BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT
It was in following up the German retreat from their "farthest south"
back to the Marne, that our men learned the truth of what they had heard
and read so often, that the German is as good a fighter as any in the
world when he is in masses, but degenerates into a sickening coward when
left alone or in small groups.
It was during this time, too, that they learned the truth of the
oft-repeated charge that Germans were left behind, chained to machine
guns so they could not escape, to hinder an advancing enemy and make his
losses as heavy as possible.
Repeatedly groups of our men advanced on machine gun nests in the face
of vicious fire until they were in a position to make a sudden rush and,
on reaching the guns, were greeted by uplifted hands and bleats of
"Americans, kamerads! kamerads!"
On the nature of the individual Americans depended what happened.
Sometimes the Germans were released from their chains and sent to the
rear as prisoners. Sometimes the bayonet was used as the only answer to
such tactics. And who shall blame either action?
When, as frequently happened, it was a case of man to man, the
Pennsylvanians found that it was a rare German who would stand up and
fight. Long afterward they told gleefully of finding, here and there, a
Hun who bravely gave battle, for our men frankly preferred to kill their
men fighting rather than to slaughter them or take them prisoner.
Some of the Americans were so eager to keep close on the heels of the
retreating Huns that they did not stop long enough thoroughly to clean
up machine gun nests and other strong points. Groups of the Boche hid
until the main body of the Americans had passed on, then raked them from
the rear with machine gun and rifle fire, snipers concealed in trees
being particularly annoying in this way.
In scores of instances our men found machine guns and their gunners both
tied fast in trees, so that neither could fall, even when the operator
was shot. It was reported reliably but unofficially that machine gun
nests had been found where the Germans, in the short time they had been
on the ground, had arranged aerial tramways of rope from tree to tree,
so that if a machine gun nest were discovered in one tree and the
gunners shot, the guns could be slid over to another tree on the ropes
and another group of men could set them going again.
Many of the Huns "played dead" until the American rush was past, then
opened fire on the rear. This is an old trick, but Allied soldiers who
tried it early in the war discovered that the Germans countered it by
having men come along after a charging body of troops, bayoneting
everybody on the field to make sure all were dead. The Germans, however,
knew they were safe in trying it with our men, for they were well aware
Americans did not bayonet wounded men or dead bodies.
Sergeant McFadden, who has been mentioned before, was making his way
through the woods with a single companion when he noticed an apparently
dead Boche in a rifle pit. He got a glimpse of the face, however, and
noticed the eyes were closed so tightly the man was "squinting" from the
effort. McFadden jabbed his bayonet in the German's leg, whereupon he
leaped to his feet and seized the rifle from the astonished American's
hand. He threw it up to fire, but before he could pull the trigger,
McFadden's companion shot him.
At one point, below Fossoy, the Germans not only went back to the river,
but actually crossed it in the face of the 110th Infantry's advance.
Reaching the banks of the river, however, the enemy was within the
protection of his big guns, which immediately laid down such fire that
it was utterly impossible for the Americans and French to remain. Having
had a real taste of triumph, the Pennsylvanians were loath to let go,
but fell back slowly, unpressed by the Germans, to their former
positions.
It was on this forward surge back to the Marne that Pennsylvania's
soldiers began to get real first-hand evidence of Hun methods of
fighting--the kind of thing that turned three-fourths of the world into
active enemies of them and their ways, and sickened the very souls of
all who learned what creatures in the image of man can do.
They came on machine gun nests, in the advance between Mezy, Moulins and
Courtemont-Varennes, to find their comrades who had been taken prisoner
in the earlier fighting tied out in front in such a way as to fall first
victims to their friends' fire should an attack be made on the gunners.
Men told, with tears rolling down their cheeks, how these brave lads,
seeing the advancing Americans, shouted to them:
"Shoot! Shoot! Don't stop for us!"
They saw eight airplanes, painted with the French colors, swoop over the
lines, soar low near a barn where a battery had been planted and drop
tons of bombs, shaking the earth and demolishing everything about as if
an earthquake had occurred. Fortunately in this instance, the battery
had been moved to another location, but the same planes poured streams
of machine gun bullets into the ranks of our men until driven off by
machine gun and anti-aircraft fire.
Not the least of the difficulties of our men was the fact that the
Germans mingled a certain quantity of gas shells with their high
explosives and shrapnel. Ordinarily, soldiers learn to distinguish gas
shells from others by the difference in the sound of the explosion, but
in such a bombardment as this the sounds are so commingled that even
that protection is denied.
Therefore, it was necessary for the men to wear their gas masks almost
continuously. While these are a protection against the poisonous fumes,
they are far from being pleasant. Not only is it more difficult to see
and breathe, but what air is inhaled is impregnated with chemicals used
to neutralize the gas. Yet for hours at a time, the men had to go
through the inferno of fighting under the handicap of the masks.
Men returned to the rear with great burns upon their faces, hands and
bodies. From some the clothes were burned away almost entirely, and
others reeled along like drunken men, nearly blinded. They reported that
they had seen Germans in the woods with what looked like large tanks on
their backs. As the Americans approached to give battle, these Huns
turned short nozzles toward the oncoming soldiers, and from the nozzles
leaped great streams of flame, extending as much as thirty feet.
A part of the 111th Infantry confronted, at one time, a small wood,
which the French believed masked a strong machine gun nest. A patrol was
organized to reconnoiter the position, composed partly of volunteers and
partly of men chosen by officers. One of the volunteers was Private
Joseph Bennett, of Gulph Mills, Pa., near Norristown, a member of the
headquarters company of the 111th. The party consisted of twelve
enlisted men under command of a French lieutenant.
They advanced with the greatest care, their line extended to more than
the normal skirmish distance. There was not a sign of life about the
wood. Coming closer, they saw the body of an American soldier propped
against a tree. The French officer signaled for the men to close in
toward this point. As they did so, four machine guns, concealed by the
Hun ghouls behind the American body, raked the thin line of approaching
men with a terrific fire. Every man in the party except Bennett was
killed instantly. Bennett fired one shot and saw one of the Boche
plunge forward from his hiding place and lie still. Then a stream of
machine gun bullets struck his rifle and destroyed it.
Bennett flung himself to the ground and dragged himself to the body of
the French lieutenant. He took a supply of smoke bombs with which the
lieutenant had intended to signal the result of his expedition. Setting
these in operation, Bennett heaved them over in front of the machine gun
position. They promptly threw up such a dense cloud that the Gulph Mills
man was able to stand up. Under cover of the smoke he advanced and threw
hand grenades into the position, killing the remaining three Germans.
Then he returned to his regiment, the sole survivor of the scouting
party of thirteen men. The Distinguished Service Cross was awarded to
him for that act.
Bennett had another remarkable experience. He is one of the biggest men
in his regiment, standing a little more than six feet, and weighing
about 200 pounds. He was with Private Joseph Wolf, of Pottstown, in the
advance when they saw a sniper in a tree just drawing a bead on an
American lieutenant. Bennett was almost directly under the tree, and
coolly picked off the sniper. In falling, the body dislodged a second
badly frightened German. Bennett, watching the grim little tableau, had
not lowered his gun, and the live German fell directly on his gun,
impaling himself on the bayonet. The force of the blow almost dropped
the big American.
The men of the 111th were no whit behind their comrades of the other
regiments in the intensity of their fighting spirit nor in their
accomplishments. Individuals performed the same kind of heroic feats,
whatever regiment they called their own. In other words, all were true
Americans.
Corporal William Loveland, of Chester, with Company B, 111th,
single-handed, captured seventeen of the enemy, and was decorated for
his bravery. He was so badly wounded in the last campaign of the war
that he died November 5th.
It was a little later, after they had driven the Germans back to the
Marne and had retired again to their original positions, that there came
to the Pennsylvanians a highly pleasing estimate of their prowess as
viewed by the British. A runner from division headquarters brought up a
copy of a great London daily newspaper in which appeared the following
comment:
"The feature of the battle on which the eyes of all the world are fixed,
and those of the enemy with particular intentness, is the conduct of the
American troops. The magnificent counter-attack in which the Americans
flung back the Germans on the Marne after they had crossed was much more
than the outstanding event of the fighting. It was one of the historical
incidents of the whole war in its moral significance."
One other bit of cheering news came to them, passing down through the
various ranks from headquarters. It told something of what the
intelligence officers had gleaned from the study of documents taken from
enemy prisoners and dead. One of these latter had been an intelligence
officer. He was killed after writing a report on the quality of the
American troops and before he had a chance to send it along on its way
to German great headquarters. Our men learned that in this report he had
written that their morale was not yet broken, that they were young and
vigorous soldiers and nearly, if not quite, of the caliber of shock
troops, needing only more experience to make them so.
With his troops back at the Marne and balked from moving southward, the
enemy now tried to move eastward along the banks of the river toward
Epernay. The checking of this move fell to other troops, chiefly French,
while our men lay in their trenches, the victims of a continuous,
vindictive bombardment, without apparent purpose other than the breaking
of that morale of which the dead intelligence officer had written.
The men did not know what had happened. They knew only they wanted
either to get away from that sullen bombardment or get out and do
something. They were not aware that Foch had unleashed his armies
between Chateau-Thierry and Soissons and that the enemy already was in
flight from the Marne, the bombardment being designed to keep those
terrible Americans in their trenches until the last Huns had recrossed
the river to begin the long retreat northward.
Until July 21st, the Pennsylvania regiments hugged their trenches,
nursed their minor hurts and their deadly fatigue, and wondered what was
going on out yonder where the fate of Paris and possibly of the war was
being decided. The roar of artillery had gradually died down and the men
realized that the front was moving away from them. This could mean only
one thing--a German retreat: and our soldiers were gladdened, despite
the sad gaps in their ranks, with the knowledge that they had played the
parts of real men and splendid soldiers in making that retreat
compulsory.
Uppermost in the mind of more than one old national guardsman, as
evidenced by scores of letters received since that time, was the thought
that the despised "tin soldiers" of other days had "come through" with
flying colors, and had put their fine old organization well beyond the
touch of the finger of scorn.
So, on July 21st, the regiments were ordered back out of the ruck of
battle and away from the scene of their hard six days for a rest. They
went only a few miles back, but it was a blessed relief for the men--too
much and too sudden for some. Men who had come through the battle
apparently unscathed, now collapsed utterly as their nerves gave way
with the release of the tension, like the snapping of a tight-coiled
spring, and more than one went under the physicians' care from that rest
camp, miles away from German fire.
Not all were allowed to rest, however. Details were sent to the scene of
the recent fighting to clear up and salvage the wreckage of war, to hunt
for wounded and to bury the dead. This was not the least trying of their
experiences for the men engaged. The bodies of well-liked officers were
dragged out from tangles of dead Huns and buried tenderly, each grave
being marked by a little wooden cross on which was placed one of the
identification disks taken from the dead man, the second being turned
over to statistical officers for record purposes.
A week had passed since the first engagement, and the burying squads had
no pleasant task, from the physical standpoint, entirely aside from the
sadness and depression it entailed. The men got little touches of
spiritual uplift from things they found on the battlefield. Such as, for
instance, the body of little Alexander Myers, of Green Lane, Montgomery
County, a private in Company M, 109th, who had been known in boxing
circles about Philadelphia as "Chick" Myers. He was found with five dead
Boche about him. And the body of Sergeant Coburn, of the same company,
who had been married two days before he sailed for France, was found
prone on an automatic rifle, with the ground before him literally
covered with dead Huns.
In the burial detail of the 111th was Harry Lewis McFarland, of
Fallston, Pa., near New Brighton, a private in Company B. He had been
grieving bitterly over the fact that his brother, Verner, had been
missing since the company was cut up so badly in the first German
advance. Moving about among the dead, he turned one over, face up. It
was his brother. In his hands was his rifle, still clenched tightly. In
front of him, in such position that it was plain he had done the
execution himself, lay seven dead Germans.
Such was the spirit with which our men fought and died, and such was the
price they charged for their lives.
Back in the rest camp, the companies were mustered and the rolls checked
off with the known statistics regarding those not present. Figures on
the casualties of the 109th in those six days of action have reached
this country. They show four officers and 75 enlisted men killed; ten
officers and 397 enlisted men wounded; six officers and 311 enlisted men
missing, a total of twenty officers and 783 men, or 803 casualties for
the regiment, out of something more than 3,000 men--approximately
twenty-five per cent of losses. The 110th suffered about as heavily, and
the 111th scarcely less. The 103d Engineers had been more fortunate.
Their hard time was yet to come.
It was in this period that the weather changed. The fine, hot, sunshiny
days gave way to pouring rains, which turned the roads into quagmires
and added immeasurably to the miseries of the men. However, officers
commented on the fact that there was little complaining. Men who had
grumbled in the training camps back in America when the beans were cold
for lunch, or when they had an extra hour's work to do, or when the wind
blew chill while they were "on sentry go," now faced actual hardship
with dauntless spirit and smiles. In some places the men marched through
mud up to their knees. At night they slept in the open with the rain
pouring on them. When the hot sun shone once more, their clothing
steamed.
More cheering news came to the men while they rested. The companies that
had been in the front line with the French when the Germans drove across
the river and had suffered the heaviest, were mentioned in special
orders for their gallantry, and the report went down the line that
several of the officers and men were to receive decorations.
With indomitable good humor, which served to cover their hurts to some
extent--as many a small boy laughs to keep from weeping--officers and
men made the most of things that struck a funny vein. In this
connection, there was much "kidding" of Captain George M. Orf, of
Philadelphia, statistical officer of the 109th.
Sunday, July 14th, Captain Orf received his discharge from the army
because he had been found to be suffering from an ailment that unfitted
him for military duty. He wrote a request at once for a re-examination
and revocation of the order of discharge. Pending action on his request,
he was, technically and to all intents and purposes, a civilian.
Actually, he went right on with his duties, "carried on" throughout the
German drive and the counter-attack, came through without a scratch, and
stayed right with the regiment through further hard fighting and
campaigning to August 9th. Then he received final word, a rejection of
his appeal and orders to proceed home at once. During this period, his
fellow officers declined to address him by his military title, but went
out of their way to speak to him and of him as "Mister Orf."