The Fight for the Argonne Part 1

The Fight for the Argonne.

by William Benjamin West, et al.

INTRODUCTION

It was on the road from Neufchateau to La Foche, where Base Hospital 117 was located, that I first became acquainted with the author of this book. He evidently knew how to run a Ford camionette, even though it was not in just the shape in which it left the factory. I remember that I asked him what he did for a living back in the States--those service uniforms were great levelers--and he said he was a parson.

"But now you are a chauffeur," I objected. "Well, you see," he said, "when I first came over they asked me to fill out blanks indicating what I could do, and in that statement I admitted that I could run a car. I also said I could preach. They tried me out as a chauffeur and liked my work so well that they said they would stand pat on that; they had never heard me preach."

As a matter of fact, I heard Mr. West preach that morning to the boys suffering from war neurosis, or "sh.e.l.l shock," in Hospital 117. He had helped them out on former Sundays there, and they sent for him again and again.

Later, when I was in the Baccarat sector, I met a most interesting and effective man who was in the Supply Department of the "Y" on week days, and conducted services in outlying camps every Sunday morning with great success. He had been a circus acrobat back in the States.

What a revolutionizing influence war is, with preachers chauffeuring and acrobats preaching! The important point was that they were all serving whole-heartedly in whatever way they could.

It was in Baccarat that I met West again, running his car, transporting newspapers or moving-picture machines, or canteen supplies, or itinerant entertainers such as I, out over any sort of road toward the front line. His glimpses of the great war were from an angle of vision that makes what he has to say in this book well worth reading. His duties took him into every sort of billet, and brought him into close touch with many branches of the army, as well as with all sorts of welfare work and workers. I find that he refers, in pa.s.sing, to that dramatic moment when we stood on a hilltop and watched the bombing of Baccarat just below us, while the Boche machine pa.s.sed very close overhead. He does not say that he hid behind one tree and I hid behind another, trying to keep the trunks between us and the flying shrapnel. Nor does he say that he picked up and carried home a fragment which landed between us in the road, although it came just as near to me as it did to him!

This started out to be an introduction to a book. It is really a personal expression of good will toward one whom I was glad to meet and touch for a moment in that strange whirlpool of human activity last summer in France.

BURGES JOHNSON.

Va.s.sar College, March 3, 1919.

CHAPTER I

FIVE WEEKS IN A FLIVVER

"Halt!"

When above the noise and rattle of the car--for a Ford always carries a rattle--you hear the stentorian command of the guard, _instantly_ every stopping device is automatically applied.

"_Who Goes There?_"

"A friend with the countersign."

"Advance! and give the countersign."

The guard at charge, with bayonet fixed, awaits your coming. When you get within a few feet of the point of his bayonet the guard again commands, "_Halt!_" In the silence and blackness of the night you whisper the pa.s.sword and if he is satisfied that you are indeed a friend he says, "Pa.s.s, friend." If he is not satisfied you are detained until your ident.i.ty has been established.

No matter how many hundreds of times you hear the challenge ring out, each time you hear it a new thrill runs through your whole being and a new respect for military authority holds you captive, for you instinctively know that behind that challenge is the cold steel and a deadly missile.

It was a splendidly camouflaged camionette that I inherited from Hughes when I went to Baccarat on the Alsatian border. In all my dangerous trips, by night and day, it never failed, and I think back to it now with a tenderness bordering on affection.

My first day on the job I was sent out to five huts with supplies, driving my own car and piloting the men who were sent out to pilot me.

Although they had been over the roads and were supposed to know the way, they did not have a good _sense_ of direction and so were easily lost.

The headquarters of the 37th Division were at Baccarat on the Alsatian border. Strasburg lay fifty miles to the east and Metz fifty-five miles to the northwest. To hold this front, an area fifteen to twenty miles long, was the task of the Ohio boys until they were relieved by the French the middle of September and sent into the Argonne Forest.

Over this area were scattered twenty-one Y.M.C.A. huts. The Headquarters hut was at Baccarat, which was farthest from the front line--about ten miles back as the crow flies. The other huts were scattered over the area at points most advantageous for serving the boys and up to within a few hundred yards of the line. We had thirty-four men and ten women secretaries. Our farthest advanced woman worker had a hut all her own at Hablainville, a village where our troops were billeted and where Fritzie kept everyone on the _qui vive_ by his intermittent gifts of high-explosive bombs and sh.e.l.ls.

Miss O'Connor always inspired confidence. It mattered not whether she was dealing with the hysterical French women when bombs exploded in their gardens and fields, or whether she was counseling with the Colonel, at whose table she was the invited guest. Her quiet a.s.surance, her cordial greeting, her intelligent understanding, and her keen sally of wit made her always welcome. And the boys thronged her hut. She did not try to "mother" them--the mistake some canteen workers made. Nor did she try to "make an impression" upon them. She quietly lived her life among them. No one could long be boisterous where she was, and so I always found her hut a rendezvous where men were glad to resort as they came from the battle or from camp.

Many were absorbed in their reading, of which there was a good a.s.sortment--the daily papers, the magazines and a choice collection of books furnished by the American Library a.s.sociation. Other groups were intent upon chess or checkers, while in the piano corner were the musically inclined. Sometimes it was a piano or a baritone solo, but most often the boys were singing "Keep the Home Fires Burning," "The Long, Long Trail," or "Katy."

One day when delivering to the hut at Neufchateau, I was attracted by the strains of music that came from the piano in the auditorium--the "Y" there had a large double hut. I slipped into a back seat to listen. A group of boys were around the piano while others were scattered through the building attracted as I had been. At the old French piano was a small khaki-clad figure, coaxing from its keys with wizard fingers such strains as we had not dreamed were possible. We were held spellbound until the musician, having finished, quietly walked away, leaving his auditors suspended somewhere between earth and heaven. One by one we walked silently out to our respective duties of helping to make the world safe for such as he.

One Sunday evening just at dusk, I drove to our camp at Ker Avor. The boys called this camp their summer home. It surely was an ideal spot in the heart of a pine forest, high up in the Vosges Mountains. It was also near enough to the enemy lines--about a mile distant--to make it mighty interesting.

After delivering our supplies to the hut we went out to where a gang of soldiers who were off duty had gathered in the forest. One was playing a harmonica and another was "jigging" and telling funny stories. Instantly and gladly they swung the gathering into a religious service, with songs from the "Y" hymn book and a fine snappy address as a speaker stood on a hummock surrounded by the silent, thoughtful bunch. The sky was our canopy and with the moonlight filtering through the branches of the pines, an indelible impression was registered on every fellow there.

The boys were happy to have us come and showed us about their camp, including an ingenious little chapel which had been built by the Germans during their occupancy of this territory in the early part of the War.

My first near view of the Boche trenches came one day when, waiting for our movie man at one of the huts, I went out "masked and helmeted"

to a hill between our first and second lines. The peculiar "chills"

and "thrills" of first sensations are indescribable. Cautiously and with some inward trembling I followed Private Van Voliet, of the 146th Infantry (Colonel Weybrecht's Regiment), across a sh.e.l.l-torn field where twisted wire entanglements told of former fierce encounters. We pa.s.sed a Stokes mortar battery of the 147th Infantry concealed in low bushes. The boys, lying idly in their dog-tents, wove canes from willow branches wound with wire and capped with bullets. I was presented with a cane by Private Boothby and a swagger stick by Private Rhoades.

A five minute walk brought us to the "alert zone," where gas masks must be adjusted and ready for instant use. The guard at the crossroad allowed us to pa.s.s with the warning, "Keep under cover or you will draw the fire of the Boche snipers." So we crawled through a hole in the camouflaged screen which protected the road from German observers, and keeping behind clumps of bushes we peered through at the trenches just across the valley, in which Hun rifles lay c.o.c.ked and primed for any American who would dare become a target. I confess I breathed easier when we got safely back to the "Y" hut.

NIGHT BOMBING

For four nights in succession Boche planes had been trying to drop bombs on the rail-head where troop trains were being loaded near our Headquarters. On the fourth night, when returning from a front line hut with Secretary Johnson, who in America was a professor in Va.s.sar College, we stopped on a high ridge overlooking the battle line. This was a favorite rendezvous on my return from night deliveries, as it gave a wonderful panoramic view of the whole front line for miles in either direction. The flashes of the guns, the dazzling brilliancy of the star sh.e.l.ls, the long lines of varicolored signals as they went up from many camps and out-posts, and the flares dropped from scores of planes, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing in the darkness overhead, can never be forgotten. It was a nightly and wonderful Fourth of July celebration, enhanced by the weirdness and danger of actual warfare.

As we stood this night, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, wearing our "tin" hats and with gas masks at "alert," suddenly out of the night loomed a German plane, flying low, the Boche engine distinguished by its own peculiar throb. As it pa.s.sed over our heads it dropped a red flare and proceeded toward Baccarat. Evidently, it had discovered our signals for that night and was using them. As soon as its deception was discovered our gunners opened fire, but not until it had dropped four bombs on the town and gotten away in safety toward the German lines. The explosions from the bombs were terrific and the flashes lit up the whole sky. We took refuge behind trees as shrapnel from our anti-aircraft guns rattled down in the roadway and the "ping"

of machine-gun bullets startled our ears.

When we returned to town we found everything in confusion. One bomb had exploded in the treetops a half block from our billet and had wrecked the beautiful mansion of the French mayor of the town. It also wounded some American soldiers in a nearby barracks. Another bomb landed between two buildings at Hexo Barracks, killing three of our boys and one French poilu, besides wounding many and shattering the buildings. Four horses were killed by pieces of shrapnel, and when looking over the scene of destruction the next morning I noticed a hole, clean cut, through a half-inch steel tire on a nearby cart. It had been cut by a piece of shrapnel about an inch long which had also gone through spokes and hub and buried itself in the ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMAN AERIAL BOMB (Small)]

At four o'clock one day, after the regular round of hut deliveries, a special order was handed me from our chief for immediate execution. In ten minutes I was off in my ever-faithful flivver. My order took me to Reherrey, a village near the line, where a special pa.s.s was secured from the commanding officer, allowing me to go over a dangerous road exposed to the German guns. From the Y.M.C.A. Hut at Reherrey, I took with me a new secretary, a Congregational minister from the Middle West, to relieve McGuffy, the secretary at St. Pole, whom I was to bring back to headquarters.

When we reached the hut at St. Pole, the secretaries, including McGuffy, were out at the front with supplies for the boys. While waiting for them to return we strolled about through the desolate remnants of this old peasant village. My companion had not been under fire before, so when the first sh.e.l.l from the Boche "heavies" came whistling and whining toward us he hastened to the dugout saying, "This is no place for me." He was ashamed of his own fear and proved that he was a "regular guy" by joining in the laugh and jibes of the fellows. Being rea.s.sured by the pa.s.sing of several sh.e.l.ls safely overhead, he rejoined me in our tramp through the village. Every portable thing of value had been carried off by the Huns and what was left had been destroyed. Stoves had been broken down and beds and furniture demolished.

When McGuffy got back we started for Baccarat. It was a stormy night, black as ink, and we had to go over roads which the bombardment of the early evening had torn up. It took two hours to go eight miles. When we arrived we found an anxious group of "Y" workers discussing the probability of our having been blown to pieces or captured by the Boche, and they were just about to send out a searching party.

No soldiers ever had anything on the boys from the Buckeye State. They had been sent to the Alsatian border to hold the line against a threatening foe. Persistent rumors told of a German drive on this sector. Nothing but our men and guns and a few hastily constructed wire entanglements stood in their way. And the German army had a name for sweeping right through such open country and taking what it wanted. But many things caused Fritz to stop and think. The German raiding parties were failures. Only two out of a score succeeded in getting the Americans. That meant that the Yankee out-posts were not only on the job but also that they were absolutely fearless and able to capture single-handed superior numbers of the enemy.

Then, one night just as the Germans seemed to be concentrating on a dangerous salient, eighty of our big guns in a couple of hours coughed up twelve hundred tons of gas and spit it in the faces of an enemy that dared to think it could fool with Uncle Sam's boys from Ohio. For two days after, the Boche were carrying their dead out of that area.