Though physically wounded—often mortally—the spirit of the French
soldiers never perished, but immortalized their efforts in conflict.]
“We saw some horrible things in Lucy, At one house we found an old
French woman, She said she was with her three daughters—16, 18, and 20
years old—when the Germans came, and they had remained there without
any protection from the Huns who took charge of the house. We asked
where her daughters were and she said they were upstairs and she
guessed they were asleep.
“Several of us went to learn the fate of the girls and we found all
three stretched out with their throats cut from ear to ear, and their
bodies horribly slashed. The Germans had deliberately butchered them
when they were forced out of the town.
“When we told the old lady of the fate of her daughters she was
stricken with heart trouble and died in a few minutes, but before she
died she asked that we bury her with the three girls in the little
grove near her home. We did it although we were under fire the whole
time, and eight of our men were killed while burying those French women.
“The next day we pushed on and got through the woods. That was the
hottest fighting of all. The Germans used more artillery, and when the
day was over the number of men in my company had again been reduced to
about 150. Some companies had only a dozen or fifteen men left.
“One of the fellows killed that day was a fellow from South Baltimore
who used to be a chum of mine before we went to war. His name was
Halle. He said to me that morning: ‘Jim, I feel I’m going to get
knocked off to-day. Never tell my people that I was killed. Just tell
them that I am somewhere in France.’ He was killed and I haven’t told
his people and never will, but they found it out through the War
Department.
“We next went to the Marne. There we fought in the river. It was tough
luck for a fellow to be wounded there, for as he sank down he was
drowned. It was often close fighting, bayonet to bayonet in midstream,
and must have been a pretty sight for people to look at if there’d been
any spectators there, but it wasn’t very pretty for those in the fight.
“After the Marne battle our company’s ranks had to be filled again.
Once more we had been reduced to about 150.
“Next we went to Château-Thierry and fought there for nine days, which
was followed by a three-day hike to Soissons, which we reached on July
18, 1918. The next day we went over the top at 3 a.m.
“Ten minutes later I went down with a wound that crippled my ankle.
I was gassed, too, and suffered shock. When I came to my senses in a
hospital I had two other wounds that I didn’t know anything about. They
told me that as the ambulance was carrying me to the rear it was struck
by a shell which killed some of the other wounded men and presented me
with a couple more wounds for good measure.
“Outside of having been in a bunch of hospitals in France and America
that’s about all I know about the war,” concluded “Jimmie” Gardener.
“You haven’t told why you got the Croix de Guerre and the palm branch,”
we suggested.
“Oh,” said “Jimmie.” “I was awarded the Croix with the six other
fellows for cleaning up that bunch of 498 Germans in the quiet sector
I told you about. The affair they gave me the palm for was rescuing a
lieutenant who was wounded in the Belleau Wood fighting.
“I don’t know who the lieutenant was, but he was a newspaper man who
had entered the fighting forces and he was out in advance of the line
when he was wounded. Several of us volunteered to go out and bring him
in, but we did not know exactly where he was. It was during the night
and very dark. Along about four o’clock, as I was crawling along, I
fell plumb into a shell-hole, and there he was with his leg shot off.”
“SORT OF SWIMMING-LIKE”
“I put my coat around him and bandaged his leg up as well as I could.
Then he got his arms around my neck and I held on to him with one hand
and dragged myself, sort of swimming-like, along the ground with the
other.
“I had only an hour and a half before daybreak when the Germans would
be able to see us, and in that time I managed to make about twenty
yards to another shell-hole. We lay in that all day. The lieutenant
suffered a great deal. I gave him what water I had in my canteen.
“When night came on we started again and before morning had made the
rest of the distance—about sixty yards—to our trenches. The lieutenant
got well. They say he is a great writer of books and things. He
belongs in New York State somewhere.”
“Were you kissed when the Croix was presented to you?” we asked.
“Yes, General Foch pinned the badge on our coats and then kissed us on
both cheeks. We were all smiling when the kissing was going on.”