FROM
UPTON TO THE MEUSE WITH THE 307th
W. KERR
RAINSFORD
PREFACE
PREFACE
The following brief history was written for the most part
during the latter months of the Regiment's stay in
France, and was pieced together, in so far as the events
recorded had not come under the writer's direct
observation, from a number of sources. Such documents as
the Regiment still held in its possession were carefully
studied, but these were very insufficient and often
inconclusive. They consisted largely of orders, which
might afterward have been countermanded, or else simply
never have been carried out as contemplated. They
consisted also of reports which had been called for on
specific subjects or actions; but these also would often
have been written without adequate time for their
preparation, and under stress of more pressing matters by
officers greatly overtaxed. The battalion war diaries in
General Headquarters at Chaumont were also studied. But
there again the line or two devoted to the day's activity
of a battalion was too meager a contribution to be
greatly helpful; and when action had been serious and
continuous it was often represented simply by a gap in
the records.
The barest skeleton of the story could thus be built and
the filling in of it was found to be best accomplished by
continuously interviewing those who had taken part in its
various phases. In this connection the reader may be
struck by a slight but unintentional overemphasis of the
battalion to which the writer belonged, and with the
life-history of which he was more intimately familiar.
There may also be an under-emphasis of any headquarters
higher than that of battalion, which, rather than
regiment, is the combat-unit of the modern army. But the
effort has been consistent and very painstaking for truth
of both fact and color; and the story herewith presented
is primarily a true story. On that point the writer
wishes to be emphatic.
The reader will find herein little of the colorful
melodrama with which the public's taste has so largely
been vitiated in the stories of war. As a case in point
he will find no mention of bayonet-fighting. It is
difficult to turn to a single magazine-illustration of
fighting in the Argonne Forest wherein at least one of
the American soldiers is not seen driving his bayonet
through the body of a German machine -gunner, while the
latter raises inadequately protesting hands to the
sky-and quite probably every American in the picture will
be so engaged. Yet, at the risk of deeply shocking his
public, the writer gives it as his careful opinion that
probably no German machine- gun crew was ever bayoneted
by Americans in the Forest of Argonne. Although his
regiment, perhaps more than any other, bore the bitter
brunt of fighting down the whole bloody length of that
forest, he yet thinks it improbable that any soldier of
the regiment, either there or elsewhere, ever used his
bayonet at all. It may have occurred, but if so it was a
rarity. Nor does this imply any slightest lack on the
part of the troops engaged-certainly not any lack of
intelligence. The bayonet became obsolete with the
passing of trench warfare. Place a group of men, armed
with machine-guns, magazine-rifles, and automatic
pistols, free-footed in the woods, and try hurdling the
barbed-wire toward them with a spear in your hand. You
will infallibly be mourned by your relatives-if they
loved you -and the machine-gun will still be in action.
In innumerable conversations with officers from almost
all the American combat-divisions whom be met in
hospitals, the writer has never heard an authentic and
first-hand account of bayonet-fighting. It is altogether
unworthy of true courage and self-sacrifice that the
story of it should be falsified to suit a supposedly
popular taste.
The story herewith presented is then primarily true. In
so far as it deals with the 307th Infantry alone it is
known to be true; and in so far as it touches upon other
organizations it is believed to be so-but not as the
result of any special investigation. Since writing the
chapter on the crossing of the Aire, for example, the
writer has learned of some dispute between the 153rd
Brigade and the 82nd Division as to the taking of St.
Juvin. On this, or on similar subjects not directly
germane to his narrative, he has made no great effort to
investigate, and has not thought it worth while to
qualify his reference to the taking of St. Juvin by the
153rd Brigade. The references made to other organizations
are merely intended to give the story of the 307th its
proper setting, and to suggest the relation of its
movements to the scheme of larger events, rather than to
define the movements of those organizations.
The sketches and photographs used to illustrate the text
were made by the author-the first when, as an ambulance
driver with the French in 1916 he traversed in part the
same region, and the latter when he revisited the
battlefields of the Vesle and Aisne in March, 1919-six
months after they had been fought over. He greatly
regrets that the subjects presented should not be of more
obvious and general interest, and he made every effort,
though unsuccessfully, to secure some that were.
Yet to himself the photographs are of deep interest, as
were those few days of March on which they were taken.
The return, as of a spirit escaped from purgatory, to
that drear half-forgotten country-the battered villages,
with their pitiable inhabitants creeping back to ruined
homes; the broken woodlands with their trampled wreckage
of equipment, still un-gathered, rotting slowly into the
ground; the flooded marshes, where the river, choked with
d6bris, backed and spread into stagnant pools; the bleak,
scarred uplands, seen through a mist of rain and driving
snow, where black flocks of rooks winged back and forth,
or perched in hordes along the tangled wire; and from the
hills, where the French engineers were setting off
unexploded shells, the same heavy orchestra as of yore.
It is a land accursed whose regeneration will be long in
coming.
The two poems have both previously appeared in the
Outlook. The first was written on February 21st, 1918,
while spending a night alone as Officer of the Day in the
71st Regiment Armory in New York, where the 307th
Infantry had left its arms under guard for the parade of
Washington's Birthday. The officers of the Regiment had
recently adopted for it the old Gaelic motto of the Irish
Inniskillen Dragoons, "Faugh-a-Ballagh"
("Clear the Way"), and had agreed to carry
blackthorn sticks as a regimental emblem. It was said
that the Regiment would be known as the Blackthorn
Regiment, although actually the name never clung very
close. These verses were afterward read to Congress by
the member from Michigan, and reprinted in the
Congressional Record. The second was written in hospital,
late during the fateful month of October, 1918, when it
was becoming evident to those behind the lines that the
final act of the great drama was about to be played.
Finally the writer thinks it well to say that, though
largely written in France, this book was at the time of
the mustering out of the Regiment on May 9, 1919, still
in very fragmentary form, so that it was not read by any
superior officer. Should there appear in its pages any
passages seeming by implication to be critical, such
criticism is that solely of the writer and of the brother
officers with whom he has conferred, and does not in any
way bear the endorsement of the greatly respected
colo-nel or the general who have so generously prefaced
it, but who have never had the opportunity to see its
contents. Criticism is far from the purpose of this
present volume, but in deal-ing very frankly with the
facts, as seen on the Line, it may occasionally seem to
be implied.
The writer was informed by the Regimental Adjutant,
shortly before demobilization, that be had received
notice of the Regiment being chosen from among the others
of the Division for perpetuation in the Army of the
United States. This, to become fact, would be conditional
upon the proposed enlargement of the Regular Army to five
hundred thousand, under which circumstances one regiment
is to be selected from each of various divisions for
perpetuation. The 77th Division, already distinguished as
the first division of the Draft to be sent overseas, has
been officially credited, in the report of Gen. Peyton C.
March, Chief of Staff, with the greatest aggregate depth
of territory gained from the enemy of any American
Division in France-77.5 kilometers, or 9.14 per cent. of
the entire advance of the American forces-there being
twenty-seven divisions listed in all, and the 2nd
Division coming next with 60 kilometers.
The 307th Infantry has been selected permanently to
represent the Division, than which no greater recognition
of its service could well be accorded it. This, then, is
the story of the Regiment, the purpose of which is
truthfully to portray some aspects of an epoch very
memorable in the life of the nation.
W. K. RAINSFORD
Captain 307th Infantry