CONSTRUCTEDBYBATTERY E, 149th F. A.IN ACTIONA. D. 1918
The gun pits were rushed to completion in the last days of April, so that they might be occupied by the guns of Battery D in an attack that came May 3. In the preceding days the French had moved up heavy artillery in support, and several batteries of 75’s, of the same 232d French regiment which had been our neighbors in the Lunéville sector, occupied the meadows to the left of our new position.
Our firing had been only occasional and limited to brief reprisals up to this time. The first platoon, at 163, had suffered most in reply, receiving over 400 shells one day. Now a heavy bombardment was planned, to push back the enemy lines a short way and safeguard our own occupation of “No Man’s Land.” On May 2, some of the batteries kept pounding away all day, cutting barbed wire entanglements and clearing away obstacles in the infantry’s advance.
The following morning we were aroused at 3, and stood by the guns. At 3:50 we added our fire to the din aroundus, sending over a barrage in front of the troops going over the top. It lasted only two hours, and expended about 175 rounds per gun. So thorough and heavy had been the preliminary bombardment that the enemy had been forced to withdraw all his troops from the shelled area, and the infantry met with next to no resistance in reaching the objective set for them.
May 13 the officers and sergeants went to Azerailles to inspect Battery B equipped and packed in the manner of a battery on the road prepared for open field warfare. Rumors had been plentiful for weeks (1) that the 42d Division was going home to become instructors of the millions of drafted men in the great camps in the United States, (2) that the 42d Division was going to the Somme to aid in checking the rapid drive of the enemy in the north, (3) that the division was to go to a rest camp in the south of France, (4) that the regiment was to turn in its horses and be motorized, etc., etc. The review at Azerailles strengthened some of these rumors and stirred up still others. But, for the present, all these reports came to naught.
May 21 the battery moved four kilometres back to a reserve position just in front of Merviller, which had formerly been occupied by Battery B. The latter moved up to relieve us. After the seven weeks of close confinement in damp abris, the change to the life at the Merviller position was like a trip to a summer resort. Being so far back of the lines, the men were permitted to move about with perfect freedom. The stream just back of the position invited cool swims on the hot dusty afternoons. Ball games passed the time of waiting for mess. Battery E won a close game and keg of Baccarat beer from Headquarters Company by the score of 12 to 11. Just across the road was stationed a bathhouse and laundry unit, and before long the battery had replaced their uniforms, torn and dirty from digging, with more presentable ones.
Merviller’s cafes and “epiceries” furnished food to make up for the lean weeks at Montigny. Being only a few minutes’ walk from the position, the town was a frequent evening’s resort. Baccarat, about eight kilometres farther, was visited when Sunday passes permitted. This city was not so large as Lunéville and held by no means the same attractions as that early favorite of the 149th men. But the shops,cafes, large hospitals, the celebrated Baccarat Glass Works, and the fact that it was a city drew the men there often. Across the Meurthe River, between the cathedral and the heights at the western edge of town lay the ruins of a large section of the city, shelled in those days of August, 1914, that marked the limits of the Germans’ first onrush.
Work had been dropped, after a couple of days, on the position begun by Battery B some distance in front of the one we occupied. Gun drill and instruction in various phases of the battery’s work was the sole occupation of the men. Only once did the battery fire. At 1:30 a. m., June 5, the gun crews were hurriedly aroused, and fired for about an hour, in response to a heavy enemy barrage, to which all guns in the sector replied.
Gas alarms woke the battery many times at night, but by this time the men had reached that stage where their own judgment told them when they should sit up with their gas masks, and when they might turn over and go to sleep. In brief, the alarms, though frequent, bothered them little.
June 9 the first two sections took two Battery D guns up in front of our forward positions, to demonstrate for the officers of the regiment the methods of open field warfare. All of the men learned to put up the “flat-tops” that were always, after we left Lorraine, used as camouflage over the guns. From four corner poles, held firmly by ropes and stakes, heavy ropes were stretched as taut as possible. On this framework was spread a cord netting, about thirty feet square, whose corners slanted out equidistant from the corner poles. On the netting were fastened wisps of green burlap thick enough to conceal what lay beneath it, but not so thick as to cast a heavy shadow which might be distinguished in an aerial photograph. This form of camouflage could be set up and taken down quickly, and used repeatedly.
During the latter part of our stay near Merviller, the peculiar sickness called “trench fever” ran through the regiment, thinning the ranks of the men fit for active duty and sending many to the hospital for a few days. After a few days of fever, languidness and weakness, the illness passed away.
June 19 the first platoon pulled out, and the secondplatoon followed on the next night, hiking 37 kilometres to Damas-aux-Bois. After two days there, the regiment marched to Charmes, where we entrained for a short train ride to Chalons-sur-Marne. By noon next day the battery was in comfortable billets in Chepy, which, to us, is the cleanest village in France, for no manure piles decorate its main street and no dirty gutters line its roads.
Swimming in the canal near by, French “movies” at the Foyer du Soldat, plenty of food—vegetables were abundant, and so were cheese, butter and milk till the hungry soldiers bought out the creamery completely—made this a delightful place, in spite of the boredom of “trigger squeeze exercise” and overlong “stables” in the heat of the day.
On the night of June 28 the regiment marched up through Chalons to Camp de la Carriere, a large concentration camp in the midst of woods, away from any towns, the nearest of which was the little village of Cuperly. We were in the great area known as the Camp de Chalons, where MacMahon had mobilized his army of 50,000 men in 1870, which ended so unhappily at Sedan.
Sunday, June 30, one year since the regiment had been called out, there was a rigid inspection in the morning, and in the afternoon Colonel Reilly and Major Redden spoke on the work of the regiment in that time, and announced that the 42d was now to go into a new sector as a combat division.
The 149th had no fireworks on July 4, 1918. Even the games arranged for the afternoon to celebrate the holiday were neglected. There was good reason: one of the biggest batches of mail our battery had ever received. A letter from home was worth many skyrockets or three-legged races to us. But that evening we saw a bigger variety of pyrotechnic displays than we had ever witnessed before, even at “Paine’s Burning of Rome” or some other such spectacle.
After supper we were given the order to pack, and at 10:30 pulled out on the road. Our way was north, through a broad and barren country, marked in the darkness only by chalky white roads and trenches. Overhead were planes whirring and buzzing, invisible, but very audible, in the dark night. Here and there one dropped a sparkling signal light. At our backs were big fingers of whiteness thrust up into the sky; they were the searchlights in front of Chalons, seeking for enemy planes to reveal to the anti-aircraft guns defending the city from bombers. Ahead, and far to the right and left, the front lines disclosed their presence by light rockets or “star-shells” that continually shot up into the sky and perhaps hovered there for long minutes. We were used to rockets in Lorraine, but never had we seen so many and such a variety as confronted us now. Here was visible evidence that we were engaged in something big.
At 3:30 a. m., we unlimbered our guns and pointed them across a deep chalk trench in front of us. The ammunition from the caissons was piled beside them. As day broke we pitched the flat-tops. The first platoon was located about 200 meters to the right of the second platoon. An equal distance on either side were located platoons of D and F batteries. Thus were the regiment’s guns lined alongthe trench for a distance of two kilometres. To the right flowed the Suippes river, on which was situated the nearest town, Jonchery-sur-Suippes. Several kilometres in front, the church steeple of St. Hilary-le-Grand served as a point for calculating the guns’ fire.
The regiment was in a reserve position, just back of a gently sloping crest, on the forward side of which were the strongly fortified entrenchments of the front lines. One of our earliest fires practiced in gun drill was “firing at will” at imaginary German tanks appearing over this crest. At that time such a possibility was not without its thrills, for the four previous German offensives, on the northern part of the line, had been strikingly successful that spring, and the one which we were to help stop was known to exceed in magnitude any previous attempt. General Gouraud’s exhortation to the French Fourth Army, to which our division was attached, was to “Stand or die!” This his men were ready to do, but how successfully they would withstand the repeated rushes of the German hordes, whose numbers had proved superior in the north, no one could be sure. Two reserve positions were picked, to which the battery might fall back in case the enemy broke through, and Lieutenant Anderson, Sergeant O’Meara and Sergeant Suter spent three days exploring by-roads and paths through the barbed wire for short cuts to be used in case it became necessary to fall back. Fortunately, “falling back” was something the 42d Division never had to do.
Our first work was to dig a gun-pit beneath our flat-top, with a short shelter trench for the gun crew on each side. The pit was dug nearly three feet deep, and the soil piled high in sand-bags on the sides, for additional protection. The gravel and lime, into which our picks and shovels went, seemed as hard as mortar. Under the hot July sun, the men shed all the garments they could, and still the perspiration poured down their bodies.
Ammunition came up at night, and three thousand rounds per gun was stacked in the trench in front, and camouflaged, ready at hand when the attack should come.
For meals the cannoneers walked, in reliefs, to an expanse of low brush, just over a rise a few hundred yards behind us. At a distance this was an innocent looking spot. But when one followed a path into it, he discovered onevery hand pup-tents full of infantrymen, battery and company kitchens cooking meals, and wagons and teams hidden by the foliage. Here was our kitchen, with Tubach and Harris in action, and the branch battery office where “Rainbow” Gibbs officiated, under a tarpaulin beside the chariot du parc. Jerry Rosse, on his ration cart, brought up fresh beef, which Tubach made into delicious roasts and nourishing steaks, as well as an abundance of supplies which enabled us to eat better than we had dreamed a battery could eat in the field.
Daytimes one would scarcely imagine a war was on. Not a gun could be heard. Over the crest in front we could see the black ovals of the enemy’s observation balloons. Occasionally an aeroplane’s whir made us scurry to cover, while a machine gun took a few shots at it, if it was an enemy craft. But otherwise scarcely a sign of activity could be seen on the whole landscape.
At night it was far different. The heavy booming of big guns in our rear, the scream and whistle of shells through the air overhead, the thunder of the enemy’s cannon, lasted from 10 o’clock to 3 or 4 in the morning. The rattle of wagons, carts and caissons in the darkness betokened a continuous procession along the roads up to the front lines the whole night long. Red flares illumined the sky, and light rockets hovered above the crest like a string of arc lamps. The gun crews stood guard, a man at each gun, in two-hour watches through the night.
The men of the gun crews slept in pup tents beneath the flat-tops. The other men—machine gunners and B. C. detail—carved bunks out of the sides of the trench that ran along in front of the pieces. These bunks they covered with their shelter-halves, whose brown was whitened, to blend with the chalky soil they covered. Some shelter-halves bore chalked signs, such as the “Windy Alley Hotel,” the abode of Berney and Pond, with the injunction, “Bombers Aim at This!” Under the caption, “Familiar Sayings,” was chalked up: “Tonight’s the Night!” “What’s for Mess?” “Is there any Mail?” etc.
Captain Robbins spent his time at the battalion observation post. The first platoon was commanded by Lieutenant Waters and the second by Lieutenant Adams. When the latter left, July 13, to act as instructor at an artillery school, many were the regrets expressed, not only by the men ofthe second platoon, but also by those of the first platoon, who had spent the months at 163, in Lorraine, under him. Lieutenant Cronin came up from the horse-lines to take his place.
About five kilometres back, the horse-lines were located in a wood of evergreens, where the caissons and picket lines were camouflaged under trees. During the hot, sunny days before the attack, the men lay in the shade and “read their shirts.” After July 14, they were so constantly on the road for ammunition that the horse-lines were deserted.
Sunday, July 14, was “Bastille Day,” the French Fourth of July. If the rumor was true that the French army issued a bottle of champagne to each three soldiers in way of celebration, it affected the American troops with it not the least. For the day was as dry and hot as those preceding, and the only variation in drink from the coffee at mess was the water of the Suippes river, where some men went to bathe and swim and wash clothes. If the German high command believed the rumor, and thought by beginning their offensive that night they would catch the French incapacitated from their holiday spree, they found they were sadly mistaken.
At any rate they commenced their greatest and last offensive against the Allies that night, a night the 149th can never forget. Shortly before midnight the order came to make up our rolls and packs, so that if events required, we could move out quickly. The information came over the wire that two prisoners captured about nine o’clock had revealed the entire plans of the attack to the minute. At midnight the preliminary bombardment was to commence, which was to last four hours. At 4:15 a. m., the enemy’s infantry was to start over the top. And so it occurred.
At twelve o’clock broke loose a thunderous roar, which sounded like a gigantic hailstorm, so many and so rapid were the cannons’ reports. Over five thousand cannon, it is estimated, were in action. Our orders were to stand by the guns ready to fire the instant command came. So we stood listening to the tremendous cannonading, the whistle and screech of shells overhead from the long-range guns behind us, and watched the red glow of cannon’s belch and shells’ burst. Now and then a great red glare filled the sky, when some ammunition dump was set afire. Off tothe right appeared a lurid eruption of rockets and signal lights of all kinds, the varied pyrotechnics lasting for ten or fifteen minutes; the infantry’s stores of rockets had been hit. Along the crest ahead, where ran the road on which we heard so much traffic at night, shells from the enemy’s heavy guns were dropping. In addition to the heavy bombardment of the front lines, there was constant fire on all trenches, roads and other ways of communication.
At 4 a. m., the blackness was lightening to grey. The guns were laid, ready to drop a barrier of bursting shells when the enemy’s first wave neared our front line. The ’phone rang. There was checking of data and minute directions. At 4:15 came the command, “Fire,” and the guns along the trench began to blaze and bang unceasingly. The men worked like demons, deaf now to all the thunder and roar about them, no eye to the crimson glare that lit up the horizon in front beneath the black piles of smoke like thunder clouds over the front lines, unconscious of the occasional shrapnel that fell near or the fragments from the big shells that burst along the crest and sometimes over towards them. Hour after hour they fed the guns at the same rate of speed. They could see no signs of the enemy themselves, none but the shells from his guns. But they knew that on the other side of the crest their fire was thinning the successive grey waves of Germans that hurled themselves on our infantry. The strength, the lives of our infantry depended on these 75’s, and we could not fail them for a second. Fatigue, hunger, thirst were unminded. Coffee was brought to the gun crews at noon. The first food was some beans and hard-tack at midnight, more than thirty hours after mess of the evening before.
At 11 a. m. came a lull. The enemy’s first mighty effort was broken. General Gouraud’s plan had succeeded. By drawing back all his forces from the front lines to the intermediate defences, he had caused the bombardment of hundreds of the enemy’s guns to fall harmlessly, and exposed the German infantry waves to the more deadly fire of our cannon and machine-guns while they crossed the vacated trenches. In addition to the three German divisions holding the sector opposite the 21st French Corps—comprising three French divisions and the 42d Division—six first-class divisions of the enemy were hurled againstour lines. Yet, says the division’s official Summary of Events of July 15, 1918, “In spite of the most vigorous attempt of the enemy, he was able to set foot on the intermediate position only at one point. A counter-attack by two companies of French infantry and two companies of the 167th Infantry drove him from this position in a bloody hand-to-hand combat.” Five successive attacks that morning were one after another thrown back with heavy losses.
Not only in our immediate front, but all the way along the line from Chateau Thierry to the Argonne, the Allied line had held. The program by which the enemy expected to reach Suippes at noon July 15, and Chalons at 4 p. m. July 16, was irretrievably defeated. The Second Battle of the Marne, involving greater numbers of men than any previous battle in history, and more cannon than were engaged in our entire Civil War, was a decisive triumph for the Allies and a fatal crisis for the enemy.
Late in the afternoon, the enemy undertook a second great effort, and our firing, which had slowed down during the afternoon,recommencedat its rapid rate. Again there was a lull, and again the attack recommenced. All night long we fired, but since the rate was slower, three men could handle the work. Half the crew slept half the night, and then relieved the others. So tired they were that the frequent report of the gun ten feet away disturbed their slumbers not the slightest.
Next day the firing continued, but slowly, as during the night. During the 15th the battery fired nearly one thousand rounds per gun. On the 16th about half that number of rounds were fired.
The reserve ammunition stored in the trench had been expended, and the caissons were bringing up more. This necessitated hard, long and dangerous trips by the drivers. On the night before the attack they had packed up, harnessed and hitched, and stood till morning waiting for possible orders to pull out the guns. In the four big offensives before this one, in 1918, the Germans had swept through the lines the first day; so preparations had been made for any contingencies. In the morning, caissons were sent out for more ammunition. One dump was blown up while they were alongside. This and other difficulties compelled them to search about the countryside for available storesof shells. It was midnight before they brought them up, along shelled roads, to the position. Those who had not gone out in the first hitches, were out next day on another search. When they were on their way to the battery position, a great rainstorm burst. A high wind swept from the woods where the enemy had been dropping gas shells during the day. Alarms came so frequently that the order was given to put on masks. To follow a road in utter darkness amid beating rain with gas masks on was next to impossible. And that the caissons reached the position without accident seemed a miracle, for which the drivers can not be given too much credit. The gas alerte passed. But the rain was still pouring down so heavily and the sky was so black that the caissons had to be unloaded by lightning flashes. A few stray steps might pitch one headlong in the deep trench. With this intermittent illumination, unloading four caissons was a slow job. When it had been finished, everyone was, in spite of slickers and gas suits, so drenched that water could be wrung out of every garment. The storm passed across the front lines towards the enemy. As it cleared on our side, the silence, interrupted only by peals of thunder before, was broken by a heavy cannonading from the Allies’ guns.
A hot sun next day dried out clothes and blankets. The quiet of the days before the battle returned. Exciting aeroplane battles, or an occasional balloon sent down in flames, were all the evidence of warfare. Captain Robbins read the communiques of the preceding days, and told of the mighty repulse the enemy had suffered.
A projectile with an I. A. L. fuse, the most delicate of those we used, had stuck in the bore of the Third Section piece on the evening of the 17th. Since all efforts of the battery mechanics were unavailing, the piece was taken to the divisional repair shop at about dawn on the 19th and another gun sent from the shop to replace it.
Though there were losses in other batteries of the regiment, Battery E went through the engagement without a casualty. The death of Lieutenant Cowan, who had enlisted in the battery as a private, gone with it to the Mexican border, and been commissioned an officer of it before leaving Fort Sheridan, in August, 1917, came as a heavy blow to the men of Battery E because he was so generallyand thoroughly well liked by them. His transfer to Headquarters Company had merely removed him from their eyes but not their hearts. As liaison officer, he was in the forward trenches during the engagement, and there a shell fragment struck him on the afternoon of July 16. The weird beauty of his funeral the following evening left a deep impression on the men who were at the regimental horse-lines at the time. After a drizzling rain early in the evening, the sky cleared, and the moonlight sifted down through the trees, glittering on the wet leaves, as the procession marched slowly through the woods to the band’s solemn music of Chopin’s “Funeral March”. The call of “Taps” through the dead of night, the final rifle volleys, brought the keener anguish at the thought that our first loss at the enemy’s hands had been a comrade with whom we would have parted last.
On Friday, July 19, came orders to move. All ammunition was carried into the trench and camouflaged. When darkness came the flat-tops were taken down, and everything packed. The limbers were up early, and at 10 o’clock the battery pulled out. Our way was through Dompierre and into a woods, where we camped during the next day. Next night, leaving at 9:45, the regiment made a wide detour around Chalons, which was receiving heavy bombing by dark, and arrived at Vitry-la-Ville about 7:30 a. m. That night we entrained, bound for the west, where the Allies were pushing back the Chateau Thierry salient. Our destination was not far by direct route, but the presence of the enemy in the valley of the Marne about Dormans cut us off. So we traveled in a circuitous course, southward to Brevonne, then westerly through Troyes, Rumilly-sur-Seine, Longueville and Gretz, to the environs of Paris, and east again down the valley of the Marne, through Meaux, to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where we detrained at midnight, July 22.
At our encampment near Montreuil-aux-Bois, whither we hiked from La Ferté-sous-Jouarre on the morning of July 23, we found traces of the horse-lines of the artillery of the 26th Division, in the shape of trampled picket lines, bunks of woven branches, and abandoned equipment of all kinds. Stories of heavy losses, of nights and days without sleep or rest, as the New England batteries tried to catch up with their infantry in the wake of the rapidly retreating Germans, of extraordinary advances by the American forces, of hardships and lack of supplies due to the inability of supply trains to catch up with the rapid progress of the forward troops, met us on every hand. They might have been, as we recall them now, prophecies of what we, too, were to undergo in this sector.
We had only a day’s respite. On the 24th, a large number of the battery were allowed leave to visit La Ferté. The civilians had not long returned to the city, from which they had fled when the enemy had advanced beyond Chateau Thierry, and shops were only beginning to be restocked. Fruits and vegetables were plentiful but at high prices. Meat was altogether lacking, and eggs were few. No restaurants were open at all, and few cafes. To secure a meal, one had to first buy the food, and then seek a housewife who would cook and serve it.
Next morning came a sudden order to move, and, three-quarters of an hour after its receipt, the battery was on the road at 9:30 a. m. The way led through places whose names were already known to our ears for the splendid fighting American troops had done there—Coulombes, Bouresches and Belleau woods. In the golden fields of wheat were big splotches where shells had torn up the black earth; trampled spaces often held a mound marked by a rifle stuck bayonet first into the ground—time was only enough to bury the dead, not yet sufficient to put woodencrosses over them. Along the roads was equipment and material of all kinds, abandoned by the Germans in their hurried retreat, or cast aside by the Americans pushing on in pursuit.
At night the battalion camped in the woods above Epieds. Early next morning the carriages were pushed under the shelter of the trees to hide the signs of troops from enemy aeroplanes scouting overhead. So close to the lines were we now that no movement could be made in the open by day. At 9 p. m., the guns moved out to go forward into position, leaving the wagon train here. The battery had not gone far when a heavy rain began to fall. The road, through the dense woods of the Foret de Fere, was narrow, muddy, and full of ruts. “Cannoneers to the wheels,” was the constant cry. Splashing through water and mud to their knees, the dismounted men tugged at wheels sunk far down in the deep ruts and holes. “Horse down!” came the cry from a Fifth Section caisson. The animal was on its back over the edge of the road, so that it could not regain a footing on the road, and if it rolled the other way the horse would be lost in the ravine below. With prolongs around its body, the men pulled the horse almost back on the road where it could get a footing, after three-quarters of an hour of hard effort directed by Captain Robbins. Then a caisson, catching up to the column, went over the horse’s hoof, and the animal had to be shot.
By this time the rain had ceased. In the silence that succeeded the sound of the falling drops, could be heard the venomous pop and spit of gas shells bursting in the woods. Rifle shots rang out occasionally. Uneasy in the midst of unknown danger, the men greeted the sudden order to turn back with surprise. But they made haste to execute it. Most of the battery had debouched from the narrow road into an open grassy space. The last three caissons, however, were unlimbered and turned around. Tveter gave an exhibition of skillful driving that brought cheers from the men, turning the big chariot du parc with its three-horse hitch without assistance or accident. The other carriages returned through this stretch of woods by another road, little, if any, better than the one by which they came. The drivers lashed their horses to a gallop and took the guns and caissons through with scarcely a stop, giving them notime to sink in ruts or holes. The wooden boxes roped on top the caissons swayed and tossed, spilling gas equipment and liaison instruments, to be picked up by the dismounted men following, who cheered on the drivers to greater speed.
Not until long after was the explanation of the sudden countermarch revealed. When the orders were given to move up our artillery, it was with the belief that the infantry would make a certain objective that day. The stiff resistance in these woods delayed the infantry advance, however, and the doughboys were still occupied in clearing these of the enemy when our battalion pulled through them. The courier sent to apprise Major Redden of the circumstances and consequent change of orders caught up with us when we were, therefore, beyond our own lines and up with our advance infantry. This was the first time the battalion was in so unusual a place for artillery. Just a week later, we occupied a position ahead of the infantry over night. But so fast was the enemy retreating that any thrills over our exposed condition lay in imagination rather than actual circumstances.
By the next night the woods had been cleared, and we went forward again. The long steady climb up hill through the Bois de la Tournelle made hard pulling. The halts to rest the horses were frequent, and, near the top, teams from one carriage had to be added to another hitch and then the assistance returned in order to get up the steep grade. Our division was on the extreme left of the American forces, and we were constantly alongside the French troops who adjoined us on our left. How strenuous had been the fighting was evidenced by the bodies of dead still lying where they had fallen the afternoon before. Haggard Frenchmen were just then beginning to seek their missing comrades.
The battalion took position in an open field in front of the woods, at the top of the hill, under flat-tops. The horse-lines were at the edge of the woods behind. On our left was a small woods, at the edge of which were several French batteries of 75’s. They pitched no flat-tops, but camouflaged their guns with green boughs, staying in the woods, where were their shelters and kitchen, except when actual work on the guns required their presence. Our telephone men, mechanics and Captain Robbins also had theirquarters in these woods. Elaborate abris, benches and tables woven of boughs about a cleared “Appelplatz,” and rifles, overcoats and other equipment spoke of the occupation of the same woods by the Germans not long before. Every section of the battery had one or two German rifles and a stock of “boche” ammunition beneath its flat-top, with which ambitious marksmen sought to emulate the example of the automatic riflemen of the Alabama and New York regiments, who had each brought down an aeroplane at Champagne.
This position is called by the men the “tower position,” from the high observation platform built of wooden scaffolding by the Germans half-way between the position and the edge of the woods. Being in the open field our batteries escaped the fire of the enemy, which was directed several times on the French batteries at the edge of the woods and in the depths of the woods also. Sometimes the bursts and fragments came dangerously close to the gun-pits, but they were not many enough to seem directed at our position.
Berney came close to providing the battery with fresh beef while it was here. But “close” was all! A lone cow was seen wandering in a field near by. A volunteer raiding party composed of Corporal Pond, of the engineers, and Acting-Corporal Berney of the machine-gunners, set out in pursuit. They had no difficulty in surrounding and capturing the cow, which continued to graze placidly when they forcibly seized the rope that hung from its neck. Then the members of the foraging party remembered they had no authority from their officer in command to conduct such operations. So half the detail, namely Corporal Pond, returned to outline the situation and report the success of their movement to Lieutenant Waters. Not averse to acquiring fresh beef free himself, he granted the necessary authority. But in the meantime, a new force had appeared on the scene demanding possession of the cow, to judge from his gesticulations, for his torrent of words were meaningless to the two foragers. This was a young French soldier, breathless from a run across the fields, cap askew and hair disheveled. So Pond went back to the position again, this time for some one to act as interpreter. Through this medium the volunteer raiding party learned that the cow was the property of the major commanding theneighboring French batteries, that the cow’s guardian had fallen asleep and the cow had wandered off, and that the major would do dire things to the poilu if he did not recover the cow before the major learned of his loss. So the battery got no fresh beef, but ate “goldfish” instead.
Two days later the machine gunners achieved real distinction, when Donahue and Bowly brought a German aeroplane to earth a few hundred feet from the position. The plane was riddled with bullets and both pilot and observer were badly wounded. In descending the plane crashed into a tree at the edge of the woods, wrecking the machine. This first actual contact with the enemy and visual token of damage done him was not without its thrills. Needless to say, “beaucoup souvenirs” were secured.
During the day of July 29, the battery fired on machine gun nests that obstructed the infantry’s advance. Next afternoon it gave heavy response to a German barrage, and continued with a concentration fire all evening. Both nights the battery was called on to fire at one o’clock for an hour or two. On the night of the 31st the men were at the guns almost till morning, firing intermittently all the while.
This constant firing was accompanying our infantry in their advance. The names of Sergy, Seringes, Hill 212, Meurcy Farm and the River Ourcq represent terrible hours to the infantry of the Rainbow division—hours whose awfulness we realized when the battery moved forward at noon August 2. Skirting the town of Fere-en-Tardenois, which still drew occasional shots from the enemy’s long-range guns, we crossed the small stream whose line had been so strongly defended by the Germans until our doughboys had forced them from it. The Ourcq was not more than fifteen or twenty feet wide at the place where our guns and caissons forded it. But there was a steep incline on the far-side leading up to a high road. Taking this road into Fere-en-Tardenois, we turned at a sharp angle at the outskirts and took the road to Seringes. In the shelled fields along which we passed, litter-carriers were still at work bringing back wounded. Some boys came limping back alone, or supported by others with an arm in a sling or bandaged about the head. Conversation with one of these turned always to the question of relief: When will relief be up? Have you heard of troops coming upto relieve us? Some battalions of infantry were pushing on after having lost fifty per cent of their men.
About 4 p. m. the batteries of the second battalion gained a crest to the right of the Foret de Nesles.
“How far are our lines from here?” asked an officer in the lead, of a signal corps man on the road.
“There’s only a company and a half of infantry beyond here. I don’t know how far ahead they are,” was the reply.
So the battalion turned back and took cover in woods behind the crest. Here supper—canned corn and stewed dried apricots—was served, and here were established the horse-lines, which only stayed a day. German equipment and dead lay strewn through the woods.
After mess came the order to harness and hitch. The Second Battalion trotted into position for the first and only time in the regiment’s history. The sight of the guns and caissons dashing into action was stirring, and it sent up the spirits of the fatigued infantrymen to a pitch that enabled them to carry on when already exhausted. In the morning we learned that during the darkness the company and a half of infantrymen, who had been scouting to gain contact with the enemy, had withdrawn, leaving us the nearest unit to the enemy. But the enemy were retreating so rapidly that they were beyond our range again by afternoon. The road forward was swarming with supply trains, artillery, machine gun carts, and infantry that passed, company after company, their packs on their backs, pushing ahead to keep the enemy on the move, giving him no rest in which to organize and entrench himself.
On the evening of August 3 came the order to move forward again, compelling us to abandon our mess to pack up. Our route, through Chery-Chartreuse, was so congested that progress was slow. Supply trains were doing their utmost to execute their mission, difficult because the line was pushing forward so rapidly, and leaving railroad heads so far behind. At one point it was necessary to halt for several hours because the road ahead was being constantly shelled, making passage impossible. It was daybreak when we pulled up a long steep hill, passing through muddy fields to avoid danger on the shelled roads. The horses, already worn out by continued labor, little food andscarcity of water, could hardly make the ascent even with cannoneers pushing, shouting and urging them on by every means possible.
Our position here was on the forward slope of a bowl-shaped valley. At the bottom, in the shelter of a line of bushes, were the guns of the First Battalion. To our left were woods, in which the horses and limbers took cover. At the right was a large farm house that housed the B. C. detail and some other men. Far down, in the depths of the basin were two roads that drew much fire. In front along the crest ran another, also a frequent target. Artillery, infantry and supplies were coming up all the time in preparation for an attack to push across the Vesle river.
The men had traveled all night in the rain and cold. But before there could be any rest, trail pits must be dug, in order that we might be able to fire if called upon at any time to do so. With increasing experience of hunger and consequently keener eye to the emergencies ahead, the men had levied upon a pile of rations lying where they had been abandoned by some cart whose load was too great to make progress along the miry road. They had, therefore, for breakfast—ere the battery kitchen had time to get its fire going—some of that canned commodity labelled by the packers “canned roast beef” but more generally termed, by the consumers, “monkey meat.” Canned sweet potatoes heated in a mess-kit over a can of solidified alcohol was an excellent dish, the more appreciated because they had never been issued to the battery. The infantry were favored in this regard, it seems. The discovery that elderberries grew in the woods near by furnished dessert, for sugar was supplied from some one’s store, acquired, no doubt, from some other abandoned rations. But the dessert was, for most, a mistake, as they realized when they began to feel sensations like those of years before resulting from an overdose of green apples.
When the digging was done, the cannoneers passed the afternoon in sleep. In the evening the battery fired. Heavy shelling on the road behind, after midnight, was accompanied by another call to the guns to fire again. The caissons, which had gone back after more ammunition after they had come up with the pieces, came up with their second load in the midst of darkness. The first two reachedthe position without delay, but the others, halted by the constant shelling on the road, had to wait till nearly daybreak before it was safe to venture up.
Rain fell next day. But the big tarpaulins belonging with the guns were stretched as a tent under the camouflage, and gave comfort to the men so long as they were not called upon to fire. The bread that came with meals—carried in cans from the kitchen in the woods—was green with mould, from the long journey in inclement weather from the bakeries. The coffee tasted like quinine, since the water to be found was so bad that it had to be strongly chlorinated. But a big sack of mail came to the battery that day, and all troubles were forgotten in the joy of hearing from home.
That day, August 5, Sergeant McElhone left the battery to go back to the United States as an instructor, an opportunity that made him the envy of everyone while they congratulated him on his good luck. Corporal Monroe succeeded to the charge of the Second Section, Herrod taking his place as gunner.
All that night and the next day, the battery maintained a steady fire on the enemy, destroying machine gun nests, entrenchments and available shelter in preparations for an advance across the Vesle. From 4:30 till after 8 p. m. August 6, we dropped a slow barrage on the town of Bazouches, to the left of Fismes.
At noon next day the Second Battalion went forward to a position almost overlooking the river. The movement was not without danger. For the bright day, with enemy aeroplanes overhead constantly, exposed the batteries to discovery, particularly when they galloped up an open hillside into position. A blanket covering two still figures just beside our path, several others farther away without such cover, and white bandages gleaming on the bodies of some of the battalion of engineers who, with pontoon bridges, were waiting in readiness in the woods below, were evidence that the shells which whirred over and burst a ways beyond us were not always so far from their mark. The battery went up the hill one carriage at a time. Flat-tops were stretched at once, and in addition to the trail pit, each section dug a trench for shelter as well. Shells bursting on the crest ahead lent speed to the shovels and picks.
Captain Robbins, using a tree-top as an O. P., directedthe adjustment of the pieces, firing only two rounds per gun in doing so.
But that was all the battery fired from this position, although we stayed there the following two days. The division which had relieved our infantry could not keep up the pace the latter had set, which formed the basis of the plans by which we had moved up, ready to support the crossing of the Vesle.
The roads behind us received constant fire from the enemy. Shrapnel bursts came near the position occasionally, and gas alarms were frequent. In the horse-lines just behind lit a shell on the afternoon of August 8 that caused the battery’s first serious casualties. Parkhurst was instantly killed. Foster was struck in the breast by a large fragment, and died two days later. Lawrence Gibbs was wounded in the hand. He refused to go to the hospital at the time, and kept at his duties as clerk of the firing battery, though later the wound, becoming worse, compelled him to go. For his bravery in going after medical aid and under heavy shell fire, refusing treatment himself until the others had been attended to, he was recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross by the regimental commander.
This news of death in our own battery—the first enlisted men lost in action—caused a heavy sorrow and grief that could not be shaken off, among the men of the battery, whose friendship by this time had become very close.
On the night of August 10, the battery moved back to a spot within a few hundred feet of that it had occupied before making the last advance. The caissons drivers made trip after trip to bring back all the ammunition, under frequent shell fire on the road. Horse after horse, weakened to exhaustion, dropped in harness, and had to be taken out of the hitch.
Artillery of the Fourth Division were in position all about us, in the valley. In the woods were their horse-lines, too, from which they so openly brought their horses to water that they received ironic inquiries concerning their “horse fair.”
Shelling was frequent, and gas was always noticeable at night. Itching throats and watering eyes were too common for comfort. When the battery was in readiness to move out, the caissons having gone and the guns waiting for sundownto follow, the enemy gave a parting salute, a little fuller of thrills than any before. In the trail pit was the only protection. The buzz of jagged fragments through the air, the loud whang and eruption of sod and soil from a burst not far from Captain Robbins’ tent, sent everyone to this slight shelter. Fortunately the farewell ended with no one injured.
Next day, August 12, found the regiment in the Bois de Chatelet, where they examined the site of the “Big Bertha” which had been there. Only a huge turntable ten yards in diameter, with a concrete base at least eight feet deep—one saw that far down a circular trench around it—was left, with the railway tracks along which the carriage ran. The ball-bearings of the turntable were the size of a man’s head.
That day Corporal Holton was appointed first sergeant. Corporal Collier succeeding him as gas N. C. O. Sergeant Landrus, who had been appointed “top-cutter” in O’Meara’s place July 24, had gone to Saumur to officers’ school.
Two days later the regiment marched through Chateau Thierry, to which its citizens were just returning. French soldiers guarded German prisoners at work clearing out houses and cleaning the street. Before some doors stood wagons loaded with furniture. Other doors bearing the sign, “Habitée,” indicated those houses’ occupants were settled. The church’s walls, torn by shell holes, bore witness to the severe shelling the town had received. On the hillside beyond, lay the village of Vaux, now a heap of white bricks, where the Germans had advanced. Hiking both morning and afternoon, the battery reached a woods on the bank of the Marne, near the hamlet of Mery-sur-Marne, where we encamped.
For three days the battery lay here, twenty men going to Paris on a 48-hour pass, the others visiting La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, more thriving now than when we had detrained there three weeks before. But prices were very high: peaches and plums, 3 francs a pound; melons, 4 and 5 francs each; tomatoes, 15 sous a pound; potatoes 10 sous a pound; sugar, 20 sous a pound. Swimming in the Marne was a favorite pastime until the drowning of a member of Battery F clouded our enjoyment of it.
On August 18 the regiment hiked along the Parishighway, alongside the Marne, to Trilport, where it entrained that evening.
A box-car was a welcome haven of rest then. The weeks in this sector had passed like months. The constant moving up, the difficulty of getting adequate rations, the lack of good water, the shortage of sleep, and the continual and strenuous activity through it all, had worn out the men and killed many of our horses. But the division had done much in the time during which it had been in the line, and our fatigue seemed lightened by such statements as that of the divisional commander: “In eight days the 42d Division has forced the passage of the Ourcq, made an advance of 16 kilometres, and met, routed and decimated a Prussian Guard division, a Bavarian Reserve division and one other division.”
Our train journey took us south to the divisional area, about Langres. The regiment detrained at Bourmont, and from there the batteries hiked to different towns, E to Bourg Saint Marie.
This is as close as the battery ever came to spending leisure at a “rest camp,” of which we heard rumors at the front, and it promised to be quite the opposite of a rest, from the schedule laid out. No more than promised, however, for the ten days spent there sufficed for only a day or two of the schedule, after the time required for settling down and before the days required to prepare for moving.
The men who went to the “scabies” hospital, at Bourmont, of whom there was a considerable number, were the ones who had the rest. Those who were members of the “Two Weeks’ Club” enjoyed only what rest the corporals, honorary members because their sentence was three weeks, who were in charge of the details—which did various choice bits of excavation work—allowed them; whether that was insufficient or excessive can only be determined by testimony.
The dread schedule appeared only for one day, Monday, August 26. Reveille was at 4:30; breakfast, 5; watering and feeding horses; foot drill, 7:30-8:30; pistol drill, 8:30-9:15; standing gun drill, 9:30-10:30; stables, 10:30-11:30. In the afternoon two hours of pistol drill and standing gun drill were followed by stables, 4 to 5 p. m., filling the time as completely as in the morning.
Next day reveille was at 5:45, and the schedule was thus rid of its most disagreeable feature, early rising. Otherwise it was nearly as the preceding day. Wednesday, however, a regimental review, and the consequent washing of harness, and cleaning and greasing of carriages, uponreturn, knocked out the schedule completely, and it had no time to regain its feet. Next day the caissons went after ammunition, and at night the regiment marched again on its way to the front.
Before this departure, the battalion witnessed the presentation of colors donated by Corporal Beatty’s father to Battery E. The summing up of the battery’s work on this occasion, the formal statement of its standards and achievements by Captain Robbins were indeed impressive.
All traveling on our way to the St. Mihiel front was by night. Particular care was being taken that no troop movements should be revealed to the enemy. To us this plan had its advantages because we hiked during the cool hours of night and rested when the day was hottest. The first day we passed in woods near St. Ouen des Pahey, the next under trees at the fork of two roads, and that evening made the two hours’ hike to a large camp of wooden barracks at Rebeuville, just over the hill from Neufchateau.
Here we stayed four days, visiting the city of Neufchateau, bathing in the river, and grooming and grazing the horses. Troupes of Y. M. C. A. entertainers played two afternoons, giving a performance of “Baby Mine” on the hillside behind the barracks. The last night of our stay, the whir of planes overhead caused the cry “Lights Out!” The explosion of several bombs gave proof of their being enemy planes. But fortunately the bombs damaged nothing but farm land on the other side of Neufchateau.
Next night we took the road at 8:30 and hiked till midnight, passing near Domremy, the birthplace of Jeanne d’Arc. Our billets for the day were several hay mows, in the town of Brancourse.
Starting out at 5 p. m. September 5, we made a record hike, going forty-seven kilometres before making camp after daylight. At the end of the journey, the carriages, having followed the wrong road, had to cross a narrow embankment, sloping dizzily to a deep valley below on each side. Misfortune struck the very first carriage. A wheel went over the edge, and gun, limber, horses and drivers rolled over and over down the slope. Kadon and Searles fell free and unhurt. Al Overstreet, being wheel driver, was brought down by the pole and pinned beneath a horse. His situation was precarious, but he was finally extricated,suffering from the fall and a badly wrenched leg. The horse escaped unhurt. The chief damage was done to the wheels of the gun carriage, both of which were broken. These were replaced that day by two spare wheels from the battery wagon. After a day of frequent rain and little rest, the battery drove through Toul that night and camped next day in the Bois de la Reine, near Sanzey. Here we stayed for four days, moving up into position for the attack September 10.
Amid spasmodic showers, the firing battery started forward at 5:30 p. m. Brakes, mogul springs and trace chains had all been wrapped, to muffle their clatter. Our position, a short distance past Mandres, was within a thousand yards of the enemy’s lines. The road from which we turned into an open field was being shelled, and the fire increased after we pulled into position, at about 10:30. Shell splinters cut ropes and a stake of the Third Section camouflage. A fragment struck Baker in the knee, making a bad wound. His leg was stiffening, but he was lifted to a limber seat, and rode there back to the aid station.
The crowded roads on the way up, teeming with supply trains, batteries of artillery, machine-gun carts and caissons of ammunition, gave evidence of what thorough and powerful preparations the American army had made for driving the enemy from the St. Mihiel salient. The roads themselves, very vital to an advancing army, had been put in excellent condition, and guide posts and marks were on every hand to expedite and facilitate traffic. Infantry was billeted in the towns as close to the line as they could be kept concealed, and came up in long lines when night fell September 11. By that time each section had dug its trail pit and shelter trenches, improvised some sort of a platform for the gun wheels, and cleaned and greased all its ammunition.
As darkness came on, rain began to fall. It became a heavy downpour later, and in a couple of hours the trail pits and trenches were a foot deep with water and mud. At 11 o’clock came the command through the dark, “Chiefs of sections, report!” Huddled at the entrance of the captain’s tent, the sergeants received the data for the firing that was to prepare for and accompany the attack to take place next morning.
At the same time the rattle and clank something like that of a steam roller told us of tanks coming up for the attack. We could see their clumsy silhouettes against the sky, as they crossed in front along the crest. The rain had ceased, and the sky was clearing. Long, dark lines resolved themselves into files of infantry winding their way up and over the crest ahead, into the trenches beyond.
At 1 a. m. began the preliminary fire, at the low rate of twenty rounds per gun an hour. This continued until 5 o’clock, when a huge shower rocket signaled with a great burst of light the beginning of the advance. At this we increased the rate of fire, commencing the barrage that preceded the infantry’s line. The heavy rain had so softened the ground that it gave way beneath the improvised platforms on which the gun wheels rested. When the firing was slow, the planks could be straightened, the gun crews tugging to lift a wheel out of the mud. But the barrage could not be interrupted. Before long the planks were thrown aside altogether, and the wheels sank with the shock of each round until they were eight to ten inches in the mire when the order to cease firing came at 10 o’clock.
By that time group after group of prisoners were passing us on their way to the rear, in such numbers as to indicate our great success. Still more infantry filed past to the trenches. Reports of incredible progress and amazing figures of prisoners filtered to us. At noon we packed up, ready to go forward when the limbers should come up. But, though they had started at 7 o’clock that morning, they did not arrive till 8 in the evening. The roads were black with advancing troops and supply trains. The broad fields between us and Beaumont suddenly turned an O. D. hue when a battalion of infantry pitched their pup tents there for the night.
At 11 p. m. our battery was on the road, after a hard pull to get out of the soggy field. We went only a kilometre or so to the left, toward Seicheprey, when we found the way impassable. After waiting an hour or more, the battalion turned around and headed in the opposite direction. Here, too, was blocked traffic and delay. At Flirey, in the early morning, the dismounted men were distributed along the road to assist the M. P.’s in clearing a way for us. There was, it appeared, but one road to advance into the territory ahead of us evacuated by the enemy. And it, aswe found later, had been shelled almost to extinction. Had it not been for corned beef sandwiches and coffee from kitchens at the roadside near here, the boys would have gone hungry all day, although a good many levied successfully on the ration dump in the town.
Advance was at a snail’s pace, and halts were frequent and long. Not far out of town, we gained the summit of a ridge that gave us a wide view of what had yesterday been the battlefield. It had been so plowed up by shells that trenches were obliterated, abris buried beyond sight save for some timber jutting up from the torn earth, and the woods and thickets swept as by fire. Recently captured Germans were gathering stones to fill shell holes in the road and make it passable for the long line of wagons, carts, ambulances, guns and caissons.
By afternoon we had reached the town of Essey, where large vegetable gardens, stores and warehouses full of supplies, and furnished houses showed how comfortable the enemy had been in their four years there. Now that they were gone, a throng of black-clad refugees, old men and women, a few girls, and little children, crowded the market square, with carts piled high with bedding and household belongings.
In the afternoon the battery went into position in front of LaMarche, the limbers and caissons going into woods a few hundred yards ahead. The horses, watered in a small stream, broke the dam that held it, and allowed the water to flow into the dry gulley below, in which the guns were placed. By morning the second platoon was flooded out, and had to move back a few yards to dry land. In the race between the two sections the Third Section won Lieutenant Leprohon’s prize of a keg of beer, which, however, they were destined not to drink. There was compensation for the labor caused, however, in the presence of water for bathing and washing. Since we did no firing in two days we stayed here, this was of real advantage.
The battery kitchen, in town, a few hundred yards away, put the Germans’ vegetable garden to good use, cooking the carrots, cabbage and turnips in vessels which the Germans had abandoned—a practically complete kitchen equipment. Fresh vegetables were so rare that they were highly appreciated. The wounded cow—divided, according to Solomon’s principle in the dispute of the two women over the babe,in equal parts between E and F batteries—proved to be more venerable than we thought, and though boiled for many hours, provided only soup for our nourishment.
By the afternoon of September 14 details came to us of the clearing of the entire St. Mihiel salient, freeing 150 square miles and yielding 15,000 prisoners, as well as considerable prestige to the American army in its first independent effort. Occupying the center of the advance, the 42nd Division had advanced nineteen kilometres in twenty-four hours.
The following day came the order for us to advance. The move was a short one, only two kilometres ahead, but the road was uphill through mud up to the axles. The horses, succumbing already under the heavy labor and scanty food, required all the assistance the dismounted men could give them. Sometimes there was question whether the cannoneers were not pushing the horses as well as the caissons. Even such famous teams as Hardy’s “Omar” and “Ambrose,” Grund’s “Bunny” and the mare, Hedgepath’s “Dick” and “Fatima,” and Young’s “Red” and “Bud,” were worked to their utmost to pull up carriage after carriage through “Lepage Avenue,” as the muddy way was named from its resemblance to the famous glue.
The position was on the hill top in the midst of woods, the greater part of which had already been cut by the Germans. A well equipped saw mill was not far away, and from its yards was obtained lumber for the gun pits and for shacks built for the officers and for the kitchen. Corrugated iron huts housed the B. C. detail and the extra cannoneers, who brought up supplies and ammunition on a narrow gauge railroad which ran from LaMarche up through the woods to St. Benoit station in front of them, where there was a full gauge track. When the Alabama doughboys first discovered the narrow gauge railroad, it furnished them high entertainment for a couple of nights. They coasted on flat cars down the hill to LaMarche. They ran the little engine on a wild journey through the woods, tooting the whistle and shouting loud enough to wake Fritz in his dugouts two or three miles away. Then the 117th Engineers took over the rolling stock and operated it for practical instead of amusement purposes.
The gun crews finished their gun pits and dug abris, employing the lumber and corrugated iron left by the enemy,before there was call to fire. Now that the salient was cleared, the chief work was the establishing of a firm defensive line. On the 19th the battery fired twenty rounds on an American aeroplane which had fallen within the enemy lines, in order to destroy it before the enemy carried it off. That day also the battery fired for adjustment.
Rocket guard was established when the data was provided for an indicator board. By sighting along an arrow on this board, the sentinel could tell from the location of the place where the red rocket rose whether it called for normal barrage, “green” barrage, or whatever other barrages might have been given us.
The following morning, September 20, about 5 a. m., the call came over the telephone for normal barrage, no rocket having been seen. No sooner was that fired than orders were given for green barrage. Later we learned that the enemy raiding party had gone around the first barrage but were caught by the second and none escaped back to his lines.
Two days later, September 22, we crawled out of our tents at 3 a. m. to carry 100 rounds per gun from the piles along the road back of the position. From 4 to 5:45 the battery fired a slow bombardment and then a barrage till 6:30, to accompany our infantry’s highly successful raid of Marinbois Farm, strongly held by the enemy. About noon a few rounds were fired on an enemy working party.
At 3:30 a. m., September 23, at the cry, “Normal barrage,” from Kulicek, then on watch at the rocket post, the guard in each gun pit woke the men sleeping in their pup-tents in the bushes behind. Hastily pulling on our shoes, we dashed out into a drizzling rain, and fired about 100 rounds per gun in the next two hours. A raiding party of American troops and one of the enemy had accidentally stumbled on each other in the darkness. The following night there was heavy firing on both sides, and the battery was aroused twice, but fired little either time. Both sides, it seemed, were uneasy in anticipation of the great drive that began September 26.
Though the actual drive on this date was northward, by troops west of Verdun, the preliminary cannonading stretched along the line facing eastward, south of Verdun, as well, thus concealing from the enemy the actual line ofattack until it was too late for him to concentrate his forces. Battery E, firing from 11:30 p. m. till 6:30 a. m., the morning of September 26, expended about 1,500 rounds in this ruse, our infantry having been withdrawn from the front lines, in anticipation of heavy counterbombardment.
Perhaps the worst task on this night was that of the drivers on the caissons which carried the shells from the railroad track to the position. The haul was short, but the mud was deep and heavy. They made trip after trip, using every possible means of urging the horses to their task. But when the last load had been carried, about 3 a. m., the horses were so exhausted that they could not pull the empty caissons through the long stretch of gumbo on the way back to the horse lines. When the gun crews had ceased firing, therefore, the cannoneers went to the drivers’ assistance. The latter lay, dead asleep, on top of the caissons, while the horses munched in the bushes at the roadside. By much shouting and more pushing, the men at last got the caissons past the wallow of gumbo to the hard road, where pulling was easy for the horses.
On the night of the 27th the battery moved to the front edge of the woods. It was another struggle against heavy mud, and morning came ere the second platoon was finally in position. The two platoons were about half a kilometre apart, Lieutenant Leprohon commanding the first, and Lieutenant Lombardi the second. Brush and trees had to be cut down to permit firing without danger of a shell bursting prematurely in the tree tops in front of the guns. Gun pits were commenced, proving a difficult task in the sticky clay full of wiry roots. But these were not finished by us. After three days here, the battery was relieved by artillery of the 89th Division, and started on the cross country hike to the Argonne, whence had come a hurry call for the tired veterans of the 42nd Division to aid the troops held up at one part of the line by terrific resistance on the part of the Germans.
The horse lines, near Nonsard, occupied one of the many elaborate camps which the Germans had constructed in the vicinity. Boughs had been used with the lavishness of a millionaire building an elaborate rustic garden. Walks, roads, fences, shacks, ornamental gateways, were all of this material, in camps covering acre after acre. Piles ofempty hogsheads, and wicker tables and benches, gave evidence that the enemy troops had not lived an overhard life while they had been here.
The battery pulled out of the horse-lines at 8 p. m., October 1, and hiked without stop till after midnight. After covering thirty kilometres, the battalion pulled in at an old German remount camp, near Ambly, alongside the canal. The following night the distance was shorter, but progress was slow and waits were long—during which the drivers fell asleep on their horses with blankets over their shoulders, and the dismounted men dozed in the grass at the side of the road, mindless of cold and damp. At 6 in the morning came the climb up the hill into the Camp du Bois de Meuse, where the whole 67th Brigade encamped.
Spending the day of September 3 there, we made the next journey by daylight on September 4, rising at 4:45 and pulling out on the road at 8. Our way led past the many camps where the French troops had been assembled to engage in the terrible struggles about Verdun, and past fields, at Vadelaincourt, where the red crosses of French dead seemed to grow thick as wheat. A little beyond Rampont, we pulled into another camp, in Brocourt woods, where we spent the succeeding day greasing the carriage axles and cleaning the firing mechanism. On October 6, the brigade moved forward up the hills from Recicourt, through Avocourt, razed to a mere pile of bricks and mortar, over roads still in process of mending by engineer battalions, and that afternoon into a wide valley, pock-marked with shell holes and bearing a desolate look, emphasized by the stark black tree trunks, stripped of their branches, as though the whole area had been swept by a blaze. This was what was left of the forest of Avocourt. Occasional shells burst on the ridge ahead, and orders were strict for every man to dig a hole for his bunk that night.