THE BATTLE OF THE ARGONNE
THE BATTLE OF THE ARGONNE
THE BATTLE OF THE ARGONNE
We had no doubt of the success of the 2nd Division. Artillery was lined up hub to hub on all the roads around Exermont, Fleville and Sommerance and the machine guns of both divisions were to give them a sustained preparatory barrage. I may add incidentally that the thorough preparations for their attack were the best justification for our failure to reach the last objective. We heard the artillery hammering away through the early morning and it was soon evident that the sturdy infantry and marines of the 2nd Division had carried the battle line well towards the north.
I started up with Sergeant Fitzsimmons on my own sad quest of looking for our dead in the enemy wires. Just ahead of us as we passed through Sommerance a German shell lit on the road right in a party of five German prisoners and four American soldiers. The nine men lay scattered in all directions. We ran up and I found one of ours with both legs blown completely off trying to pull himself up with the aid of a packing case. In spite of his wounds he gave not the slightest evidence of mental shock. While Fitzsimmons ran for an ambulance, he told me his name was Conover, and that he was a Catholic, and said the prayers while I gave him absolution. He had no idea his legs were gone until a soldier lifted him on a stretcher, when I could see in his eyes that he was aware that his body was lifting light. He started to look but I placed my hand on his chest and kept him from seeing. Three men were dead already and it did not seem to me as if any one of them could live. One of the Germans was an officer who cursed his fate that brought him to this death by the fire of his own guns after lasting through four years of war.
When we reached our old battleground I found that one man had gotten there before me on the same errand as myself. It was Father Davitt of Lenox, Mass., who had been detached from the 32nd Division as Corps Chaplain.
On both sides of the Sommerance road as it neared the wire we saw the bodies scattered, still well preserved andrecognizable by reason of the cool weather. Right around the wire and in the sunken road that ran into it the Germans had buried them. It was a surprise to find that even now the wire was absolutely unbroken in any place. An occasional shell had landed in it, as was evidenced by the holes made, but the whole fabric was so well bound together that it simply jumped up and then dropped back into place again. The 2nd Division had evidently been wise enough to carry their attack around it as I found just one of their dead and he was lying in thechicaneor passage made by the highway as it passed through it.
I arranged with Father Davitt to have his detachment of Pioneers look after the sepulchre of our dead in case the Regiment got orders to move on, and returned to make my report to Colonel Dravo.
The 3rd Battalion got back to our place in the rear during the morning, having suffered some losses from shell fire, amongst them being Jimmy Fay, who had part of his foot blown off. Orders to take up the advance were received on November 2nd, our 3rd Battalion being out of the line less than 24 hours.
The first day’s route laid down for us showed us that we were going to take over in the region to the west of that in which we had been fighting. In the plans for the attack of the 2nd Division they had moved rapidly towards the NNE., leaving the Germans on their left to wake up and find themselves in a salient between our troops and the northern extension of the Argonne Forest. The 78th Division was engaged in expediting the evacuation of these Germans. Two days’ march, neither of them very long, brought us to Brieulles, just north of which we were to relieve the 78th. The only difficulty about the march was for the wagons. Every outfit had lost half of its animals, and those that were left were in miserable condition. The artillery felt this hardest, but it made trouble for the infantry, too, in getting up the supplies and the kitchens. The worn down roads were frightfully crowded with ambulances,trucks, kitchens, guns, caissons, ration and combat wagons, headquarters automobiles; and the M. Ps. were kept swearing till their voices gave out trying to keep traffic conditions tolerable. When we got to Brieulles we found that the Germans were blowing up bridges and roads in their retreat. Colonel Dravo, following tradition and his own generous instincts of being nice to an old fellow like me, had sent me on with his car; and Brown was carrying me rapidly out of Brieulles towards the front when Major Doyle, our Brigade Adjutant, stopped me and said that while it didn’t matter much what became of me, cars were getting scarce and he had decided objections to presenting what was once a perfectly good car to the Germans. I deduced from this that the enemy were in the next town and that I had better stay where I was. The regiment was stopped at Authé, to which place I returned.
The villages which the Germans had left had a number of civilians, and in accordance with the order of the German Commander, the Mayors put a white flag on the church steeple to warn us against shelling them. I have never seen a happier lot of old people in my life than the French civilians whom we were instrumental in saving after four years of captivity. At Authé our P. C. was in what had once been a village inn. The proprietress was old and little and lively and pious. She gave a warm reception to M. l’Aumonier when she heard that I belonged to the Old Church, and immediately proceeded to make plans for a High Mass next Sunday in spite of my telling her that we would not probably be there more than one night. “I have been doing most of the preaching to the people around here the last four years,” she said. “M. le Curé is old and quiet and he hasn’t much to say; but me, I talk, talk, talk all the time. I tell these people that God sent the German Devils amongst them because of their sins. I preach so much that they have given me a nickname. Do you know what they call me? They call me Madame Morale. And I preach to the Germans, too. I tell them they will all be in Hell if theydo not mend their ways.” “What do they say to you?” “Most times they laugh and call me Grossmutter, but some of them swear and get mad. But I preach at them just the same. My sister she does not preach, she just prays.”
I went up to see the sister. They must have been both around eighty; and she sat in her chair looking absolutely like Whistler’s picture of his mother, except that the hands were not idle in her lap, but fingered unceasingly a worn rosary.
Madame Morale’s piety was not limited to preaching. It included hospitality. We have brought along some fresh supplies of food for our Headquarters Mess; and as soldiers from different outfits kept drifting in to the kitchen looking for water and incidentally anything else they could get, the old lady dipped into our scanty stock, saying, “Here, my poor boys, there is much food here”—until nothing was left.
In going into action in this last phase of the Argonne fight Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dravo was in command, with Major Anderson second in command, Captain Merle-Smith (vice Kelly, evacuated with fever) commanding the 1st Battalion, Captain Henry A. Bootz, in charge of Anderson’s Battalion, and Major Reilley with the 3rd. We relieved the 78th Division at the village of Artaise-le-Vivier. Here the Germans had left in such a hurry that large stores of flour and vegetables had been left behind. On asking the inhabitants the reason for this extraordinary occurrence we were answered by the word “Avions.” In this sector we have absolute mastery of the air and we see vast flights of planes spread out like wild ducks in V-shaped fashion advancing over the German lines. I almost sympathize with the poor Boches, for I certainly do not like aerial bombs.
The next three days was a foot-race, each battalion taking its turn in the lead as the others became exhausted. They swept from village to village, or rather from hill to hill, carefully closing around the villages, generally meetingwith but little resistance, the last of the Germans, invariably a machine gun group, taking their flight fifteen minutes to a half hour before our men could get up. Colonel Dravo was out in the front with his wild Irish, while Anderson had the equally important task of trying to get the kitchens and supplies through. Lieutenants Schwinn, McDermott, Goodell, Henry and Bell and Sergeant Scanlan labored night and day to get the kitchens through, crossing muddy fields and fording small streams because the roads were everywhere destroyed. Lieutenant Seidelman and Corporal Malone were busy putting up signs at every corner to guide the rear elements in the right direction to reach our swiftly moving advance.
I missed Major Lawrence, who is generally very much in evidence when action is on, but I discovered that he had very wisely made up his mind that the main thing was to see that the ambulances found a way to follow up the Infantry. He had plenty of willing doctors under him to look after any wounded men in the field, but it was evident by the rate our Infantry was traveling that wounded men would not be evacuated for several days unless the ambulances got through. When finally they were needed, he had them there, both for the use of our men and those of other outfits which had not been so carefully provided for.
For two days the advance was an interesting race. The 6th Division was coming up the road behind ours, anxious to get a chance to relieve us and get into line before the war would come to an end. Each night they thought that surely by morning they would catch up; but our lads, moving freely across the open country, always kept well in advance of troops that had to move by column; and each day they were still further in the van. Our own Mess Sergeants and Cooks labored night and day to get the food forward, but for two days and more they, too, were left behind in the race. The men in front were not left entirely hungry, as in every village from which they drove the enemy the inhabitants drew out all of their scanty stores and servedthem with coffee, vegetables and a little bread, with unlimited supplies of bouquets and kisses. In spite of drawbacks it was a nice war.
At 10:30 on the evening of the 6th, there came a most extraordinary order from Corps through Division that it was imperative that Sedan should be captured before the end of the next day; that if troops were resting they should be immediately aroused and sent on their way; and that the city should be taken if the last officer and man should drop in his tracks. Luckily for the men it took some time to get that order forward to the line, as the horses of Jack Percy, Earl Pierce and young Underwood were fatigued by the incessant work, in which their riders shared, of carrying messages night and day. So the kitchens got through and the men were fed before they started out once more.
On November 7th, Bootz with the 2nd Battalion was in the van. On Hill 332 the Germans put up a stronger resistance than they had hitherto shown; and it came at a time when our fire was growing weak on account of the expenditure of ammunition, which there was little means of replacing. Bootz told Captain Stout, who was in command of G Company, that the hill must be taken, and Stout advanced with thirty-eight men of his own company and a detachment from Company H to capture the hill. As they kept crawling in on the Germans the latter began to waver, and the Captain called on his followers to advance upon them with fixed bayonets. With a great cheer our fellows swarmed up the crest and the daunted Germans, after a futile stand, grounded their guns, threw up their hands and surrendered. The men whose names stand high in the Company annals for this deed are, first of all, the dead: John Danker, George Spiegel, Onefrio Triggiano and Raymond Hawkins. Also the gallant captain and Lieutenant Otto; First Sergeant Meagher, Sergeants Martin Murphy, Martin Shalley, Irving Framan, Denis Corcoran, John Brogan and Francis Malloy, the two latter being wounded; James Regan, Thomas Gallagher, Hilbert and Henry, Remington,Youmans and Leavensworth, and, to complete the list, a bold Choctaw Indian with the martial name of McCoy. Sergeant Patrick Travers, of Company H, received high praise from everybody. While the German resistance was still determined, he went alone against a machine gun on the right and captured it single-handed, taking three German officers and four men.
The same day B Company lost Sergeant Ed. Kramer, and Martin Gilfoyle; C Company, Frank Casserly, Michael Golinski, and Joseph Peressine; Company E, Orliff Gilbert, Samuel Kelly and William Lambert; Machine Gun Company, William Gunnell; and the Sanitary Detachment, Michael Cavanaugh.
Meanwhile events were happening which made the order to advance without ceasing seem more extraordinary. Elements of the 1st Division appeared on our flank and rear. They, too, had received orders to the same effect from their Corps Commander, and had advanced to the left across the front of the 77th Division, and were taking possession of our line, which was the one leading straight towards Sedan. They had crept up around Bulson in the morning, only to find General MacArthur and 84th Brigade Headquarters in possession of the village. Elements of the 16th Infantry now came on Bootz’s hill and claimed it as theirs. “This is my hill, and my line of advance,” said Bootz. “If you say it’s yours, show your booty. I have twenty-five prisoners and twelve machine guns; what have you got to show for it?” And Bootz ordered his battalion to advance, leaving to the others to do what they would.
Nobody blamed the 1st Division for this mix-up, because they certainly had orders the same as ours to advance and capture Sedan. The whole thing is a mystery. A staff officer told me that neither of us had any right here, as Sedan lies in the sector of the French Division on our left, and considering what it means to the French, they are certainly the ones who have the best right to capture it.
In this sector we had a visit from Sergeant AlexanderWoollcott, who is well known in New York as a dramatic critic, and who has been assigned by G. H. Q. to the duties of reporter for theStars and Stripes. He is always on hand when there is trouble, and the field of war becomes a pleasant place for me whenever he is there. We have swapped stories and discussed men and books in the weirdest places. He is communicative rather than inquisitive and one never thinks of him as a reporter, but he gets all the information he wants and all the more effectively because there is no appearance of seeking it. He can even make Anderson talk.
During this period Anderson had been forging ahead with his Headquarters group, expecting to find Bootz in Chaumont. He entered that town with a couple of doctors, Lieutenant Rerat, and his liaison men, only to find that they were the first to get there, and the enemy had not yet completely evacuated it. They were under rifle fire as they came along the street, and had a merry little sniper’s battle before they got possession. Then Lieutenant McCarthy set up his one-pound cannon on the edge of the village, and soon had the German gunners putting for safety over the hill. So Anderson captured a town for himself, and for once did Colonel Dravo out of the bouquets and kisses. Though, even here, Rerat got the cream of it.
We kept going through that day, the 3rd Battalion relieving the 2nd during the night, and reaching on November 8th, the village of Wadelincourt on the heights of the Meuse, directly overlooking Sedan. A patrol from Company M with orders to go down to the Meuse and scout up to the suburbs of Sedan, got nearest of all American troops to that famous city. Eighteen men started out, of whom most were wounded, but Corporal John McLaughlin, with two men, carried out the mission and reported the results of the reconnaissance. Under shell fire that night Albert Bieber and Carl Maritz of Company I were killed and Lieutenant Behrendts, the Company Commander, and many others were wounded. James P. Smith of CompanyM was also killed and Sergeant Lester Lenhart of Company E was mortally wounded.
That night our Division was relieved by the 40th French Division, which from the beginning had the right of way. As a matter of courtesy the French Division Commander invited a company of the 165th and 166th to enter with his troops for the occupation of the suburbs of Sedan. Company D of our regiment was selected for the purpose and Lieutenant Cassidy had them all ready, but through some mix-up of orders they were not called upon to share in the little ceremony.
On November 8th we marched back to Artaise and the next day to Les Petites Armoises; on the 10th, to Vaux-en-Dieulet. The 11th found us at Sivry-les-Buzancy, where we spent two days.
On our way in I got a rumor that the Armistice was signed. I had always believed that the news of victory and peace would fill me with surging feelings of delight. But it was just the contrary; no doubt because the constraint I had put upon my natural feelings during the year were taken off by the announcement. I knew that in New York and in every city at home and throughout the world men were jubilant at the prospects of peace. But I could think of nothing except the fine lads who had come out with us to this war and who are not alive to enjoy the triumph. All day I had a lonely and an aching heart. It would be a lesser thing to have been killed myself than to go back to the mothers of the dead who would never more return. Luckily for me my dear friend Chaplain Nash came over to see me and walked me for hours through the desolate country, encouraging me to express my every feeling until fatigue and the relief of expression brought me back to a more normal mood.
The men had no certainty that the rumors were true, and discounted them. On November 13th we marched to Landres et Saint Georges which we had striven vainly to enter from the other side five weeks before. The village wasalmost completely demolished and our troops with others of the Division pitched their shelter tents on all the hills surrounding the town. That night official information was given of the Armistice. The men raided the Engineer and Signal Stores for rockets of all descriptions and the whole sky was filled with lights which in war would have demanded the expenditure of at least a million shells. Bonfires were blazing all over the hillsideFinie la Guerre. The war was over.
My duties, like my feelings, still lay in the past. With men from all the companies I went round the battlefield to pay as far as I could my last duties to the dead, to record and in a rough way to beautify their lonely graves, for I knew that soon we would leave this place that their presence hallows, and never look upon it again.
On the 15th, in accordance with Division orders, a formal muster was held. Our strength was 55 officers and 1,637 men, with 8 officers and 43 men attached, 1,300 short of the number we had brought into the Argonne. Of the survivors, not many more than 600 were men who had left New York with the regiment a little over a year ago. And most of these belonged to the Adjutant’s Office, Battalion and Company Headquarters, Kitchens, Band and Supply Company. In the line companies, there are about twenty-five rifle men to each company who are old-timers and nearly all of these have wound stripes earned in earlier engagements. The great bulk of the old regiment is in hospitals, convalescent and casual camps; some of them promoted, some transferred, hundreds of them invalided home, a great many, alas! buried on battlefields or in hospital cemeteries.