HISTORY CHAPTER IV I MORE hard hiking, and then the Battalions entrained by night at Longpre, Hangest, and Pont Remy respectively. Although the yards at Longpre had been severely bombarded the night before, the Regiment was spared an attack. There followed an endless trip of three days, which began by slowly carrying us westward. All sorts of speculation were rife as to the destination. To Italy! To Chateau-Thierry, where it was rumored the Germans had broken through in their drive to Paris! (And where in reality they had been stopped at this time by the French and our own 2nd Division.) To Russia! Perhaps the only destination not seriously suggested was Hoboken. By day and night the little freight cars marked "Hommes 40-Chevaux 8," rumbled and bumped slowly along, stopping at times for a brief stay while the men filed by to fill canteens with coffee. The Regiment was traveling, two sections to the Battalion, and the ordres de transport were issued to the train commander at various points en route. This route took the Regiment through battered Amiens, then southwest to Forges-les-Eaoux, then southeast on a broad swing around Paris, touching its environs at Versailles, through Toul and Nancy, until the final ordres de transport were handed to the train commanders bearing the final destinations- Charmes, Chatel, and Thaon, small rail stations in the neighborhood of Epinal. Then by degrees all learned that we were going in on the Lorraine front. For some reason, irritating and unexplainable to the doughboy, these three detraining points were a full day's march from billeting or camping areas. Some sections detrained stiff and sleepy in the chilly dawn to find a march of twenty kilometers ahead of them. At last the 1st Battalion got itself comfortably sheltered under tents in the beautiful park of the chateau of Girecourt, Major Budd's 2nd Battalion under canvas and in billets in Fontenay, and Major Chinner's 3rd Battalion and Regimental Headquarters, with Headquarters Company, at St. Helene. The Regiment was for a time at rest.
Rolling kitchens began again to function. Tiresome
travel, reserve rations, and grueling marchings had come
to an end. After two months of dirty barns, bombing
raids, long-range artillery fire, with the roar of the
big guns often in one's ears, and at night the horizon
blinking with the constant heat-lightning above the
front; after those months of chilly discomfort and hard
training on the Arras front, the Regiment had apparently
entered a land of peace and summer. Once more British
rations had given way to honest American white bread,
beef, bacon, and potatoes. There was no drill schedule.
Reveille was moved half an hour forward, and the men
devoted themselves to getting clean. The 308th, going into the line, was preceded by reconnaissance, and as the battalions went in in numerical order the first trip of inspection was made by the Major and Captains of the 1st Battalion with their First Lieu-tenants. Such a trip,- whether taken then or a little later when all went forward, forms a memory never to be forgotten. Now at last, for the first time, most of us reached the long anticipated and long approached front line. After a ride of several hours in trucks through Baccarat, to which Division Headquarters had moved; through Neuf Maisons, later Headquarters of both 308th and 154th Brigade; over red sandstone roads, through beautiful pine forests, the party reached the little town of Badonviller, where it descended. Two things stick in the writer's memory. The road on the hill west of Neuf Maisons, camouflaged with dirty yellow cloth and with the ominous and significant sign suspended above it, "Zone Dangereuse "; this and the meeting during a short stop at the town with certain members of the 42nd Division, who were strolling about in what, considering the situation, seemed a strangely unconcerned manner. Badonviller before the war had been an important little manufacturing city; it made pottery, as Baccarat made glass, and after Baccarat, was the most important town of the Department of Meurthes-et-Moselle. The German invasion Of 1914 had wrecked it and swept past. When the Germans fell back after the battle of the Marne, Badonviller rested on the French line, and four years of shell-fire had accomplished what the enemy could not finish in his first rush. In the streets, barricades constructed of wattling, with a filling of cement leaving loop-holes for rifles, recalled where the French had resisted the invader in hand-to-hand street fighting. At the time of the 308th's arrival the town boasted a single citizen, who was later gassed and evacuated. Some half dozen houses still stood, and in one of these, a big square two story structure of red limestone set at the rear of a court-yard, formerly home and wholesale house of a wine mer-chant, was Headquarters of the 3rd Battalion, 168th Infantry, which our 1st Battalion relieved. Badonviller occupied the extreme left of our sector, which from there extended towards the east and south about three miles. The whole front line trench system was connected in the rear by a road, and for the most part sufficiently protected from observation by forests that served as cover in the daytime for small parties. An American platoon or string of ration carts, however, always caught the eye of the observer in a German balloon and drew a few bursts of shrapnel. For some unexplained reason, French ration wagons went unmolested. The regimental sector was divided into three sub-sectors: Chamois, on the left, rolling meadowland strongly suggestive of Illinois prairie; Village Negre, in the middle, breaking into wooded hills and valleys; and Chasseur, on the right, yet more wooded and hilly, where the actual foothills of the Vosges range began. The trench system constituted an elaborate maze, running haphazard up and down hill and across gullies; now in the woods and now in open land. At intervals occurred little groups of dugouts built with pine logs and square blocks of red stone into the sides of the hills. Many of these were ornamented with rustic woodwork, done with a truly French sense of decoration. To Major Nelson, on his arrival, occurred an incident which is worth relating. A few days earlier some American artillery had dropped a few shells into the opposite town of Bremenil. There existed a sort of gentleman's agreement that Headquarters towns should not be shelled. And so the enemy replied by shelling and gassing Badon-viller. This happened to begin when the two Battalion Commanders and Staff were sitting down to mess. Mess was finished to the last detail-and this Iowa outfit lived well in the front line; not an officer left the table until the gas alarm was screeching in the courtyard. Shells were bursting in the street, and a battered building adjoining Headquarters had been set on fire and was blazing. The bombardment kept up till 10:30 that night and began again at 3 in the morning to last two hours. A noisy reception to what had been described as "a quiet rest sector " ! On the 17th of June, the entire Regiment began its
thirty-eight kilometer march to the front. The 1st Battalion leading reached Ker Avor, a French rest
camp, at 2 o'clock of a rainy, muddy, pitch-black night.
The next day the Battalion slept and rested in the rustic
Chautauqua-like collection of artistic huts set in the
center of a magnificent pine forest. The next night the
Regiment marched in by half platoons to relieve the
Rainbow battalion. An interesting feature of the march to
the front was the meeting at night with the troops coming
out, and particularly memorable that with the 69th New
York. Father Duffy vividly describes the occasion: East side, West side, All around the town, The lots sang " ring-a-rosie, "London Bridge is falling down." Boys and girls together, Me and Mamie O'Rourke, We tripped the lightfantastic At last! The first of the National Army is actually in the line, holding its own small section of the five hundred odd miles of Western Front. At last! Here is the place toward which every moment of the last nine months has been step by step leading us. And whether his eyes rested upon the walls of a room in Battalion Headquarters, or the walls of a dugout a little further front, or whether they peered from a still more advanced strong point, reached by the maze of trenches and facing some dimly -seen field or woods, wherever he might be, there came into each man's heart something which might be translated into words thus: "At last! This is the Real Thing. May I play a man's part in it." And so the 308th went into the front line
on the night of June 21-22. Of all this preparation the Regiment was totally unconscious. For two days reigned the quiet of a summer Sunday in the country, only broken occasionally when some distant German 77 or I55 took a ranging shot on the French batteries carefully and securely screened in the thick timber north of Ker Avor. "Bonne guerre, ici, " remarked Captain Poli to Captain Fahnestock as they made the evening rounds of the Chamois line. From Mont Kemmel to Albert the British
were holding on desperately, looking forward to the
renewal of the great German drive. At Chateau-Thierry the
French were gripping hard, fearful for Paris in case of
another blow like that of May. But this was the rest
sector of Lorraine. "Bonne guerre, icil" In Badonviller, battered walls began to
tumble; soon the streets were blocked with debris; shells
of all calibres up to I55's were bursting at almost
minute intervals; and as about every third carried gas
the town was soon reeking with mustard fumes. The choice
of the Pink Chateau as Battalion Headquarters was
obviously not unknown to the enemy. Five direct hits were
registered on the building and grounds, and throughout
the bombardment two airplanes circled over the chateau
and peppered it with machine gun fire. It is to be
remembered that here was situated the telephone exchange,
by which The exchange in the Pink chateau was placed in a half cellar and thus fairly well protected from gas, but the necessity of constantly opening the blanketed doors for those going in and out soon filled it with fumes. The Battalion Staff worked in gas masks, the telephone operator taking off his mask long enough to shout messages into the phone. Secrecy was at an end. The enemy knew what was going on better than we did. Now Major Nelson began to learn that nothing is quite so helpless as a battalion commander during an attack on a trench position, unless it be his own superiors farther back. He has made his dispositions out in front and they will have to stand. If attacked he cannot get out to change them. His duty it is to sit tight at Battalion Headquarters where he can be found, to try to keep his line of communications open, and to be ready to send help to any section of the front that calls for it. One by one the wires began to go out. First died the one to French Headquarters, and soon only two were left, one forward to an observing post in Chamois, and the other back to Regimental Headquarters. The operator in Chamois stuck to his post throughout, and as daylight dawned, reported no attack in that sub-sector. The message went through to Regimental Headquarters and then this line died. Major Nelson turned to two men of the Signal Platoon and commanded them to go out and repair the line. "Out there?" asked one of them quizzically. "Certainly out there. The Infantry is out there, isn't it? The Signal Platoon ought to have as much guts as the Infantry." " Come on, Bill, it's us for the fresh air," said the lineman. They adjusted their gas masks, gripped their tool kits, and disappeared behind the gas blanketed door. They had the line fixed by the time the show was over, when it proved of great help in getting up additional medical assistance. Shortly after daylight, the only remaining telephone line, that to the Chamois outpost, died and an impenetrable curtain of ignorance descended over the happenings at the front, while every one wondered ceaselessly as to the fate of the three companies out there. About 5 o'clock the storm ended as suddenly as it began. A silence followed almost depressing in quality after the infernal racket. The ruins of Badonviller were smoking and white dust clouds hung over the piles of d6bris. Streets were piled with stone and mortar interspersed with puddles of yellow mustard gas mixture. At last a C Company runner staggers into Battalion Headquarters. He is white-faced, mud-covered, and his uniform is torn. He reports that everybody is killed. 'Trenches all gone. Men all gone. Everything all gone. " What had really happened at the front? Of the three sub-sectors, that of Chasseur had received no punishment whatever. But Village Negre, cut transversely by a deep gulley, was an ideal place upon which to deliver a gas attack, and this the Germans carried out in a very thorough manner. The road, Captain Breckinridge's P. C., and the two P. A.'s were peppered with nine inch gas shells. One of these landed directly on B Company's rolling kitchen and blew it to pieces. The accuracy of the fire was very noticeable, and the communication trenches received a number of hits. As many members of B Company then had opportunity to observe, the sound of a gas shell has a peculiar quality accompanied by a sort of gurgling and hissing in flight and exploding with a softer detonation than that of the high explosives. Two men of B Company were killed outright by bursting shells, and many others suffered from gas. " Thirty-eight of these required treatment and one died. The French in the same sector are said to have lost more than one hundred. Although this was our first experience, our gas discipline was apparently the superior. But it was in the Chamois sector that the most important events had happened. In addition to the bombardment there were attacks made on G. C.'s 9, 10, and 11. The French platoon in 9 was, as already stated, virtually wiped out. At G. C. 10 the platoon which had never been under fire before went through a terrific hammering. At one corner a two hundred and fifty pound air bomb made a direct hit, and the trench became a gaping shell crater twelve feet across and fifteen feet deep. No better platoon than Lieutenant Flood's could have been picked on which first to try the effect of battle upon our conscript army. It was about the most cosmopolitan platoon of the most cosmopolitan company that came out of the melting pot of New York. It comprised Irish, Italians, East Side Jews, Russians, Scandinavians, and even a few native Americans, but they all acted as one would wish Americans to act in such a crisis. At Camp Upton, this had been one of the best drilled platoons in the 308th, proving a close contender for the Regimental trophy won by an E Company platoon. Now upon another kind of drill ground it was to show the effect of that drilling. When the barrage lifted, Flood gave the
command to man the firing trench. Instantly riflemen and
chauchat teams took their places still wearing gas masks.
The wearing of the masks was a mistake but in accordance
with French orders in the sector, and in spite of this
handicap they met the advancing Germans with concentrated
rifle fire. The attacking force on G. C. 10 was estimated
from 150 to 200. If this is correct, a conservative
estimate would show the Americans outnumbered three to
one. While rifles and chauchats were clearing the front,
the enemy filtered in from the sides of the battered
positions so that the Americans were attacked on three
sides at once. The fight became a hand-to-hand affair:
German potato mashers against American bay-onets in the
shell holes and battered trenches. Flood encouraged his
men in just the way that any one who had watched him
working with them for the last nine months, might know he
would do. After he had shot two Germans and lay wounded
on the ground, he continued this splendid encouragement
until from loss of blood he grew unconscious. By that
time the platoon was overpowered by numbers and the fight
for G. C. 10 was lost. But there had been no surrender.
With fifty percent of the platoon lying on the
ground-seventeen of whom had seen their first and last
fight-the struggle still went on. Comparative quiet now again settled over
the Badonviller sector. A platoon of Company D now
replaced Flood's at G. C. 10, after helping to carry back
the wounded. Colonel Averill and Major Nelson came up,
and the wounded were cared for on all hands. The one
figure which most strikingly dominated the whole strange
scene was that of Captain Condon. Hatless, his sleeves
rolled up, and his arms red to the elbows, he worked
feverishly to save the life of every man in whom any life
was left. The sun shone brightly and the birds sang, but
though it was June, many of the leaves were like those of
a late October landscape, having been turned sickly
yellow by the gas. The Major, losing faith in the village
legend of the Pink chateau's safety, now moved to the
"Swiss chalet." This was nearer French
Headquarters, and the broken telephone wires had taught
the necessity of closer liaison. Seated that evening before a cheery fire
in the Swiss chalet, the Padre vented his pardonable
indignation on the foe. And how did you get out, Father? I didn't. I just tumbled into the grave
and laid there till it was over, thinking the while that
an open grave is small comfort for a man of the church
with those despicable villains shooting at him from
overhead. There are few events which deserve record during the five weeks in which the Regiment remained on the Lorraine front subsequent to the attack described. On the night of July ist, a German patrol cut the wire in front of one of E Company's petits postes, and attempted to creep into our lines. It was driven off by the members of the post, one of whom was slightly wounded; in the morning a quantity of flares and hand grenades were found left behind. A few days later Lieutenant Griffiths, then Battalion Scout and Intelligence Officer, together with Corporal Tuin of G Company, afterwards killed, was visiting P. P. 12 in what had been the old Village Negre sector, when they came upon two German scouts in camouflaged suits attempting a daylight patrol, and killed or wounded one of these. An enemy attack was confidently awaited on the eve Of July 4th. At 12:45 A.M., the French batteries opened a terrific barrage which lasted with great intensity for half an hour. At the end of that time the French Commander sent confident word to Major Budd: "Les Boches ne viendront pas." Sure enough, quiet ensued and there was no raid. On the 5th, G and F Companies relieved E and H, which went back to the Battalion support positions now held at Pexonne. On the 10th, the 2nd Battalion was relieved on the front line by the 3rd under Major Chinner; the former moving back into reserve at Bertrichamps, and the 1st Battalion, now under command of Captain Whittlesey, taking the support position at Ker Avor. Finally on July 19th, the 1st Battalion, under Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, returned to the front line to remain there until August 1st, when the 77th was relieved by the 37th National Guard Division of Ohio, and the 1st Battalion had its place taken by a battalion of the 145th Infantry. On July 11th, the 2nd Battalion then at Bertrichamps, enjoyed band concerts, Y. M. C. A. shows, and a short programme by Miss Elsie Janis herself. Passes were issued for Baccarat to the number of fifty a day, and there was a fine chance for bathing in the river Meurthe-and also facilities for dental treatment. On the 13th, started the first of a series of ball games which took place in the afternoon after the morning's drill, and in anticipation of Bastille Day perhaps, an exhibition of pyrotechnic signalling. It was at this time that special orders arrived, commissioning successful candidates who had attended the Third Officers' Training School at Upton. These non-commissioned officers, now commissioned, proved a great loss to the Regiment. Most of the new lieutenants went to the 1st and 2nd Divisions, where they made fine records. It was while the 2nd Battalion was in
support at Ker Avor, that Captain Mills of Company G was
accidentally killed by the explosion of a rifle grenade.
Thus died one of the most beloved leaders in the whole
Regiment, and the possessor of one of the most vivid
personalities. A side of Mills, not known to all, was
his sympathy and love for his men. In Camp Upton, one of
his men received a telegram, begging him to come to New
York at once as his mother was dying. There were no
trains that night and there was a bad storm. Starting at
11 in the evening, Captain Mills in his own car drove
this man to New York, left him at him home, and returned
to camp in time for reveille. Many a man in Company G can
testify to his timely help in financial trouble. Many
felt that Mill's reckless courage would not allow him to
come back. True to the ideals of his soldier father, he
laid down his life for his own country and for the
beloved France of his mother. The absence of the typewriter helped to simplify matters in the army of these practical allies, since nearly all orders had to be drawn up carefully in longhand, and as there were but few clerks, the paper work was naturally minimized. Another feature of the French Army was the substitution of decorations for promotions. Typical of the best in his army was Captain Rene Memmv who joined the 308th at Neuf Maisons as liaison officer with the French. He endeared himself to all his American associates by his cheerfulness, his willingness to work, and the charm of his character. The real desire of this soldier of Fortune was that when he had ceased to serve his country in the field, he could return to a home with his children in Gascony and there raise bees. In the meantime, the French had withdrawn from this front on July 16th. American batteries had likewise relieved the French artillery, and now for the first time there was complete American control over this pleasant sector. For it was, as sectors go, a pleasant one a rather sleepy old lion who showed his deadly teeth but once, and at other times afforded fine instruction for unpracticed hunters in the field of war. At the front there were frequent patrols into No Man's Land, and in the rear positions, constant drill. There was fairly constant shelling of the back areas (the growling, as it were, of the old beast in his sleep) but the events of the night of June 23rd were never repeated. No one, however, knew whether they might not be repeated at any moment, and thus anticipation was kept alive. For each man, who in turn went forward from the comparative comfort and safety of the reserve line to the almost equally comfortable and safe position of the support, and finally from this to the front line itself, for each the interest and novelty of that strange region never grew old. The intricacies of the trench system, its
walls and parapets held in place by firm, neatly woven
brushwood revetting; the deep secure dugouts, some
capable of holding a platoon or more of men and with the
blankets at the entrance to keep out gas; the gas alarms,
consisting of empty shells hanging from a support or of
klaxon horns; the carefully labeled French signs:
"Boyau Centrale, Cave-20 Hommes, " " Abri
en cas de bombardement the shell holes torn and gaping;
the machine gun and chauchat emplacements; the printed
propaganda shot from rifle grenades or carried in small
red German balloons; the Very pistols, rockets, and
flares; the hand grenades always at hand;-and last but
not least, No Man's Land itself, sometimes a
dismal-looking stretch of wire-sown field or shattered
woods, sometimes an innocent-appearing sylvan vista, but
always the region where men peered silently ahead or else
spoke in whispers -all of these things were just as you
had read of them, and yet all somehow so different. |