IN DEATH VALLEY
Hun infantry in considerable force held Fismes. Their big guns had been
moved across the Vesle, tacit admission they had no hope of holding the
south bank of the river, but the strength of the force in the town
indicated the customary intention to sell out as dearly as possible to
their dogged and unfaltering pursuers.
Lying in the woods, or whatever other shelter they could find, our
infantrymen for two days watched French and American batteries moving
into position. It seemed the procession was interminable.
"There'll be something doing for Fritz when those babies get going," was
the opinion of the Pennsylvania doughboys.
French and American forces already had crossed the river east and west
of Fismes, which was almost the geographic center of the line between
Soissons and Rheims. To stabilize the line, it was essential not only
that Fismes be taken, but that the river crossings be forced and
Fismette seized.
Forward bodies of infantry continually had been feeling out the German
positions in Fismes and on Saturday afternoon, August 3rd,
reconnaissance parties from the 168th Infantry, formerly the Third Iowa
National Guard, of the Rainbow Division, entered the southern edge of
the town.
They clung there desperately until the next day, but the Germans deluged
them with gas, which hung close because of the river and the heavy
atmosphere, and it was deemed inadvisable for the small force to remain.
Their reconnaissance had been completed and they were ordered to return
to their lines. The information they brought back aided the staff
materially in planning the general attack.
The Germans had placed heavy guns on the crests of hills one or two
kilometers north of the river, from which they poured in a flanking
fire.
A few hours after the return of the men of the 168th, the massed French
and American batteries turned loose with a racket that seemed to rend
the universe.
The Germans had been dropping shells intermittently since daylight, but
even this spasmodic firing stopped entirely under the hurricane of
shrapnel, high explosive and gas shells from the Allied artillery, which
swept the town, the river crossings and the country to the north. It was
a case of "keep your head down, Fritzie boy," or lose it.
The artillery preparation was not protracted. After an hour or so, it
steadied down into a rolling barrage and the first wave of attackers
went over. The 32d and 42d (Rainbow) Divisions, exhausted, had been
brought out of the front line and Pennsylvania's iron men slipped into
place.
It fell to the fortune of the 112th Infantry to lead the advance on
Fismes and, supported though it was by other regiments and by tremendous
artillery fire, it was the 112th Pennsylvania that actually took Fismes.
[Illustration: (C) _Committee on Public Information._
INTO THE MAW OF BATTLE
Pennsylvania Guardsmen attacking a German position in the
Soissons-Rheims pocket. A bombing squad leads to blow up the
German wire and open the way for the infantry waves which are
seen following close, headed for the holes in the wire
network.]
There was the usual harassing fire from enemy machine guns and snipers,
especially to the east, but these were silenced after a time and the
112th romped into the southern edge of the town. Then ensued a
repetition, on a larger scale, of the street and house fighting that had
been experienced before in other villages and towns.
Scouts crept from corner to corner, hiding behind bits of smashed
masonry, working through holes in house walls and into cellars. A haze
of dust kicked up by the shells hung in the bright sunlight.
Every open stretch of street was swept by rifle and machine gun fire
from one or both sides. Americans and Germans were so mingled that
sometimes they shared the same house, firing out of different windows on
different streets, and varying the procedure by attempts to kill their
housemates.
As the Americans crept slowly forward, always toward the river, the
Germans showed no slightest inclination to follow their comrades to the
north bank, and it became apparent that they were a sacrifice offered up
by the German command to delay, as long as possible, the progress of
those terrible Americans. They had been left behind with no hope of
succor, simply to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Quite
naturally, they fought like trapped wolves as long as fighting was
possible. When convinced they had no further chance to win, they dropped
their weapons and squalled: "Kamerad!"
Two American officers and some wounded men worked their way into one of
the houses. Inside, they found two unwounded men from Pittsburgh. Almost
as the two parties joined forces, one of the unwounded Pittsburghers,
venturing incautiously near what had been a window, stopped a sniper's
bullet and fell dead. The wounded were made as comfortable as possible
to await the stretcher-bearers and the two officers and one enlisted man
started to investigate the house.
They were crawling on all fours. They came into a dismantled room and
raised their heads to look over a pile of debris. They looked straight
into the eyes of two Germans. One had a machine gun, the other a trench
bomb in each hand. These German trench bombs were known among our
soldiers as "potato mashers," because they are about the size of a can
of sweet corn, fastened on the end of a short stick. They are thrown by
the stick, and are a particularly nasty weapon--one of the worst the
Germans had, many soldiers thought.
The German with the bombs was slowly whirling them about by the handles,
exactly like a pair of Indian clubs, as one of the Americans described
it afterward.
For the time you might have counted ten, there was not a movement on either
side, because the men were so surprised, except that the German with the
bombs kept whirling them slowly, around and around. The other German
stood like a statue, but making funny, nervous noises--"uck-uck-uck"--in
his throat. The Americans, telling about it later, frankly admitted they
were too scared to move for a few moments, expecting every second the man
with the "potato mashers" would throw them.
The remarkable tableau ended with the crash of a rifle. The American
private soldier had fired "from the hip." The German with the bombs bent
forward as if he had a sharp pain in his stomach, but he did not come up
again. He kept on going until his head hit the pile of debris, as if he
were salaaming or kowtowing to the Americans. Then he collapsed in an
inert heap on the floor, still holding his bombs.
The other turned and ran, stumbling through the wreckage, out through
the little garden in which flowers and green stuff still struggled
through the broken stone. As he ran, he cried in a curious, whimpering,
muffled tone, like a frightened animal, his big helmet crushed down
over his ears, a grotesque figure. He got out into the street, out into
the open where machine guns and rifles still called from corner to
corner and window to window. He was drilled in a dozen places at once
and collapsed like a heap of dusty rags.
There were innumerable instances of individual gallantry and of narrow
escapes. In days of fighting when virtually every man performed a hero's
part, it was impossible for anyone to keep track of all of even the more
outstanding cases, and many a lad's deed went unnoticed while another's
act brought him a citation and the coveted Distinguished Service Cross,
the difference being that one was observed and reported and the other
was not. A very small proportion of the deserving deeds were rewarded
for this reason.
Among the narrow escapes from death, probably Lieutenant Walter A.
Davenport, formerly of Philadelphia, established a record. A machine gun
bullet struck his belt buckle, was deflected and ripped a long gash in
the muscles of his abdomen. He returned to duty before his regiment, the
111th, had finished its work in Fismette, a few weeks later, and was
slightly gassed.
It was at Fismes that Captain John M. Gentner, of Philadelphia, acting
commander of the first battalion of the 109th, was wounded. He had been
commander of Company C, but took over command of the battalion when
Captain Gearty was killed in the Bois de Conde, below the Marne. After
he was wounded, Captain Gentner was made the subject of a remarkable
tribute from men of his battalion. They wrote for newspaper publication
a letter of eulogy, in which they said:
"The influence of Captain Gentner is still leading on the men of his
battalion. None speak of him but in admiration and thankfulness for
having helped them to be good soldiers. Daring, even brilliant, he led
his men into seemingly hazardous attacks, and yet we felt a sense of
safety. Other commanders say: 'I wouldn't send a man where I wouldn't go
myself,' but Captain Gentner wouldn't send men where he would go
himself. We looked upon him as a father. He has brought in wounded men
from places where no one else would venture. He delighted in dangerous
patrols and often regretted that his position prevented him from
leading combat patrols. In places where food came to us rarely and in
small quantity, he would claim that he had eaten when we knew that
neither food nor water had crossed his lips for twenty-four hours. He
was filled with admiration for his men--men who willingly would have
followed him through the gates of hell, just because no trouble, no
privation was too great for him to make his men comfortable."
What a difference between that relationship of officer and enlisted man,
and the sight our men saw of German soldiers being kicked and beaten
with sabres by German officers in an effort to drive them forward into
battle while the officers remained behind out of harm's way!
With their never-failing sense of the dramatic and their natural
tendency to picturesquely appropriate nomenclature, our men named the
valley of the Vesle "Death Valley" after the desperate fighting they
encountered there.
And so they took Fismes, these gallant American daredevils. Slowly but
surely they went through it, mopping it up in a scientific manner. It
was costly--such warfare always is--but they wiped out one German post
after another, driving the Huns to the very edge of the town on the
north, where they held on desperately for a few days until the American
occupation was complete, and the last German foothold was gone from the
Soissons-Rheims pocket, which for two weeks had been the focal point for
the eyes of the world.
Even before the operation was complete, and in callous disregard of the
men they themselves had left behind to impede the American advance, the
Germans cut loose with a hot artillery fire from the heights north of
the river.
They are not unlike the chalk cliffs of Dover, only not so high, these
elevations along the Vesle. There were several high points on the north
bank on which the Germans had observation posts, from which they could
look down upon Fismes and the surrounding country as persons in a
theatre balcony view the stage, and it was a terrible fire they poured
in.
Already their big guns had been withdrawn to the line of the Aisne,
which is only five miles to the north and therefore well within range.
Lighter pieces in great number crowned the high ground nearer the Vesle,
and machine guns held their usual prominent place in the German scheme.
Once more they brought flame projectors into play, using them in this
instance at what is believed to have been the greatest distance they
tried to operate these weapons during the war. They accomplished little
with the "flamenwerfer," however.
Night and day the gun duel continued. The French and American batteries
methodically set about to break up the concentration of Hun fire.
Monday, August 5th, the shelling became so violent that observation
virtually was impossible and maps had to be used, the American gun
commanders picking out German positions that had been marked down
earlier.
German 105's and 155's (about four and six inches) hurled their high
explosive shells. Shrapnel sprayed over the entire territory, and the
American positions in the rear were heavily pounded and deluged with
gas. The Germans shelled forests, crossroads, highways, clumps of trees
and all other places where they thought troops or supplies might be
concentrated or passing.
Every position in the American lines which ordinarily would have been
good from a military viewpoint became almost untenable from the fact
that the Germans, having so recently been driven out, knew the terrain
and the positions accurately. It was as safe in the open as in the
supposed shelters.
No sooner had the occupation of Fismes been established completely than
the Americans calmly prepared to cross the river and take Fismette,
regardless of the German resistance. For some reason still unexplained,
since after developments have made it clear the Germans had no real hope
of stopping short of the Chemin-des-Dames, north of the Aisne, they made
the taking of Fismette almost a first-class operation, even driving the
Americans back across the river after they once had established
themselves, and counter-attacking repeatedly.
Presumably, they had been unable to get away their vast quantities of
munitions and supplies between the Vesle and the Aisne, and needed to
hold up the pursuit while these were extricated.
As a first step in the crossing of the river, Major Robert M. Vail, of
Scranton, commanding the 108th Machine Gun Battalion, operating with the
55th Infantry Brigade, sent over two companies of machine gunners. They
waded the river, which was nearly to their armpits in places, holding
their weapons above their heads. Others carried ammunition in boxes on
their heads. They went over in a storm of shells and bullets, which took
a heavy toll, but they established a bridgehead on the north bank and,
fighting like demons, held it against tremendous odds while men of the
103d Engineers, ordered up for the work, threw bridges across the
stream.
It was in this work that units of the engineer regiment, particularly
Company C, of Pottsville, were badly mauled. Working swiftly and
unconcernedly in the midst of a tornado of almost every conceivable kind
and size of shell, most of the time sustaining the discomfort of their
gas masks, the engineers conducted themselves like veterans of years of
service, instead of the tyros they actually were. Officers and men of
the other organizations, watching the performance, thrilled with pride
at the outstanding bravery of these heroic young Americans. Their own
officers were too absorbed in their task to appreciate the work of the
men until afterward, when they had also to mourn their losses.
Methodically, working in water above their waists, many of them, the
engineers thrust the arm of their bridge across the stream. Shells raged
about them, churning the water to foam and throwing up geysers of mud
and spray. Now and then a flying fragment of steel struck one of the
toilers, whereupon he either dropped and floated downstream,
uninterested in the further progress of the war, or struggled to the
bank for first aid and made his way to a hospital.
The first bridge was nearly completed when a big shell scored a direct
hit and it disappeared in a mass of kindling wood. Patiently and
tenaciously, the engineers, deprived by their duties of even the
satisfaction of seizing a rifle and trying to wreak a little vengeance,
started to rebuild the structure.
Hampered by the German fire, the bridge building was slow and, the
machine gunners having made a good crossing, infantry was started over
the ford. The process of throwing men across was greatly hastened when
at last the first bridge was completed. Other spans soon were ready, but
the engineers knew no cessation from their task, for all too frequently
Hun projectiles either tore holes in the bridges or wrecked them
altogether.