Meanwhile, the 110th had been having a stirring part of the war all its own, in the taking of Roncheres. As was the case with every other town and village in the whole region, the Germans, without expecting or intending to hold the town, had taken every possible step to make the taking of it as costly as possible. With their characteristic disregard of every finer instinct, they had made the church, fronting an open square in the center of the town and commanding roads in four directions, the center of their resistance.
Every building, every wall, fence and tree, sheltered a machine gun or a sniper. Most of the enemy died where they stood. As was the case 99 times out of every 100, they fired until they dropped from bullets or thrust up their hands and bleated "Kamerad," like scared sheep, when our men got close enough to use the bayonet.
Some time before, however, the Pennsylvanians had undertaken to make prisoners of a German thus beseeching mercy, and it was only after several men had fallen from apparently mysterious fire that they discovered the squealing Hun, hands in air, had his foot on a lever controlling the fire of his machine gun. Thus, he assumed an attitude of surrender in order to decoy our men within easier range of the gun he operated with his foot.
So it is small wonder that the men of the 110th went berserk in Roncheres and made few prisoners. They played the old-fashioned game of hide and seek, in which the men in khaki were always "it," and to be spied meant death for the Hun. From building to building they moved steadily forward until they came within range of the village church, when their progress was stayed for some time.
There was a cross on the roof of the church of some kind of stone with a red tinge. Behind it the Germans had planted guns. Three guns were hidden in the belfry, from which the bells had been removed and sent to Germany. Gothic walls and balconies, from which in happierdays the plaster statuettes of saints looked down on the fair, green fields and peaceful countryside of France, sheltered machine gunners, snipers and small cannon.
Sharpshooters of the 110th finally picked off the gunners behind the cross, but the little fortress in the belfry still held out. Detachments set out to work around the outer edge of the town and surround the church. When they found houses with partition walls so strong that a hole could not be battered through easily, sharpshooters were stationed at the windows and doors and they were able to hold the German fire down so well that other men could slip to the shelter of the next house.
This was all right until they came to the roads that radiated from the church to the four corners of the village. They were not wide roads, but the terrific fire that swept down them at every sign of a movement by the Americans made the prospect of crossing them seem like a first class suicide. Nevertheless, it had to be done. The men who led this circuitous advance waited until enough of their comrades had arrived to make a sortie in force. The best riflemen were told off to remain behind in thehouses and to mark down the peepholes and other places from which the fire was coming. Automatic riflemen and rifle grenadiers were assigned to look after the Huns secreted in the church.
When these arrangements were completed, the Americans began a fire that reduced the German effort to a minimum. Our marksmen did not wait for a German to show himself. They kept a steady stream of lead and steel pouring into every place from which German shots had been seen to come.
Under cover of this sweeping hail, the men who were to continue the advance darted across the road, right in the open. They made no effort to fire, but put every ounce of energy into the speed of their legs. Thus a footing was established by a considerable group on the other side of the road, and the remaining houses between there and the church soon were cleaned up, so that reinforcements could move forward.
Still the church remained the dominating figure of the fight, as it had been of the village landscape so many years. Its stout stone walls, built to last for centuries, offered ideal shelter, and before anythingfurther could be done it became imperative to wipe out that nest of snarling Hun fire.
Using the same tactics as had availed them so well in the crossing of the road, a little band of Americans was enabled to cross the small open space at the rear of the church. Here a shell from a German battery had conveniently opened a hole in the solid masonry. It was the work of only a few minutes to enlarge this, and our men began to filter into the once sacred edifice, now so profaned by the sacrilegious Hun.
The bottom of the church was turned quickly into a charnel house for the Boche there, and then our men were free to turn their attention to that annoying steeple, which still was taking its toll. One man led the way up the winding stone stairs, fighting every step. Strange to relate, he went safely to the top, although comrades behind him were struck down, and he faced a torrent of fire and even missiles hurled down by the frantic Huns who sought to stay this implacable advance.
Eventually the top of the stairs was gained. A German under officer, who evidently had been in command of thestronghold, leaped over the low parapet to death, and three Huns, the last of the garrison, abjectly waved their arms in the air and squalled the customary "Kamerad! Kamerad!"
Mopping up of the rest of the town was an easy task by comparison with what had gone before. Then, with only a brief breathing spell, the regiment swung a little to the northwest and reached Courmont in time to join the 109th in wiping out the last machine gunners there.
Now came an achievement of which survivors of the 109th and 110th Infantry Regiments—the Fifty-fifth Infantry Brigade—will retain the memory for years to come. It was one of those feats that become regimental traditions, the tales of which are handed down for generations within regimental organizations and in later years become established as standards toward which future members of the organization may aspire with only small likelihood of attaining.
This achievement was the taking of the Bois de Grimpettes, or Grimpettes Wood.
The operation, in the opinion of officers outside the Fifty-fifth Brigade, comparedmost favorably with the never-to-be-forgotten exploit of the marines in the Bois de Belleau.
There were these differences: First, the Belleau Wood fight occurred at a time when all the rest of the western front was more or less inactive, but the taking of Grimpettes Wood came in the midst of a general forward movement that was electrifying the world, a movement in which miles of other front bulked large in public attention; second, the taking of Belleau was one of the very first real battle operations of Americans, and the marines were watched by the critical eyes of a warring world to see how "those Americans" would compare with the seasoned soldiery of Europe; third, the Belleau fight was an outstanding operation, both by reason of the vital necessity of taking the wood in order to clear the way for what was to follow and because it was not directly connected with or part of other operations anywhere else.
Grimpettes Wood was the Fifty-fifth Infantry Brigade's own "show." The wood lies north of Courmont and just south of Sergy. It is across the Ourcq, whichis so narrow that some of the companies laid litters from bank to bank and walked over dryshod, and so shallow that those who waded across hardly went in over their shoetops. At one side the wood runs over a little hill. The 109th and 110th were told, in effect:—
"The Germans have a strong position in Grimpettes Wood. Take it."
The regiments were beginning to know something about German "strong positions." In fact they had passed the amateur stage in dealing with such problems. Although, perhaps they could not be assigned yet to the expert class, nevertheless they were supplied with groups of junior officers and "non-coms" who felt—and justly—that they knew something about cleaning up "strong positions." They no longer went about such a task with the jauntysang froidand reckless daredeviltry that had marked their earlier experiences. They had learned that it did themselves and their men no good and was of no service to America, to advance defiantly in the open in splendid but foolish disregard of hidden machine guns and every other form of Hun strafing.
Yet when it came to the taking of Grimpettes Wood, they had no alternative to just that thing. The Germans then were making their last stand on the line of the Ourcq. Already they had determined on, and had begun, the further retreat to the line of the Vesle, at this point about ten miles farther north. Such places as Grimpettes Wood had been manned in force to hold up the Franco-American advance as long as possible. When they were torn loose, the Huns again would be in full flight northeastward.
Grimpettes was organized as other small woods had been by the Germans during the fighting of the summer: the trees were loaded with machine guns, weapons and gunners chained to their places; the underbrush was laced through with barbed wire; concealed strong points checker-boarded the dense, second growth woodland, so that when the Pennsylvanians took one nest of machine guns they found themselves fired on from two or more others. This maze of machine guns and snipers was supplemented by countless trench mortars and one-pounder cannon.
The taking of the hilly end of the woodwas assigned to the 110th, and the 109th was to clean out the lower part.
It was a murderous undertaking. The nearest edge of the wood was 700 yards from the farthest extension of the village of Courmont that offered even a shadow of protection.
The regiments swung out from the shelter of the village in the most approved wave formation, faultlessly executed. The moment the first men emerged from the protection of the buildings, they ran into a hail of lead and steel that seemed, some of the men said later, almost like a solid wall in places. There was not a leaf to protect them. Hundreds of machine guns tore loose in the woods, until their rattle blended into one solid roar. One-pounder cannon sniped at them. German airmen, who had complete control of the air in that vicinity, flew the length of the advancing lines, as low as 100 feet from the ground, raking them with machine gun fire and dropping bombs. The Pennsylvanians organized their own air defense. They simply used their rifles with more or less deterrent effect on the flyers.
The sniping one-pounders were the worstof all, the men said afterward—those, and the air bombs. They messed one up so badly when they scored a hit.
It is a mystery how any man lived through that welter of fire. Even the men who survived could not explain their good fortune. That the regiments were not wiped out was a demonstration of the tremendous expenditure of ammunition in warfare compared to effectiveness of fire, for thousands of bullets and shells were fired in that engagement for every man who was hit.
A pitiful few of the men in the leading wave won through to the edge of the wood and immediately flung themselves down and dug in. A few of the others who were nearer the wood than the town scraped out little hollows for themselves and stuck grimly where they were when the attackers were recalled, the officers realizing the losses were beyond reason for the value of the objective.
Neither officers nor men were satisfied. Private soldiers pleaded with their sergeants for another chance, and the sergeants in turn besought their officers. The Pennsylvanians had been assigned to a task andhad not performed it. That was not the Pennsylvania way. Furthermore there were living and unwounded comrades out there who could not be left long unsupported.
A breathing spell was allowed, and then word went down the lines to "have another go at it." The men drew their belts tighter, set their teeth grimly and plunged out into the storm of lead and steel once more. It must be remembered that all this was without adequate artillery support, for what guns had reached the line were busy elsewhere, and the others were struggling up over ruined roads.
Again on this second attack, a handful of men reached the wood and filtered in, but the attacking force was driven back. It began to seem as if nothing could withstand that torrential fire in force. Three times more, making five attacks in all, the brigade "went to it" with undimmed spirits, and three times more it was forced back to the comparative shelter of Courmont.
Then headquarters was informed, July 30th, that artillery had come up and a barrage would be put on the wood.
"Fine!" said the commander. "We willclean that place up at 2.30 o'clock this afternoon."
And that is exactly what they did. The guns laid down a barrage that not only drove the Germans into their shelters, but opened up holes in the near side of the wood and through the wire. The scattered few of the Pennsylvanians who still clung to their places just within the first fringe of woodland made themselves as small as possible, hugging the ground and the boles of the largest trees they could find. Despite their best endeavors, however, it was a terrible experience to have to undergo that terrific cannonading from their own guns.
Finally, the barrage lifted and the regiments went out once more for the sixth assault on the Bois de Grimpettes. The big guns had lent just the necessary added weight to carry them across. The Germans flung themselves from their dugouts and offered what resistance they could, but the first wave of thoroughly mad, yelling, excited Americans was on them before they got well started with their machine gun reception.
Our men went through Grimpettes Wood"like a knife through butter" as one officer expressed it later. It was man against man, rifle and bayonet against machine gun and one-pounder, and the best men won. Some prisoners were sent back, but the burial squads laid away more than 400 German bodies in Grimpettes. The American loss in cleaning up the wood was hardly a tithe of that. It was a heroic and gallant bit of work, typical of the dash and spirit of our men.
After the first attack on Grimpettes Wood had failed, First Sergeant William G. Meighan, of Waynesburg, Pa., Company K, 110th Infantry, in the lead of his company, was left behind when the recall was sounded. He had flung himself into a shell-hole, in the bottom of which water had collected. The machine gun fire of the Germans was low enough to "cut the daisies," as the men remarked. Therefore, there was no possibility of crawling back to the lines. The water in the hole in which he had sought shelter attracted all the gas in the vicinity, for Fritz was mixing gas shells with his shrapnel and high explosives.
The German machine gunners had seenthe few Americans who remained on the field, hiding in shell holes, and they kept their machine guns spraying over those nests. Other men had to don their gas masks when the gas shells came over, but none had to undergo what Sergeant Meighan did.
It is impossible to talk intelligibly or to smoke inside a gas mask. A stiff clamp is fixed over the nose and every breath must be taken through the mouth. Soldiers adjust their masks only when certain that gas is about. They dread gas more than anything else the German has to offer, more than any other single thing in the whole category of horrors with which the Kaiser distinguished this war from all other wars in the world's history. Yet the discomfort of the gas mask, improved as the present model is over the device that first intervened between England's doughty men and a terrible death is such that it is donned only in dire necessity. Soldiers hate the gas mask intolerably, but they hate gas even more.
So Sergeant Meighan, hearing the peculiar sound by which soldiers identify a gas shell from all others, slipped on his mask.It never is easy to adjust, and he got a taste of the poison before his mask was secure—just enough to make him feel rather faint and ill. He knew that if his mask slipped to one side, if only enough to give him one breath of the outer air, he would suffer torture, probably die. He knew that if he wriggled out of his hole in the ground, however inconspicuous he made himself, he would be cut to ribbons by machine gun bullets. So he simply dug a little deeper and waited.
If this seems like a trifling thing, just try one of the gas respirators in use in the army. If one is not available, try holding your nose and breathing only through your mouth. When you have discovered how unpleasant this can be, try to imagine every breath through the mouth is impregnated with the chemicals that neutralize the gas, thus adding to the difficulty of breathing, yet insuring a continuance of life.
And remember that Sergeant Meighan did that for fifteen hours. And then ask yourself if "hero" is an abused word when applied to a man like that.
Furthermore, when in a later attack onthe wood, Company K reached the point where Sergeant Meighan was concealed, he discovered in a flash that the last officer of the first wave had fallen before his shelter was reached. Being next in rank, he promptly signaled to the men that he would assume command, and led them in a gallant assault on the enemy position.
There were other men in the 109th and 110th regiments who displayed a marked spirit of gallantry and sacrifice, which by no means was confined to enlisted men. Lieutenant Richard Stockton Bullitt, of Torresdale, an officer of Company K, 110th, was struck in the thigh by a machine gun bullet in one of the first attacks.
He was unable to walk, but saw, about a hundred yards away, an automatic rifle, which was out of commission because the corporal in charge of the rifle squad had been killed and the other men could not operate the gun. Lieutenant Bullitt, member of an old and distinguished Philadelphia family, crawled to the rifle, dragging his wounded leg. He took command and continued firing the rifle.
Five more bullets struck him in different places in a short time, but he shook hishead defiantly, waved away stretcher bearers who wanted to take him to the rear, and pumped the gun steadily. Finally another bullet struck him squarely in the forehead and killed him.
After the wood was completely in our hands, a little column was observed moving slowly across the open space toward Courmont. When it got close enough it was seen to consist entirely of unarmed Germans, apparently. Staff officers were just beginning to fume and fuss about the ridiculousness of sending a party of prisoners back unguarded, when they discovered a very dusty and very disheveled American officer bringing up the rear with a rifle held at the "ready." He was Lieutenant Marshall S. Barron, Latrobe, Pa., of Company M, 110th. There were sixty-seven prisoners in his convoy, and most of them he had taken personally.
That night the regimental headquarters of the 110th was moved to Courmont, only 700 yards behind the wood that had been so desperately fought for.
"We'll work out tomorrow's plans," said Major Martin, and summoned his staff officers about him. They were bendingover a big table, studying the maps, when a six-inch shell struck the headquarters building squarely. Twenty-two enlisted men and several officers were injured. Major Martin, Captain John D. Hitchman, Mt. Pleasant, Pa., the regimental adjutant; Lieutenant Alexander, the intelligence officer, and Lieutenant Albert G. Braden, of Washington, Pa., were knocked about somewhat, but not injured.
For the second time within a few days, Lieutenant Alexander flirted with death. The first time he was blown through an open doorway into the road by the explosion of a shell that killed two German officers, who were facing him, men he was examining.
This time, when the headquarters at Courmont was blown up, he was examining a German captain and a sergeant, the other officers making use of the answers of the prisoners in studying the maps and trying to determine the disposition of the enemy forces. Almost exactly the same thing happened again to Lieutenant Alexander. Both prisoners were killed, and he was blown out of the building uninjured.
"Getting to be a habit with you," said Major Martin.
"This is the life," said Lieutenant Alexander.
"Fritz hasn't got a shell with Lieutenant Alexander's number on it," said the men in the ranks.
The shell that demolished the regimental headquarters was only one of thousands with which the Boche raked our lines and back areas. As soon as American occupancy of Bois de Grimpettes had been established definitely the Hun turned loose an artillery "hate" that made life miserable for the Pennsylvanians. In the 110th alone there were twenty-two deaths and a total of 102 casualties.
The village of Sergy, just north of Grimpettes Wood, threatened to be a hard nut to crack. The 109th Infantry was sent away to the west to flank the town from that direction, and the 110th co-operated with regiments of other divisions in the direct assault.
The utter razing of Epieds and other towns above the Marne by artillery fire, in order to blast the Germans out of their strongholds, led to a decision to avoid such destructive methods wherever possible, and the taking of Sergy was almost entirely an infantry and machine gun battle.
It was marked, as so many other of the Pennsylvanians' fights were, by the "never-say-die" spirit that refused to know defeat. There was something unconquerable about the terrible persistence of the Americans that seemed to daunt the Germans.
The American forces swept into the town and drove the enemy slowly andreluctantly out to the north. The usual groups of Huns were still in hiding in cellars and dugouts and other strong points, where they were able to keep up a sniping fire on our men.
Before the positions could be mopped up and organized, the Germans were strengthened by fresh forces, and they reorganized and took the town again. Four times this contest of attack and counter-attack was carried out before our men established themselves in sufficient force to hold the place. Repeatedly the Germans strove to obtain a foothold again, but their hold on Sergy was gone forever. They realized this at last, and then turned loose the customary sullen shelling with shrapnel, high explosives and gas.
While the 110th was engaged in this grim work, the 109th recrossed the Ourcq, marched away down the south bank to the west of Sergy, and crossed the river again. Officers, feeling almost at the end of their physical resources, marvelled at the way in which the regiment—blooded, steady and dependable—swung along on this march.
Like all the other Pennsylvaniaregiments, food had been scarce with them because of the pace at which they had been going and the utter inability of the commissary to supply them regularly in the circumstances. When opportunity offered, they got a substantial meal, but these were few and far between. There were innumerable instances of men going forty-eight hours without either food or water. The thirst was worse than the hunger, and the longing for sleep was almost overpowering.
Despite all this, the two regiments set off for the conquest of Sergy with undiminished spirit and determination, and the two grades of men, commissioned and enlisted, neither willing to give up in the face of the other's dogged pertinacity, spurred each other on to prodigies of will-power, for by this time it was will-power, more than actual physical endurance, that carried them on.
The 109th took position in a wood just northwest of Sergy and sent scouts forward to ascertain the situation of the enemy, only to have them come back with word that the town already was in the hands of the 110th, after a brilliant action.
The 109th now came to some of the most nerve-trying hours it had yet experienced, though no fighting was involved. A wood north of Sergy was selected as an abiding place for the night and, watching for a chance when Boche flyers were busy elsewhere, the regiment made its way into the shelter and prepared to get a night's rest.
They had escaped the eyes of the enemy airmen but, unknown to the officers of the 109th, the wood lay close to an enemy ammunition dump, which the retiring Huns had not had time to destroy. Naturally, the German artillery knew perfectly the location of the dump, and sought to explode it by means of artillery fire.
By the time the 109th, curious as to the marked attention they were receiving from the Hun guns, discovered the dump, it was too late to seek other shelter, so all they could do was to contrive such protection as was possible and hug the ground, expecting each succeeding shell to land in the midst of the dump and set off an explosion that probably would leave nothing of the regiment but its traditions.
Probably half the shells intended forthe ammunition pile landed in the woods. Dreadful as such a bombardment always is, the men of the 109th fairly gasped with relief when each screeching shell ended with a bang among the trees, for shells that landed there were in no danger of exploding that heap of ammunition.
The night of strain and tension passed. Strange as it may seem, the Boche gunners were unable to reach the dump.
In the night a staff officer from brigade headquarters had found Colonel Brown and informed him that he was to relinquish command of the regiment to become adjutant to the commandant of a port of debarkation. Lieutenant-Colonel Henry W. Coulter, of Greensburg, Pa., took command of the regiment.
Colonel Coulter is a brother of Brigadier-General Richard Coulter, one time commander of the Tenth Pennsylvania, later commander of an American port in France. A few days later, Colonel Coulter was wounded in the foot, and Colonel Samuel V. Ham, a regular army officer, became commander. As an evidence of the vicissitudes of the Pennsylvania regiments, the 109th had eight regimental commanders intwo months. All except Colonel Brown and Colonel Coulter were regular army men.
The 110th was relieved, and dropped back for a rest of two days, August 1st and 2d. The men were nervous and "fidgety," to quote one of the officers, for the first time since their first "bath of steel," south of the Marne. Both nights they were supposed to be resting they were shelled and bombed from the air continuously, and both days were put in at the "camions sanitaire," or "delousing machines," where each man got a hot bath and had his clothes thoroughly disinfected and cleaned.
Thus, neither night nor day could be called restful by one who was careful of his English, although the baths probably did more to bolster up the spirits of the men than anything else that could have happened to them. Anyway, when the two-day period was ended and the regiment again set off for the north, headed for the Vesle and worse things than any that had gone before, it marched away whistling and singing, with apparently not a care in the world.
It was about this time that the first ofthe Pennsylvania artillery, one battalion of the 107th Regiment, came into the zone of operations, and soon its big guns began to roar back at the Germans in company with the French and other American artillery.
The guns and their crews had troubles of their own in forging to the front, although most of it was of a kind they could look back on later with a laugh, and not the soul-trying, mind-searing experiences of the infantry.
The roads that had been so hard for the foot soldiers to traverse were many times worse for the big guns. The 108th, for instance, at one time was twelve hours in covering eight miles of road.
When it came to crossing the Marne, in order to speed up the crossing, the regiment was divided, half being sent farther up the river. When night fell, it was learned that the half that had crossed lower down had the field kitchen and no rations and the other half had all the rations and no field kitchen to cook them. Other organizations came to the rescue in both instances.
At six o'clock one evening, not yet havinghad evening mess, the regiment was ordered to move to another town, which it reached at nine o'clock. Men and horses had been settled down for the night by ten o'clock and, as all was quiet, the officers went to the village. There they found an innkeeper bemoaning the fact that, just as he had gotten a substantial meal ready for the officers of another regiment, they had been ordered away, and the food was all ready, with nobody to eat it.
The hungry officers looked over the "spread." There was soup, fried chicken, cold ham, string beans, peas, sweet potatoes, jam, bread and butter, and wine. They assured the innkeeper he need worry no further about losing his food, and promptly took their places about the table. The first spoonfuls of soup just were being lifted when an orderly entered, bearing orders for the regiment to move on at once. They were under way again, the officers still hungry, by 11.45 o'clock, and marched until 6.30A. M., covering thirty kilometres, or more than eighteen miles.
The 103d Ammunition Train also had come up now, after experiences that prepared it somewhat for what was to comelater. For instance, when delivering ammunition to a battery under heavy shellfire, a detachment of the train had to cross a small stream on a little, flat bridge, without guard rails. A swing horse of one of the wagons became frightened when a shell fell close by. The horse shied and plunged over the edge, wedging itself between the bridge and a small footbridge alongside.
The stream was in a small valley, quite open to enemy fire, and for the company to have waited while the horse was gotten out would have been suicidal. So the main body passed on and the caisson crew and drivers, twelve men in all, were left to pry the horse out. For three hours they worked, patiently and persistently, until the frantic animal was freed.
They were under continuous and venomous fire all the while. Shrapnel cut the tops of trees a bare ten feet away. Most of the time they and the horses were compelled to wear gas masks, as the Hun tossed over a gas shell every once in a while for variety—he was "mixing them." The gas hung long in the valley, for it has "an affinity," as the chemists say, for water, and will follow the course of a stream.
High explosives "cr-r-r-umped" in places within two hundred feet, but the ammunition carriers never even glanced up from their work, nor hesitated a minute. Just before dawn they got the horse free and started back for their own lines. Fifteen minutes later a high-explosive shell landed fairly on the little bridge and blew it to atoms.
The 103d Field Signal Battalion, composed of companies chiefly from Pittsburgh, but with members from many other parts of the state, performed valiant service in maintaining lines of communication. Repeatedly, men of the battalion, commanded by Major Fred G. Miller, of Pittsburgh, exposed themselves daringly in a welter of fire to extend telephone and telegraph lines, sometimes running them through trees and bushes, again laying them in hastily scooped out grooves in the earth.
Frequently communication no sooner was established than a chance shell would sever the line, and the work was to do all over again. With cool disregard of danger, the signalmen went about their tasks, incurring all the danger to be found anywhere—but without the privilege and satisfaction of fighting back.
Under sniping rifle fire, machine gun and big shell bombardment and frequently drenched with gas, the gallant signalmen carried their work forward. There was little of the picturesque about it, but nothing in the service was more essential. Many of the men were wounded and gassed, a number killed, and several were cited and decorated for bravery.
When the Hun grip was torn loose from the positions along the Ourcq, he had no other good stopping place short of the Vesle, so he lit out for that river as fast as he could move his battalions and equipment. Again only machine guns and sniping rear-guards were left to impede the progress of the pursuers, and again there were times when it was exceedingly difficult for the French and American forces to keep in contact with the enemy.
The 32d Division, composed of Michigan and Wisconsin National Guards, had slipped into the front lines and, with regiments of the Rainbow Division, pressed the pursuit. The Pennsylvania regiments, with the 103d Engineers, and the 111th and the 112th Infantry leading, followed by the 109th and then the 110th, went forward in their rear, mopping up the few Huns they left in their wake who still showed fight.
It had begun to rain again—a heavy, dispiriting downpour, such as Northern France is subjected to frequently. The fields became morasses. The roads, cut up by heavy traffic, were turned to quagmires. The distorted remains of what had been wonderful old trees, stripped of their foliage and blackened and torn by the breaths of monster guns, dripped dismally. In all that ruined, tortured land of horror on horror, there was not one bright spot, and there was only one thing to keep up the spirits of the soldiers—the Hun was definitely on the run.
Drenched to the skin, wading in mud at times almost to their knees, amid the ruck and confusion of an army's wake, the Pennsylvanians trudged resolutely forward, inured to hardship, no longer sensible to ordinary discomforts, possessed of only one thought—to come to battle once more with the hateful foe and inflict further punishment in revenge for the gallant lads who had gone from the ranks.
All the time they were subjected to long-distance shelling by the big guns, as the Hun strafed the country to the south in hope of hampering transportfacilities and breaking up marching columns. All the time Boche fliers passed overhead, sometimes swooping low enough to slash at the columns with machine guns and at frequent intervals releasing bombs. There were casualties daily, although not, of course, on the same scale as in actual battle.
Through Coulonges, Cohan, Dravegny, Longeville, Mont-sur-Courville and St. Gilles they plunged on relentlessly.
Close by the hamlet of Chamery, near Cohan, the Pennsylvania men passed the grave of Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, who had been brought down there by an enemy airman a few weeks before and was buried by the Germans. French troops, leading the Allied pursuit, had come on the grave first and established a military guard of honor over it and supplanted the rude cross and inscription erected by the Germans with a neater and more ornate marking.
When the Americans arrived the French guard was removed and American soldiers mounted guard over the last resting place of the son of the onetime President.
Just below Longeville, thePennsylvanians came into an area where the fire was intensified to the equal of anything they had passed through since leaving the Marne. All the varieties of Hun projectiles were hurled at them, high explosives of various sizes, shrapnel and gas. Once more the misery and discomfort of the gas mask had to be undergone, but by this time the Pennsylvanians had learned well and truly the value of that little piece of equipment and had imbibed thoroughly the doctrine that, unpleasant as it might be, the mask was infinitely better than a whiff of that dread, sneaking, penetrating vapor with which the Hun poisoned the air.
The "blonde beast" had his back to the Vesle and had turned to show his teeth and snarl in fury at our men closing in on him.
The objective point on the river for the Pennsylvanians was Fismes. This was a town near the junction of the Vesle and Ardre rivers, which before the war had a population of a little more than 3,000. Here, in centuries long gone, the kings of France were wont to halt overnight on their way up to Rheims to be crowned.It was on a railroad running through Rheims to the east. A few miles west of Fismes the railroad divides, one branch winding away southwestward to Paris the other running west through Soissons and Compiegne. The town was one of the largest German munitions depots in the Soissons-Rheims sector and second in importance only to Soissons.
Across the narrow river was the village of Fismette, destined to be the scene of the writing of a truly glorious page of Pennsylvania's military history. The past tense is used with regard to the existence of both places, as they virtually were wiped out in the process of forcing the Hun from the Vesle River barrier and sending him flying northward to the Aisne.
The railroad through Fismes and in its vicinity runs along the top of an embankment, raising it above the surrounding territory. There was a time, before the Americans were able to cross the railroad, that the embankment became virtually the barrier dividing redeemed France from darkest Hunland along that front. At night patrols from both sides would moveforward to the railroad, and, burrowed in holes—the Germans in the north side and the Americans in the south—would watch and wait and listen for signs of an attack.
Each knew the other was only a few feet away; at times, in fact, they could hear each other talking, and once in a while defiant badinage would be exchanged in weird German from the south and in ragtime, vaudeville English from the north. Appearance of a head above the embankment on either side was a signal for a storm of lead and steel.
The Americans had this advantage over the Germans: They knew the Huns were doomed to continue their retreat, and that the hold-up along the railroad was very temporary, and the Germans now realized the same thing. Therefore, the Americans fought triumphantly, with vigor and dash; the Germans, sullenly and in desperation.
One man of the 110th went to sleep in a hole in the night and did not hear the withdrawal just before dawn. Obviously his name could not be made public. When he woke it was broad daylight, and he was only partly concealed by a little holein the railroad bank. There was nothing he could do. If he had tried to run for his regimental lines he would have been drilled like a sieve before he had gone fifty yards. Soon the German batteries would begin shelling, so he simply dug deeper into the embankment.
"I just drove myself into that bank like a nail," he told his comrades later. He got away the next night.
Richard Morse, of the 110th, whose home is in Harrisburg, went out with a raiding party. The Germans discovered the advance of the group and opened a concentrated fire, forcing them back. Morse was struck in the leg and fell. He was able to crawl, however, and crawling was all he could have done anyway, because the only line of retreat open to him was being swept by a hail of machine gun bullets. As he crawled he was hit by a second bullet. Then a third one creased the muscles of his back. A few feet farther, and two more struck him, making five in all.
Then he tumbled into a shell hole. He waited until the threshing fire veered from his vicinity and he had regained a little strength, then crawled to another holeand flopped himself into that. Incredible as it may seem, he regained his own lines the fourth day by crawling from shell hole to shell hole, and started back to the hospital with every prospect of a quick recovery. He had been given up for dead, and the men of his own and neighboring companies gave him a rousing welcome. He had nothing to eat during those four days, but had found an empty tin can, and when it rained caught enough water in that to assuage his thirst.
Corporal George D. Hyde, of Mt. Pleasant, Company E, 110th, hid in a hole in the side of the railroad embankment for thirty-six hours on the chance of obtaining valuable information. When returning, a piece of shrapnel struck the pouch in which he carried his grenades. Examining them, he found the cap of one driven well in. It was a miracle it had not exploded and torn a hole through him.
"You ought to have seen me throw that grenade away," he said.
In this waiting time it was decided to clean up a position of the enemy that was thrust out beyond their general line, fromwhich an annoying fire was kept up constantly. Accordingly, a battalion of the 110th was sent over to wipe it out.
The Rev. Mandeville J. Barker, rector of the Episcopal Church in Uniontown, Pa., is chaplain of the 110th, with the rank of first lieutenant. He had endeared himself to officers and men alike by his happy combination of buoyant, gallant cheerfulness, sturdy Americanism, deep Christianity, indifference to hardship and the tender care he gave to the wounded. He had become, indeed, the most beloved man in the regiment.
He went over the top with the battalion that attacked by night on the heights of the Vesle. It was not his duty to go; in fact had the regimental commander known his intention, he probably would have been forbidden to go. But go he did. He had an idea that his job was to look after the men's bodies as well as their souls, and when there was stern fighting to do, he liked to be in a position where he could attend to both phases of his work.
The attacking party wiped out the Hun machine gun nest after a sharp fight and then retired to their own lines, asordered. It was so dark that some of the wounded were overlooked. After the battalion returned, voices of American wounded could be heard out in that new No Man's Land, calling for help. Dr. Barker took his life and some first aid equipment and water in his two hands and slipped out into the dark, with only starshine and the voices of the wounded to guide him and, between the two armies, attended to the wounds of the men as best he could by the light of a small pocket torch, which he had to keep concealed from the enemy lookouts.
One after another the clergyman hunted. Those who could walk he started back to the lines. Several he had to assist. One lad who was beyond help he sat beside and ministered to with the tenderness of a mother until the young soul struggled gropingly out into the Great Beyond. Then, with the tears rolling down his cheeks, the beloved "Sky Pilot" started back.
But again the sound of a voice in agony halted him. This time, however, it was not English words that he heard, but a moaning petition in guttural German: "Ach Gott! Ach, mein lieber Gott!"
The men of the 110th loved their "parson" even more for what he did then. He turned right about and went back, groping in the dark for the sobbing man. He found a curly-haired young German, wounded so he could not walk and in mortal terror, not of death or of the dark, but of those "terrible Americans who torture and kill their prisoners." Such was the tale with which he and his comrades had been taught to loathe their American enemies. Dr. Barker treated his wounds and carried him back to the American lines. The youngster whimpered with fear when he found where he was going, and begged the clergyman not to leave him. When he finally was convinced that he would not be harmed, he kissed the chaplain's hands, crying over them, and insisted on turning over to Dr. Barker everything he owned that could be loosened—helmet, pistol, bayonet, cartridges, buttons, and other odds and ends.
"All hung over with loot, the parson was, when he came back," said a sergeant in telling of the scene afterward.
"The Fighting Parson," as the men called him, did not fight, actually, buthe went as close to it as possible. On one occasion snipers were bothering the men. Dr. Barker borrowed a pair of glasses, lay flat on the field and, after prolonged study, discovered the offenders, four of them, and notified an artillery observer. A big gun casually swung its snout around, barked three times and the snipers sniped no more. Two or three days later, the regiment went over and took that section of German line and found what was left of the four men. "The Parson's Boche," the men called them.
Toward the last of the action below the Vesle, a group of men of the 110th had established an outpost in a large cave, which extended a considerable distance back in a cliff—just how far none of the men ever discovered. After they had been there several days, Dr. Barker arranged to cheer them a little in their lonely vigil. The cave had been an underground quarry. The Germans had occupied it, knew exactly where it was and its value as a hiding place, and kept a constant stream of machine gun bullets flying past its mouth.
For three weeks it had been possibleto enter or leave the cave only after dark. Even then it was risky, for the mouth of the cave was only about fifty yards from the German trenches and slight sounds could be heard. After dark the Hun fire was laid down about the entrance at every suspicious noise. Sometimes the men inside would amuse themselves by heaving stones outside from a safe position within, to hear Fritz turn loose his "pepper boxes."
Despite these difficulties, Dr. Barker got a motion picture outfit into the cave and gave a show of six reels to the men stationed there, after which Y. M. C. A. men entertained them with songs and eccentric dances. Men who saw that performance, in the light of torches and flambeaux, will never forget the picture.
Toward the last there were sounds from the farther interior of the cave, and two American soldiers walked into the circle, blinking their eyes. Nobody gave much attention to them, supposing they just had wandered away a few minutes before, until one of them interrupted a song with the hoarsely whispered query:
"Got any chow?" Which is army slang for food.
"Aw, go lay down," was the querulous reply of the man addressed. "Ain't yuh got sense enough not to interrupt a show? Shut up, will yuh?"
"Gee, but I'm hungry," came the answer. "I need some chow. We been lost in this doggone cave for two days."
Investigation developed that he was telling the truth, and Dr. Barker produced from some mysterious horn of plenty some chocolate, which the famished men ate with avidity. With the natural, healthy curiosity of American youth, they had set out to explore the cave and had become lost in its mazes. Only the lights and noises of Dr. Barker's concert had led them out.
An instance of the attitude of mind of the Pennsylvania men, who felt nothing but contempt for their foes, and of how little the arrogance and intolerance of the typical Prussian officer impressed them, was given by members of the 111th Ambulance Company, working with the 111th Infantry.
Soldiers of Pennsylvania Dutch descent had amazed the Germans more than once not only by understanding theconversation of the enemy, but by their intense anger, almost ferocity, which they displayed on occasions when confronted with "the Intolerable Thing" called the Prussian spirit. Offspring of men and women of sturdy, free-minded stock who fled from oppression in Europe, they flamed with the spirit of the real liberty lover when in contact with the Prussian.
A little group of the 111th's ambulanciers when carrying back the wounded, met a German major who was groaning and complaining vigorously and demanding instant attention. The contrast between his conduct and that of American officers, who almost invariably told the litter-bearers to go on and pick up worse wounded men, was glaring, but finally the bearers good-humoredly decided to get the major out of the way to stop his noise. He was not wounded severely, but was unable to walk, and they lifted him to the stretcher with the same care they gave to all the wounded.
Promptly the major began to upbraid the Americans, speaking in his native tongue. In the language of a Billingsgate fishwife—or what corresponds to one inHunland—he cursed the Americans, root, stock and branch, from President Wilson down to the newest recruit in the army.
Thomas G. Fox, of Hummelstown, Pa., one of the bearers, understood his every word and repeated the diatribe in English to his fellows, who became restive under the tirade. At last the major said:
"You Americans think you are going to win the war, but you're not."
That was too much for Fox and his companions.
"You think you are going to be carried back to a hospital, but you're not," said Fox. Whereupon the litter was turned over neatly and the major deposited, not too gently, on the hard ground. For some time he lay there, roaring his maledictions. Then he started to crawl back, and by the time he got to a hospital, he had lost some of his insolence.