The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War Part 2

Meantime, the regiments had gone plugging ahead with their training work--rifle shooting, bayonet work, hikes and practice attacks succeeding each other in bewildering variety.

The work was interrupted July 5th by the arrival of messengers from brigade headquarters. The regiments were to move up in closer support of the French lines. Marshal Foch had shepherded the Germans into a position where their only possibility for further attack lay almost straight south from the tip of the Soissons-Rheims salient. The French forces there were expected to make the crossing of the Marne so hazardous and costly an enterprise that the Germans either would give it up almost at the outset, or would be so hara.s.sed that the push could gain little headway. In any event, the American support troops--including our own Pennsylvanians--were depended on to reinforce the line at any critical moment. And for that reason it was imperative that they be within easier striking distance.

So, very early on the morning of July 6th, the bugles roused the men from their slumbers and word was pa.s.sed by the sergeants to hurry the usual morning duties, as there was "something doing." No larger hint was needed. Dressing, was.h.i.+ng, "police duty" and breakfast never were dispensed with more rapidly, and in less than an hour after first call the regiments were ready to move.

The 110th, the 111th and the engineers moved off without incident, other than the keen interest aroused by the increasing clamor of the guns as they marched northward, to the new positions a.s.signed them. Parts of their routes lay over some of the famous roads of France that had not suffered yet from the barbarous invaders, and made fairly easy going. At times they had to strike across country to gain a new and more available road.

A doughboy, pressing close to where a fine old tree leaned protectingly across the sun-baked road, reached up and pulled a leafy twig. He thrust it into the air hole in his hat, and laughingly remarked that "now he was camouflaged." His comrades paid no attention until he remarked later that it was a good thing to have, as it helped keep the flies away.

Thereafter there were many grasping hands when trees or bushes were within reach, and before noon the men bore some semblance to the Italian Bersaglieri, who wear plumed hats.

The going was not so smooth for the 109th, however. The farther the regiment moved along its northward road the louder and more emphatic became the cannonading. Both the officers and men realized they were getting very much closer to artillery fire than they had been. A spirit of tense, nervous eagerness pervaded the ranks. The goal of the long months of hard training, the achievement of all their dreams and desires, seemed just ahead.

They had pa.s.sed the little village of Artonges, where the tiny Dhuys River, no more than a bush and tree-bordered run, swung over and joined their road to keep it company on the northward route. Pargny-la-Dhuys was almost in sight, when a sh.e.l.l--their first sight of one in action--exploded in a field a few hundred yards to one side.

At almost the same time an officer came das.h.i.+ng down the road. He brought orders from brigade headquarters for the regiment to turn off the road and take cover in a woods. Pargny and the whole countryside about were being sh.e.l.led vigorously by the Germans with a searching fire in an effort to locate French batteries.

The sh.e.l.ling continued with little cessation, while the 109th in vexation hid in the woods south of Pargny. The doughboys became convinced firmly that the Germans knew they were on the way to the front and deliberately were trying to prevent them, through sheer fear of their well-known prowess. For many a Pennsylvania soldier had been telling his comrades and everybody else for so long that "there won't be anything to it when this division gets into action," that he had the idea fixed in his mind that the Germans must be convinced of the same thing.

Three times the cannonade slackened and the heckled Pargny was left out of the zone of fire. Each time the 109th sallied forth from its green shelter and started ahead. Each time, just as it got well away and its spirits had begun to "perk up" again, the big guns began to roar at the town and they turned back.

This continued until July 10th. When orders came that morning for the regiment to proceed northward, there was much gibing at Fritz and his spite against the regiment and little hope that the procedure would be anything more than another march up the road and back again.

Surprise was in store, however. This time the guns were pointed in other directions, and the regiment went over the hill, through what was left of Pargny after its several days of German "hate," and on up the road.

Just when spirits were soaring again at the prospect of marching right up to the fighting front, came another disappointment for the men. A short distance north of Pargny, the column turned into a field on the right of the road and made its way into a deep ravine bordering the northern side of the field. Ensued another period of grumbling and fault-finding among the men, who could not understand why they still saw nothing of the war at first hand.

The discussion was at its height as the men made camp, when it was interrupted by a screeching roar overhead, followed almost instantaneously by a terrific crash in the field above their heads and to the south.

"Whang" came another sh.e.l.l of smaller caliber on the other side of the road, and then the frightful orchestra was again in full swing. Suddenly that little ravine seemed a rather desirable place to be, after all.

Most of the men would have preferred to be in position to do some retaliatory work, rather than sit still and have those sh.e.l.ls shrieking through the air in search of them, but the shelter of the hollow was much more to be desired than marching up the open road in the teeth of sh.e.l.l fire.

An air of pride sat on many of the men. "Old Fritz must know the 109th is somewhere around," they reasoned.

Three days pa.s.sed thus, with the regiment "holed up" against the almost continuous bombardment. Little lulls would come in the fire and the men would s.n.a.t.c.h some sleep, only to be roused by a renewal of the racket, for they had not yet reached that stage of old hands at the front, where they sleep undisturbed through the most vigorous sh.e.l.ling, only to be roused by the unaccustomed silence when the big guns quit baying.

Runners maintaining liaison with brigade headquarters and the other regiments were both better off and worse off, according to the point of view. Theirs was an exceedingly hazardous duty, with none of the relatively safe shelter of the regiment, but, too, it had that highly desirable spice of real danger and adventure that had been a potent influence in luring these men to France.

Liaison, in a military sense, is the maintaining of communications. It is essential at all times that organizations operating together should be in close touch. To do this men frequently do the seemingly impossible. Few duties in the ranks of an army are more alluring to adventurous youth, more fraught with risk, or require more personal courage, skill and resourcefulness.

At last, however, the tedious wait came to an end. Sat.u.r.day night, July 13th, the usual hour for "taps," pa.s.sed and the customary orders for the night had not been given. Toward midnight, when the men were at a fever heat of expectancy, having sensed "something doing" in the very air, the regiment was formed in light marching order. This meant no heavy packs, no extra clothes, nothing but fighting equipment and two days' rations.

It certainly meant action.

Straight northward through the night they marched. Up toward the Marne the sky was aglow with star sh.e.l.ls, flares and shrapnel and high explosives. The next day, July 14th, would be Bastille Day, France's equivalent of our Independence Day, and the men of the 109th commented among themselves as they hiked toward the flaring uproar that it looked as if it would be "some celebration."

The head of the column reached a town, and a glimpse at a map showed that it was Conde-en-Brie, where the little Surmelin River joins the Dhuys. Colonel Brown and the headquarters company swung out of the column to establish regimental post command there. The rest of the regiment went on northward.

A mile farther and a halt was called. There was a brief conference of battalion commanders in the gloom and then the first battalion swung off to the left, the third to the right and the second extended its lines over the territory immediately before it.

When all had arrived in position, the first battalion was on a line just south of the tiny hamlet of Monthurel, northwest of Conde. The second battalion was strung out north of Conde, and the third continued the line north of the hamlet of St. Agnan, northeast of Conde.

Then the regiment was called on to do--for the first time with any thought that it would be of real present value to them--that which they had learned to do, laboriously, grumblingly and with many a sore muscle and aching back, in camp after camp. They "dug in."

There was no sleep that night, even had the excited fancies of the men permitted. Up and down, up and down, went the st.u.r.dy young arms, and the dirt flew under the attack of intrenching picks and shovels. By daylight a long line of pits, with the earth taken out and heaped up on the side toward the enemy, scarred the fields. They were not pretentious, as trenches went in the war--scarcely to be dignified with the name of trenches--but the 109th heaved a sigh of relief and was glad of even that shelter as the Hun artillery renewed its strafing of the countryside.

Runners from the 109th carried the news to brigade headquarters that the regiment was at last on the line. Thence the word seeped down through the ranks, and the men of the 110th and 111th and of the engineers got little inklings of the troubles their comrades of the old First and Thirteenth had experienced in reaching their position.

Roughly, then, the line of the four regiments extended from near Chezy, on the east, to the region of Vaux, beyond Chateau-Thierry, on the west.

The 103d Engineers held the eastern end. Then came, in the order named, the 109th, 110th and 111th. The 112th was busy elsewhere, and had not joined the other regiment of its brigade, the 111th.

CHAPTER III

THE LAST HUN DRIVE

Our Pennsylvania regiments now were operating directly with French troops, under French higher command, and in the line they were widely separated, with French regiments between.

The troops faced much open country, consisting chiefly of the well-tilled fields for which France is noted, with here and there a clump of trees or bushes, tiny streams, fences and an occasional farm building. Beyond these lay a dense woods, extending to the Marne, known variously in the different localities by the name of the nearest town.

The Bois de Conde, near Monthurel, was the scene of some of the stiffest fighting that followed.

The real battle line lay right along the Valley of the Marne, a little more than two miles away, and the men of the Pennsylvania regiments were disappointed again to learn they were not actually holding the front line. That was entirely in the hands of the French in that sector, and French officers who came back to visit the American headquarters and to establish liaison with these support troops confidently predicted that the Boche never would get a foothold on the south bank of the river. The river, they said, was so lined with machine gun nests and barbed wire entanglements that nothing could pa.s.s.

That evening, Sunday, July 14th, runners brought messages from brigade headquarters to Colonel Brown, commanding the 109th, and Colonel George E. Kemp, of Philadelphia, commanding the 110th. There were little holes in the French line that it was necessary to plug, and the American support was called on to do the plugging.

Colonel Brown ordered Captain James B. Cousart, of Philadelphia, acting commander of the third battalion, to send two companies forward to the line, and Colonel Kemp, from his post command, despatched a similar message to Major Joseph H. Thompson, Beaver Falls, commanding his first battalion.

Captain Cousart led the expedition from the 109th himself, taking his own company, L, and Company M, commanded by Captain Edward P. Mackey, of Williamsport. Major Thompson sent Companies B, of New Brighton, and C, of Somerset, from the 110th, commanded respectively by Captains William Fish and William C. Truxal.

Captain Cousart's little force was established in the line, Company M below Pa.s.sy-sur-Marne, and Company L back of Courtemont-Varennes. The two companies of the 110th were back of Fossoy and Mezy, directly in the great bend of the river. The Dhuys River enters the Marne near that point and this river separated the positions of the 109th and 110th companies. Fossoy, the farthest west of these towns, is only four miles in an air line from Chateau-Thierry, and Pa.s.sy is about four miles farther east.

The reason for this move was two-fold: Marshal Foch had manipulated his forces so that it was felt to be virtually certain the next outbreak of the Germans could be made only at one point, directly southwest from Chateau-Thierry. If the expected happened, the green Pennsylvania troops would receive their baptism of fire within the zone of the operation, but not in the direct line of the thrust. Thus, they would become seasoned to fire without bearing the responsibility of actually stopping a determined effort.

The second reason was that the French had been making heavy concentrations around Chateau-Thierry, and their line to the east was too thin for comfort. Therefore, their units were drawn in somewhat at the flanks, to deepen the defense line, and the Pennsylvania companies were used to fill the gaps thus created.

French staff officers accompanied the four companies to the line and disposed them in the pockets left for them, in such a way that there were alternately along that part of the front a French regiment and then an American company. The disposition of the troops was completed well before midnight. The companies left behind had watched their fellows depart on this night adventure with longing, envious eyes, and little groups sat up late discussing the luck that fell to some soldiers and was withheld from others.

The men had had no sleep at all the night before and little during the day, but no one in those four companies, facing the Germans at last after so many weary months of preparation, thought of sleep, even had the artillery fire sweeping in waves along the front or the exigencies of their position permitted it.

Eagerly the men tried to pierce the black cloak of night for a first glimpse of the Hun lines. Now and then, as a star sh.e.l.l hung its flare in the sky, they caught glimpses of the river, and sometimes the flash of a gun from the farther sh.o.r.e gave a.s.surance that the Boche, too, was awake and watching.

About 11.30 o'clock, the night was shattered by a ripping roar from miles of French batteries in the rear, and the men lay in their trenches while the sh.e.l.ls screamed overhead. It was by far the closest the Pennsylvania men had been to intensive artillery fire, and they thought it terrible, having yet to learn what artillery really could be.

Days afterward, they learned that prisoners had disclosed the intention of the Germans to attack that night and that the French fire was designed to break up enemy formations and hara.s.s and disconcert their artillery concentration.

The Germans, with typical Teutonic adherence to system, paid little attention to the French fire until the hour fixed for their bombardment.

Midnight came and went, with the French cannon still bellowing. Wearied men on watch were relieved by comrades and dropped down to rest.