the Sergeant, and the Lieutenant" (they even did this when wounded in battle) "and move my stuff in at once." As time went on we began to work out an adaptation of our old tactics to 1918 conditions. Unfortunately, our pre-war musketry and combat practice systems were of recent growth and both the British and ourselves had allowed this training to lapse. The British were reviving it now but our Major had never encountered it, and the spring fighting came on before we had really solved this problem. For that matter, our GHQ did not get around to securing effective training in this—the culminating stage of infantry training—until the war was over. So our whole army—not we alone—paid the price because we did not really know how to combine our fire and our movement. The Major, gleaning his ideas from us—ideas based on our scanty pre-war training—was about to solve this problem of problems for us when we lost him. But he had been a fighting soldier during all his service, and he had never had time during his campaigns to do the thing that the professional soldier is expected to do during peace—to project his philosophy ahead of actual events, and to solve new problems before they occur. Had the Major been spared to us, his practical experience of war as it then was found in western Europe, and his readiness to absorb ideas and apply them would have spared us many trials. When the battalion entered the line that spring, its calm efficiency dealt with raid and bombardment as if it had known them aforetime. And it spent its spare hours, even in the trenches, keeping up its standard of routine performance, even polishing up the rusty old grenades and other articles of trench-stores. "When they're awake, keep them busy. When we're busy, we don't worry."

No firing off of rockets and Very lights except in emergency. Keep the front dark and get used to doing your work that way. A dark front makes the enemy worry."

DOUGHBOY DIARIES

2009-10-30T14:23:00.001-07:00

THE HINGES OF HELL

"A little while back, three or four years, a conflagration had broken loose in the midst of men—a war such as past history had never known. People by the millions had forsaken all else for the sword. The battlefield was brooding all over the world. Not the battlefield of storybooks, not the battlefield of pomp and glamour. This was the battlefield of stenches, of caked blood, of dirty bandages, lice, rats, eternal mud, and the smell of rotting corpses.

Groups of men in trenches, thin lines of men on the firing steps. Cold, rain, fog, darkness. A shot, somewhere near, grey phantoms leaping out of nowhere into the trenches. A pandemonium of rifles, pistols, hand grenades, the sound of a bayonet driven home to the hilt, swift grappling with the raiders—the trench knife at play—a paroxysm of fury, the –silence—stifled groan—a gasp—hurried checking up for casualties—daylignt, and the sensing of a charge. A charge to kill, destroy the figures you knew lurked in the trenched across the field. No individual hate—no personal grudge. We were a pack of wolves—a million years back—and the pack in the other trenches wanted our blood. We were going to get theirs.

It was not the language they mouthed, not the rags they wore, not the land they came from. We cared not at all for that. They were a pack of wolves and we were a better pack, we were going to blow them to hell—and we were going to survive. Days, months of it—endless vistas of muddy grim lines of men. ----

Civilization--?—eigh! That's only pap for the demagogues and the politicians. The shrill of a whistle, a platoon of olive-drab figures leaping to action—a rushing headlong charge—deployed for action—a rushing headlong charge—deployed for action, action to win. Each man has to keep his place in the formation, to fire at a vital part of a fighting, advancing enemy. To fire with a steady, deliberate aim. A man is leading you. A man who gave all his life to learn how to lead you—and you naturally follow that man into the jaws of hell, and if he falls, you carry on; his leadership still lives after he is killed. That's what made him a leader. He made you self reliant; he made you a better rifleman than your antagonist; your bayonet is as familiar to you as your right hand; you KNOW you can knock the hell out of anybody who wears a uniform different from yours.

THE RUNNERS

"Before going further it is well to say a word in regard to runners. Runners are as vital today as they were in the days of Julius Caesar, for under heavy shell fire field telephones and buzzers go out at once, leaving runners the only dependable form of communication. The runners in sinister Belleau Wood, rendered splendid service of the most hazardous nature. The battalion commander passed one of them during the big attack lying with his leg badly mangled. He never whimpered, but only said, "Major, I can't run any more."

There were at regimental headquarters some 22 runners, men who carried messages to and from the lines, and with all the other means of communication gone, it was necessary to call on these chaps. One after another was sent forward by Colonel Foote with messages and none returned. Eighteen men had gone, and of those eighteen, officers at regimental knew enough to realize that failure to return was due to one thing only. Death or severe wounds were all that could keep the members of that faithful group from doing their duty.

At last, Colonel Foote wrote out a message for the front once again and this time called for a dispatch rider. There were at regimental headquarters two such men, one belonging to the regiment and another loaned from divisional headquarters to replace one of the 104^th regulars who was in a hospital. These dispatch riders had motorcycles and were used mostly in work between regimental and brigade or division. The one remaining 104^th rider had been going most of the night and was lying on the floor behind the group of officers in an attempt to get a little rest—the other was on duty when the colonel called for a rider and responded.

Then occurred one of those intensely dramatic incidents. The Colonel held out the dispatch and said quietly: "Take that message into Belleau to Major Lewis and bring me back his answer."

The color died out of the rider's face. Looking at the commander he said: "Colonel, that means death."

The onlookers sat spellbound. The Colonel's face never changed and without even raising his voice, he said calmly: "In the army when you get an order you do not question, you obey it."

The frightened rider stood riveted to the spot for a second, and in that interval the regular driver, Pvt. Ray Therrien of Holyoke jumped to his feet, and ducking under the other's arm, saluted and said: "Colonel, I'll take that message in."

The words were hardly said before one of the regular runners, one of the four who were left, stood at his side and said, "Make the message in duplicate, Sir, and I'll go with him."

THE SURGEON

"It was evident that the first aid station was too far to the rear, but it could not well be moved up and still be accessible to the ambulances. However, when an additional surgeon was assigned to the battalion because of the heavy increase in casualties, it was decided to establish an advanced first aid station at battalion headquarters. The new surgeon by the way, was an unfortunate victim of unpreparedness. He weighed over 200 pounds. He had been a doctor in a small town before the war and probably had never seen an army uniform. He had left the States exactly two weeks before the day he reported for duty in Belleau Wood, which at that time, was the hottest place on the western front, or any other front. There was one thing that would indicate that he had something in him. Whenever a wounded man was brought in, no matter how ghastly and mutilated a sight he might present, the doctor promptly forgot his own troubles and became the cool, efficient surgeon. It is impossible to describe his attempts to put on his gas mask when the klaxon, for the first time, sounded the gas alarm.

I saw him toward the end of the war, during the Argonne, still serving with the same battalion. He weighed a little over 150 pounds. He had a clear eye, healthy color, alert manner, and the cool air of a veteran. And every officer and man in that battalion swore by that doctor. He had made good."

THE ATTACK Then he had his mess kit out. With its cover, he carved away at the cheesy earth. Clumsily he stabbed earth loose with the handle. In the end he was underground, half buried alive in the shaking earth. There was nothing to do but stay there while it shook to pieces. Inside that hole he cowered, no better than the meanest grub or worm, no more heroic, no less ignorant of what was going on in the world above. He'd heard tales of how immaculate British officers walked about under fire encouraging their men. It must have been some other war. Like a gigantic team and wagon the shaking rolled away. He crawled out blinking and stood up. There was a moment of vast calm, of deep relief. He started a long, slow breath, which instantly was cut in two. It was incredible, those two slow, solid blocks of Germans running clumsily, opening their mouths. They were coming up at him. Two solid blocks of Germans running clumsily. They were coming, nothing was stopping them. Fixed in a cold trance, he pulled out his automatic. Where were his men? All gone? No, there ahead were two. They rose up from the ruined earth without their rifles and passed below him, running with fixed grins. Another came by, his mouth stretched open. "Halt!" he shouted and jumped out of the hole. He struck at him with the butt of his automatic; the blow glanced off the shoulder. The man dodged over the crest. He shot a cartridge into the chamber. He'd rather get the next man that ran back than all the Germans in the world. And all the time the two small blocks of running men were coming up the slope. He stood alone in a bare, ruined world without fear, without hope, a dead man, cold and rigid, in the shroud of fate. Then in the squares of Germans some running men went tumbling as sparse rifles cracked along the line; and then—a sound of joy and wonder—he heard slow tapping up the hill. Beneath his eye, the nearest square broke into fragments, stopped and streamed back down the slope. Now the crackling ran along the line and other crackling lines came up behind him and dinned about his ears, and a loud voice, "Jesus Christ, Lieutenant, get away from there! Beneath this crackling, the other square had melted and was drifting down the fierce stream of their fire.

Emptying his automatic as he ran, he got among the fox holes of his men. There were fragments, and there were shrunken bodies half buried, face down, on the ground; but here and there, under the tin hats, close to the churned earth, eyes rolled up at him. He ran among them, his dry mouth open wide. "Come on, you buggers, come on! Are you going to let the second wave go through you?"

THE SHELL

As soon as the new Major arrived we moved into the neighboring town of Celeste, where an infantry headquarters was then established. For our own headquarters we took over a fine house, furnishings almost intact, including dishes and drinking goblets, a kitchen range, a pool table upstairs, and a wine cellar. With the Major came our first field duty Y.M.C.A. man who looked the part of a penny changing five and ten clerk. He professed great interest in the men, as a politician loves his voters, showed an exaggerated sympathy for them and displayed a profound respect for the Major. A German sausage balloon idly poised a few kilometers across country interested us for two days. On the third day she ceased to be a curiosity. The Major and his aides were eating a hearty meal in fine style in the well equipped dining room. A half dozen of us were loafing in the kitchen with the cook when a shell swished into the cobbled courtyard and splattered against the building. The nose of the shell bounced through the doorway, struck the chimney and fell with a crash on the stove. The cook, a minute before a white man, gleamed thru the dust and smoke, frying pan in hand, as would the puzzled end man of an old time minstrel thinking out the answer to a poser.

Before the ringing was out of our ears, the Major and his dinner guests had tumbled out of a back window and dropped behind the house. Three or four of us dived out on top of them. The cook and the others raced across the courtyard and plunged into the wine cellar, the last chap coming in thru the chute to land heavily on the floor. We lay in the pile of disturbed soldiers, huddled behind the flat, regardless of rank and dinner. Enlisted men counted off the shots as per the muffled commands issuing from the bottom of the heap. Gas was the signal given by our gentry, so we whiffed gingerly when the less savage shells burst or landed in softer spots. The shelling, never above the strength of a battery, lasted perhaps an hour. No casualties resulted here if we except the damage done to the Y.M.C.A. man's nose in the scramble thru the window. Some skin was rudely removed by an elbow of piece of glass, but hardly enough to warrant the duly-requested wound chevron."

Doughboy Diaries

2009-10-18T16:22:00.001-07:00

FAT MAN

In the book Ranging in France with Flash and Sound we read:

Nearly every organization has its "fat man." In our section it was Private Flora, of Harrisburg,Pa. Flora served as photographer at central. The dark room had to be enlarged when he went on the job. Flora was gaining weight day by day, and needed exercise badly. His opportunity came when Corporal Thompson formed a survey party to run a check of the microphone positions.

Private Flora joined the party as a rodman, and he made an excellent target for either a transit or a German machine gun. For this reason he was given the job as rear rodman. This plan worked nicely until the party came to Microphone No. 7, when Flora was told to assume the duties of front rodman. It was with much suspicion the misgiving that Flora made his way out into forbidden territory where he had been directed to hold up his rod on an elevated point in the field.

Scrambling through the trenches and barbwire entanglements, and over shell holes, he made slow progress. He stumbled and fell; he glanced downward and discovered he had tripped over a dead German. Then he was startled by a shout. Looking around he beheld a negro's head protruding over the edge of the trench. (The sector was held by negro troops of the 92^nd Division.)

"Fo' the land's sake; what yo'all doin' out yondah?" inquired the negro, at the same time looking over the barrel of his machine gun. Flora decided to retreat.

"Come heah!" yelled the colored doughboy.

Flora obeyed.

"What yo' all tryin' to do?" questioned the negro.

Flora explained.

"Lawd be praised; I'se glad I don't belong with the engineers," replied the machine gunner, "but first let me shake you' hand good-bye."

THE ATTACK

At the command "Halt" two of the enemy jumped into the trench, while three others hurdled it to get in the rear of the Americans. Assisted by others not in the trench, who grenade the post, the two closed in on Dahl and Whalen. But our boys held their ground, and as the first German approached, Dahl made a lunge at him with his bayonet; but the treacherous mud was his undoing and he slipped and fell on his hands and knees. In a flash the German was on him and laid him flat with a blow on the head from his pistol.

Another member of the post, Private Roy H, Eaton, who was in the shelter trying to get a little sleep before his turn to go on watch, then rushed out, and seeing the German atop his comrade, grappled with him bare-handed. This time it was the German who was on the bottom, and Dahl remained on his feet. Whalen, in the excitement of the moment, after firing a clip at the Boches on the parapet, caught his rifle in the bank and lost it. Then the pin of the grenade he picked up stuck, so he made a dive for the P.C. just as the "potato masher" exploded and caught Dahl in the back. Even this did not dismay him, and he started after the second Boche. Grenades now seemed to be flying from all directions, and the two had no idea as to how many of the enemy they had to combat. All this was happening in a few seconds, and they had to act by instinct, for there was no time to formulate any plan. Their instinct led them to fight regardless of the odds. In another moment one of the flying grenades hit Eaton full in the body, snuffing out his life as quickly as one extinguishes a candle. At the expense of his own, he had saved Dahl's life.

Dahl, now alone, picked up an automatic rifle, but as he fell flat to avoid a grenade, his adversary escaped. He then discovered that the previous burst had sprung his weapon, so he threw it aside and rushed after the Germans, grenading them as they retreated.

Private Frank A. Brandt, on a neighboring post, hearing the fight started toward Post 4 as the Germans fled up the trench. He heard their quickened steps, and crouching behind a corner, lay in wait. His first shot struck the leading German below the lower right rib, whirling him completely around, at the sight of which the others jumped out of their trench and made for their lines. Brandt and Corporal Norman K. Bruner, who had come on the scene, jumped on the wounded Boche, but Brandt was forced to loose him with a cry as a grenade fragment tore his hand. The Boche, a giant in size, of powerful build, and apparently of indestructible composition, struggled up with Brandt clinging to him, so the latter was forced to clout him over the head with his rifle butt; but even that did not seem to faze him, so the American finished him off with another shot.

In the meantime Privates Postel and Payne were firing with auto-rifle and grenades on the Germans scattering out through our wire. Several were seen to fall, but they were picked up and carried back. The entire engagement had lasted three minutes at the most, and was over before the rest of the post knew what was happening. It was evidently the intention of the Germans to swoop down upon an unsuspecting group, overpower them by sheer force of numbers, capture one or two, and then retire immediately. Instead of taking prisoners, they left one in our hands. It was the possibility of such encounters as this, even throughout long intervals of quiet and inactivity, that kept the men on duty in the firing trench constantly keyed up to the high pitch.

The Germans were obviously piqued at the trend of affairs and resolved to even up matters. About half past eight, as darkness was gathering the sector in its shadow, a party of sixty or seventy Boches was reported approaching one of the outpost positions. Hastily collecting a few reserves, Lieutenant Priddy rushed to the threatened post, and got there just in time, for the enemy patrol was about to march in, attempting to put over the shop-worn ruse—the old, old Kamerad game that had been so overworked that to attempt to repeat it was an insult to the intelligence of any soldier.

They were bold enough about it. The whole party advanced, hands overhead, calling "Kamerad" as they came. Lieutenant Priddy let them come as far as he thought safe, and then halted them. From their midst emerged a spokesman, who announced in good English that they wished to give themselves up to the Americans. The lieutenant admitted that the idea was a good one, and directed them to enter our lines at a designated spot one at a time.

That upset their plan entirely. The leaders held a moment's consultation, and then bunching up, some of them still calling "Kamerad", they made ready to rush the line. Priddy hesitated just a second to make sure of their intention, and then gave the order to fire. The blast of rifle, auto-rifle, and grenade fire from the outpost caught the enemy full in the center. A number were seen to fall, and the piteous cries of the wounded indicated that the casualties were heavy. That decided them and the whole crowd broke in confusion and started for their lines, every man for himself, in spite of the attempts of an officer to check them.

About a hundred and fifty yards away, the officer managed to halt the retreating mob. Berating them in no uncertain terms, he lined his men up again in squad formation, and could be heard counting in German, "Ein, Zwei, Drei, Vier", in preparation for a second attempt.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Priddy had strengthened his line and had secured a machine gun from the garrison of the 151^st Machine Gun Battalion. The gunner found a good position atop one of the dugouts, and when the Germans again came within range they met with a reception even warmer than the first. The fight lasted for nearly a half hour, and it had got quite dark before the Germans finally gave up the attempt to break through. Aided by the thickening dusk, a few daring Boches got close enough to hurl grenades into our trench. With deliberate coolness, combined with quickness of wit, Corporal Vester A. Benson saved several of his men by kicking a sizzling grenade around the corner of the traverse, and in so doing was himself wounded in the leg and foot. One group of the enemy tried to flank the post from the left, but were discovered in time and driven off after one of their number was sacrificed to the marksmanship of Private Silas M. Teig. It was then that they admitted to themselves the futility of further efforts to get in by withdrawing for good, taking with them their dead and wounded, but leaving most of their weapons behind. The men had been kept on edge practically all day; but there was no relaxing yet, for the warning had gone out that another attack by the enemy could be expected before daybreak.

KITCHEN INSPECTION

Often the cooks were hidden in the deep, dark holes, the only things in sight being the smoking soup guns.

Just previous to the coming of Captain Hardwick and the inspector, the farm had been subjected to a long and particularly heavy bombardment. Cooks and kitchen police had taken refuge in the dugouts. The inspector arrived at Kitchen No. 1 and much to his disgust the steaming soup gun had no attendants.

Knowing the difficulties that often beset this culinary department, Captain Hardwick pounded on the sheet iron piece that served to protect workers from weather and possible flying shell splinters. Shortly afterward they emerged from a nearby hole, crawling from the darkness of the deep shelter and blinking blindly until they grew accustomed to the light. The inspector saw them make their exit from the hole. Glancing around he inquired for the cook. The good natured heater of army canned goods stepped forward and saluted.

"You're not the cook?" the visitor inquired.

"I am, sir," the cook replied.

"Let me see your hands," he of the yellow gloves requested. From their hiding place behind his back the cook produced a dirty pair.

"Are those your hands?" asked the owner of the cane.

"They are, Sir," said the soup dispenser and promptly slid them out of sight behind his back.

"Let me see your nails," demanded the inspector, and once again the bashful hands came into view.

"How often do you shave?" asked Shiny Shoes.

"Every day, Sir," came the ready answer.

"Your beard grows very fast," the inspector remarked and turned to have a look at the kitchen.

Pots and pans were laid out, and after these the utensils used about the kitchen. When they had all been exposed to view, he of the spotless clothes delivered the following oration:

"My good man, I understand the difficulties of your position perfectly, but think you show a lack of interest in your surrounding. I suggest that you obtain at once a pail of whitewash and brighten up your kitchen, that your garbage pit be placed at quite some distance from its present location and that you employ your kitchen force to clear away the rubbish about you."

Just then overhead came the Wheeeeeeeee of Fritz's iron rations and the inspection came to a sudden close. The immaculate gentleman began a hurried leave and, as he turned, the cook and the kitchen help dove headlong into the dugout. As the inspector and Captain Hardwick reached the top of the next hill and looked back, smoke of bursting bombs and dust of falling walls showed the farm was getting the full force of the activity.

The following day as Captain Hardwick passed Antioche Farm on his daily rounds he stopped. The kitchen the inspector had requested whitewashed had disappeared. In its place only some giant shell holes remained. A much battered soup gun stood behind a bit of broken wall, but a grinning cook greeted an equally grinning medical officer by rubbing a well scrubbed hand across a hairless chin to show that he had carried out instructions, the scene being done in pantomime without the interchange of a word.

The men who cooked the food and their helpers who carried it to the fighting line stood the shell fire with the rest. They toted endless marmite cans of steaming food to hungry men day after day, lived in filth and mud and ooze and served their companies without complaint. Yes, when it came time for glory, few remembered the cooks.

David Homsher
American Battlefields of World War I: Chateau-Thierry--Then and Now
ISBN: 97809702444307 $19.95.
Winner of three National Book Awards. Available at bookstores everywhere.
and on website: www.battlegroundpro.com
WWI blog sites: www.davehomsher-wwi.blogspot.com/ AND www.doughboydiaries.blogspot.com/

DOUGHBOY DIARIES

2009-09-26T18:39:00.001-07:00

THE PIGEONS

"There was comedy along with tragedy. General Dickman, who commanded the Third American Army, tells about a British Chief of Staff who very politely send a basket of highly trained carrier pigeons to the staff of a newly landed American division, only to be rewarded a few days later with a courteous note saying they enjoyed the pigeons very much! No doubt they had an excellent cook. "

THE PIG

"The first battalion had a pig. When the battalion was in reserve at Aulnois, we put our pig in a blue barracks bag and carried him in a supply wagon. When the wagon arrived, we could hear the pig squeal, but all that we could see was its little snout pushing against the cloth. When we let him out, one of the boys painted "102d Infantry" on him, and the last we saw of him he was painted green all over. The boys tormented that poor pig to death, poking it in the ribs to hear it grunt and squeal. I suppose that eventually the poor pig was converted into pork."

THE RUNNER and the COLONEL's CAR

One of our runners had a most trying experience in the Toul sector. He was returning from the first line, tired, hot and exhausted. So he stopped the colonel's car.

"Don't you know better than to stop an officer's car?" the colonel demanded.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, why did you do it then?"

"I didn't notice that there was an officer in it, sir."

You should have noticed."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, get in," the colonel said.

The runner was so absorbed in the conversation he forgot that he held a lighted cigar, the first that he had smoked in weeks and it sold for ten cents at the "Y".

"Who gave you permission to smoke in this car?" the colonel demanded.

The runner immediately threw the awful cigar away without making any comments. The colonel's driver sat as stiff and upright as a Broadway coachman, and the runner was so nervous and uncomfortable that he squirmed considerably and was ordered to "straighten up."

"Got any more cigars on your person?" asked the colonel.

"No, sir, for if I had I would have offered you one, Colonel."

The runner was let off at Beaumont. He stood at attention, saluted and said, "Sir, I thank you for the ride, and apologize for the mistake, and assure you that it will not re-occur."

The Colonel smiled, as much as to say, "I guess that guy has learned his lesson." Said Colonel was not Colonel Parker, for John Henry Parker would have offered the runner a cigar."

THE GREAT CRUSADE

"It was the great crusade. It is not my purpose to glorify war. It is simply my purpose to glorify the sacrifices and achievements of my comrades, and the eternal cause for which they worked and fought so hard. It was vainly feared that the war would brutalize our boys. Since they were fighting the most brutal foe in the annals of history, they did not simply hate brutality—they despised it.

Their feeling against brutality was only as great as their mercy and compassion for the women and the little children that had endured insufferable and unprovoked wrong. Here again I have access to indisputable facts that prove my statement absolutely. From September 27^th to November 29^th, members of our Expeditionary Force adopted 1,156 war-stricken youngsters. They adopted 294 war orphans in one week. This campaign to support the war waifs was started during the summer of 1918 and 1,670 were taken by the last of November. Hundreds of others were adopted by the 16^th of December. A full account of what the overseas men, through "The Stars and Stripes," accomplished, may be obtained by anyone who cares to look up the back numbers of this excellent publication.

A finer, cleaner, braver, more generous and patriotic and religious body of men than my comrades, history will never know. They would share with one another their smokes, hard tack, bully beef and the contents of their packages from home with a liberality that was simply grand. They would die for one another."

THE MULE or GET GOIN' SOLDIER

In the memoir of Pvt. Malcolm D. Aitken, USMC we read:

"It was on one of those hikes into the front lines of the Soissons Sector. It was pitch dark, lines of men and all kinds of equipment filling the road to capacity. You couldn't see your nose, is the way I described it.

We had halted for one of those short rests and were sort of lying down using our packs for support; splendid when you could get them adjusted; and were trying for a wink of sleep. I suddenly came to and realized that the man next to me on the right was not there. I was third from the head of the company column and was used to being left by the man ahead; he had done the same stunt several times, accidently of course; so I elbowed the man next to me and said, "Get Goin". He didn't move. I repeated the affair twice more and when no response was forthcoming, I investigated aided by a match, and I had been elbowing the rump of a perfectly dead mule. I then noted that no other men were around me. I glanced at my watch and saw that an hour had passed since the rest was called. Believe me I hurried as fast as possible and caught the outfit about 100 yards ahead. The traffic block cleared as I resumed my spot in the ranks. Ralph, the fellow on my right, wanted to know if I had seen Paris and I told him I had been in the burial grounds but was retuning to see the rest."

THE EGG AFFAIR

"After the Armistice the lessening of military chores also meant more time for the pranks and shenanigans in which soldiers excel. Perhaps the best known incident of mischief-making during the occupation of Germany, as far as the 42^nd Division was concerned, was the so-called "egg affair." Eggs were a rare treat for the troops on duty in the Rhineland, and when an entire carload of eggs arrived at the rail station in Sinzig, intended for distribution to all units of the Rainbow Division, the Alabamians of the 167^th Infantry, declared Reilly, "took immediate possession of the whole carload and lived happily on eggs for some time thereafter." Colonel Screws, the regiment's commander, explained that his men seized the eggs because another regiment had earlier stolen a carload of tobacco which the citizens of Alabama had sent for the 167^th. "Of course, we Alabamians being the 'he-men' we are," Screws remarked, "we would sooner 'chaw' on tobacco than eggs, but we had the eggs and we didn't have the tobacco." MacArthur chose to ignore the incident, possibly for the reason Screws offered: "I sent a few around to the other Colonels and Generals to keep them from starting something."

HUMOR at the FRONT

In the book Ranging in France with Flash and Sound we read:

" It was while at the Norroy base that the irresistible Kennedy was working on the communications lines one afternoon when his ever-watchful eye caught sight of some splendid blackberries. After filling his steel helmet, he picked a few more and sat down to eat them. Soon her heard footsteps, and a shadow from some hovering object fell across the path by which he was sitting. Glancing up Kennedy was surprised to see a brigadier-general confronting him.

As the general waited for Kennedy to spring to attention his face was drawn into a frown.

"Well, don't you know a general when you see one," he growled.

"Yes, sir; but I never expected to see one up here, sir."

The general hesitated. The frown on his face was changing into a grin.

"Where is your post?" asked the offiver.

"I haven't any, sir."

"To what organization do you belong?"

"Twenty-ninth Engineers, Sir."

"What kind of work do you do?"

"I can't tell you, sir."

The general was baffled. His eyes roamed about while his mind groped for something effective. He spied the berries.

"What are you going to do with those?" he asked.

"Take them home to the cook to make a pie, sir."

Well; be careful not to eat too much of that pie, or you may make yourself sick.

"Yes, sir."

Kennedy salutes. The general returned the salute and walked on."

DOUGHBOY DIARIES

2009-09-13T18:41:00.001-07:00

In the book World War I in Retrospect we read: "But all in all I was certainly less miserable there at Brest prior to embarkation than my comrades, for while the company was off unloading lumber in the rain and cold I sat in our sheet-iron billet by the camp stove and, pad on knee, devoted myself to the work of chronicler. Even without the bargain I had made with the captain I would have been unavailable for heavy work because of an amusing, although extremely painful, episode. One cold and rainy morning in January the company was marched off to the delousing plant, where men and clothes were to receive the kerosene treatment. As right guide of the company, I was first to enjoy the delectable shower, after which, while waiting for my clothes, I stood naked with my back to the red-hot barracks stove. Others soon appeared and there was the usual banter and chatter. Presently one of the men asked me for a light for his cigarette. In the process of obliging I leaned forward just far enough to touch my rear on the stove. To this very day I remember the sticking sensation and my mad leap to safety. Next morning, when I reported for sick call, the doctor exclaimed: "Why, Sarge, you have a burn as large as a pie plate." For a time I was quite immobilized, never stirring from my pillow, but spiritually free and deeper than ever immersed in my narrative. Only one mistake I made in this connection. I wrote my mother that I had had a rather painful mishap and should probably not have been surprised when, on my return home, she greeted me with the question: "Now where were you wounded." "Wounded? Me? Nowhere." Well, you certainly wrote me of a mishap and of course I knew what you meant." Demonstration was hardly feasible, so I had to rely on argument to put her mind at rest.

Life underground is the order of things within the scope of the enemy's guns. By the light of candles and lamps, soldiers live down here and eat and sleep. And yet men laugh and joke over the most serious things. A new habit of mind seems to have been created so suit this new outlook, one in which the exposure and danger and shell fire and the blood of comrades are usual factors, instead of the strange and shocking horrors they would be in normal life conditions."

DOUGHBOY SHEPHERDS

"In many ways, the French civilian customs provided entertainment for the American soldiers of 1918. The Headquarters Company at Moyemont were daily aroused by the shrill blasts of the community stock-herder's trumpet. At the first peep of dawn, when all the good doughboys were pounding the blanket hard, he would sound off, shambling down the village street in motley garb—perhaps the regalia of his high office—dragging his wooden shoes with difficulty over the cobblestones. The first blast of his tin horn usually produced the desired result. Out of barns and yards tumbles sundry sheep, goats, cows and pigs to fall in behind him. Returning from the fields at dusk, the animals would instinctively fall out and retire to their respective habitations. Two members of the Regimental Band yearned for trouble. The machinations of their fertile brains sent the loudest and strongest First Cornet down the street one morning long before Reveille, blowing the Call to Arms. The Pied Piper of Hamlin boasted no such array. With stately tread, he conducted his unique platoon of animals around the town. Wither he went they dutifully followed. He stopped playing, but they still hung on. The joke was revealing complications. Showing signs of deep concern, the cornetist attempted the soothing strains of "Go to Sleep, My Baby," without result. Far be it for such loyal adherents to desert their leader in the midst of drill. But hark! What is that old familiar sound? The shrill call of the herder's old horn resounding through the village! With tails erect, or flying, or kinked or not showing at all, as the case may be, the animals dashed off in all directions. Pandemonium reigned, during which time the First Cornet made good his escape."

SID's PACK

They maintained the brutal march until human endurance could no longer maintain them, then they fell by the wayside, sick, exhausted and oftentimes unconscious. 'Long about midday, General Wittenmeyer came upon a pathetic figure by the roadside, propped against his pack which he hadn't the energy to take off. "Dogs," he soliloquized, gazing ruefully at his feet, "you've gone back on me. For many a year you've been my main support and you've done your duty noble. I've been careful of you right along; but I guess I was too easy with you. And now, because you've had to take some hard knocks, you're laying down on me, ain't you? But I guess you done the best you could an' I can't blame you for putting me out of the running.

Any feeble attempt at mirth and hilarity had long since failed. Conversation was at a standstill, but what the boys thought about the army at that time was unfit for publication. Yet the hike was productive of many surprises, among them General Wittemeyer's decision, after hearing the doughboy's lament, to order a lengthy rest at noon and—Sidney Wennick's quality of endurance.

Sid had been cooking for the Signal Platoon all the time we were out with the British climbing the hills of Northern France. We had carried the pack a bit, nearly every day in the week. Sid hadn't. So, when we started on this jaunt the hardened veterans thought that Sid would be one of the first to drop out. Along about the fifth hour of marching, when fully ready to call it quits there was Sid Wennick marching blithely along, seemingly with no cares or worries. He was in at the finish, and probably the freshest man of the lot. That night, his Bunkie happened to be looking when Sid unrolled his pack. It comprised one blanket and a lot of straw; all the rest of his equipment was on the ration cart."

GAS!

A British general, in whose area and under whose jurisdiction we happened to be training, said to the American officer who accompanied him on tour of inspection one morning: "And are your men well trained in the matter of gas-defense?"

"Oh yes indeed, "replied General Johnson.

"Gas!" screamed the general at a passing American doughboy, for the purpose of making a practical test. Nothing but blank amazement masked the Latin-American countenance on the roadside.

"Gas!" howled the general, thinking that the boy hadn't heard him. No response; not a quiver of intelligence.

"Don't you know enough to put on your mask when you hear that warning?" cried the excited general.

"Me no speak-a-da Eenglis," answered the American."

STOLEN CHICKENS

"Five chickens have disappeared from a shed near your Signal Platoon," the captain said. "This is nothing less than plain stealing and cannot be glossed over. Investigate."

The captain goes over to one of the French neighbors and says in fluent French, "Avvy voo lost cinq chickens? The neighbor says "No." The captain reports the findings to the Town Commandant, who 'lows as how that ain't the right neighbor and proceeds to investigate, for himself. Here is the shed; foot-prints, gore, feathers. Unmistakable signs of a terrible carnage. Five hens are still cowering, wild-eyed in a corner, suffering from nervous prostration. If Monsieur Legrand formerly had ten and a rooster it is certain that the others must be A.W.O.L. Oh, no! He couldn't have sold them.

The Supply Company advertises a big chicken dinner for the coming Sunday; but such evidence is purely circumstantial. H Company is billeted in the next street over; looks bad for H. E Company had a couple of recalcitrant's picked up in the street that fatal night; but that is nothing out of the way. The finger of suspicion undoubtedly points to Headquarters Company, though the First Sergeant swears the blood on the Orderly Room door-sill resulted from the company mechanic having cut a finger. Therefore, all four companies are finally ordered to chip in, purchasing out of their company funds an ephemeral portion of vanished chicken for every man in town."

DOUGHBOY DIARIES

2009-08-26T17:27:00.001-07:00

John F. Gilder writes of the psychology of the American soldier in his book Americans Defending Democracy, Our Soldier's Own Stories: "The conduct of our men was characterized at all times by a remarkable spirit—a spirit difficult to define, but which reached in battle a veritable state of exaltation. It was a spirit which breathed confidence, determination and willingness to make any sacrifices to win. This spirit was so marked as to be frequently commented upon in the British area. I am sure that no man who has not experienced the ordeal of battle can appreciate the feelings of the officer who sees his men coming out of battle after, perhaps, three or four days and nights of continuous fighting, plastered with mud, scratched and cut by wire and shell splinters, lame and stiff from the water of shell holes in which they have spent the nights, half dazed from shell-shock and loss of sleep, half sick, and frequently burned from poisonous gas and depressed by the loss of comrades whom they have seen killed or wounded about them. Certainly one must admire the discipline of men who under such conditions keep in column and observe the many rules of the road as they patiently make their way to the rest camp over roads pounded with never-ceasing shellfire, but the officer's admiration turns to devoted affection when under such circumstances he receives from his men the responsive glance and the labored straightening of the exhausted body, which indicates that it is the physical machinery alone that is "all in"—that the spirit remains unimpaired. This has been the experience of our officers with their men. Cases by the score have occurred where officers and men struck down in battle, in response to their spirit had struggled to their feet and gone on with their companies in the attack only to be hit again. Cases exist in every regiment where men have done this as many as three times before being killed or rendered helpless. This spirit cannot be produced by discipline alone. The character of our cause had some relation to it. A spirit so intense cannot be developed in a period measured by months. In our case it was the growth of years of zealous effort to compel the recognition of the efficiency of their regiment—effort which involved not only sacrifice, but lack of appreciation and even hostility from some sources. Our men and the new men who gained their spirit were prepared to make any sacrifice to justify their confidence in themselves and their unit, and to this end they seemed to be willing to give their

lives freely."

EXCERPTS FROM SOLDIERS' DIARIES" Rats? What did you ever read of the rats in the trenches? Next to gas, they still slide on their fat bellies through my dreams. Poe could have got new inspiration from their dirty hordes. Rats, rats, rats, tens of thousands of rats—I see them still, slinking from new meals on corpses, crunching between battle lines, their hellish feasts. Full fed, slipping and sliding down into the wet trenches they swarm at night—and more than one poor wretch has been attacked and his face partly eaten off by them while he slept. Stench? Did you ever breathe air foul with the gasses arising from a thousand rotting corpses. Dirt? Have you ever fought half madly through days and nights and weeks unwashed, with the feverish rests between long hours of agony, while the guns boom their awful symphony of death, and the bullets zip-zip-zip ceaselessly along the trench edge—that's your skyline—and your deathline, too, if you stretch and stand upright. It was such a horrible grind that one of the boys in the company, who had been studying to be a minister before he left home, learned to swear worse than any man in the whole outfit. A bayonet charge is a street fight magnified and made ten thousand times more fierce. It becomes on close range almost impossible to use your bayonets. So we fought with fists and feet, and used our guns, when possible, as clubs. We lay in our captured trench for about four hours. The boys, excited, because they still lived, sang and jested and told of queer experiences and narrow escapes they had had. We were soon in the wood, where it was so dark that we could hardly distinguish friend from foe. I ran in and out among the trees and asked everyone I met who he was. I came upon one big fellow. My mouth opened to ask him who he was, when his fist shot out and took me between the eyes. I went down for the count, but I knew now who he was—he was a German. I got up as quickly as I could, you may be sure, and swung my rifle to hit him in the head, but the stock struck a tree and splintered. I thought I had broken all my fingers. Gas? What do you know of it, you people who never heard earth and heaven rock with the frantic turmoil of the ceaseless bombardment? A crawling yellow cloud that pours in upon you, that gets you by the throat and shakes you as a huge mastiff might shake a kitten, and leaves you burning in every nerve and vein of your body with pain unthinkable; your eyes starting from their sockets; your face turned yellow green. Death is everywhere, but we do not believe in it any more. And when on certain mornings, to the sound of cannon, that mix their rumblings with mystic voices of bells, in the devastated church which cries to the heavens through every breach opened in its walls, the chaplain blesses the regiment that he will presently accompany to the firing line. The soldier in the front line trenches does not hear the enemy's artillery which is firing at him, or if he does hear it it is only as a confused, distant roar or rumble. The American artillery is some miles behind him. All he hears of his own guns is a moderate boom and roar. There is a sound of the clear whistle over his head as the shells pass on their way to "Fritz," which give him a feeling of assurance that he is being well supported and protected. So many of the German shells pass over his head or fall short, or land some distance up or down the line from him, that the constancy of their arrival in close or dangerous proximity is not nearly so great as might be supposed from the enormous number incessantly hurled in his direction. In places the two lines were not one hundred yards apart, and no movement was possible during daylight. In some of the trenches which were under enfilade fire, our men had to sit all day long under the traverses, as are called those mounds of earth which stretch like partitions at intervals across a trench so as to give protection from lateral fire. Even when there was cover, such as that afforded by depressions or sunken roads, on the hillside below and behind our firing line, any attempt to cross the intervening space was met by fierce bursts of machine-gun and shell fire. The men on the firing line were on duty for twenty-four hours at a time, and brought rations and water with them when they came on duty, for none could be sent up to them during the day. Even the wounded could not be moved until dark. There are many funny incidents in war, and one I particularly remember was that there were three or four of us in a group when a piece of shell dropped almost in our midst. There was not any great force in it, because before falling it had struck a tree; but as it dropped we started turning up the collars of our coats and rolling ourselves into balls—just as if things like that would make any difference to a bursting shell. However, it is amusing to see how men act like children at such times. METHODS OF GERMAN SNIPERS At Alsace, where I was in charge of a sector, with twenty men, it was my duty to study the terrain within my vision, and I had it down so plainly that each morning I could look out and see bushes that had not been there the night before, therefore proving to me that they were put there during the night by enemy patrols either for airplane signals or sniper's posts. On August 1, 1918, about 9:30 a.m., a sniper in my platoon detected a black object some distance out on No Man's Land. Calling my attention to the mark, he said he saw it move. I was very cautious, because if we were to start firing, it might prove to be only a burnt stump, which it closely resembled, and therefore betray our location to enemy observers. I studied the object until late that afternoon, when I finally decided to let the boy try his luck. He did, and it was a fine shot, as we saw the object fall. That night our patrol went out and investigated the spot and found the body of a young German skillfully camouflaged the color of the adjoining tree, with a bullet through his forehead. So the boy on the job was responsible for there being one less Hun sniper. Another night I was sitting at the entrance to what was once an old German dugout when I heard a very mysterious noise out on the barbed wire. I sent up an illumination rocket to try and see if I could find who the intruder might be. But I could not make out anything because of the density of the shrubbery and old wire. I waited for a while and again I heard noises, but of a different nature this time. It was a German patrol. One German was crying for help in English, trying to get our boys to answer and go to the supposed American boy's assistance. They would ambush our boys, thus causing many casualties. Some of these tricks could be detected, such as the cry of cats, birds and dogs, or anything that would cause our boys to waste ammunition or sacrifice their lives by answering. The ruse of making our boys waste hand grenades and bullets worked successfully one night. On the following night the discovery was made that up in a tree, not far from our trench, sat a camouflaged German, cutting short strands of wire with clippers, thus making us believe there were German patrols breaking through., For a while before the discovery, our boys poured machine-gun and rifle fire into the wire entanglements, only to find that their shooting was in vain. After he was detected, the little Boche in the tree had no more use for his wire cutters or wire.

Lack of space prevents reference to other methods of warfare that the American boys had to contend with, but it did not take them long to show the Hun that no matter how smart a man might be, there is always one born smarter.

In William L. Langer's book Gas and Flame in World War I we read: "We are proud of our Uncle Sam because he didn't show us up before Europe. And American soldiers have taught Europe a few things. I wonder if they'll profit from our system of sanitation? I wonder if they'll learn how to shave a man properly? An American is the only barber who shaves down on the upper lip. Every time I got shaved in France or Germany I thought the end of my nose was going off. Manners we ain't supposed to have, but we showed cultured Europe a few of the fundamentals of a gentleman. Did you ever notice Private Buck, how quickly Private Buck gave his seat to the European ladies? And did you notice how the European men stared at him? And the women graciously thanked him. Here in the home of Kultur the Herrn shove the women around by the scruff of the neck. This little act of chivalry—Americans giving their seats to Frauen and Fräulein—is the talk of all the Rhineland. "Americans are rough and loud and all that, especially in their cups," said a Frenchman to me; "at first we thought them as wild as Mangin's Algerians, but they're gentlemen under the skin." Europe will remember us for things other than the beaucoup francs and viel gelt. And for these, Europe is ever ready with the itching palm.

It's America first when we get back home. We know what we are now. We were deferential before. We used to feel in the presence of old polished Europe like a country bumpkin suddenly lifted by his bootstraps and thrust on Fifth Avenue in New York City. "When a man comes to himself, " says Woodrow Wilson. The returning soldiers have come to themselves all right. Like the ancient Greek we are ready to call all barbarians born outside the big old land—we've had the Pentecost of Americanism, the fiery apostles are returning. Get ready the incense, ye politicians and editors. You can't fool us anymore."

DOUGHBOY DIARIES

2009-08-07T14:56:00.001-07:00

In Ernest Piexotto's book The American Front, we read: "The 155's hidden under the trees, were firing in salvoes of four, while up in the Grande Tranché the crack, crack, crack of the "75's" was uninterrupted, barking and yelping like hounds on the chase. Our big barrage was going over. But very little was coming back. So, as the road was absolutely deserted, we kept straight on until we struck traffic: ambulances and ammunition-trains going up. We hid our car again and soon had reached the P.C., passed it, and were out in the trenches. Here we were told that the infantry had already gone over the top and were now in the German first-line trenches. Out in the blasted wastes of No Man's Land, however, where hill succeeded hill, once covered with dense forests, not but shell-torn barrens spotted with a few blackened stumps, nothing was visible but the shell bursts that kicked up clouds of dirt or broke in dense balls of smoke. The "doughboys," as had always been the case up to this time, were practically invisible, hidden in shell-holes, in trenches, or under any cover that they could find.

But soon the wounded began to filter in through the trenches—poor fellows, some walking quite erect with head or hand bound up; others stooping doubled up with pain or fear, their khaki coats spotted with great brownish stains, their faces and hands bloody. Then came the litter-bearers, staggering through the slippery mud up the hill, steadying themselves by a hand pressed against the trench walls as they bore their heavy burdens—still forms stretched flat, immobile, covered with an O.D. blanket from which protruded a pair of spiked shoes with the toes turned up. When we returned to the regimental P.C. these pathetic figures increased in number, for near it a first-aid dressing station had just been established. The stretchers lay upon the ground with the doctors stooping over them. The ambulances came up one by one, were filled as fast as the wounds were dressed, and dispatched to the rear. To our left was a division of French Colonials, Senegalese as black as ink. Their wounded were also coming in, and one of the most striking pictures I saw that day was one of these negro giants borne like a bronze knight on the shoulders of four prisoners—a group reminiscent of the statues on some mediaeval tomb. By now the prisoners were arriving in squads; then they were brought in by droves. In the first lot I counted no less than a hundred and forty; in the second over a hundred, and still they steadily poured in. Most of them were serious-looking men of middle age, who certainly seemed glad to be through with it, flinging down their helmets with gestures that plainly said: "Thank God, that's over." A few were slightly wounded but the great proportion wore new uniforms, clean, unspotted with mud, showing clearly that they had given up without a struggle; in fact, had dressed to go into captivity. Their sergeants lined them up in double ranks, under the watchful eye of their own lieutenants, while our men looked on with frank curiosity. Then they were questioned by our own Intelligence officers and marched off to the rear, shambling off with stooped shoulders under the guard of a few alert and rosy-cheeked young New Englanders.

All day long they continued to pour in, and that evening, at Rarécourt, the accommodations provided were so inadequate to the numbers that had come in, that I saw hundreds of them huddled together, crowded into temporary pens, fenced round with barbed wire, passing the night in the drizzling rain—living evidence of our victory."

In The Story of the 168^th Infantry we read: "Suddenly, with the instantaneity of a lightning flash, the whole north seems to rise up in flames and hurl itself forward—like an agile, hungry tiger leaping down upon its prey. With a thunderous, dismaying roar it fall upon the Chamois, raining steel and destruction. There is no need to waken anyone; air and earth tremble with the concussion of bursting shells, and the men at the front, in the support, back in town, all find themselves on their feet without being conscious of the force that placed them there. In the trenches every post, save those of the lookouts is instantly abandoned. Terrified bodies come rushing, slipping, stumbling, splashing to the dugouts, dodging bits of flying debris, ducking showers of dirt, their path lighted by flashing explosions. Already the wires connecting the front with the reserve are out, and all communication is suspended. From each G. C. rockets shoot heavenward, to be answered almost immediately by the alert artillery—half French, half American. Guards at dugout entrances breathlessly watch and wait, eyes and ears strained for the slightest variation in the deafening turmoil that may signify a shift in the barrage and give warning of the approach of the enemy. Soon the bombardment resolves itself into one steady roar in which it is impossible to distinguish the individual detonations. The heavy concentration of enemy shells is turning the whole Chamois system into a hecatomb of horror and confusion. Trenches that were, cease to be and leave in their place gaping craters which in turn are torn afresh. Carmine flashes from the northern sky translate themselves into carmine splashes and pools on the furrowed soil. A heavy cloud of smoke and dust, like a gigantic pass to enshroud those torn bodies whose spirits have fled, obscures the waning moon. Awed and shaken, the men crouch in the dark, oppressive dugouts, waiting for the signal that will send them forth to determine their fate. And while no man of them would avoid the responsibility about to be placed upon him, sudden memories crowd to the fore to make life seem more dear. An attempted jest, a bit of forced laughter, falls unheard from the lips of a comrade, for the pounding of the guns is equaled only by the wild pounding of their own hearts and the heavy breathing of their trembling bodies. A sickening sensation thus to be caged helpless like a hunted animal which awaits only the finishing stroke. At any moment one of the larger shells may bury them all—they have the alternative of forsaking the inadequate shelter and being blown to pieces in the open trench—or the outnumbering force of picked Stosstruppen may fall upon them before they have an opportunity to defend themselves. The suspense is enough to drive one mad. For a half hour there is no diminution of the fire. On the front line the enemy continues to rain a devastating storm from his field pieces, while the heavier guns, the 210's are directed on the support, and churn up the trenches about the headquarters of Companies B and D. The communicating boyaux have long since been obliterated, and with all wires severed the front is completely isolated.

Shortly after five, as the first cold streaks of dawn are rifting the morning sky, the observers at the dugout mouths perceive a slight shifting of the barrage and immediately pass down the information. "Every man to his post," shout the commanders."

"American Expeditionary Forces, France. August 1, 1918. DEAR MOTHER,--Yesterday I had a wonderful experience; I saw an actual battle from a hill. I lay in a big field of crimson clover, all in blossom, on the top of a sunny hill. It was a beautiful Summer day, hot and brilliant. White butterflies fluttered everywhere; the air was full of the hum of bees; far overhead I could hear two larks singing. Below was a broad valley, a checker-board of yellow and green, ripened wheat fields and green clover; with here and there patches of velvet woods. There were old farmhouses along the road which dipped over the rolling fields and wound away through the tiny forests. On the right was a toy-like village with a big church steeple rising out of the center of it, controlling the whole country. Then suddenly, our barrage began, like a mighty thundering behind me. The air was filled with the whine and shriek of thousands of shells and the sleepy road in the valley became an inferno. Dust clouds rose hundreds of feet; trees shook, trembled and fell; a shot hit the old tower and it crashed over. Relentlessly, the barrage kept up, beautiful to watch because of its dreadfulness; then it began to roll steadily forward, so that every square yard seemed to be covered. Then like a flash it stopped—the world was deathly still; so still that the hum of the insects became prominent again. Out from the woods below filtered a long thin line of brown American troops, their bayonets flashing in the sun. There came the monotonous rat-tat-tat of the Boche machine guns from the further woods; still they kept on, here and there a man went down, his bayonet making an arc of fire as he fell. Behind them came another wave, and another, and another, till every field was full of advancing men. They entered the woods and the fields were empty again, and—as if someone had pushed an electric button, the deafening barrage began anew, sweeping the woods clean before the hidden infantry. Suddenly the barrage stopped and from the woods came a long grey column of about 600 BochePrisoners, a snake-like line, that wound away down the dusty road to the rear. The attack was over for the day—the woods that had so menaced our advance with their machine gun nests all clean and free. To-night we shall be on the march once more—still going forward, close on the heels of the Crown Prince's veterans. All my love, TREVENEN." August 15, 1918 "I passed through several villages which have come into our hands only within the last week,--every one of them the scene of fierce and bloody fights. You can have no idea of the devastation, the complete desolation, of these pretty French villages which the artillery of each side has reduced to a battered mass of ruins; where the roofs and walls of the houses are still standing they are pitted with shell holes; of the rooms inside, perhaps one corner is left untouched with pictures on the walls, furniture standing, and in some places the tables set with dishes and the remains of a meal still there; the other corner is a heap of rubbish, piles of stone and timber which have fallen from a gaping hole in the roof above. The roads are full of shell holes, gardens destroyed, fruit trees sawed down, and the beautiful shade trees shattered and torn by the hail of shells and bursting shrapnel they have suffered. Everywhere along the roads and in the houses are scattered old rifles and uniforms, equipment of all kinds left behind or abandoned in the struggle, piles of shells and empty shell cases, guns and cannon destroyed or deserted, everywhere waste, ruin and destruction that makes one sick to look upon. How I pity the poor French inhabitants who will return to find their homes shattered masses of stone, in ruins as complete as if a mighty earthquake had leveled each house to the ground. Yet the French will come back and immediately set about restoring their houses as best they can. In Chateau-Thierry the inhabitants followed the troops so closely that two days after the last German had been driven back from the town the French families began to come back.

Surely no people with such indomitable courage as that can ever be crushed or conquered."

"We had revised our idea of an offensive, and decided that, with all its disadvantages it had its good points, an admission never found in the best-seller versions of warfare. In a quiet sector, life is fairly comfortable, with deep dugouts, trenches, and all that,--but you get stale. There is a nervous strain and various other unpleasantnesses, yet no results are ever apparent. You simply get stale. It begins to look like an endless job.—But in a drive it's different! You can see the results of your work. When you go into action over dead Boche horses which are still warm, you realize that you are advancing. You are doing what you enlisted to do, and doing it hard. There is a chance for the enthusiasm and dash of other wars—so hopelessly lost in the deadlock of trench warfare. The roads teeming with armed men, columns of artillery stretching for miles, fields alive with troops infected with the spirit of the advance, prisoners streaming back, great panoramas of open country, changing scenes, excitements, quick alarms; all of these jumbled together produce a state of exhilaration." In James Cooke's book, The Rainbow Division, we read: "There is a strange transformation that the soldier undergoes. The report of any gun, at first, makes him jumpy, but the report of his own guns—these being nearer usually—make him jumpiest of all. But when he becomes acclimated, becomes accustomed to the work at the front, there is nothing that adds to his peace of mind and contentment like the crack of his own guns near at hand. When your own guns are belching a heavy torrent of steel over your heads, you, if you are a seasoned campaigner, sleep a sweet sleep that know no dreams. Lt. Thompson's feeling of isolation increased as he saw GC 9. The untried lieutenant recalled: The sight that greeted us brought an immediate and positive reaction. "Desolate" was the only name for it. A mass of rusty barbed wire was sitting on crisscrosses of posts that seemed to grow from the ground. Ghost-like trees to the right were splattered with shell scars. Some had fallen into the mass of twisted wire and upturned earth. Others were broken off at various heights, like so many match sticks. The expanse of desolation sloped up a gentle rise. The German trenches were hidden behind the crest some two hundred yards away. As he toured the line, Thompson was overpowered by a sickening stench. French intelligence was examining the body of a dead German soldier to find documents and to confirm the dead man's unit for order of battle information. The young officer became so violently ill that he staggered back to the dugout, where he was still overwhelmed by the smells of death, unwashed bodies, human excrement, rotting equipment, and spoiling food. He watches as the ever-present "Slum" was served to the troops, who had no rags to clean their mess tins. An old wad of newspaper or crust of bread was used to wipe the greasy mess-plate that a few minutes before had held stew. All the lessons in military hygiene that Thompson had learned were invalid once in GC 9. A few minutes later, he looked at his wooden bunk, one of many in a tier, and underneath the bottom bunk stood ankle-deep water. On a small table a single flickering candle illuminated the dugout, and all Thompson could feel was a sense of isolation and desolation."

DOUGHBOY DIARIES

2009-07-15T19:30:00.001-07:00

In Company K by William March we read: " Private Carroll Hart:Sergeant Tietjen was with me that day we took the machine gun nest in Veuilly Wood. We found the crew all killed except one heavyset, bearded man, and he was badly wounded. Just as we came up, the bearded man reached inside his coat and fumbled. I thought he was going to throw a grenade, so I emptied my pistol into him. His arm came away from his coat with a jerking, irregular motion and his palm rested for a moment against his lips. Then the blood in his throat began to strangle him, and he made a gurgling, sighing sound. His eyes rolled back and his jaw fell open.I went over and opened his palm to see what he had in it. It was the photograph of a little German girl. She was round-faced, and freckled, and her hair was curled, for the occasion, over her shoulder. "That must have been his daughter," said Sergeant Tietjen.

That night I couldn't sleep for thinking of that German soldier. I rolled and pitched about and toward daybreak Tietjen came over and lay down by me. "It's no use blaming yourself that way, fellow," he said; "anybody in the world would have thought he was going to throw a grenade."

In "The Ribbon Counter" in Points of Honor, by Thomas Boyd we read: " The Machine Gun Nest--…It had seemed impossible that one division should accomplish, in one attack, what another division had failed three times to do—but when morning came, so faintly over the soggy earth, the infantry was close behind its own barrage with fixed bayonets pushing through the heavy woods, parting the low tree limbs and trampling the brush. Captain Osborne, in the lead when the battalion broke into the woods, was the first to reach the clearing, a flat piece of ground at the base of a hill, black with trees. The clearing buzzed with the maddening, inquisitive zip-zip of the machine-guns ahead, but Osborne pushed on calmly, his shoulders a little bit forward, his head drawn into them so that his neck appeared shorter than it really was, and holding a Colt automatic in his hand. Strangely, MacMahon found himself following closely, with Morrow and Thomas joining. There were others, but they did not enter MacMahon's consciousness, not even when they sprawled foolishly on the ground. MacMahon saw only the few slabs of grey rock which peaked the hill, the untrampled, brown-tinged earth which led to it, and Captain Osborne and himself drawing nearer each moment to the slender muzzle of the Maxim outthrust from a crevice in the rock. Like a rapier of a thousand blades held by an invisible and expert fencer, the bullets of the machine-gun flashed by so closely that he could feel the scorch through his cloth puttees. Then, for the first time, Captain Osborne's pistol answered, and, as if it had been agreed upon, MacMahon shifted his rifle to his left hand and reached in the pocket of his blouse. Slowly his hand came out, grasping a grenade. For a moment he was scared, ready to fall to the ground: he could not put down his rifle, and he could not extract the pin from the grenade with one hand. His energy was draining away as he caught the pin between his teeth and twisted it out with a jerk. Calmly, his arm drew back; he aimed, and the missile, on a dead line, whined through the air, struck the top of the rock and bounced inside. He fell forward as the thing roared out in explosion, then watched the mushroom cloud of dense smoke rise above the gray slabs. Of those who had climbed the hill but four reached the emplacement, though the machine-gun had been silenced, and as MacMahon followed Captain Osborne into the nest, where the biting smoke still hung, he saw the gunner, his face resting against the stock of the Maxim, his right hand clinging to the trigger guard and his left thrown in front of his head. The loader was seated beside the water-cooler, his body limp and his head lolling against his shoulder. His face was a chronicle of ten days' fear and privation: an uneven growth of beard on his cheeks was matted with grime, yellow where the dirt had not changed it to drabness; his pale blue eyes could not have taken on much of a difference in death; the lines at the corners had been engraved by nights of waiting, by the strain of repulsing an enemy three times, and the pupils had long held the knowledge of his end.

The main line of resistance would be a short distance ahead, and Captain raised the German from the Maxim and placed the machine-gun so that the barrel pointed in the opposite direction, while MacMahon was sent back to discover how far the rest of the battalion had advanced."

In the book Fix Bayonets! by John W. Thomason, Jr., we read: The Charge at Soissons."Miles of close-laid batteries opened with one stupendous thunder. The air above the treetops spoke with unearthly noises, the shriek and rumble of light and heavy shells. Forward through the woods, very near, rose up a continued crashing roar of explosions, and the murk of smoke, and a hell of bright fires continually renewed. It lasted only five minutes, that barrage, with every French and American gun that could be brought to bear firing at top speed. But they were terrible minutes for the unsuspecting Boche. Dazed, beaten down, and swept away, he tumbled out of his hole when it lifted, only to find the long bayonets of the Americans licking like flame across his forward positions….His counter-barrage was slow and weak, and when it came the shells burst well behind the assaulting waves, which were already deep in his defenses….The battle roared into the wood. Three lines of machine guns, echeloned, held it. Here the Foret de Retz was like Dante's wood, so shattered and tortured and horrible it was, and the very trees seemed to writhe in agony. Here the fury of the barrage was spent, and the great trunks, thick as a man's body, were sheared off like weed-stalks; others were uprooted and lay gigantic along the torn earth; big limbs still crashed down or swayed half-severed; splinters and debris choked the ways beneath. A few German shells fell among the men—mustard gas; and there in the wet woods one could see the devilish stuff spreading slowly, like a snaky mist, around the shell-hole after the smoke had lifted….

It was every man for himself, an irregular broken line, clawing through the tangles, climbing over fallen trees, plunging heavily into Boche rifle pits. Here and there, a well-fought Maxim gun held its front until somebody, officer, non-com, or private—got a few men together and, crawling to left or right, gained a flank and silenced it. And some guns were silenced by blind, furious rushes that left a trail of writhing khaki figures, but always carried two or three frenzied Marines with bayonets into the emplacement; from whence would come shooting and screaming and other clotted unpleasant sounds and then silence."

In the book The American Spirit, by Joseph A. Minturn we read:

"At Commercy we began to see buildings wrecked by German shells, and at a stop, a train load of German prisoners stood on a track next to us. They immediately began clamoring for tobacco and were willing to trade their caps, buttons, blouses, anything they had in fact, for a taste of the weed. We got several little trinkets and were preparing to get more when a French sergeant and a private soldier came along and ordered all traffic stopped. They reinforced their orders with fixed bayonets—those shivery needle kind of theirs—and handled them so recklessly in their excitable way that we were afraid they might hurt somebody and gave up idea of acquiring a "Gott mit Uns" belt buckle just at that time. German prisoners aggravated a Frenchman more than they did later after becoming more common. It had been too much the other way. As illustrating this feeling the story was current of a French general who saw a squad of German soldiers as he was passing. He got out of his car scowling, gave the order like von Hindenburg, calling them to "Attention!" in German, to which they responded like automatons. Then he walked behind and gave each prisoner a good swift kick and continued his journey a happier man."

Leonard H. Nason, in his book Three Lights on a Match, tells us: "So here he was. This was hardly his idea of what war should be. He had had some vision of men marching as they had done down Fifth Avenue, bands playing, flags waving, perhaps a few cheering spectators, and the bold brave Americans marching on the cowering enemy, who immediately yielded up their arms. It was rather a shock to discover that the gallant soldiers looked like tramps, that they were not noble, but always hungry, and that the enemy did not cower. Sheehan had been led to believe that the Germans were demoralized. It had been his impression that the Americans had only sent over a few men to have the flag on the battlefield, and not to help toward winning the war.

Whoever was throwing those shells about seemed to have no lack of nerve, nor did he seem to be on the verge of defeat. The obvious nervousness on the sentry's part had completed Sheehan's disillusionment. These men were afraid and so was he."

Author of The Top Kick Leonard H. Nason tells us: "A rifleman can burn up a tremendous amount of cartridges, upwards of four or five hundred rounds a day, provided he can get it. The ammunition pockets in his belt will hold only a certain amount, and the amount that can be carried in bandoleers is limited. In the shank of the day the dead and wounded do not yield very much ammunition, having been shooting all day themselves. A machine-gun is in the same fix as a rifle, only more so, because of its greater rapidity of fire. Author of Dear Old "K" James T. Duane tells us: "On the return of the boys from France, many questions were asked by the home folks, and among the most frequently asked was, "How did you fellows every have the nerve to face the machine-guns and bayonets and how did it feel to be under artillery fire?" Let me tell all my good friends that it is harder to describe the feelings in those events than it is to go through them. To advance in the face of machine-guns is no pleasant task, and to fight hand to hand with bayonets is another rough form of entertainment, but, when one realizes that he is there to accomplish a purpose, and the only means of accomplishing his end is to use his bayonet, he gets his fighting spirit up and advances with the idea that it is either you or the other fellow and, of course, you always vote for the other fellow. Perhaps the feeling under artillery fire is the easiest of any to describe, but the only feeling that I can liken it to, as the shells come toward you and you imagine your name is engraved on each one, is to be strapped onto a railroad tie; as you lie there you feel the vibration of a heavy train coming in the distance. As it approaches with a terrible rumble and rattle, you await the moment to have it reach you with a rush and pass over your body, only to find that you were on the small section of the tie outside of the rail. It is always a happy relief when a shell which you hear whizzing in your direction lands—somewhere else in France. During a heavy shelling one day the enemy sent many shells far to the rear—fifteen landing near Division Headquarters. As they sailed over the heads of our lads, they shouted, "Go to it, Boche, give them more back there so they will know the war is still on; if you give them a lot, we're all for you. Of the great days in a soldier's career, the morning of a big attack leads all. The orders have been issued and all final instructions have been transmitted to officers and men; everybody is moving about with a high tension spirit, and all await with a nervous strain the hour of starting. At the set hour our artillery lets loose a perfect thunder, and the fun is on. The artillery plays on the enemy lines for a given period, at H hour (zero hour) the artillery advances its range, and with a yell of "Let's go, boys," the doughboys are on their way, and after passing through great depths of barbed-wire entanglements, they reach the first enemy line. There is a certain thrill that keeps the chill running up and down the spine as you advance, but the greatest nervous strain is waiting in the moment when you come in personal contact with the enemy. You meet him, and the excitement is so great that you have no time to think of personal fear. Have I been afraid in battle? Yes—awfully; I'll be no one in the army felt any more so than I. If a man says he was never afraid in battle, he is one of two cases—he is mentally unbalanced or else is handling the truth rather haphazardly. As the boys said, "How could a man stand up and not feel a little fear when the Jerries were throwing freight cars, ash cans, and railroad tracks (as the big shells were sometimes called) at him?" The machine-gun nests were difficult things to attack. The machine guns are usually so placed that they cover every portion of the enemy line, and are enfilading the whole position; that means that when they fire, each gun is firing its bullets so that they overlap the other, and this forms a sort of scissors-effect, the guns on the right firing to the left, the left guns to the right, and the frontal guns covering the interval. Thus every single inch of front is being covered by bullets."

DOUGHBOY DIARIES

2009-06-28T14:25:00.001-07:00

In A Corporal Once, by Leonard Nason, we read: The afternoon wore on, the shadows began to lengthen, then, as the column slowly dragged its weary length up a long slope, the setting sun gleamed redly at them through the ghost of a long dead wood, set on fire by shells and burned weeks ago, and that now leered at them like a skeleton. They halted here again in the ditch. There were no ambulances now, and no talking. The men sat silently in the gathering darkness, some leaning back against their packs, trying to sleep, others peering about them anxiously, trying to see what lay ahead, or to gather some idea from the black woods before them as to what was going on. From time to time one could hear the soft thud of a pack being punched into more comfortable shape, the clink of a stopper striking against a canteen as some thirsty soldier drank, the crash of a rifle falling against the hard stones of the road. For all there was a battle raging, the road was very still, save once in a great while, when the wind blew from the north, there would be a faint rattling, like a distant trolley car crossing a switch. What were they waiting for? No one knew. But down the road a few yards was the place where the drive had started that morning. The unburied dead lay thick in that road and on the fields, and the place was strewn with abandoned rifles and equipment. There is nothing so shattering to the morale of green troops as the sight of dead, so this column was being held until darkness before being taken through the zone where the troops had jumped off that morning. "Godamighty!" exclaimed someone. "Lookit the Huns!"

Exclamations ran along the column, a mutter of excitement. Coming up the road, escorted by a mounted M. P. was a long grey, column, prisoners. They marched calmly along, four abreast, looking neither to the right nor left, stolid and taciturn. The leader of the column was an officer, evidently of high rank, judging by his glittering boots and gleam of gold on his high collar and wide shoulder straps. He had a monocle screwed into his eye, at which the doughboys jeered derisively, and were promptly taken to task by their officers. Wasp-waisted, erect, his grey uniform fitting him like a glove, the officer stalked on, more as if he were leading a Potsdam review than a march to the prison pens. After him came several ranks of non-commissioned officers, distinguished by their superior bearing and the white facing on their collars. Then the rank and file, the cannon food, dirty, bearded, stinking with a small that is beyond belief, shambling, scuffling by, some wearing their coal-scuttle helmets, others the round cap, many bareheaded. They were of all ages, from smooth-faced boys to gray-bearded men. The uniforms were ill fitting and worn. Some of them plodded along stolidly, as though one place was as good as another, which it probably was, as far as they were concerned. The younger ones grinned bashfully at the Yanks. One or two of the older ones let the hate that was in them show in their eyes, and when one crossed looks with an infantryman, the Yank felt his spine creep."

In God Have Mercy on Us!, by William Scanlon, we read: "The Attack: "Tanks now came up from the rear and pass through us. The German artillery swings into action with a vengeance. Most of the fire is directed at the tanks, but as usual they shoot high and the shells burst among us. We curse the tanks. We move forward…The tanks are about three hundred yards ahead…The German artillery and machine guns are working fast…And there is no sound in back of us of our own artillery answering…The wheat through which we are moving is full grown…We advance continuously, at a walk, without getting down…Our bayonets are held down, so they will not flash in the sun. They get tangled up in the long wheat and we have to tug to get them loose, pulling up the wheat… The machine gun fire encountered before the town of Bouresches was bad but the fire now is a thousand times worse….It is like a hailstorm…My body is bent forward as though forcing myself through a heavy rain…My free hand clutches my blouse, pulling it tighter about my body…There are little crooked paths through the wheat…At the end of each little path lies a dead soldier…They would be hit, then stagger and drop…The bullets mow down the wheat… Sergeant McFadden has the group next to me, on the left…He is leading…All of a sudden he swerves around, facing our group…He has a terrified, surprised look of agony on his face…His hand clutch at the air one moment, then they wrap themselves about his stomach…His teeth gnash…Biting the air, he staggers back and falls, close to my group… Young runs over to help him, but McFadden is dead. We approach a road lined with trees. Someone in my group cries, 'Look!' I turn. He is pointing up at a tree in the road. The figure of a man shows through the leaves. The men drop to their knees and fire. A German machine-gunner and his gun crash to the ground. No orders to fire had been given. Across the road a tank stood motionless. The front of it had been damaged. Through an opening in the side we could see the charred remains of the operator. The whole inner portion of the tank had been lined with shells. A direct hit had penetrated the tank and caused all these shells to explode. It was a fiery oven with no chance to escape. It was still smoking as we passed by. Three of our officers were down on the right behind some tanks when several shells crashed in the midst of them and messed them up pretty badly. Word came from the right to swing back in the original direction. This meant we had to cross back over the road with the trees again and out into the open stubble-field. I was on the left flank now. This meant I had to go far enough out in the field to permit the other groups to get in. I started across on a run, but as soon as I figured there was enough room for all, I faced to the east. The men crowded up, and first it was, 'Give way on the left,' then, 'Close over on the right.' The machine guns were soon trained on us again and the men dropped fast. Two hundred yards ahead was an embankment that meant certain protection.

Spud Murphy was over on my right, about ten men between us. I saw Spud stop, turn, and crumple down. He had been ripped open with machine-gun bullets. He died instantly."

In the book Fix Bayonets! by John W. Thomason, Jr., we read:"Battle Sight...There was always good feeling between the Marines of the 2d Division and the Regular Army units that formed it, but the Marines and the 2d Engineers—"Say, if I ever got a drink, a 2d Engineer can have half of it! – Boy, they dig trenches and mend roads all night, and they fight all day! An' when us guys gets all killed off, they just come up an' take over the war! They's no better folks anywhere than the Engineers…"The Boche wanted Hill 142; he came, and the rifles broke him, and he came again. All his batteries were in action, and always his machine-guns scourged the place, but he could not make head against the rifles. Guns he could understand; he knew all about bombs and auto-rifles and machine-guns and trench mortars, but aimed, sustained rifle-fire, that comes from nowhere in particular and picks off men—it brought the war home to the individual and demoralized him.

And trained Americans fight best with rifles. Men get tired of carrying grenades and chaut-chaut clips; the guns cannot, even under the most favorable conditions, keep pace with the advancing infantry. Machine-gun crews have a way of getting killed at the start; trench-mortars and one-pounders are not always possible. But the rifle and bayonet goes anywhere a man can go, and the rifle and the bayonet win battles. Toward midday, this 6^th of June 1918, the condition around Hill 142 stabilized. A small action, fought by battalions over a limited area of no special importance, it gave the Boche something new to think about, and it may be that people who write histories will date an era from it."

DOUGHBOY DIARIES

2009-06-12T18:41:00.001-07:00

Sleeplessness, days and nights at a time, was the lot of front-line troops. Those who got used to carnivorous insects and omnipresent rats and could sleep jammed next to one another in dugouts and foxholes or chose to doze off in soaking uniforms were wakened by gas alarms, some of them for real gas attacks. In Sergeant Charles R. Blatt's unit, about a dozen gas alarms sounded between sunset and daybreak, forcing everyone to put on uncomfortable masks. Repeating nightmares, in which he felt unable to move, terrified Corporal Pierce and made him afraid to doze off. Many men saw the horrors of the battlefield reenact themselves in silent dreams. Even a trip to recuperate behind the lines did not guarantee rest. Then the Twenty-ninth Division was taken out of action for a time, 2^nd Lieutenant Joseph D. Lawrence was assigned to a billet with another officer, but each man smelled so badly that they both found it hard to fall asleep. Rats as big as half-grown opossums would run all over the battlefield and the trenches, some even falling through the tar paper in the ceiling of dugouts, landing on the soldiers inside, and then running like frightened rabbits. It was hard for the men to keep the rats from getting under their blankets. Sergeant Mosher told his mother he had gotten used to rats dropping on his blankets and playing around his feet. But when he woke up suddenly and found himself knocking one off his neck, it was "something else." Sergeant Walter J. Strauss, asleep in a pup tent on an old battlefield in Belgium, woke with a start. A rat was chewing on his hair. "It was tough sleeping after that," Strauss said, "and I became exhausted from lack of sleep." Another soldier awoke from a stab of pain—a rat had bitten a piece out of the man's ear lobe! To find in the morning that, during the night, a chummy rat had sallied forth from his quarters under the floor, had broken through the barricade that the boys had erected each night around their haversacks to keep them out, and had cut the strings of a shoe or the thongs of a haversack and had helped himself to hardtack or—worse yet—cookies, was an ordinary occurrence that merely drove home the truth that we were indeed living close to nature." "For what seemed like years, life had consisted of death in a thousand forms, of rifle and machine-gun fire, of artillery barrages, of attack and defense, of woods and shattered trees, broken bodies, cries of the wounded, tiny gouges of earth as home, a candle in a tin can for a stove, a thirst never assuaged, a body never clean, the same clothes, filthy and lice-infested, bowels tortured by foul rations and relieved in stinking slit trenches, cold nights without blankets, hot days in wool uniforms, everywhere the stench of dead—the complete, awful, humiliating sordidness of combat that once they supposed to be grand."In The American Army in France, General James G. Harbord tells us:"The heroes of the AEF in front of the enemy sprang from every racial strain that has contributed to our national life. They wore names that have been the best names among every modern people. Largely derived from the British Isles, there were also many from the German lands; not a few from Scandinavia; some from lands where names can hardly be written except with a predominance of consonants; many of the soft-sounding names along and around the Mediterranean; a sprinkling from the Balkans and Slav countries; some from distant Asia and the isles of the Eastern sea. Caught by the draft, the men came from every part of our great country. The wounds from which they suffered and some died, and the sacrifices they made were as varies as the instrumentalities with which men make modern war. Remaining at the front when wounded, until carried back or compelled by orders to go, was a common case. Rushing out under withering fire to rescue a fallen comrade, carrying him sometimes hundreds of yards to safety was so frequent as to be the expected thing. Taking over command of a unit at the death of disabling wounds of all seniors and instantly rising to the responsibilities thus assumed was the rule of the hour. As we say in the Army, "the Commanding Officer never dies." A successor always takes over. Runners shot as they ran with messages and reports, and dragging themselves with broken legs or other disabling injuries to insure the delivery of the message—it happened many times. The taking of a machine gun or its nest at the cost of a man's life was an ordinary sacrifice. The deeds of heroism came from all ranks and from all units. Many a man gives his life sheltering or carrying a comrade. Medical officers and corpsmen dress wounds under fire as coolly as if in an isolation ward in a city hospital. Field hospitals partly blown away by a shell leave the surgeon uninterrupted at his operating table. Men with eyes blinded by gas stay in line and keep the touch. Man with an arm or hand shot off carry on until they drop from shock or loss of blood. A soldier puts his foot on a hand grenade which there is not time to throw away, losing his foot but saving his comrades of the group. Seizing hand grenades to throw them away happened often." 13In War Notes of a Casual, Harold Riegelman tells us:"Our exhausted Battalion—what was left of it—was relieved at last. The men were tired, completely tired. Just the knowledge that relief is at hand releases the feeling of utter weariness which is held at bay so long as there is work to do wherein weariness has no place.It is wonderfully good to come out of the line—to come away from the incessant bombardment, the ever-alertness for gas, the casualties and the millions of flies which are inescapable. When you go in, you are tuned up to those things. While you are in they are part of a day's job. The cold meals of canned stuff are part of it. The hole one sleeps in, the clothes one wears interminably, the occasional meal cooked in the rear and cooled en route are part of it. You don't realize that those things are repellant until the promise of rest comes and the reconnaissance by officers of the incoming units begins. That sort of lets down the floodgates and you want to be out and clean and fed and rested. After that it doesn't matter. In battle you are suddenly plumped down amidst roofless buildings with gaping walls, stinking with swollen lifeless livestock, shuddering with an occasional rush of steel overhead and the scream and burst of a shell that finds a nearby mark. Your mind and body are prepared for the ordeal. The thing is expected. It is part of the game. All of you is tuned up to it. You automatically appraise the possibilities of shelter when the carnage was at its height. The answer is not easy. You remark the impossibilities—an unscathed bottle standing on a shelf next to a shell hole in the wall; a pitcher filled with water, the handle shot away; a child's doll unscarred astride the wreck of a baby carriage (you do not examine the carriage too closely); a perfectly intact glass plate over the entrance to a home, every other portion of which has been reduced to debris—debris destined for the re-making of the road. You wonder how these dwellings will be re-built, whether they will be rebuilt, whether they will be re-created with their former century-old inadequate arrangements. And so you go on, your eyes penetrating into nooks and corners that had not seen the light of day for ages—discovering every conceivable form of destruction, until you have had your post-graduate course in the modern School for Vandals and have been duly Kultured. And all this is as it should be. It is expected.Out in the open country it is also as it should be. The road-side, marked by German printed signs, is littered with German equipment, helmets, packs, clothes, gasmasks, extra canisters and piles of abandoned ammunition, casings, fuses, projectiles. The further on you go, the more dead horses in various stages of decomposition soil the air and, for the first day, lift the floor of your stomach. The fields are freshly shell-ploughed. The roads less passable. Distant booming becomes sharpened and the ear-splitting orchestra is before, beside and behind you. Troops are forming to take their place on the crest of the advancing wave. High above, an observation balloon hangs. Airplanes are humming over-head. In front, a black speck appears in the sky and becomes the center of little dark puffs of smoke that hand motionless a while and dissolve. The black speck wheels and vanishes in the sky. Scattered about, under trees and vari-colored tarpaulins are groups of artillerymen, some in their undershirts. Horses and mules are picketed under cover. Trees broken, torn and twisted by shell-fire. This is just behind that intangible ever forward-moving "line" which is not a line at all but an irregular, slow, resistless, forward moving surge of dirty blue and muddy brown.In its wake are a number of detached things that force their pictures upon one's brain. The temporary graves, side by side, of American, French and Boche soldiers, little mounds surmounted by stark crosses by the road. You gaze across the valley and over the Marne to a point where two hills meet shoulder to shoulder, a sort of miniature Thermopolae where the modern Spartans were clothed in khaki.You note in passing the spot where an American major held his battalion in reserve and, when the French broke, stepped before his men, revolver in hand, and gave the order to shoot any Frenchman who attempted to pass. And on that spot the French turned and with our men beat back the Hun. 14Don Lawson, in his book The United States in World War I, says:

"Many doughboys felt, however, that actual combat above ground was not nearly so grim as day-to-day life below ground in the trenches. Most trenches and dugouts were wet and cold even in good weather. When it rained, which it seemed to do most of the time at the front, the walls and floors would be awash with water. The only light was provided by feeble candle flames, and those often went out in the foul air. The men also lived in constant fear of the sounding of a klaxon horn announcing a gas attack."

"We're living in the dark underground vaults with the snails," was the way one Yank described it in a letter home. "A few days of this and you begin to wish for 'Zero Hour' and an attack against the Hun. Actually the Hun seems to be the least of our problems. In addition to the snails coming out of the dugout walls when it rains we have trench rats visiting us nightly. They can shred leather shoes like razor blades."

AEF DOUGHBOY AT WAR

2009-06-01T18:29:00.001-07:00

"Every soldier at the moment of going into battle, trembles, is afraid, wishes he could escape from it. The noise is dreadful; the men rush forward, never walk; each one is watchful lest a companion may read fear in his face; no one cries out lest he be shot down; thus a whole regiment goes into battle, playing the part of bravery, yet sick of the whole business. Under bombing and artillery attack, troops felt utterly helpless, incapable of responding to what was being done to them, uncertain, paralyzed, afraid to perform basic physical functions. Ralph Seifert, a sergeant with the 103rd Sanitary Train, had gone behind a stone wall to relieve himself when he heard a shrieking sound directly overhead, and almost in the same instant, a bang. "I knew it was a shell"; he wrote his father. "It scared me, so I used all my paper in one wipe and grabbed a handful from a pile that was along side of me, used it and pulling my britches up, made for a dugout. An emotion that battle commonly evoked in these men, even in the brave, the stoical, and those eager to fight, was fear, which took many forms. Before their first battle, new men not only worried about combat itself but were afraid they would succumb to fright. Veterans feared crippling and disfigurement. Lieutenant Allen remembered how he heard someone playing a sentimental song as he was getting ready to go into battle and how the music aroused in him fear and nostalgia at the same time, an acute longing for his loved ones, despair and anxiety about the next day's "indignities," together with a sense that the war would last forever. He called all this the "Just-Before-the-Battle-Mother" feeling and noticed that others felt it too. It paralyzed him mentally and physically until "the great machine of the army" laid its "iron touch" on his mind and body and enabled him to go on. Before his first battle, Corporal Pierce heard a band in a nearby valley playing taps for the dead of its regiment. The music left him with a "helpless, hopeless," frightened feeling." Author of Ambulance 464, Julien H. Bryan tells us: "I have finally seen what I came over for, and a lot more besides—war, real war, stripped of glory. For what chance has a man against a shell? And how does the awful suffering of trench life compare to the thrilling battles of the Revolution? I don't mean that it doesn't take ten times the nerve and endurance, but there's the rub, for we have become machines, not men. I know that God will protect us over here, but you realize how absurdly weak and helpless you are when a load of dead are brought in, some with arms and legs gone, others with heads and trunks mixed together; and quite often you learn there wasn't anything left to bring." 12 "The student of tactics soon realizes the difference between fighting a battle in imagination and in reality. Imagination cannot bring home to any human brain the extent to which the chess-board dispositions of modern strategy are tempered by the actualities of modern fighting—in other words, by the strain upon the human machine. All the five senses are affected—hearing by the appalling din; seeing, by the spectacle of a whole group of people being blown to shreds; smelling, by the reek of gas and explosives; touching, by the feel of dead men's faces everywhere under your hand in the darkness; and tasting, by the unforgettable flavor or meat in the mouth after forty-eight hours continuous fighting in an atmosphere of human blood. The War is going to be won, not by strategists, but by the man who can endure these things most steadfastly. Still, we have come to school knowing more than most new boys—far more, indeed, than our seasoned French and British companions knew when they embarked upon their martial education. The American soldier takes to the field today, thanks to the recorded experiences of others, with a serviceable knowledge of trench warfare. Gas is no surprise to him, and he is familiar with the tactical handling of bombs, machine guns, and trench mortars. Up to date, however we have not by any means drunk deep of warlike experience, for the good reason that authorities are breaking us in by stages. We now regard ourselves, justifiably, as initiated. We have been bombarded fairly regularly. We do not like it, but we can stand it, which is all that matters—as eels probably remark while being skinned. We are getting used, also, to the sight of sudden death and human blood. These things affect us less than we expected. It is all a matter of environment. If you were to see a man caught and cut in two between a street-car and a taxi-cab in your own home town, the spectacle would make you physically sick and might haunt you for weeks, because such incidents are not part of the recognized routine of home town life. But here, they are part of the day's work: we are prepared for them: they are what we are in the War for. And, curiously and providentially, it seldom occurs to any of us to suspect that it might be his turn next. Thus all-wise Nature maintains our balance for us. We have made another interesting discovery about Nature, and that is that habit can be stronger than instinct, and pride than either. The first law of Nature is said to be the instinct of self-preservation. Yet the average soldier, even in the inferno of modern warfare, gives less trouble to his leaders when under shell-fire than when his dinner does not come up to the usual standard, or he has run out of cigarettes." "Leaving my little pack, I wandered a few rods onto the battlefield, for I indeed was curious. There were fresh holes, thick in proportion as those in a sieve, and there were dandy rifles, now rusting, any one of which I would have welcomed with a scream of delight when a boy. Dozens of little bombs were scattered about, not yet exploded. There were machine-guns, all smashed up, with blood and helmets near. The German "potato-masher" bomb was everywhere. Whole bands of ammunition lay about. Little wires ran here and there all through the grass, and I was almost afraid to step lest I explode a mine or something. I sidestepped around many of the big shells, yet unexploded, and bent over close, time and again, to peek at those curious deadly little bombs half hidden in the grass. I wondered why so many good ones were there, but supposed someone got tired carrying them and dropped them or else in their flight the Boche had deserted them. Now I had seen a battlefield. Since a little chap, I had read of such things but little expected to see a real one." "What they observed on the battlefield troubled many of these men, particularly those new to battle. They fought on a gloomy landscape with shattered stumps of trees and ruined buildings and ground so torn up that they could hardly associate it with the earth they knew. Everywhere they saw the bodies of men and animals, blackened maggot-covered objects. The sights made Corporal Vaughn E. Timmins vomit. Wilder C. Hopkins, a teenaged private, responded in a clinical way, taking careful note of the shapes and positions of the dead; "In one place a man's head was lying with none of the body anywhere in sight. Another part…with all of the facial features remaining but the center of and back of the head completely gone as was the body." After a platoon in Corporal Ralph T. Moan's company attacked some Germans with machine guns and hand grenades, Moan noted in his diary that one of the Germans had his head blown off. "It made a ghastly sight, suspended in the barbed wire." A shell landed not far from Lieutenant Lawrence, who had to walk carefully to avoid stepping into "a bloody mess of flesh and scraps of an American uniform." "The acrid scent of exploding shells and charred buildings, the odors of poison gas, of muddy ground, of excrement, and the sweetish smell of corpses that pervaded the battleground affected AEF troops deeply and lastingly. Corporal Pierce remembered traveling for two miles over a recent battle site that reeked of decaying flesh. Several days after the battle, Private First Class Thurmond Baccus of the Eighty-second Division wrote from an area where the burial squad still had not finished its work. "I had rather smell gas than the odor of men and horses." The men in burial details lived with the stench of the dead, which permeated their clothing and stayed with them when they went to eat and sleep. Major Raymond B. Austin of the First Division sent his men out to bury dead French Moroccans lying near his command post "or else be almost driven out ourselves. Sights don't trouble me, but the other—no one ever gets used to that."

Doughboy Diaries

2008-07-31T15:05:00.001-07:00

Our exhausted Battalion—what was left of it—was relieved at last. The men were tired, completely tired. Just the knowledge that relief is at hand releases the feeling of utter weariness which is held at bay so long as there is work to do wherein weariness has no place.

It is wonderfully good to come out of the line—to come away from the incessant bombardment, the ever-alertness for gas, the casualties and the millions of flies which are inescapable. When you go in, you are tuned up to those things. While you are in they are part of a day's job. The cold meals of canned stuff are part of it. The hole one sleeps in, the clothes one wears interminably, the occasional meal cooked in the rear and cooled en route are part of it. You don't realize that those things are repellant until the promise of rest comes and the reconnaissance by officers of the incoming units begins. That sort of lets down the floodgates and you want to be out and clean and fed and rested. After that it doesn't matter.

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-03-12T18:00:00.001-07:00

In the foreword to Henry R. Miller's The First Division, published in 1920, we read the following thought provoking words:

"It is easy to forget. And we, it seems, are fast forgetting that but lately men in thousands were dying, in hundreds of thousands risking death, mutilation, enduring the agony of battle, creating a new tradition of American manhood, at our command. Our fine fervor has vanished as the summer mist, souls have gone cold. The lonely limping figure in khaki, still sometimes met on the street, we pass with careless glance; gold stripes on both sleeves, bit of ribbon on breast, meaningless symbols to us to whom the war meant petty sacrifice, a trifle of discomfort, or even profit. One does not talk of the war nowadays. We are tired of the war and of hearing about it--the most dramatic, stupendous fact in our historyf! The clustered graves overseas, the path of glory that led to them? A tale that is told!

I, who in unheroic role saw much of what this booklet shall tell, cannot forget. May I set down one of many reasons that grow more poignant as they recede?

During the third day before Soissonss there was a tiny knoll that, they told me, was taken and retaken six times, at the end remaining in our lines. Toward nightfall there was a lull in the storm; one could go forward with comparative safety. Just at dusk I came to the slope leading up that knoll. And everywhere I looked the trampled wheat was dotted by recumbent figures. There was one field, two or three acres, on which it seemed you could not have stood ten feet from some one of those figures. They might have been wearied troops that had thrown themselves down to sleep. They slept indeed, the sleep no earthly reveille could disturb. I wish you could have seen that silent company under the summer twilight. It was not gruesome then, and it was not all tragedy. There lay the best of America, not dead nor sleeping, but alive as long as we will it to live. For America, if it is anything lasting, means what they showed--free, unswerving loyalty to an ideal. Who shall say that they who died there lacked vision of that ideal, even though on their unschooled tongues it could never have become articulate. They paid to the uttermost for their faith.

And an even greater thing was found a little beyond--the thin line of the survivors; too weary for words, four days and nights sleepless, without food save the crusts they had gleaned from the packs of the enemy dead, souls lacerated by their ordeal. They had just been told that the expected relief was not at hand, that in the morning they were to leapfrog the first wave and go over again; most of them, and they knew it, to join their comrades in sleep. And not a quiver, not a doubt, not a fear, not a regret. They were ready.

While that spirit endures, America shall live. When America can forget, that spirit will die.

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-03-09T20:41:00.001-07:00

The Dugout:

It was a queer place for boys to sleep.

A hole in the ground, lined and braced with planks. Covered with rusty elephant iron. Damp.

Smelling of clay and decaying leaves. Old, narrow steps led downward, like a ladder pointing the wrong way. There were bunks, two deep, along the four walls

Faintly, outside the board lining and between the cracks, water trickled day and night. It came from the fog to the tree-tops, down the bare branches through channels in the bark, then back to the clay.

Wet boots smelled dismally. There was continual coughing and spitting. Blouses were folded and rolled for pillows. Some of the boys were lousy for the first time and their bodies were covered with ugly red scratches. There were marks down the backs of their necks as far as they could reach. The underground air was heavy and soggy. The ominous noises from the busy road did not reach so far.

Once or twice each night, the boys awoke, tight and oppressed. Their brain floundered around the darkness a moment, their fingers dug at the itch under their collars and over their moist bellies. They fumbled for boots, lifted their sore and aching kidneys over the edge of the bunk, stumbled up the ladder, tripping over loose shoe-laces, and lingered for a moment in the rain. Then they crawled back into their blankets and fell asleep thankful that it was not yet morning. It is odd how a boy gets used to this.

Life at the front was always interesting, lifted far above the levels of drudgery by the indomnitable humor and clear-cut fatalism of the average American soldier. A whole battery laughed at the story of how a chip of shell landed in Private Smith's coffee cup while he was drinking, when every single man of them knew the chip might just as easily have landed in his own eye. Because the butt of that particular joke happened to be a visitor from a rear echelon, the laughter increased. Rear echelons, to the cannoneer, form part of the S. O. S. [Service of Supply] until the cannoneer goes back to one himself. Then there was Corporal So-and-So, who spent most of his time searching for stray cows, left behind by the peasant refugees, so that the larder of the Regiment might be better stocked. Quips were tossed around about the rapidity with which battalion and battery commanders moved their headquarters when the enemy batteries had adjusted fire on nearby points.

The death, the killing, the empty stomachs, the vermin-infested uniforms, the mud-caked bodies, the stench of rotting flesh, all this had become a way of life, day to day living, the hour to hour existence--waiting to killf or be killed, was giving way to the feeling that permeated every being. All of it very soon would be part of the nightmarish past.

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-03-03T20:05:00.001-08:00

Continuing Hervey Allen's memoir Toward the Flame:

"Here we again ran across some of the 26th U. S. Division. At that time they had seen so much more fighting than we, that they seemed veterans, by comparison. Their clothes were in very bad shape, the set expression of their faces, and their small platoons advertised what they had been through. They sat along the roads and told us stories of the fights and recounted details of their losses. I thought it disheartening for our men, but the "Yanks" did not seem to feel that way about it. They held an absolutely fatalistic viewpoint, telling us we would never get through the game. "Wait," they said, "wait." Later on I understood. There was a great pride about these fellows.

Men who have faced death often and habitually can never again have the same attitude towards life. It is hard to be enthusiastic about little things again. The fact is that everybody is soon going to die is a little more patent than before. One sees behind the scenes, the flowers and the grave-blinds, the opiate of words read from the Good Book, and the prayers. For there is Death, quiet, calm, invincible, and there is no escape. Yet there are compensations.

For instance, one loses one's horror of the dead themselves. They have so patently lost all personality, and to the soldier, the process of their incorporation with the mineral kingdom is a visible one. Earth is claiming them again. It is my honest opinion, a very humbleone, that the sight of battlefields must always be a great blow to the lingering belief in personal mortality. The least that can be said is that the subject was never mentioned by any one, contrary to the statements of religious enthusiasts and the stock cant of journalism.

There is no man who is so totally absorbed by the present as the soldier. It claims all his attention and he lives from moment to moment in times of danger with an animal keeness that absorbs him utterly. This is a happy and saving thing. With time to brood, conditions would often seem intolerable. To the soldier, now is everything. It is in the piping times of peace and leisure that a man has had the time to afford himself the luxury of an immortal soul. When the present world is not engrossing enough, we begin to ponder on another."

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-03-02T20:11:00.001-08:00

Hervey Allen gives some vivid descriptions of battle with the AEF in his book, Toward the Flame:

"A big high explosive shell came over so close to us we felt sure from its sound it was going to burst very near. There is nothing worse than listening to the increasing howl of a shell and realizing that this time it really is going to burst near you. How near? That is the vital question. This particular shell burst several hundred yards away, tearing through the trees and crashing with a red flash that lit up the road and the columns of troops. Then we heard those awful agonized screams and cries fo rhelp that so often followed. It is impossible to make people at home understand what listening to them does to your brain. You can never get rid of them again.

What had happened was this: the big chap who rode the horses on our company kitchen had been caught in the burst and mortally hurt. Every bit of flesh from his waist down had been blown off his legs and yet he lived for some time. The splendid bit grays were killed.

An experience of that kind can never be described. Death is very near. There is a constant howling shuddering the air, and shells were dropping everywhere about us.

The roar of the explosions about us was almost continuous. The air was full of peculiar black smoke, dust, debris, and the stifling odor of high explosive, luckily no gas.

"The dim columns of men coming out of the woods, the lines of carts and kitchens assembling in the early, grey dawn, all without a light, and generally pretty silently, was always impressive.

We were beginning to be pretty tired by now and even here needed relief. One no longer got up in the morning full of energy. Hunger, dirt, and strain were telling, and we felt more or less "all in" that day in particular. One was consciously weak.

In a few minutes we were headed back in the direction from which we had come. There was a full moon, or one nearly so, hanging low in the west. As I jolted along, on legs that seemed more like stilts than limbs with knees, the heavy equipment sagged at every step, and seemed to clink one's teeth together weakly. At last the weariness and the jangle took on a fagged rythm that for me fell into the comfort of rhyme.

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-02-23T14:30:00.001-08:00

Every soldier wonders about his first time under fire. All my life I've wondered what my sensations would be, how I should act. My great hope was that I shouldn't run if ever I was fortunate enough to be actually under enemy fire. Here we were in that position at last. The sensation was a peculiar one. We didn't run, we were not afraid. It all seemed so impersonal, not meant for us. The sensation to us was one of joy and intense interest. Milliken said: "They can take away our rank, they can send us home, and take everything away from us, but they can't take away this experience." We really were delighted. Soon our delight was tempered with a bit of nervousness, for it seemed the boche had planned to send some more things our way.

The Dead! It is no more than your duty to read of the things that are not nice about war. You give your money, your comfort, your sons, brothers, husbands, sweethearts; you sacrifice for us, pray for us; you support us as you should; but you are thousands of miles from the mental and physical suffering and a million miles from the truth. You don't know what war is! You haven't a conception of it. All the stories, lectures and pictures of war in the world would not give you an idea of it as it actually is. To realize war you have got to see it and get the stench. You got to see the dead bodies and mutilated bodies and smell the stink.

The stink! --the "atmosphere" of a battlefield a day old! A battlefield--scene of a battle--is glorious, inspiring, like any great display of power, like the heavens at night when a fierce, ragged-jagged electrical display shatters the sky and shakes you where you stand or sit, partly fearful, partly in awe. But a battlefield after a battle; before there has been time to bury the dead, or when the burying squads are out dumping the dead Huns in shell holes and covering them in their machine gun pits, and making an attempt in handling the bodies of Americans as gently as they would like--it's after that one realizes something of war.

David Homsher
American Battlefields of World War I: Château Thierry--Then and Now
ISBN: 97809702444307 $29.95.Winner of three National Book Awards, Available at bookstores everywhere.
www.battlegroundpro.com
www.doughboydiaries.blogspot.com/
www.davehomsher-wwi.blogspot.com

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-02-18T15:18:00.001-08:00

I have been in a big fight now, the first big American drive, and am beginning to feel that I have been a soldier. I have gone for more than 48 hours at a stretch without sleep: have slept in a trench half full of water, in the rain; have curled up in my rain-coat in the mud on the side of the road and slept; have slept on my horse; have gone without eating for 48 hours; have eaten horse meat, and I think dog meat; have worked my horses to death; seen them drop in the traces and feel that I have seen some real campaigning.

I certainly will be glad when Wilhelm realizes that he is licked, for he he is undoubtedly licked, good and proper. It may be some time before we can make his people see it, but I believe he knows it now.

John B. Hayes, U. S. 42nd Division, describes the fighting along the Vesle River in the summer of 1918:

Presently, we attained the summit of a high hill. From that eminence we had an unobstructed vieww of the blazing battle lines for miles in each direction. The panorama that unfolded before our spellbound gaze contained all the elements that suggest themselves in a mental picture of a battlefield.

In both directions--to the right and left--the battle lines reached the horizon wrapped in a pall of smoke and dust that half conceals, half discloses, a battle scene. Fighter planes zoomed and maneuvered overhead and were followed in many places by a trail of smoke puffs from bursting anti-aircraft shells. Along the roads and trails back of the front could be seen moving vehicles and men. some bound for the front, others to the rear. The steady rumble and roar of artillery was punctuated by nearby bursts of exploding shells and the rattle of machine gun and rifle fire. All low places held the constant and all-pervading smell that comes from the combined odor of bursting shells, mustard gas and the stench of rotting men and horses. Truely a battlefield is a picture both grand and terrible.

It is a fearful thing to advance into battle over a terrain littered and strewn with the wreckage and debris of military combat, and reeking with the odor of the dead combined with the smell of corrosive mustard and chlorine gas and the penetrating and acrid fumes of bursting shells charged with high explosives--past dead and swollen horses, their legs jutting stiffly into the air, and past human corpses blue and discolored and frozen in the grotesque positions assumed in sudden and violent death.

Eventually, it is an encouraging thing to discover that you are not as afraid as you thought you would be. It gives green troops a wonderful and immeasurable life in their first days under fire. After these initiations they reflect with satisfaction that they have discovered they are not cowards, and can do their duty in spite of of their fear and dread.

Unfortunately, the discovery loses its potency and effectiveness in repetition: never-ending hikes, patrols, gas attacks, barrages and assaults follow one another in rapid and meaningless order. Finally the soldier finds that simple courage is not enough.

Providentially, help comes. A strange, exalted spiritual emotion from the depths of the soul takes over and sweeps the endangered soldier along to the destined end of the road, fiercely resigned, let come what may. For the survivor, the memory of the experience lingers long and wields a powerful and stimulating influence that uplifts the spirit in the heart of man. This experience is a consoling, sustaining and imspiring obsession which fascinates and creates a craving for more indulgencee. Men inflamed by the excitement of battle will go back from safety to the battle when for them there is no compulsion. I once saw this demonstrated when a dangerously wounded officer tried to escape from the dressing station to which I had helped carry him and made his way back to his beleaguered company.

But the danger craze, excitement or lust is more remarkable in ordinary men, doing their job as best they can, and finding no pleasure in it except the satisfaction of a job well and conscientiously done. These the fever and excitement of battle can wholly transform into something utterly foreign to their natures.

That in the end is how a soldier is made--through fear. Fear for your life--until you are so afraid that you can be afraid no more.

Mr. Hayes wrote of his comrades: "An exceedingly great army--who enlisted in the service of our country for $15.00 a month, hazarding life, limbs, and health. Many of them now sleep eternally in Flanders Fields. In one battle alone my company lost 30 men killed and 100 wounded, casualties of more than 50 per cent. My company was composed of 250 men, but during its service overseas more than 1,000 were on its roster...replacements occasioned by disease and battle loses."

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-02-13T19:25:00.001-08:00

Every soldier at the moment of going into battle, trembles, is afraid, wishes he could escape from it. The noise is dreadful; the men rush forward, never walk; each one is watchful lest a companion may read fear in his face; no one cries out lest he be shot down; thus a whole regiment goes into battle, playing the part of bravery, yet sick of the whole business.

Under bombing and artillery attack, troops felt utterly helpless, incapable of responding to what was being done to them, uncertain, paralyzed, afraid to perform basic physical functions. Ralph Seifert, a sergeant with the 103rd Sanitary Train, had gone behind a stone wall to relieve himself when he heard a shrieking sound directly overhead, and almost in the same instant, a bang. "I knew it was a shell"; he wrote his father. "It scared mee, so I used all my paper in one wipe and grabbed a handful from a pile that was along side of me, used it and pulling my britches up, made for a dugout.

An emotion that battle commonly evoked in these men, even in the brave, the stoical, and those eager to fight, was fear, which took many forms. Before their first battle, new men not only worried about combat itself but were afraid they would succumb to fright. Veterans feared crippling and disfigurement. Lieutenant Allen remembered how he heard someone playing a sentimental song as he was getting ready to go into battle and how the music aroused in him fear and nostalgia at the same time, an acute longing for his loved ones, despair and anxiety about the next day's "indignities," together with a sense that the war would last forever. He called all this the "Just-Before-the-Battle-Mother" feeling and noticed that others felt it too. It paralyzed him mentally and physically until "the great machine of the army" laid its "iron touch" on his mind and body and enabled him to go on. Before his first battle, Corporal Pierce heard a band in a nearby valley playing taps for the dead of its regiment. The music left him with a "helpless, hopeless," frightened feeling.

AEF Doughboy in Combat

2008-02-11T19:35:00.001-08:00

The acrid scent of exploding shells and charred buildings; the odors of poison gas, of muddy ground, of excrement; and the sweetish smell of corpses that pervaded the battleground affected AEF troops deeply and lastingly. Corporal Pierce remembered travelling for two miles over a recent battle site that reeked of decaying flesh. Several days after a battle, Private First Class Thurmond Baccus of the Eighty-second Division wrote from an area where the burial squad had still not finished its work: "I had rather smell gas than the odor of men and horses." The men in burial details lived with the stench of the dead, which permeated their clothing and stayed with them when they went to eat and sleep. Major Raymond B. Austin of the First Division sent his men out to bury the dead French Moroccans lying near his command post "or almost be driven out oursellves. Sights don't trouble me, but the other--no one ever gets used to that."

Facing fire was something elsee most men never got used to--the experience of hugging the forward inside slope of a foxhole while bullets buried themselves in the side behind; walking or running while clouds of metal whistled through the air; being bombed or shelled. "To be shelled is the worst thing in the world," Hervey Alled declared. "It is impossible to adequately imagine it. In absolute darkness we simply lay and trembled from sheer nervous tension. There is a faraway moan that grows to a scream and then a roar like a freight train, followed by a groundshaking smash and a diabolical red light."

Lieutenant Lawrence recalled how he gritted his teeth and clenched his hands and drew his muscles rigid while shells exploded near his foxhole, and how when a large shell screamed a few feet over the heads of his men, they fell to their kneess as if they were one man, throwing the column into disorder. Lawrence noted that even veterans jerked and twisted as they lay under a heavy barrage. Some men began to cry. During his first bombardment, Lieutenant Ranlett's whole body shook convulsively, as if he had a terrible chilll, his knees shook, his fingers and hands moved involuntarily, and he noticed that his voice had a strained, high-pitched sound. Corporal Pierce recalled: "I am soon a nervous wreck. I lose control as the bombardment wears on into hours. I want to scream and run and throw myself. My gas mask irritates me and I am on the verge of throwing it off, gas or no gas. My throat is dry and cracked from the mask but the saliva runs from my mouth and swishes around on my face. When I hear the whistle of an approaching shell I did my toes into the ground and push on the walls of the dugout.

Doughboy in Battle

2008-02-03T17:31:00.001-08:00

Troops saw comrades and enemy soldiers grievously wounded. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive, a German artillery barrage tore through Harold H. Wadleigh's unit, part of the Eighty-ninth Division. "My platoon was unlucky." Wadleigh recorded in his diary. "We lose heavily." He described how a private in his unit tried to run with both legs off at the knees. In the same battle, Wadleigh observed a German soldier in the same condition begging the Americans to kill him.

Distance sometimes made it possible to watch the most horrifying sights with detached fascination. Second Lieutenant Louis F.Ranlett observed two columns moving up a hill half a mile away. A fountain of smoke rose into the air between them, and after it cleared, one figure in each column struggled to stand up and staggered away; two other figures raised their shoulders and "fought like mashed ants" to free their shattered legs. Most of the figures looked like dead rags, and some had vanished altogether. Corporal Pierce watched through field glasses as a battalion of green American troops with inexperienced officers moved across a field about two miles away. Pierce realized that many of them would be deadddd in a few minutes when the enemy artillery caught them in the open, but he could not stop watching. He felt like a bird hypnotized by a snake. As the troops reached the middle of the field in perfect order, he heard a distant "crumph" from an enemy battery, followed by a long whistle. Then he observed the shells blowing them apart.

Some battle noises, like the sound of friendly artillery, were reassuring to those who had learned to distinguish them from hostile sounds. Lieutenant Ranlett recalled how an Allied barrage seemed to shield him as he prepared to move across no-man's-land: "The sound of the shells passing overhead formed a solid, invisible dome. The sound filled the air. It seemed as though one could reach out and touch the sound, pull it away from one's headd, butt one's helmet against it." But troops in battle were usually disturbed and frequently terrified by what they heard--whining and cracking machine-gun and rifle fire; screamins, screeching, and freight-train sounds of large shells; the head splitting concussions of bombs and artillery rounds; and ominous noises of lower amplitude: the dull thud of distant mortars; the swishing, humming and whistling of large projectiles, the "flop," "flop" of poison gas shells; and the screech of a Klaxon horn sounding a gas alarm. Sometimes, after a salvo detonated, they heard screams of such intense agony that it seemed no human being could make them--sounds impossible to rid from one's brain--and the cries of men begging to be shot to death. Shreiks and moans of the wounded tore at the feelings of their friends who could not try to rescue them withoug becoming targets for waiting snipers. For Lieutenant Allen, some of the most terrible sounds of battle were the faint noises in caved-in trenchds where explosions had buried men alive.

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-02-01T16:16:00.001-08:00

Allen, Hervey. Toward the Flame, p. 112. Allen's description of a delayed burying-detail is notable for its horror and absurdity, together with a detailed, understated narrative: "Lieutenant Glendenning and I took some men and went back to the 4th platoon trench. We took shelter halves and blankets and went through the ditch and picked up arms and legs and everything else. Some things we just turned under, and the most we buried in a great shell-hole. Then we pulled out the men that were smothered in the dirt; some were cut in pieces by the shell-fragments and came apart when we pulled them out of the bank. Lieutenant Quinn was so mixed with the two men who had lain nearest to him that I do not know yet whether we got things just right. We did not feel this so much at the time--you get numbed after a while." (p.49).

Theodore Fredenburgh, Soldiers March: (New York, 1930), p.112. Fredenburgh describes the front-line, where "patrols skirmished amid the putrefaction of the valley":

"On all sides lay great shell holes, half-filled with water. The chalky soil had been churned and rechurned until its vitals were spewed to the surface. Fragments of stained and rotten uniforms projected from the ground. The dirty bones of corpses reached despairingly from the soil that gave them no rest.

On the floor of the valley a sickly stream flowed. Its banks of yellow mud looked slimy and unclean in the sun. As far as the eye could see the valley continued--a yellow, pestilent muck-heap.

March, Company K, p.27:

"The dog sniffed the air. He lifted his voice and howled.

I got up, then,and put on my pack and a moment later Al joined me. for a moment we looked at the white wall, stil standing, and at the sacred picturee untouched in its place.

Al walked over to the wall and stood regarding it curiously: 'why should that one wall remain?' he asked. 'Why should it be spared?'

Then as he stood there adjusting his pack, and fumbling with the rusty catch of his cartridge belt, there came a tearing sound, and a sharp retort, and down fell the wall in a cloud of dust, smothering the heart from which flames weree ascending, and crushing him to death with its weight."

Hervey Allen, in "Report to Major Roberts," (a novella) in It Was Like This (New York, 1940) combines irony, rhetoric, and objective action in still another vignette, set in the small French town of Crezancy:

A battalion of Americans and a regiment of Germans had left their dead behind them. The place had been shelled into a shambles. Streets of empty and desolate houses with collapsed roofs and fronts ripped open, the contents gushing out of the doorways like vomit out of a dead man's mouth. The large church in the town square stood with one side cracked open, a large painting of Christ on the Cross looked out over the shivered roofs and gazed at the gentle works of his followers in the year 1918. In the courtyard of the town hall twelve abandoned horses, their eyes swollen shut with gas, milled about miserably and made bleating noises. Dick had them shot."

Cooty Bill--continued

2008-01-29T15:55:00.001-08:00

"Well we got up on the hill and then after they told us all about what they wanted us to do they desided they would get 2 or 3 tanks to go with us so they sent somebody to parley with the tank commander but after he was gone about haff an hour he come back and says the tank man told him it would be imposible to get up over the hill at that place and that they would have to go a kilo or 2 out of the way and couldnt be with us for 3 or 4 hours. Well then the officers went off to parley with somebody else or somethin and before long they come back and says that it had been desided not to send out any advanse party but that a general attack had been ordered so we went back to our companys and was pritty glad to get back to you can take it from me and then before long the hole outfit got orders to advanse.

We all went out over the hill in battel formashun and for a long ways ahead of us there wasn't nothin but a plane with no hills and no trees. We got lined out in 2 waves and squad columns and pritty soon we started. There wasnt no oppisishun at all for a while and at 1st they didnt even shell us and we begin thinkin again they had all run away when all of a sudden a shell come singin along and exploded out ahead of us and nocked a part of a squad to peices like they was so much paper and then we knowed hell was on oncet more. We kept on walkin ahead like there wasnt no shells or nothin and they kept comein faster and faster and all the time we was waitin and expecktin 1 to hit our squad and we wondered where our own artillery was and then orders come to retreat back to the shelter of the hill. We started back and then they said that them orders was wrong and so we had to line up and start forward again and after we had got on out there in the fields and some more fellos got bumped off orders came to take cover in the shell holes which we done toot sweet. The corporal which was in charge of my squad had got mislaid in the shuffel goin back to the hill and so I was put in charge of the squad.

Well I don't know why we ever done it but we layed out there in them shell holes all that day lettin the botches pour down shells into us and all that time we didnt have no artillery that I could hear but 1 batery of 75s or 3 in. guns which come up late in the afternoon and begin firein. From what I could find out the advanse was held up on the flanks and along in the afternoon 2 platons from my company was sent over to attack with some machine gun outfit which was bein held up and we didnt never get back with them durin the fight untill the last day. I suppose they was expecktin to go any minit and so didnt want to expose us to any more fire goin back to the shelter under the hill.

The worst part about a battel is waitin for orders to do somethin espeshaly if your waitin at the same time for a shell to come along and bump you off any minit. I never learned nothin so quick in my life as I did about where a shells goin to light from the noise it makes. There aint no way of describin what kind of a sound it is bekause you wouldnt know if I told you but if I would live to be 100 years old and all of a suddin somebody would let out a whine or a skream or whatever you would call it a shell I bet I would jump 20 ft. and light a runnin and make 100 yards in a littel less than nothin flat. The worst skare we had that day all most was in that shell hole. We was layin there when all of a sudden we heard a shell comein right for us zz-e-e-e-o-o and while we was all tryin to push the bottom out of the earth Blooey! she lit only about 50 ft. from us and hurt a coupel of fellos in another shell hole and then when we was just raisein up again and our hearts was gettin down to where they belonged z-z-z-o-o-e-e-e-o-ou and another 1 that didnt hesitate a minit come right strait for us and we shut our eyes and waited for St. Peter and the angels with the littel harps to apear on the seen until they had ought to of had plenty of time to welcome us in and then we opened our eyes again and there only about 3 ft. outside our hole was a coupel of in. of a dud stickin up out of the ground where it had buryed itself. Well dad Ill bet a gost would have had a fine compexxshun compared to us there for a few minutes and for quite a while after that.

AEF Doughboy in Combat

2008-01-27T17:39:00.001-08:00

Upon his return to America, Daniel E. Morgan, author of the book When the World Went Mad, wrote an intense letter to the United States Veterans Bureau:

"United States Veterans Bureau,

Washington, D. C.

Gentlemen:

Soon after the European war startet, I, Daniel E. Morgan, enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. By the time this country declared war I was a well-trained soldier. Being prepared, of course I was among the first to go over.

During the thirteen months that I stayed on foreign soil, it was my lot to engage in five pitched battles, on five different fronts, as a Sergeant of machine guns in the very midst of the hardest fighting. Records show that these men remained in the front lines longer, and suffered more casualties, than did any other machine gun battalion in the American Expeditionary Forces. In most battles we had to stay in the lines twenty-four hours after our supports were withdrawn, being supports to the troops new in warfare.

At the offset of a battle the sick and wounded are evacuated, and at once begin to regain their lost strength and vitality. No so with those that must remain to see the thing through. Theirs is a never-ending grinding out of their existence in obedience to the command, "Hold at all costs," the agonies, hardships and horrors of which the half has never been told. I lived three days in an abandoned toilet in the muck and filth, in order to keep alive my half-wrecked body, digging down the dirt from the sides to cover up the dung.

In my haste to get down below the surface of the earth I dug through the body of a dead man that had been buried, and lived in that hole with the decayed and rotten feet of the dead sticking out. Like a rat on a garbage dump, I crawled from one dead body to another, seeking a crust of bread or a slab of bacon, and when any food was found one could hardly stuff it down for it smelled like decomposed or rotten human flesh. Dead men cannot win a war. Myself and others ate this filthy food. The very atmosphere in those hot July days smelled like an abandoned butcher shop. It was the most horrible kind of sickening, nauseating smell.

With a bursting headache, eyes sunken in, twitching and jerking nerves, with every fibre of my body strained trying to hang on to life, I lived in this battle along about 27 days without as much as washing my hands or face. In addition to robbing the dead to keep alive, there was the never-ending fear of being blown to pieces. Thousands of big and little shells were tearing their way through the woods. God only knows how we stood it.

The casualty list for this battle, Chateau-Thierry, were over 9,000, as the record states. This was the end for them. For me it was only the beginning, one of five battles.

At another front I lived in the slime and mud of the trenches more than a week without any shoes. I sat at the trigger of a machine gun with my feet wrapped in old bags, in an abandoned patch of barbed wiree, in no man's land. When I took my report to headquarters I borrowed the shoes of one of my boys. In the day time we hid in an old dugout that was half filled with water, shooting the rats and watching them fall into the sump.

The summer days were passing, and the cold Winter days were rapidly approaching, with additional hardships that must be met by strained and exhausted bodies. Hundreds of boys fell exhausted in the grind. As a Sergeant in charge of four machine guns and crews, I had to keep going. Others could drop out, but not I. I had to keep going, even unto the end. Shall thqt be charged up to me now? I had no thought of compensation or reward.

Long weary days of forced marches, untold hardships and suffering I manned my guns. Had I evacuated there would have been one less in the struggle. My training as a Marine forbid the slacking of the hand as long as there was a spark of life in the body. The official records bear out this fact.

Did we not push into the terrible slaughter to the extent of 24,432 casualties? In the one division, namely the Second. Those who evacuated wounded, sick and exhausted, have a clinching argument for compensation. Half dead, it was always my lot to be in the very thickest of the battle, not only dragging along my own wrecked body, but to at all times be on hand to instruct and advise the recruits, of which our division used up 35,343 as replacements who know nothing about the art of war. Shall this be charged against me now?

November the first saw me still in the lines, fighting fighting for my flag and for my country, a war to stop all wars, so we were told. The bursting, shrieking shells, tearing through the bodies of those alive put the poor devils out of their misery. But by the grace of God I lived through it, drinking the water from the shell holes, crawling among the German dead, drinking the stale beer from their canteens.

November the tenth, or in the early morning hours of the eleventh, I laid between the ties of a railroad track all in. I could go no further. My limbs were numb and I laid there pounding my legs to keep them from freezing while the newer and fresher men forced their way across the Meuse River."

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-01-26T17:39:00.001-08:00

Somewhere in France

October 6, 1918

Dear Dad:

Well dad were still here in the same place so I will write you another letter today and tell you about the 2nd day of the drive. I have been on the sick book every day for almost a week and have been marked quarters which is pritty lucky for me as usually you have got to have a leg gone or combinashun rumatism and saintvitusdance as Bud says in order to get out of drill by bein sick but sense I aint doin nothin else I might as well tell you about our fight.

Well the 2nd morning we got woke up about haff past 5 or sooner and say mabe it wasnt a sensashun to open your eyes and find yourself on a hill and wonder where you was and then sudinly realize that you was in a battel and remember what you seen yesterday and what might hapen to you today. 1st we eat a little bully beef and hardtack and then they called the companys together which it was near imposibel to get together bekause of the slippery mud all over the hill and then they says "Boys theres a lot of machine gun posishuns over the hill right ahead of us and we have desided that the best way to clean em out is to send out a detale of men to flank em and take em and we want volunteers to go on this misshun." Well that was some proposhun right early in the morning that way before you hardly got your eyes open but after a littel bit they got the number of men they wanted and I found out I had volunteered to go to though you mustnt think it was bekause I wanted to be a hero bekause by that time I had lost all my ambishuns to be a hero and everything like that and simply went bekause I seen it was my duty and nothin more. As we climed that hill and lined up to go ahead and get them nests my old heart began tryin to clime out again and I'' bet if I lived to be 100 years old and went to battel every morning my heart wouldnt of learned to act no better on the last mornin than on the 1st bekause theres 1 thing you wouldnt never get ust to or would learn to like and thats havin peopel shoot at you with a rifel and blow you to peices with shells and pour lead into you with a machine gun like a garden hose. If anybody ever says they wasnt skared up in a drive you will know that there ether liars or aint never been there 1 or the other bekause there aint nobody that can wach a man get bumped off without feelin pritty sure that the next shell has got his name wrote all over it and when he hears it comein and aint skared why my names Bill Kaiser thats all and hes just a plane liar if he tells you he wasnt. It aint the man that aint skared thats the brave man its the man thats so skared he cant hardly breathe bekause his heart is where his lungs should ought to be but still goes on anyway and fights till its all over or hes nocked off and theres only 1 way to keep from bein so bad skared and that is to keep goin just as much as you can bekause the more ackshun you get into the less time your goin to have bein afrayed somebodys goin to get you. If you give yourself time to get skared the chanses is that you will do a good job doin it.

Excerpted from Cooty Bill by Kirke Mecham, 1919. To be continued

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-01-24T14:20:00.001-08:00

The first experience of the American soldiers in actual warfare cane in the raids into No Man's Land, between the two lines of battle. To crawl at night up to the listening posts in front of the enemy's position in order to obtain information, to seize the occupants of the post if occasion offered, to meed and kill or capture, or at least to drive off an enemy's scouting party, to cut the enemy's wire entanglements--to do any of these things was to acquire training, to become indifferent to mud and danger, and to learn how to take care of oneself in emergencies. These nightly expeditions brought a large number of soldiers into the experience of this particular kind of warfare, the like of which had never been seen in Europe before this war began.

As the American soldiers became accustomed to night raiding their raids took on a more serious nature. They were carried out by large numbers of men and resulted frequently in encounters in which several casualties occurred. March 4 in the Lunéville sector the Germans made a strong attack on the Americans and were driven back after some sharp fighting. Their action prompted their opponents to retaliate on the 10th in three large raids planned for simultaneous delivery against points close together. After a heavy bombardment had leveled the German first line trenches the Americans went forward. They found the first line abandoned and went as far as the second line, 600 yards in the rear, before they were ordered back to their own lines. Some of these trenches, it was reported a few days later, were held permanently, thus making the action at Badonvillliers the first sustained advance of the Americans, although it was not the first fighting that may be called a battle.

Doughboy in Battle

2008-01-23T14:22:00.001-08:00

What they observed on the battlefield troubled many of these men, particularly those new to battle. They fought on a gloomy landscape with shattered stumps of trees and ruined buildings and ground so torn up that they could hardly associate it with the earth they had known. Everywhere they saw bodies of men and animals, blackened, maggot-covered objects. The sights made Corporal Vaughn E. Timmins vomit. Wilder C. Hopkins, a teenaged private, responded in a clinical way, taking careful note of the shapes and position of the dead: "In one place a man's head was lying with none of the body anywhere in sight. Another part...with all of the facial features remaining but the center of and back of the head completely gone as was the body." After a platoon in Corporal Ralph T. Moan's company attacked some Germans with machine guns and grenades, Moan noted in his diary that one of the Germans had his head blown off. "It made a ghastly sight, suspended in the barbed wire. " A shell landed not far from Lieutenant Lawrence, who had to walk carefully to avoid stepping into "a bloody mess of flesh and scraps of an American uniform."

At Château-Thierry, German gunners made several direct hits on a trench near Hervey Allen. The next day, Lieutenant Allen and another officer took a detail to the trench and, using blankets and shelter halves, picked up hands, arms, and other parts and buried them. The explosions had smothered some of the occupants and shredded their bodies, which fell apart as Allen's men pulled them out of the dirt. Later, Allen came upon the wreck of a downed airplane. The aviator, whose buttons identified him as an American, was still sitting in his seat. He had been burned to death and there was nothing left of him but a "blackened, egg-shaped mass."

AEF Doughboy in Battle

2008-01-22T15:43:00.001-08:00

"I have finally seen what I came over for, and a lot more besides--war, real war, stripped of glory. For what chance has a man against a shell? And how does the awful suffering of trench life compare to the thrilling battles of the Revolution? I don't mean that it doesn't take ten times the nerve and the endurance, but there's the rub, for we have become machines, not men. I know that God will protect us over here, but you realize how absurdly weak and helpless you are when a load of dead are brought in, some with arms and legs gone, others with heads and trunks mixed together; and quite often you learn there wasn't anything left to bring." ---Julian H. Bryan, from Ambulance 464, World War I

"You who have never seen the horrors of war, who have never seen a man disappear, literally blown to atoms, on being struck by a shell; who have never heard the shrieks of wounded human beings, who have never heard the hysterical laughter of a man as he gazes at the stump where his hand was a moment ago, who have never heard the cries, the groans, the swearing, the praying of men with festering wounds, lying in the first aid station, waiting too long and in vain for ambulances; who have never witnessed the terror of those men when the aid station is gassed and there are no gas masks, who have never seen convalescents, totally blind and with both hands amputated above the wrist--can you say that we should stop at anything in order to prevent this frightfulness, this savagery, this horror from occurring again?"

---Letter dated March 18, 1919 from Wyman Richardson, a wounded soldier, to the editor of the New York Times.

Doughboy in Battle

2008-01-21T13:29:00.001-08:00

The student of tactics soon realized the difference between fighting a battle in imagination and in reality. Imagination cannot bring home to any human brain the extent to which the chess-board dispositions of modern strategy are tempered by the actualities of modern fighting--in other words, by the strain upon the human machine. All the five senses are affected--hearing, by the appalling din; seeing by the spectacle of a whole group of human beings being blown to shreds; smelling, by the reek of gas and explosives; touching by the feel of dead men's faces everywhere under your hand in the darkness; and tasting, by the unforgettable flavor or meat in the mouth after forty-eight hours continuos fighting in an atmosphere of human blood. The War is going to be won, not by the strategist, but by the man who can endure these things most steadfastly.

We now regard ourselves, justifiably, as initiated. We have been bombarded fairly regularly. We do not like it but we can stand it, which is all that matters--as eels probably remark while being skinned. We are getting used, also, to the sight of sudden death and human blood. These things affect us less than we expected. It is all a matter of environment. If you were to see a man caught and cut in two between a street-car and a taxi-cab in your own home town, the spectacle would make you physically sick and might haunt you for weeks, because such incidents are not part of the recognized routine of home town life. But here, they are part of the day's work: we are prepared for them: they are what we are in the War for. And, curiously and providentially, it seldom occurs to any of us to suspect that it may be his turn next. Thus all-wise Naturee maintains our balance for us.

We have made another interesting discovery about Nature, and that is that habit can be stronger than instinct, and pride than either. The first law of Nature is said to be the instinct of self-preservation. Yet, the average soldier, even in the inferno of modern warfare, gives less trouble to his leaders when under shell-fire than when his dinner does not come up to the usual standard, or he has run out of cigarettes.

DOUGHBOY IN BATTLE

2008-01-20T13:26:00.001-08:00

Rats as big as half-grown opossums fell through the tar paper in the ceiling of his dugout, landing on soldiers, and then running like frightened rabbits. It was hard for him to keep them from getting under his blanket. Sergeant Mosher told his mother he had gotten used to rats dropping on his blankets and playing around his feet. But when he woke up suddenly and found himself knocking one off his neck, it was "something else." Sergeant J. Walter Strauss, asleep in a pup tent on an old battlefield in Belgium, woke with a start. A rat was chewing on his hair. "It was tough sleeping after that," Strauss said, "and I became exhausted because of lack of sleep."

Sleepleshess, days and nights at a time, was the lot of front-line troops. those who got used to cooties and omnipresent rats and could sleep jammed next to one another in dugouts and foxholes or doze off near-frozen in soaking uniforms were weakened by gas alarms, some of them for real gas attacks. In Sergeant Charles R. Blatt's unit, about a dozen gas alarms sounded between sunset and daybreak, forcing everyone to put on their uncomfortable masks. Repeating nightmares, in which he felt unable to move, terrified Corporal Pierce and made him afraid to doze off. Men saw the horrors of the battlefield reenact themselves in silent dreams. Even a trip to recuperate behind the lines did not guarantee rest. When the Twenty-ninth Division was taken out of action for a time, 2nd Lieutenant Joseph D. Lawrence was assigned to a bed with another officer, but each man smelled so badly that they both found it hard to fall asleep.

Going without sleep, marching long distances with a heavy pack over roads that sometimes turned to liquid mud, and the exertion of battle wore troops out physically and mentally. According to George C. Marshall, a colonel on the AEF staff, during the last offensive of the war many American soldiers died of exhaustion.

The Doughboy Attacks

2008-01-19T13:46:00.001-08:00

A few minutes were spent in clearing up some minor points and then each of us went to his particular work. How many of that group of fine young men, as they stood there wishing each other "the best of luck," ever thought that within a short time many of them would be dead or badly wounded. It is a good thing that we cannot see into the future. If we could have seen what was to happen within the next twelve hours, how would we have felt?

At 6:45 the First Sergeant reported that the company was ready. Giving the company a brief outline of our plan of attack, cautioning against wasting ammunition, I directed them to push the attack and to get at the enemy with the bayonet. Then I allowed the men the few remaining minutes before zero hour to themselves.

Of those who have waited in position for the signal to attack, who can explain the feelings or thoughts of a soldier during the last few minutes before a battle? He fixes his bayonet, sees that his rifle is working properly, loads it, turns the safety lock, doing a dozen things, automatically from force of training. Just a faint trace of nervousness. Still there is a great deal of 'kidding' among the men. One young soldier drew the edge of his bayonet back and forth across the sole of his shoe just as a man would strop a razor. His 'Buddy' asked, "What are you going to do, shave the Kaiser?" The reply was, "Just preparing for a painless operation on my friend 'Fritz'." Another pair of habitual gamblers were trying to make bets on each other as to who would get wounded first. Never a thought of themselves, or of what might be their individual fate; no patriotic 'ballyhoo' as to why they were in France or the enemy in front of them. A few of us were thinging of a wife and children, hoping if it was our turn to 'GO WEST,' that the folks back home would not feel too badly.

During the short interval the hands of my watch moved to 6.50 to 6.55, then to 6.56. When the smoke bombs fell on the enemy line at 6.59 the platoon commanders were signalled to get ready. Watching the second-hand make the last trip around, as the minute-hand reached the hour I gave the signal to attack. Company B 'Goes over the top.' We are in it at last and hell breaks loose. Since that day as a commander of other companies, battalions and various units never have I seen a finer body of men. They went at the task as calmly, and under perfect control, as if they had been on a drill field.

The Doughboy in Combat

2008-01-18T19:01:00.001-08:00

America's participation in World War I, though short, was a ghastly and harrowing experience for the men who reached the front line trenches. There death was so omipresent that it was in sight and in the air. Many doughboys lived through such days and nights they would never forget. A young lieutenant, after the battle of St. Mihiel, told his parents that of all the horrors of war--the overwhelming smell of death, and life in the trenches--the one sight he could hardly bear was of "brave fellows lying to blacken in the sun and rot where they fell." Yet, he concluded, the "Hun, man for man is no match for the American."

Everywhere along the borders of "no man's land," men "slept with nerves taut with anticipation and in the consciousness of a nightmare." Some tried to evade the sounds of war by sleeping in deep dugouts; others, oppressed with a consciousness of space, slept in the open. Everywhere, and always, there was shock.

A young Marine wrote his mother that the fighting in Belleau Wood was so horrible that it was sheer luck, and not prayer or supplication, which allowed for survival. A young officer described death as a horrible sight, "tho one becomes more or less accustomed to seeing the dead."

In the Argonne, the fighting resembled all of the horrors of past Wildernesses and of future Ardennes. As one First Division soldier put it: "I have lost all track of time and hardly know when one day ends and another begins--and, as for the days of the week, I haven't known that for weeks."

What was it like to live as a Doughboy?

2008-01-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

When they reached their destination, the Americans encountered hardships that few had endured until that time. At the front, their basic needs went unsatisfied or were appeased just enough to keep them fighting. They sheltered themselves in water-soaked foxholes and cold muddy trenches, covering their bodies with filthy, tattered clothes and mud-caked blankets. For days at a time they lived without enough to eat.

"To be in the front line of the American army at that time was to go hungry," wrote Lieutenant Hervey Allen.

Letters and diaries of other men record how they craved food all of the time and how monotonous their rations were. Troops in combat suffered from an almost unslakable "battle thirst."

Private William A. Francis of the Fifth Marine Regiment told how at the battle of Belleau Wood, after a water detail failed to appear, "we felt as though we would go mad for want of a drink. I started digging as fast as I could and came to some wet clay. I put this to my tongue. It helped a little as it was very cool."

There was plenty of water in ditches and shell holes--along with poison gas, decaying bodies and body parts, blood, and human and animal waste. Nevertheless, soldiers drank it and suffered the consequences, including dysentery, or blinded themselves by rubbing mustard gas--tainted water into their eyes. The army had taught them how to dig slit trenches and build latrines and had given them equipment to purify drinking water, but some men either could not or would not follow correct procedures. Private Wilder Hopkins of the Thirty-second Division wrote that, "at the battlefront there was no such thing as sanitation."

Some men relieved themselves whereever they happened to be. Soldiers lived in filth continuously, sometimes going for months without taking off their breeches.