THIACOURT--AERIAL DARING
"Where are you saying Mass next Sunday Chaplain?"
"In Thiacourt," I replied.
Just the shadow of a doubt flitted across the handsome face of Colonel
Cummings, who nevertheless promptly responded, "All right, I'll be
there."
That Mass _could_ safely be said in such a veritable inferno as
Thiacourt November 1st offered very reasonable room for doubt. Located
but a single kilometer from the front line trench, its ruins were
shelled by day, and air bombed by night, with daring Fokers and Taubes
finding rare sport in spraying its main street with machine gun fire.
The gallant boys of the 55th Infantry, nine hundred of whom came from
Chicago, were then bravely holding that death-swept point; and I was
determined to bring them the consolation and strength of Religion in
their supreme need.
Dawn was breaking that Sunday morning when I rode through Bouillonville.
Leading north from this village the road leaves the shelter of a
friendly hill and plunges boldly across the open plain. Our Batteries
were firing constantly from every available angle of the hills, and the
enemy's spirited reply made very heavy the din of gun fire. In all
directions, on roadside, field and hill, geysers were rising, and
yawning yellow craters forming from the impact of bursting shells.
It was seldom I urged "Jip" out of a canter. This morning, however,
things were different. The road through the open plain lay full in view
and range of eagle-eyed enemy snipers.
Across the pommel of the saddle, in front, was fastened a bag of oats;
and behind, my Mass kit. Tightly I strapped on my steel helmet, with gas
mask tied at "alert."
Leaving the shelter of the hill I leaned forward and spoke to "Jip."
"Allez! Allez! Mon petit cheval!" Right bravely he responded. With ears
back, and raven mane and tail streaming to the breeze, he fairly hurled
himself forward across the death-swept plain. His speed and courage
stood between me and eternity.
It is not easy for even the best sniper to hit such a fast moving horse.
At a point two hundred yards to the right of us burst a huge shell. To
just the slightest degree "Jip" trembled, but with never a break of his
even flying stride. "Thank God!" was my heartfelt prayer as we reached
the ruined mill at Thiacourt.
Quickly dismounting I led "Jip" deep into the rear of a building whose
front was shot away.
O how I hugged and patted that brave little horse; and from the manner
he pawed the ground and rubbed his nose against my side I felt he fairly
thrilled with the pride of his race with death. For your sake, my brave
little "Jip," I will never be unkind to a horse as long as I live.
Rewarding him with an extra ration of oats, and leaving him secure from
gas, I proceeded forward on foot.
Shrapnel was bursting all about, and its sharp, sizzling echo, against
walls still standing, made maddening din.
Dodging from building to building up the deserted front street I reached
a point opposite the Hotel de Ville in time to see the front of a
building one hundred yards to the left blown completely out by a
bursting shell. The church was but a heap of smoking ruins.
In the courtyard of a large building, that a few days before was
headquarters of the German staff, I was welcomed by boys of the 55th
Infantry. It was a platoon in command of Lieutenant Coughlan of Mobile,
Alabama.
This gallant young man, nephew of Capt. Coughlan who sailed with Dewey
into Manila Bay, was every inch a hero. Just the day before he had held
a front sector against terrible odds when the platoon on his right had
fallen back under heavy gas attack with its commander mortally wounded.
In this encounter Coughlan was badly gassed himself, and could not speak
above a whisper. "I know the Latin, and can serve your Mass all right,
Chaplain, if you can stand for my whispers."
An altar was improvised out of a richly carved sideboard standing in the
courtyard. After a goodly number had gone to Confession, a crowd of some
two hundred assembled for the Mass. At this moment Colonel Cummings,
true to his word that he would be on hand, strode into the yard.
The boys knelt around, wearing their steel helmets, and with masks at
"alert." My vestments consisted simply of a stole worn over my cassock.
Helmet and mask lay easily within reach at one side. The firing,
meanwhile, was terrific--high explosive shells shrieking overhead and
bursting on every side. Rifle and machine-gun bullets added their shrill
tenor notes to the orchestral wail of gun fire.
I had prepared a sermon, but, amid such din, I, for a moment, questioned
the possibility and even propriety of delivering it. I decided in the
affirmative, and raised my voice in challenge to the wild clamor of
death.
As I looked upon the battle-stained faces before me, I felt how pleasing
it all must have been in the sight of Him who feared not Death of old,
and who said on the hills of Galilee: "Greater love than this no man
has, that he give up his life for his friends."
Mass over, the boys quickly disappeared into neighboring dugouts.
Colonel Cummings was greatly pleased with it all, remarking, "As soon
as you began Mass, Chaplain, the gun fire seemed to ease a bit, and a
comparative zone of quiet prevailed where we were gathered."
"I shall know after this, Colonel," I laughingly replied, "what is
bringing you to Mass--to get into a zone of quiet!" Permit me to add
here, however that the good Colonel needed no urging to attend Mass. I
never met a better Christian overseas nor a more gallant loyal comrade
than Colonel Cummings.
The remaining hours of that day were spent in ministering to the living
and burying the dead. Along that battle swept front the Chaplain was
always gladly welcomed and his divine Message reverently received. Death
in its thousand ghastly forms, ever impending, ever threatening,
impressed with serious religious thought the consciousness of even the
most careless. In direct proportion to the coming and going of danger
was the ebb and flow of the tide spiritual. "Haven't you noticed,
Chaplain, an improvement in my language of late? I sure have been trying
to cut out swearing." Often would some officer or enlisted man--of any
or no church membership--so remark, and who had hitherto been prone to
sins of the tongue.
On such occasions two thoughts would come to me--the reflection of
Tertullian that "The soul of man is by nature religious;" and the
admonition of Ecclesiastes 7:40, "Remember thy last end and thou shalt
never sin." Far into that All Saints night I heard Confessions, and was
edified with the large number who approached Holy Communion All Souls
morning.
In burial work, we always made it a point, where it was at all possible,
to bury the enemy dead as reverently as our own. We would gather their
poor shell-torn bodies, often in advanced stages of decomposition, and
place them in graves on sheltered hillsides, safe from gun fire,
carefully assembling in Musette bags their belongings, which we would
forward to the Prisoner of War Department. One day, while so assembling
the scattered remains of four dead Germans, evidently killed by the same
shell, one of our boys of the 34th Infantry, Sam Volkel by name, who
before the war lived in my old parish at Harvey, passed by. This good
boy's parents had been born in Germany. When he saw the reverent care we
were giving those four of the enemy dead, he came up to me and with
tears streaming down his smoke and dust-covered face exclaimed,
"Father, God bless you."
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum" is a principle of conduct dating back to Him
who of old declared burial of the dead a corporal work of mercy. It is
the mark, neither of the Christian individual nor nation, to disrespect
a body nor desecrate its resting place. The fact that in life it was
tenanted by the soul of an enemy is no justification for dishonoring it;
for He who is Infinite Truth and Justice declares "Love thy enemy; do
good to those who hate you, and bless those who persecute you." This, of
course, is not the way of the world; but _is_ the way of Him whose
standards of living must guide our lives, and whose will to reward or
punish us shall prevail through Eternity.
We had now been many weeks at the extreme front on minimum ration of all
things bearing on bodily comfort or mental relaxation. Water was but a
word, a memory, cherished dream of him who wrote "The Old Oaken Bucket."
If we could but find enough of the chlorinated drug store kind to
nourish our canteen, we were prepared to dispense with the common, or
laundry serving, variety.
In the eternal fitness of things, there came now into being an Army
institution, officially known as the Delousing Station. It appears to
have been named in memory of a certain small wingless insect. There was
an appeal to it that at once caught the popular fancy of the soldiers,
always itching for novelty, and it became the most frequented of
watering places. It was a thoroughly democratic affair, officers and
enlisted men freely approving and patronizing it, under the undenying
impulse, no doubt, of a common human need. It little mattered that its
location was usually the wreckage of some wind-swept barn; or that its
furniture consisted of a barrel of water jauntily poised on the rafters;
the spectacle of Buddie, bar of soap in hand, sporting and splashing in
the limpid stream of that miniature Niagara, offered wealth of theme for
the inspired artist, poet, and writer of commercial advertising.
I greatly wonder that the hallowed memory of this loving institution has
so far escaped the popular fancy as to be left "unwept, unhonored and
unsung." That it _was_ inspirational might be shown from the case of a
boy of the 64th Infantry changing the words of the popular song, "They
go wild, simply wild, over me," to "They _run_ wild, simply wild, over
me."
Huts designed to offer any manner of mental relaxation, reading, music,
and the like, were necessarily many miles to the rear. No sound but gun
fire was ever to be heard. No matin bugle call of Reveille to rouse, nor
plaintive note of Taps to "mend the ravelled sleeve of care." No
regimental band to "soothe the savage breast," nor lead to the charge in
the way it is described in books of history.
No lights to show from dugout or trench, not even on motor cars or
cycles dashing along treacherous roads and trails. If mess and water
carts could be kept in touch with advanced posts, the mail and welfare
supply trucks could be dispensed with.
Days and weeks would pass without so much as sight of a letter,
newspaper, book, or word from the rear of any kind. Such times were like
living in the bottom of a well, glimpses of the sky overhead, but all
around you, dark, foul, and deathly.
Amid such surroundings our chief pleasure and relaxation was often the
sky. Reclining in the soft yielding mud we could watch the canvas of the
heavens, stretched from horizon to horizon, in panoramic splendor.
Whether it was the hour of the "powerful king of day rejoicing in the
east," the mid-day brooding calm, or when "Night folds her starry
curtains round," the ever-changing, ever-beautiful pictures of cloudland
lulled to rest our fancies sweet as music which
"Gentler on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes."
How thrilled we were when cloudland became of a sudden peopled with
armed men! When that azure blue became an ocean, with ships of the air
scudding in and out of cloudy coves, around billowy headlands, "zuming,"
spiraling, volplaning, maneuvering for position to hurl broadsides of
death.
It was all, as it were, a tournament staged for our amusement. Herald of
its beginning would be a splash of white against the blue above the
German lines. Faintly, then with steadily increased volume in tone,
would come to our ears the unmistakable high tenor engine trum of a
Foker plane.
[Illustration: THE WOUNDED WERE CARRIED TO THE NEAREST SHELTER.]
All eyes would intently watch its approach. It was coming over to deal
death or destruction of some sort, possibly to attack our anchored
observing balloon, just to the rear.
Seconds as well as minutes count in such an adventure, and quicker than
the eye can count them, puffy balls of white appear above, below and all
around on the on-rushing Foker; they are the shrapnel bursts of our
vigilant anti-aircraft guns that have now opened briskly from every hill
and forest.
On it comes!--and now black puffs appear in its path, the dynamite shells
of our guns finding their range. Boom! boom! rat-ta-tat-boom-rat-ta-tat
is the music that greets our ears and every hill is a tremble under the
shock of thousands of rounds of fire.
In such an emergency our orders are clear. We must remain perfectly
motionless: we will not be seen unless we move about. We must not fire
at him; he must know neither our location nor what arms we have.
The tons of steel being hurled into the air must meanwhile fall in
splinters to the earth. Here is where our steel helmets prove so
serviceable, protecting the head not only from falling splinters, but
from bullets of the machine gun the Foker flyer is now vigorously firing
earthward.
Now a new and welcome sound greets our eyes. Coming on the wings of the
wind out of the south is the strong deep bass of Liberty Motor
music--the all-American made--which, though arriving in quantity late in
the war, proved at once its superiority to all others. Our ground guns
have driven the Foker high into the air; which, evidently noting that
the on-coming ships are merely observing and not fighting planes, comes
steadily on!
How vividly I recall that stirring afternoon! We were on a hillside,
just above Thiacourt, directing the work of a burial detail. As the
Foker reached a point directly over us he dove full in our direction.
There was nothing for us to do, no shelter to take refuge in, just an
unprotected slope of the hill.
Whether it was the fact that we were a burial party and he wished to
spare us--and this explanation I like to believe--or whether, by firing
on us, he might betray his presence, and thus defeat his main purpose,
which was to destroy the balloon anchored in the neighboring valley, I
will never know; but _this_ I _do_ know--at a point directly above us,
and where he could most easily have killed us with machine gun fire, he
suddenly changed his course.
Gliding down the valley, he raced full upon the observing balloon and
hurled incendiary shells into it, setting it on fire; then, coming
about, he dashed away to the north, escaping over his own lines amid a
shower of leaden hail! "Ill blows the wind that profits no one"--the
position of undertaker, we at first hesitated in accepting, had saved
our life; burial boys were, after this, more reconciled than ever to
their work!
Air craft battles, although of frequent occurrence along our front, were
always watched with keen delight. Our fliers were chiefly of the 108th
Squadron from the fields of Toul and Colombey-le-Belles.
It was in our area, on the banks of the Moselle, that the heroic and
gallant Lufberry fell, fighting, to his death. He is buried in the
little cemetery of Evacuation Hospital No. 1, near Toul.
Eddie Rickenbacker, Reed Landis, Tuper Weyman, Elmer Crowel, Bernard
Granville, Douglas Campbell, these and others were the gallant Aces of
our Army, flying and fighting daily over the front.
On September twenty-eighth Douglas Campbell fell in flames at Pannes. In
the cemetery of the old church there he is buried. It was with special
interest we cared for his grave, inasmuch as his home was in Kenilworth,
near our own Chicago.
Infantry contact flying was necessarily hazardous. It meant flying at an
elevation easily in reach of rifle fire.
Usually at mess, the evening before, the flyer, chosen for this mission,
would be notified. His companions, too, would hear of the selection; and
often indulged, in their own grim humorous way, of reminding him of the
fact! The man next to him at the table would softly and weirdly hum a
strain from Chopin's Funeral March, setting its music to the solemn
words, "Ten thousand dollars going home to the States!"
It was this trait in Buddie's character, however, ability to make the
best of things, to see the smooth and not the seamy side of Death's
mantle, that made him the most intelligent, cool, and resourceful of all
fighting men. His buoyancy of disposition and resiliency of spirit gave
him a self-confidence and initiative that made him rise superior to all
hardship, and, as it were, compelled circumstances to side with him.
The 10th Field Signal Battalion, commanded by the brilliant and
big-hearted Major Gustav Hirch of Columbus, Ohio, was a favorite
rendezvous of mine. The nature of work of these Signal men appealed to
me; and their nomadic habits co-ordinated happily with my duties,
frequently requiring me, along the changing front, "to fold my tent with
Arabs and silently steal away."
They had direct charge of the Intelligence Maintenance of War work, and
constituted the axes of liaison between the various Units of the
Division.
Their skill in the transmission of messages was most remarkable. Masking
their operations in the language of secret signs and ciphers, they made
use of the telephone, telegraph, radio, wig-wag, panel, carrier pigeon,
blinker, and last, and perhaps most dependable of all, the living
runner. The duty of the latter consisted in carrying messages to or from
exposed positions when no other means would do. Usually a volunteer from
any branch, he was selected because of courage, agility and ability to
get through somehow, no matter how great the opposing odds. I was
present in an Observation Post near Jolney talking to Colonel Lewis,
when a runner came rushing across No Man's Land through a leaden hail,
saluted, handed a message to Captain Payne, and fell unconscious at his
feet. There were no greater heroes of the war.
Operators and linesmen "carried on" under conditions demanding the
greatest courage--remaining to the last in exposed positions like the
wireless heroes of a sinking ship. I have known lines to be shelled and
blown to pieces a dozen times during the day, and just as often repaired
by daring linesmen.
Frequently sharing their mess and dugouts, I cultivated the friendship,
not only of their generous Commander, but of Captain Cash, of Abilene,
Texas; Captain Jim Williams, of Troy, Alabama; and Lieutenant Phillips
of Brooklyn, New York--three of the most beloved of soldiers. Lieutenant
Andy O'Day, of Detroit, also with them, was heavily gassed at Jolney.
Attached to the Battalion, too, was a brilliant young man, Lieutenant
D'Orleans, French Army. He was from Brittany, had won the Croix de
Guerre, and spoke English, if not fluently, at least interestingly.