MONTDIDIER
"And horror is not from terrible things--men torn to rags by
a shell,
And the whole trench swimming in blood and slush, like a Butcher's
shop in Hell;
It's silence and night and the smell of the dead that shake a man to
the soul,
From Misery Farm to Dead Man's Death on a nil report patrol."
KNIGHT-ADKIN.
By the end of March we were veteran troops.
All during the latter part of the month rumor had been rife about the
proposed German drive. After nearly four years of war, Germany had
crushed Russia, Rumania, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania; had
dealt Italy a staggering blow, and was about to assume the offensive in
France. On March 28th the blow fell, the allied line staggered and
split, and the Germans poured through the gap.
The news reached us, and at the same time came orders to prepare for an
immediate move. At once the Twenty-sixth American Division moved up in
our rear, and with hardly any time for reconnaissance they took over
from us. My battalion moved out and marched twelve kilometers to the
rear; the last units checked in to where our trains were to meet us at
about 5 A.M., and by 6 A.M. we were on the march again to the vicinity
of Toul, where the division was concentrating.
Here we were told that we were to be thrown into the path of the German
advance. By this time all types of rumor were current. We heard of the
Englishman Cary's remarkable feat, how he collected cooks, engineers,
labor troops from the retreating forces, formed them into a fighting
unit, and stood against the German advance, and how his brigade grew up
over night. Cary, because of this feat, became, from captain in the Q.
M. C., general of infantry. We heard of the thirty-six hours during
which all contact was lost between the French left and the English
right, when a French cavalry division was brought in trucks from the
rear of the line and thrown into the gap, and on the morning of the
second day reported that they believed they had established contact with
the English.
The next few days all was excitement. We formed the men and gave out our
first decorations to Lieutenant Holmes and Sergeant Murphy. At the same
time we told them all that we knew of our plans. They were delighted.
Men do not like sitting in trenches day in and day out, and being killed
and mangled without ever seeing the enemy, and this promised a fight
where the enemy would be in sight.
We had a large, rough shack where we were able to have all the officers
of the battalion for mess. Lieutenant Gustafson, an Illinois boy, who
had, in civilian life, been a head waiter at summer hotels, managed the
mess. We had some good voices among the officers, and every night after
dinner there was singing.
Our supply officer, meanwhile, was annexing everything in sight for the
battalion in the most approved fashion. One time his right-hand man,
Sergeant Wheeler, passed by some tethered mules which belonged to a
green regiment. He hopped off the ration cart he was riding, caught
them, and tied them behind the cart. A mile down the road some one came
pounding after them.
"Hey! Where are you going with those mules?" Wheeler was equal to the
occasion. "Are them your mules? Well, what do you mean by leaving them
loose by the road? I had to get out and catch them. I have a good mind
to report you to the M. P. for this." Eventually Wheeler compromised by
warning the man, and giving one of the mules back to him.
Then the trains arrived. We had never traveled on a regular military
train before. A military train is made up to carry a battalion of
infantry; box cars holding about forty men or eight animals each, and
flat cars for wagons, kitchens, etc. We entrained safely and got off
all right, though we were hurried at the last by a message saying the
schedule given us was wrong, and our train left one half hour earlier
than indicated.
We creaked off toward the southwest. We didn't know where we were going,
but by this time we had all become philosophical and self-sufficient and
believed that if the train dropped us somewhere far away from the rest
of the division, we would manage to get along by ourselves without too
much trouble.
After a day's travel we stopped at a little station. The only thing that
we had to identify us was a long yellow ticket scratched all over with
minute directions, which none of us could read. Here I was informed by a
French guard that this was the regulating station and the American
regulating officer was waiting to see me. I hopped off the train and ran
back, finding Colonel Hjalmar Erickson, who afterward became a very dear
friend of mine and later commanded the regiment. He was busy trying to
figure things out with the French _chef de la gare_, an effort
complicated by his inability to speak French.
"My lord, Major, why aren't you the Seventh Field Artillery?" was
Colonel Erickson's greeting.
As he was giving me the plans and maps I heard a whoop from the train
outside. I ran to the door and found that, for some reason, best known
to himself, the French engineer had started up again and my battalion
was rapidly disappearing down the track. I started on the dead run after
them. Fortunately some of the officers saw what was happening, and by
force of arms succeeded in persuading the engineer to stop the train.
That night we detrained a couple of days' march from Chaumont-en-Vexin,
where division headquarters were to be. We hiked through a beautiful
peaceful country, the most lovely we had yet seen in France, billeting
for the night in a little town where a whole company of mine slept in an
old chateau. At Chaumont we stayed for some few days, maneuvering while
the division was being fully assembled.
From Chaumont we marched north for four days to the Montdidier sector. I
never shall forget this march. Spring was on the land, the trees were
budding, wild flowers covered the ground, the birds were singing. Our
dusty brown column wound up hill and down, through patches of woods and
little villages. By us, all day, toward the south streamed the French
refugees from villages threatened, or already taken, by the Hun. Heavy
home-made wagons trundled past, drawn by every kind of animal, and piled
high with hay and farm produce, furniture, and odds and ends of
household belongings. Tramping beside them or riding on them were women
and children, most of them dazed and with a haunted look in their faces.
Sometimes the wagons would be halted and their occupants squatted by the
road, cooking a scanty meal from what they had with them.
To us in this country, thanks to Providence, not to our own forethought
or character, this description is only so many words. Unless one has
seen it, it is impossible to visualize the battered village, the column
of refugees that starts at each great battle and streams ceaselessly
toward Paris and southern France, the apple orchards and gardens torn
beyond recognition, the desolation and destruction seemingly impossible
of reparation.
Nothing would have been better for our countrymen and women than for
each and every one of them to have spent some time in the war zone. When
I think of men of the type of Bryan and Ford, when I think of their
self-satisfied lives of ease, when I think of what they did to permit
disaster and death to threaten this country, it makes me wonder more
than ever at the long-suffering kindness of humanity which permits such
as they still to enjoy the benefits of citizenship in this great land
which they have so signally failed to serve.
When we took over the Montdidier sector it was not, nor did it ever
become, the type found in the parts of the front where warfare had been
going on without movement for more than three years. Trenches were
shallow and scanty, and dugouts were almost lacking. Indeed, from this
time on, with one exception, the division never held an established
sector. The line at Montdidier had been established shortly after the
break-through by the Germans, by a French territorial division which was
marching north, expecting to relieve some friendly troops in front of
it. They suddenly encountered, head on, the German columns that were
marching south. Both sides deployed, went into position, and dug in
where they were. The First Division took over from these troops.
The first morning we were in the Montdidier sector the Huns shelled us
heavily. Immediately after they raided a part of our front line held by
a platoon of D Company, commanded by Lieutenant Dabney, a very good
fellow from Louisville, Ky. The Germans were repulsed with loss. We
suffered no casualties ourselves except from the German bombardment. The
next evening we picked up the body of the German sergeant commanding
the party, whom we had killed.
We staged a very successful raid ourselves at about this time. The
raiding party was composed of eighty-five men of D Company, under the
command of Lieutenant Freml. The section of German trenches selected as
the objective of the operation lay in a little wood about one hundred
yards from our front line. Our patrols had reported that this part of
the German line was particularly heavily held. In the first light of the
half dawn the raiding party worked up into position, passing by through
the mist like black shadows. At the agreed time our artillery came down
with both the heavies and the 75's, and the patch of woods was enveloped
in clouds of smoke through which the bursts of the H. E. showed like
flashes of lightning. In ten minutes the guns lifted and formed a box
barrage, and the raiding party went over. So rapid was the whole
maneuver that the German defensive barrage did not come down until
after the raiding party had reached the enemy trenches.
The enemy trenches were found, as had been expected, full of Germans.
Most of them were in dugouts or funk holes, and did not make a severe
resistance. "Come out of there," the man in charge of the particular
detail for that part of the trench would call down the dugout. If the
Huns came out, they were taken prisoner. If they did not, a couple of
incendiary grenades were thrown down the dugout and our men moved on.
We captured, in all, thirty-three prisoners, of whom one was an officer,
and probably killed and wounded as many more. Our losses were one killed
and five slightly wounded. Unfortunately the one man killed was
Lieutenant Freml, the raid leader, who fell in a hand-to-hand combat.
Freml was an old Regular Army sergeant and had fought in the Philippine
Islands. After this war he was planning to return and establish a
chicken farm. He always kept his head no matter what the circumstances
were and his solutions for situations that arose were always practical.
His men were devoted to him and would follow him anywhere.
[Illustration: A TRENCH RAID
Drawn by Captain George Harding, A. E. F.,
Montfaucon]
The men returned in high excitement and fine spirits. This was the most
successful minor operation we had had so far. I was with the raiding
party when it jumped off and then went to the point where they were to
check in as they got back. There were four parties in all. As each
returned with its collection of prisoners, the first thing that the
officer or sergeant in command asked was, "Sir, did any of the rest get
any more prisoners than we did?" When I told one of them, Lieutenant
Ridgely, that another party had brought in two more prisoners than he
had, he wanted to go back at once and get some more himself.
A very gallant fellow, Bradley, my liaison sergeant, asked and was
granted permission to go on the raid. He turned up at the checking-in
point driving three Germans in front of him, his rifle over his
shoulder, the bayonet covered with blood and a German helmet hanging
from the end. As he passed I said, "Bradley, I see you have a new
bonnet." He turned to me with a beaming smile and answered, "Why, Major,
I heard that Mrs. Roosevelt wanted a German helmet and this was such a
nice one that I stuck the man who had it on." Poor Bradley was, I
believe, killed in the battle of Soissons, though I never have been able
to get positive information.
A curious instance of the way a man will carry one impression from an
order in his mind and one only was given by this raid. Before the
operation started I had given particular instructions to the effect that
I wanted prisoners and papers. This is literally what the party brought
back, lots of prisoners and papers of all sorts. They took the crews of
two machine guns but did not bring the guns back--that was not included
in the instructions. The company which made this raid was composed of
raw recruits who had never had even the most rudimentary kind of
military training until their arrival in Europe some five months before
this date. They were of all walks in life and all extractions. Many did
not even speak the English tongue with ease.
It was in this sector that the First Division staged the first American
attack when the town of Cantigny was taken. The attack was made by the
Twenty-eighth Infantry. My battalion, although not actually engaged in
the assault, was in support and took over the extreme right of the line
after the assault. It also helped in repelling counter-attacks delivered
by the Germans and in consolidating the position. Just preceding the
Cantigny show the Germans strafed and gassed very heavily the positions
held by us. I suspect that this was due to a certain amount of
additional movement in the sector coincident with moving the troops into
position for the attack.
After gassing us and strafing us heavily a raid in considerable force
was sent over by the Germans. It was repulsed with heavy loss, leaving a
number of prisoners in our hands. A Company took the brunt of this, the
platoon commanded by Lieutenant Andrews doing particularly well. Just
after the repulse of the German attack I was up watching the right of
the line, which was in trenches out in the open. The German machine guns
and sharpshooters were very active. One of our men was lying behind the
parapet. He had his helmet hooked on the end of his rifle and kept
shoving it over the top. The Germans would fire at it. Then he would
flag a miss for them by waving it to and fro in the same way the flag is
waved for a miss when practice on the rifle range is going on.
Our own losses were due in large part to the German artillery fire. In
this operation a number of our most gallant old-timers were killed.
Captain Frey, second in command of the battalion, was shot twice through
the stomach while leading reenforcements to his front line. When the
stretcher bearers carried him by me, he shook my hand, said "good-by,"
and was carried away to the rear. After they had moved him a short
distance he lifted himself up, saluted, said in a loud voice, "Sergeant,
dismiss the company," and died. Sergeant Dennis Sullivan, Sergeant
O'Rourke, and Sergeant McCormick, not to mention many, many others, were
killed or received mortal wounds at this time.
The Cantigny operation was a success. We took and held the town, or
rather the spot where the town had been, for it would be an exaggeration
to say it was even a ruin. It was literally beaten flat. This piece of
land had seen the German invaders for the last time. We learned a
valuable lesson also, namely, not to make the disposition of the men too
thick. In this operation we did, and this, and the fact that our
objective was necessarily limited in depth, caused us casualties, as the
enemy artillery was not reached and opened on us before we had time to
dig in and consolidate the position we had taken.
Not all our operations were necessarily as successful as the ones I have
mentioned above. Raids were organized and drew blanks. At times orders
would reach us so late that it was exceedingly difficult to attempt
their execution with much chance of success. For example, one night a
message reached me that a prisoner was wanted for identification
purposes by morning.
As I recall, it happened as follows: The telephone buzzed; I answered,
and the message came over the wire somewhat in this fashion: "Hello,
hello, is this Hannibal? Hannibal, there is a friend we have back in the
country [the brigadier general] who is very fond of radishes
[prisoners]. He wants one for breakfast to-morrow morning without fail."
This reached me at about ten or eleven o'clock. The raid had to be
executed before daylight. In the meantime the plans had to be made, the
company commander notified, the raiding party chosen, and all ranks
instructed. Add to this that everything had to be done during the dark
and you will see what a difficult proposition it was.
I got hold of the company commander, got the men organized, telephoned
to the artillery, and asked for five minutes' preparation fire on a
certain point, joined the raiding party and went forward with it. Then
the first of a string of misfortunes happened. On account of the hurry
and the difficulty of transmission, the artillery mistook the cooerdinate
and fired three hundred meters too short, with the result that an
effective bit of preparation fire was wasted on my own raiding party. By
the time this preparatory firing upon our own raiding party was over,
the Germans naturally understood that something was happening, for why
would we strafe our own front-line trenches to no purpose? The result
was that when the raid went over, every machine gun in the area was
watching for them. They got to the opposing wire, ran into cross-fire,
and, after various casualties, found it entirely impossible to get by
the enemy wire, and worked their way back.
As they were working back a senior sergeant, Yarborough by name, was
sitting in a shell hole, machine-gun bullets singing by him, checking
his party as it came in. Lieutenant Ridgely, who had been with the
party, came up to him. As he crawled along, Yarborough said to him:
"Lieutenant, this reminds me of a story. There was once a guy who
decided to commit suicide by hanging himself. Just about the time he
done a good job of it the rope broke. He was sitting up on the floor
afterward when I came in, a-rubbing his neck, and when he saw me, all he
said was, 'Gee, but that was dangerous.'"
During this period the German Chateau-Thierry drive was made, again
scoring a clean break-through. The Second Division, which was coming up
to our rear to relieve us, was switched and thrown in front of the
enemy. Shortly after the Huns attacked toward the town of Compiegne, in
an endeavor to straighten out the reentrant in their lines with its apex
at Soissons. This latter attack passed by on our right flank.
We, of course, got little but rumor. In the trenches you are only
vitally concerned with what happens on your immediate right and left.
What goes on ten kilometers away you know little about, and generally
are so busy that you care less. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof," is a proverb that holds good in the line. In this last
instance we were more interested because we believed that as a result of
this attack the next point to stand a hammering would be where we were
holding. Our policy, which held good through the war, was developed and
put into action at this time. The orders were, all troops should resist
to the last on the ground on which they stood. All movement should be
from the rear forward and not to the rear. Whenever an element in the
front line got in trouble, the elements immediately in the rear would
counter-attack. This extended in depth back until it reached the
division reserve, which, as our general put it, "would move up with him
in command, and after that, replacements would be necessary."
During the time when the Huns were making their Chateau-Thierry drive,
Blalock, afterward sergeant of D Company, distinguished himself by a
rather remarkable piece of marksmanship. Noticing a pigeon fluttering
over the trench, he drew his automatic pistol and killed it on the wing.
The bird turned out to be a carrier pigeon loosed by one of the
attacking regiments the Germans were using in their drive toward the
Marne, and carried a message giving its position as twelve kilometers
deeper in France than our higher command realized. At the same time it
identified a division that we had not heard of for three months, and
indicated by the fact that it was signed by a captain who was commanding
the regiment that the Germans were finding it difficult to replace the
losses among their officers.
Instances occurred constantly which showed the spirit of both officers
and men. A recruit, arriving one night as a replacement, got there just
in time for a heavy strafing that the Germans were delivering. A
dud--that is a shell that does not go off--went through the side of the
dugout and took both of his legs off above the knees. These duds are
very hot, and this one cauterized the wounds and the man did not bleed
to death at once. The platoon leader, seeing that something had gone
wrong on the right, went over to look and found the man propped up
against the side of the trench. When he arrived, Kraakmo, the private,
looked up at him and said, "Lieutenant, you have lost a hell of a good
soldier."
Another time, when we were moving forward to reenforce a threatened part
of the line, a sergeant called O'Rourke was hit and badly wounded. As he
fell I turned around and said: "Well, O'Rourke, they've got you." "They
have sir," he answered, "but we have had a damned good time."
Sergeant Steidel of A Company was a fine up-standing soldier and won the
D. S. C. and the Medaille Militaire. He used to stay with me as my own
personal bodyguard when I was away for any reason from headquarters.
Steidel was afraid of nothing. He was always willing and always
clear-headed. When I wanted a report of an exact situation, Steidel was
the man whom I could send to get it. We used to have daylight patrols.
One day a patrol of green men went out to obtain certain information.
They were stampeded by something and came back into the part of the
trench where Steidel was. He went out alone as an example to them, and
came back with the information.
Lieutenant Baxter, whom I have mentioned before, and a private called
Upton patrolled across an almost impossible shell-beaten area to
establish connection with the battalion on our left. They both went out
cheerfully, and both, by some streak of luck, got back unhurt. Baxter,
on returning, reported to ask if there was any other duty of a like
nature that he could undertake right away.
One night, when we were shifting a company from support to a position on
our left flank, a heavy bombardment came on. A number of the men were
killed and wounded while moving up. One sergeant, by the name of
Nestowicz, born in Germany, was badly hit and left for dead. I was
standing in the bushes on the side of the valley waiting for reports
when I saw this man moving unsteadily toward me. I asked him what the
matter was, and he replied that he had been hit, his company had gone
on and left him, and he had come up to ask me where he could find them.
I said, "Hadn't you better go to the first aid, sergeant?" He said, "No
sir, I am not hit that bad and I want to go back to my company. It looks
as if they'd need me."
Sergeant Dobbs, of B Company, badly wounded by a hand grenade, wrote me
a letter, saying that he was well enough to come back, but the doctors
would not let him come, and could not I do something about it. I took a
chance and wrote, telling the medical authorities I would give him light
work if they let him come back to the outfit. Dobbs turned up, was
wounded again, and the last I heard of him was a letter written in late
October, saying that he had never had the opportunity to thank me for
getting him back. Mind you, getting him back merely meant, in his case,
giving him the chance to get shot up again before he was thoroughly
cured of his first wound. He finished by saying that he was in bad
trouble now, as part of his nose had gone the last time he was wounded
and they would not even keep him in France, but were sending him back to
the United States. His last line was the hope that he would get well
soon so he could get back to the outfit.
There was a young fellow called Fenessey from Rochester, New York, in B
Company. He was being educated for the Catholic priesthood. As soon as
war was declared he enlisted and came over with the regiment. He did
well and was a good man to have around the command because of his
earnestness and humor. He was eventually made corporal of an
automatic-rifle squad. His rifle was placed in the tip of a small patch
of wood guarding a little valley that ran back toward the center of our
position. These valleys were important, as down them the Germans
generally delivered thrusts. The Huns, one morning, strafed heavily our
position. Fenessey's automatic rifle was destroyed and he was hard hit,
his right arm torn off and his right side mangled. Fenessey knew he was
dying. The strafing stopped, the first-aid men worked in, and Fenessey
was carried to the rear. They heard him mumble something, listened
carefully, and found he wished to be taken to his company commander.
They carried him back to Lieutenant Holmes. When he saw Lieutenant
Holmes, he said: "Sir, my automatic rifle has been destroyed. I think
the company commander should send one up immediately to take its place."
Fenessey died ten minutes later.
Quick promotion, unfortunately not in rank, simply in responsibility,
occurred all the time. Of the four infantry company commanders which had
started, only one was surviving when we left this sector. In each case a
lieutenant took command of the company and did it in the finest shape
possible. Lieutenants Cathers and Jackson were killed here at the head
of their platoons, and Lieutenants Smith and Gustafson died from the
effect of wounds. Lieutenant Freml, who was killed in a raid, had
numerous narrow escapes.
I remember one time we were going together over the top on a
reconnoitering party preparatory to redisposition of the troops. Freml
had as his personal orderly a very bright little Jew from San
Francisco--Drabkin by name, who had kept a junk-shop. The little fellow
seemed to run true to former training, for he always went around
festooned with pistols, "blinkers," notebooks, and everything
conceivable. A shell hit beside them, Freml being between this man and
the shell. Freml was untouched, but the man was torn to pieces.
One young fellow seemed, for a while, to bear a sort of charmed life.
Unfortunately this did not last, and he was killed in the battle of
Soissons. He was very proud of the things that had happened to him. One
night, while I was inspecting the front trenches, he said to me, "Major,
I have been buried by shells twice to-day. The last time I only had one
arm sticking out so they could find me. All the other men in the dugout
have been killed and I ain't even been scratched."
It was here that Lieutenant Ridgely earned for himself the nickname of
the idiot strategist, which he went by for a long while in the
battalion. The Huns were putting up a pretty lively demonstration on our
left. A message reached me that they were attacking. I made my
preparations to counter-attack, if necessary, and sent runners to the
various units concerned to advise them of this plan. The runner who was
bringing the message to Ridgely's platoon lost it in the shuffle.
Runners are made to repeat messages verbally to take care of
contingencies just like this. However, this does not always work, and
when he got to Ridgely, the only message he could remember was, "The
Major orders you to counter-attack, and help the troops on our left."
It seemed a pretty forlorn business to counter-attack with one platoon,
but neither Ridgely nor the platoon considered this was anything which
really concerned them. They hastily formed up and moved to the left.
They got over and found that the Germans had been successfully repulsed
and that they were among our own troops. The Captain in charge of the
company told Ridgely to go back. Ridgely thought for a moment and said,
"No, my Major's orders were to counter-attack to assist the troops on
the left," and it was only with difficulty that they persuaded him that
he must not stage a little private adventure then and there against the
German lines.
In this sector we experienced our most severe gas attacks. It is a
thoroughly unpleasant thing to hear gas shells coming over in quantity.
Often an attack begins much as follows: It draws toward morning; the
digging parties file back toward their positions. Suddenly shelling
begins to increase in volume. Private Bill Smith notes a sort of a
warbling sound overhead and remarks to Private Bill Jones, "Gee, Bill,
they're gassing us." Next, reports come in from various sections that
they are gassing Fontaine Woods, Cantigny Woods, and the valley between.
You stand out on some point of vantage and listen to the shells singing
over and bursting. As day dawns you see a thick gray mist spreading
itself through the valley. The men have slipped on their gas masks. The
question now is, what's up? Just meanness on the part of the Huns, or is
it part of some ulterior design to straighten the salient and nip off
the two points of woods we are holding? How heavy is the gassing to be?
How quickly will the wind carry it away? A thousand and one other
questions.
You send your gas officer up to test. You go up yourself and generally
know as much as the gas officer. Our general experience was that the
first gas casualties we had were the gas officers. You decide that, as
nothing has developed up to this time, it is probable that if any attack
is planned by the Huns it is not intended to take place this morning.
You get your men out of the heavily gassed areas and try to determine
where is the best place for them to be well protected, to cover
practically the same territory, and not to be too much exposed to the
gas. By this time they have been sweating in their gas masks for three
hours or more with the usual number of fools and accidents contributing
to the casualties. You carefully redispose them while a desultory
bombardment by the Germans adds to the general joy of life. You get them
redisposed. The wind changes, the gas is carried to the position where
they are. You have to change them again. To add to the general
complications, the chow which was brought up last night is spoiled. It
has been in the gassed area and the men must go hungry until the next
evening. You come back to your dugout and find that in some mysterious
way the gas has gone down into the dugout, so you prop yourself in the
corner of the trench and carry on from there. Altogether it is a happy
and joyful occasion. Your one consolation rests in the fact that your
artillery is now earnestly engaged in retaliating on their infantry.
Speaking of artillery, there is one thing that always used to fill us,
the infantry, with woe and grief. A paper would come up, reading,
"Nothing to report on the (blank) sector except severe artillery
duels." "Severe artillery duels" to the uninitiated means that the
opposing artillery fights one with the other. This, however, is not the
custom. Your artillery shells their infantry hard and then their
artillery shells your infantry hard. This is an artillery duel. The
infantry is on the receiving end in both cases.
Our artillery was particularly good. General Summerall, who commanded, I
have been told, preached to his men that the primary duty of that arm
was to help the infantry, and that to do this properly in all war of
movement they should follow the advancing troops as closely as possible.
Once I saw a battery of the Seventh F. A. wheel up and go into action
not more than two hundred yards from the front line. We, on our part,
endeavored to call uselessly on the artillery as little as possible.
At times our own artillery would drop a few "shorts" into us but this is
unavoidable and the infantry felt too strongly what had been done for
them to pay much attention.
In one of the German dugouts we captured, a lieutenant told me he found
a sign reading, "We fear no one but God and our own artillery."
Sector materiel is something that always adds interest to the life of
the officers in trench warfare. Sector materiel consists of all
varieties of articles, from tins of bully beef and rusty grenades to
quantities of grubby, illegible orders and lists, and mangled maps.
These remain in the sector and are turned over by each unit to the next
succeeding. Theoretically a careful inventory is made and each
individual article checked each time.
Moreover, to keep the higher command satisfied, there must be
maps--legions of maps. These maps do not have to be accurate. Indeed,
they cannot possibly be accurate, but they must be beautifully marked in
red, blue, yellow, and green with a pretty "legend" attached. The higher
command never knows if the maps are correct, but they do know if they
are not beautifully marked. In each sector there must be, first, a map
indicating where all the trenches are. You, as commanding officer, are
probably the only person who knows and you are too busy to put them
down. Then there must also be maps indicating work in progress. Very
generally they like a map to be turned in every day showing what work
has been done during the night. How they expect anyone to do this is
beyond anyone who has done it. Further, maps must show abandoned
trenches; still further, there must be what is known to the high command
as maps indicating "alternate gas positions." "Alternate gas positions"
are impossible to indicate. Everything depends on which way the wind is
blowing and what place is gassed. But the higher command wants these
maps and it is simpler to placate them than to fight with them. I had a
fine artillery liaison officer, called Chandler. He had had some
training in topography and he kindly agreed to take over the map
question. When a message came up from the rear demanding a map showing
alternate gas position, he would get out his stack of blue pencils and
make, with exquisite care, the nicest and most symmetrical blue lines.
He would number them in black, arrange a margin between, putting green
marks and yellow marks and red marks for other units; fold them up and
send them back. It was quite simple for him. He did not have to consult
anyone, it wasn't necessary to reconnoiter the ground; the map would go
in with the morning report and all would be happy.
Another sport indulged in by the higher command was to change the main
line of defense and re-allot the defense system of the sector. To be
really qualified to do this, you should on no account have any knowledge
of the actual terrain. Indeed, I think in all my experience I never
received a defense map from the higher command where the individual
making the map had been over the ground. All that you do, if you are the
higher command, is to get a beautiful large scale map, draw broad lines
across it and then dotted lines to indicate boundaries. For nearly a
month I defended a sector where the map was entirely wrong. Two patches
of woods were represented as in a valley, whereas they were on a hill.
This worried neither the higher command nor me. The higher command did
not know that the map was wrong; they had sent me their beautiful little
plans. I sent them equally beautiful ones without debating the matter,
and all were satisfied.
I remember one general who commanded the brigade of which I was a
member. His hobby was switch lines. A switch line is simply a trench
running approximately perpendicular to the front, where a defensive
position can be taken up in case the enemy breaks through on the right
or left and whereby you form a defensive flank. The old boy would come
up, solemn as a judge, and ask me where my switch lines were to be put.
With equal solemnity I would explain to him. After talking for a half an
hour he would ask confidentially, "Major, what is a switch line?" With
equal solemnity I would explain to him and conversation would cease.
Three days thereafter we would go through the same thing again. The old
fellow had heard someone talking about a switch line once and somehow
felt that it counted a hundred in game to have one.
Another indoor sport of the high command was a report for plans of
defense. A plan of defense consisted of maps and long screeds indicating
just where counter-attacks were to be launched when parts of the front
line were taken by the enemy. They were beautiful things, pages and
pages long. They were as gay in color as Joseph's proverbial coat, and
when things broke, circumstances were always such that you did something
entirely different from any of the plans.
Still another sport was patrol reports and patrolling. The patrols were,
according to instructions, arranged for by the higher command because
the higher command knew nothing and could know nothing of the particular
details that govern in any individual section of the front. They would
send down to the battalion commander and demand statements, for their
revision, as to what his patrols were to be for the night, when they
were to go out, what they were to do, etc. The battalion commander would
send them his patrol sheet and then by the above-mentioned code they
would endeavor to confer with him and debate the advisability of certain
of his actions. Again experience taught the way out. You agreed with
everything they said, and did what you originally intended. Next day
they would want a map indicating exactly the points traversed by the
patrol. Knee-deep in water in a filthy dugout, your adjutant or
intelligence officer would make them this map. The map, like most maps,
was for decorative purposes. No patrol wandering in a pitch-black night
in the rain, stumbling on dead men, snarling itself in wire, lying flat
on its bellies when the Hun flares shot up, could possibly tell exactly
where it had gone. This was, happily, not known to the higher command,
so they rested in blissful ignorance.
I cannot leave the question of maps without discussing the all-absorbing
topic of cooerdinates. A cooerdinate is a group of numbers which indicate
an exact point on the map. If you have firmly got the system in your
head, you can find the point accurately on the map. Any man, however,
who thinks he can go and sit on a cooerdinate on the actual ground is
either a lunatic or belongs to the higher command. Incidentally, in
demanding reports of patrols, alternate gas positions, etc., the order
usually, reads, "Battalion commander will furnish reports with
cooerdinates."
When I was recovering from a wound in my leg, I attended for two weeks
our staff college. This college was well conceived and did excellent
work, but nowhere were more evident the grievous faults of our
unpreparedness. A good staff officer should have had practical
experience with troops. If he has not had this experience he takes the
thumb rules too literally and does not realize that they are simply
rules to govern in general. We had practically no officers with this
experience. The result was that the students, good fellows, most of them
men who had never been in action, attached too much importance to the
figures and did not realize it was the theory that was important.
Infantry, according to staff problems, always marches four kilometers an
hour. March graphics are drawn with columns which clear points, with
three hundred meters to spare between them and the head of the next
column after both columns have marched ten kilometers to the point of
junction. No account is taken of the fact that rarely, if ever, does
infantry exceed in rate of march three and one half kilometers under the
ordinary conditions prevailing in France, and that bad weather, bad
roads, etc., bring it to three kilometers. What a commanding officer of
troops must bear in mind is not simply getting his troops to a given
point, but getting them to that given point in such shape that they are
able to perform the task set them when they arrive. Furthermore, roads
given on the map are accepted with the sublime faith of a child. I
remember once having my regiment on the march for twelve hours because
the trail on which we had all been ordered to proceed necessitated the
men going single file, and the infantry of a division single file
stretches out indefinitely.
Our troops had now begun to arrive in France in large numbers. It was
more than a year after the commencement of the war before this was
effected. The inability of our national administration to bring itself
to the point where it considered patriotism as above politics was
largely responsible for this. Every move forward toward the active
pushing of the war was the result of the pressure of the people on
Washington. When I say that our troops were coming across in large
numbers, let it be borne in mind that, though the men did come,
munitions and weapons of war did not. The Browning automatic rifle, for
example, to my mind one of the greatest weapons developed by the war,
was invented in the United States in the summer of 1917. When the war
finished it had just been placed for the first time in the hands of a
limited number of our divisions; my division, the First, never had them
until a month after the armistice. We used the old French chauchat, a
very inferior weapon. None of our airplanes had come, and the death of
many of our young men was directly traceable to this, as they, of
necessity, used inferior machines. Our cannon was and remained French
and its ammunition was French. Our troops were at times issued British
uniforms and many of the men objected strenuously to wearing them on
account of the buttons with the crown stamped on them. Our supply of
boots, up to and including the march into Germany, was composed in part
of British boots. These boots had a low instep and caused much foot
trouble. These are facts that no amount of words can cover, no speeches
explain away.