SOISSONS
"And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy."
TENNYSON.
Early in July rumors reached us that we were going to be relieved. At
first we did not attach any importance to this, as we had heard many
rumors of a like nature during the months we had been in the sector. At
last, however, the French officers came up to reconnoiter, and we knew
it was true. We were relieved and marched back to some little village
near the old French town of Beauvais. Everyone was as happy as a king.
Here we heard that the plan was to form a corps of the Second Division
and our division, train and recruit them for a month, and make an
offensive with us some time late in August or September. General
Bullard, our division commander who had been, in turn, colonel of the
Twenty-eighth Infantry, brigadier general commanding the Second Brigade,
and division commander, was to be corps commander. This pleased us very
much, as we had great confidence in him.
We had been in these villages only for a few days when orders reached us
to entruck and proceed to some towns only a short distance from Paris.
This appealed to us all, for if we were going to train and rest for a
month, no more delightful place could be chosen for one and all than the
vicinity of Paris.
The buses arrived and all night we jolted southwest through the forest
of Chantilly. By morning we arrived and detrucked and the brown columns
wound through the fresh green landscape to the charming little gray
stone towns. The town where we were to stay was called Ver. It was built
on rolling country and its gray cobble-paved streets twisted and wound
up hill and down through a maze of picturesque gray houses in whose
doors well-dressed, bright-cheeked women and children stood watching
us. On the hill were the remains of an old wall and chateau, and at the
foot, through a broad meadow shaded with trees, a fair-sized brook
rippled. Jean Jacques Rousseau lived and wrote there. How he could have
been such a hypocrite and have lived in such a charming place is more
than I can see.
The men were delighted. "Say, Buddie, this is some town; look at that
stream!"--"Bonne billets."--"Let's fight the rest of the war here"--were
some of the remarks I heard as the column swung in.
Everything was ideal. The stream above mentioned furnished a bathtub for
the command. We had had no opportunity for about two months to
thoroughly bathe, as we had been on active work the entire time, and you
can imagine in just what condition we were. To put it in the words of
one of my company commanders, "The command was as lousy as pet coons."
The first day we spent in orienting ourselves, getting the kitchens
arranged and the billets comfortable. Meanwhile the troops were down
bathing in the stream, to the admiring interest of the French
inhabitants, who lined the bridge. To our staid Americans the
unconventional attitude of interest in bathing troops displayed by the
French inhabitants of all ages and both sexes was a source of constant
embarrassment. I have known a platoon sergeant to guide his men to quite
a distant point to take their baths. When I asked him why, he replied,
"Sir, it isn't decent with all them frogs looking on."
That evening, at officers' meeting, everyone was on the crest of the
wave, "sitting on the world," as the doughboy puts it. The officers
established their mess in various houses, and I remember to this day
Lieutenant Kern, as gallant an officer as ever it was my pleasure to
know, who was mortally wounded some three days from this time, telling
me that they had the prettiest French girl in all of France as a
waitress at his company mess and that they were all going to give her
lessons in English. We talked over training and made all arrangements
for a long stay. The only dissenting voice was that of the medical
officer, Captain E. D. Morgan. He, Cassandra-like, prophesied that the
town was too nice and we would be moved soon.
Next morning, while I was out going over the village, selecting drill
grounds and planning the schedule, a motorcycle orderly arrived and
handed me a message which read, "You will be prepared to entruck your
battalion at two this afternoon." This meant no rest for us. We realized
that a move on our part now meant one thing and one thing only, that
something serious had arisen, and that we were going in again. Rumor had
been rife for two or three days past that the big Hun offensive was
about to start again. In the army, among the front-line troops,
practically all you get is rumor about what is happening daily. Where
the rumor starts from it is impossible to say, but it travels like
lightning. Officers' call was sounded, and when they had assembled, I
read them the order and told them it was my opinion we were going into a
big battle right away. The men were immediately assembled and told the
same thing. We always felt that all information possible should be given
to the men. Instead of the command being downcast at the idea of leaving
their well-deserved rest, their spirits rose. Immediately bustle and
preparation was evident everywhere in the town.
By one o'clock the truck train was creaking into place on the road.
Oddly enough the truck train was made up of White trucks, made in
Cleveland, with Indo-Chinese drivers and was under the command of a
French officer. The troops filed by in columns of twos toward the
entrucking point. The men were laughing and joking. "They can't do
without us now, Bill." "Say, Nick, look over there" (pointing toward a
grave yard), "them's the rest billets of this battalion, and that"
(indicating a rather imposing tomb) "is the battalion headquarters."
Many of them were singing the national anthem of the doughboy, _Hail!
Hail! the Gang's All Here._
I got into the automobile of the French commander of the train, taking
with me Lieutenant Kern, as he was pretty well played out and I wanted
to spare him as much as possible. The French train commander had no idea
what our ultimate destination was. All he knew was a route for about
sixty kilometers, at the end of which he was to report for further
orders at a little town. As we ran up and down the column of trucks
checking the train to make sure that all units were present and all
properly loaded, the men were singing and cheering.
As all afternoon we jolted northward through clouds of dust, rumors came
in picked up from French officers on the roadside. The Hun had attacked
in force east and west of Rheims in a desperate attempt to break the
French army in two. East of Rheims they had met with a stone-wall
resistance by Gouraud's army and been hurled back with heavy loss. West
of Rheims their attack had been more successful, and they were reported
to have broken through, crossed the Marne, and to be now moving on
Chalons.
As night fell the jolting truck train pressed ever farther north. At
the regulating station, by the shaded flare of an electric torch, we got
our orders: we were to proceed to Palesne. We guessed on receiving them
what our mission was. We were pushing straight north into the reentrant
into the German lines, at the peak of which was Soissons. Our
destination was a large wood. We realized that we were probably to form
part of an offensive to be made against the Hun right flank, which
should have as its object, first, by pressure at this point, to stop the
attack on Chalons; second, if it was possible, to penetrate far enough
to force the evacuation of the Chateau-Thierry salient by threatening
their lines of communication. In the early dawn the troops detrucked,
sloshed through the mud, and bivouacked in the woods. Every care
possible was taken to get the troops under cover of the woods and the
trucks away before daylight in order to avoid any possible chance of
observation by the Germans.
All day we became more certain that our guess as to our probable mission
was correct. We heard that the Foreign Legion and the Second American
Division had come up on our right. We knew that our division, the
Foreign Legion, and the Second Division, would not be concentrated at
the same point if it did not mean a real offensive.
Soon after the orders for the attack were given us. Apparently the idea
was to stake all on one throw. Marshal Foch had decided on a
counter-offensive in this part and had delegated to General Mangin,
commander of the French army, the task of putting it into execution.
Mangin desired to make this offensive, if possible, a complete surprise.
All care was used that no unnecessary movement took place among our
troops in the back area. We were not to take over the position from the
French troops holding the front line, as was generally customary for the
attacking troops before an action, but rather to march up on the night
of the offensive and attack through them. Fortunately, from the point of
view of secrecy, the night before the attack it rained cats and dogs.
The infantry slogged through the mud, up roads cut to pieces by trucks
and over trails ankle deep in water. The artillery skittered and
strained into place. The tanks clanked and rattled up, breaking the
columns and tearing up what was left of the road. It was so dark you
could hardly see your hand before your face.
As a part of the element of surprise there was to be but a short period
of preparatory bombardment. The artillery was to fire what the French
call "the fire of destruction" for five minutes on the front line, and
then to move to the next objective. This bombardment was to commence at
4.30, and at 4.35 the men were to go over the top.
The troops all reached the position safely by about 4 o'clock. Our
position lay along the edge of a rugged and steep ravine. The rain had
stopped and the first faint pink of the early summer morning lighted the
sky. Absolute silence hung over everything, broken only by the
twittering of birds. Suddenly out of the stillness, without the warning
of a preliminary shot, our artillery opened with a crash. All along the
horizon, silhouetted against the pale pink of the early dawn, was the
tufted smoke of high explosive shells, and the burst of shrapnel showed
in flashes like the spitting of a broken electric wire in a hailstorm.
After the bombardment had been going on for two or three minutes, D
company, on the right, became impatient and wanted to attack, and I
heard the men begin to call, "Let's go, let's go!"
At 4.35 the infantry went over. The surprise was complete. Germans were
killed in their dugouts half dressed. One of the units of the division
captured a colonel and his staff still in his dugout. So rapid was the
advance on the first day that the German advance batteries were taken.
The French cavalry followed up our advance, looking for a break-through.
By night all the objectives were taken and the troops bivouacked in the
captured position. During the night Hun airplanes flew low over us
dropping flares and throwing small bombs. Next morning the attack
started again. We ran into much machine-gun fire. "Only those who have
danced to its music can know what the mitrailleuse means."
[Illustration: AN AIR RAID
Drawn by Captain George Harding, A. E. F., August,
1918]
The Germans now rushed up all the reserves they could to hold this
threatened point. On the second day we took prisoners from four Hun
divisions in front of the regiment. One prisoner told us he had marched
twenty-four kilometers during the preceding night. For five days the
advance continued, until the final objective was taken and we held the
Chateau-Thierry-Soissons railroad and the Germans ordered a general
retreat. I was not fortunate enough to see the last half of this battle,
as I was wounded. I heard about it, however, from men who had been all
through it.
Our casualties were very heavy. At the end of the battle, companies in
some cases came out commanded by corporals, and battalions by second
lieutenants. In the battle the regiment lost most of the men that built
it up.
Colonel Hamilton A. Smith, as fine an officer and as true a gentleman
as I have ever known, was killed by machine-gun fire while he was
verifying his outpost line. Major McCloud, a veteran of the Philippines
who had served with the British for three years, was killed on the
second day. I have somewhere a note written by him to me shortly before
his death. He was on the left, where heavy resistance was being
encountered. I had just sent him a message advising him that I was
attacking in the direction of Ploisy. His answer, which was brought by a
wounded runner, read: "My staff are all either killed or wounded. Will
attack toward the northeast against machine-gun nests. Good hunting!"
Lieutenant Colonel Elliott was killed by shell fire. Captain J. H.
Holmes, a gallant young South Carolinian, was killed. He left in the
United States, a young wife and a baby he had never seen. Captains Mood,
Hamel, and Richards were killed. Lieutenant Kern, of whom I spoke
before, was mortally wounded while gallantly leading his company.
Lieutenant Clarke died in the hospital from the effect of his wounds a
few days later. Clarke was a big, strapping fellow who feared nothing.
Once he remarked to me: "Yes, it is a messy damn war, sir, but it's the
only one we've got and I guess we have got to make the best of it."
These are only a few of those who fell. Both Major Compton and Major
Travis were wounded.
The Twenty-sixth Infantry was brought out of the fight, when it was
relieved, by Lieutenant Colonel (then Captain) Barnwell Rhett Legge, of
South Carolina. Colonel Legge started the war as a second lieutenant.
When I first knew him he was adjutant of the Third Battalion. Later he
took a company and commanded it during the early fighting. He was then
made adjutant of the regiment, and two or three times I recall his
asking the Colonel to let him go back with his company. Captain Frey,
killed earlier, who was originally my senior company commander, thought
very highly of him and used to "josh" him continually. Once Legge took
out a raiding party and captured a German prisoner fifty-four years
old. Frey never let him hear the last of it, asking him if he considered
it a sportsmanlike proceeding to take a man of that age, and saying that
a man who would do such a thing would shoot quail on the ground and
catch a trout with a worm. All during my service in Europe, Legge served
with me. During the latter part he was my second in command in the
regiment. I have seen him under all circumstances. He was always cool
and decided. No mission was too difficult for him to undertake. His
ability as a troop leader was of the highest order. In my opinion no man
of his age has a better war record.
An amusing incident occurred in Lieutenant Baxter's platoon during the
battle. The men were advancing to the attack perhaps a couple of hundred
yards from the Germans. They were moving forward in squad columns as
they were going through a valley where they were defiladed from
machine-gun fire, though the enemy was firing on them with its
artillery. Suddenly Baxter heard rifle fire behind him. He wheeled
around and saw that a rabbit had jumped up in front of the left of the
platoon and the men were firing at it.
The worst strain of the battle came during the last two days when
casualties had been so heavy as to take off many of the field officers
and most of the company commanders, when the remnants of the regiments
pressed forward and captured Berzy-le-Sec and the railroad. It is always
more difficult for the juniors in a battle like this, for they generally
do not know what is at stake. General Frank Parker told me how, during
the fourth day, when battalions of eight hundred men had shrunk to a
hundred and it looked as if the division would be wiped out, and even he
was wondering whether we were not losing the efficiency of the division
without getting a compensatory gain, General C. P. Summerall, the
division commander, came to his headquarters and said: "General, the
German high command has ordered the first general retreat since the
first battle of the Marne."
General Summerall took command of the division just before Soissons,
when General Bullard was given the corps. He had previously commanded
the artillery of the division. The division always regarded him as their
own particular general. He was known by the nickname of "Sitting Bull."
He is, in my opinion, one of the few really great troop leaders
developed by us during the war. At this battle General Summerall is
reported to have made a statement which was often quoted in the
division. Some staff officer from the corps had asked him if, after the
very heavy casualties we had received, we were capable of making another
attack. He replied: "Sir, when the First Division has only two men left
they will be echeloned in depth and attacking toward Berlin."
Beside the First Division, the Foreign Legion and the Second Division
were meeting the same type of work and suffering the same losses. No
finer fighting units existed than these two. A very real compliment that
was paid the Second Division was the fact that the rank and file of our
division was always glad when circumstances ordained that the divisions
should fight side by side. I have often heard the junior officers
discussing it.
The division was relieved by the Seaforth and Gordon Highlanders. When I
was going to the rear, wounded, I passed their advancing columns. They
were a fine set of men--tall, broad-shouldered, and fit looking. They,
too, were in high spirits. The morale of the Allies had changed within
twenty-four hours. They felt, and rightly, that the Hun had been turned.
Never from this moment to the end of the war did it change.
This Highland division showed its appreciation of the American division
by the following order that was sent to our higher command:
Headquarters 1st Division,
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES,
FRANCE, August 4th, 1918.
General Order
No. 42.
The following is published for the information of all concerned as
evidence of the appreciation of the 15th Scottish Division of such
assistance as this Division may have rendered them upon their
taking over the sector from us in the recent operation south of
Soissons:
15th Scottish Division No. G-705 24-7-18
To General Officers Commanding,
FIRST AMERICAN DIVISION.
I would like on behalf of all ranks of the 15th Division to express
to you personally, and to your staff, and to all our comrades in
your splendid Division, our most sincere thanks for all that has
been done to help us in a difficult situation.
During many instances of taking over which we have experienced in
the war we have never received such assistance, and that rendered
on a most generous scale. In spite of its magnificent success in
the recent fighting, your Division must have been feeling the
strain of operations, accentuated by very heavy casualties, yet we
could discern no symptom of fatigue when it came to a question of
adding to it by making our task easier.
To your artillery commander (Col. Holbrook) and his Staff, and to
the units under his command, our special thanks are due. Without
hesitation when he saw our awkward predicament as to artillery
support the guns of your Division denied themselves relief in order
to assist us in an attack. This attack was only partly successful,
but the artillery support was entirely so.
Without the help of Colonel Mabee and his establishment of
ambulance cars, I have no hesitation in saying that at least four
hundred of our wounded would still be on our hands in this area.
The 15th Scottish Division desires me to say that our hope is that
we may have opportunity of rendering some slight return to the
First American Division for all the latter has done for us, and
further that we may yet find ourselves shoulder to shoulder
defeating the enemy in what we hope is the final stage of this war.
Signed: H. L. REED,
_Major General_
_Comdg. 15th Scottish Div._
By Command of Major General Summerall:
H. K. LOUGHRY,
_Major, F. A. N. A._,
_Div. Adjt._
The Highlanders cheered as the wounded Americans passed by them. One
lieutenant called out to me, "How far have you gone?" I answered, "About
six kilometers." "Good," he said. "We'll go another six."
After the battle the division was withdrawn to near Paris. Many of the
officers came to see me, where I was laid up with a bullet through the
leg. Major A. W. Kenner, the regimental surgeon, who had again
distinguished himself by his gallantry, and Captain Legge were both in,
looking little the worse for the wear.