The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War Part 7

The wonderful roads for which France so long had been noted were totally effaced in places, sometimes by sh.e.l.l fire, often with every evidence of having been mined. Here and there were tumbled heaps of masonry, representing what had once been happy little villages, many of the houses centuries old. Trees and grape vines had been hacked off close to the ground, and often the trunks of trees were split and chopped as if in maniacal fury. Where the Huns had not had time to chop trees down, they had cut rings deep into the trunks to kill them.

They saw the finest homes of the wealthiest landowners and the humblest cottages of the peasants absolutely laid in ruins--furniture, tapestries, clothing, all scattered broadcast. Handsome rugs were tramped into the mud of the fields and roads. It was as if a t.i.tanic hurricane had swept the entire country.

There had been no time to bury the dead, and the men actually suffered, mentally and physically, from the sights and the stench. At one place they came on a machine gun emplacement, with dead Boche lying about in heaps. Close beside one of the guns, almost in a sitting posture, with one arm thrown over the weapon as if with pride of possession, was an American lad, his fine, clean-cut face fixed by death in a glorified smile of triumph.

Scores of officers and men almost unconsciously clicked their hands up to the salute in silent tribute to this fair-haired young gladiator who had not lived to enjoy his well-won laurels.

It was about this time that the Pennsylvanians saw one of the few really picturesque sights in modern warfare--a touch of the war of olden times, which had been seen seldom since Germany went mad in 1914. Troop after troop of cavalry, some French, some American, pa.s.sed them, the gallant hors.e.m.e.n sitting their steeds with conscious pride, their jingling accoutrements playing an accompaniment to their sharp canter, and round after round of cheers from the Americans sped them on their way to harry the retreating foe.

During a brief halt along a road for rest a part of the 110th Infantry took shelter under an overhanging bank while a sudden spurt of heavy enemy fire drenched the vicinity. There were few casualties and the officers were just beginning to congratulate themselves on having chosen a fortunate position for their rest when a large high-explosive sh.e.l.l landed on the edge of the bank directly above Company A. Two men were killed outright and several were wounded. Lieutenant George W. R.

Martin, of Narberth, rushed to the wounded to apply first-aid treatment.

The first man he reached was Private Allanson R. Day, Jr., nineteen years old, of Monongahela City, Pa., whom the men called "Deacon,"

because of a mildness of manner and a religious turn of mind.

"Well, Deacon, are you hard hit?" asked Lieutenant Martin, as he prepared his first-aid application.

"There's Paul Marshall, Lieutenant; he's. .h.i.t worse than I am. Dress him first, please, sir. I can wait," replied the Deacon, who died later of his wounds.

The Pennsylvanians had thought they hated the Hun when they left America. They had learned more of him and his ways below the Marne, and they found their loudly-voiced threats and objurgations turning to a steely, silent, implacable wrath that was ten times more terrible and more ominous for the enemy. The farther they penetrated in the wake of the Boche the more deep-seated and lasting became this feeling of utter detestation. Not for worlds would they have turned back then. Had word come that peace was declared it is doubtful if the officers could have held them back. The iron had entered their souls.

During the progress of all these events east of Chateau-Thierry, the 112th Infantry had come up and had been in the desperate fighting in the vicinity of that town, so that when the Franco-American attack from Soissons to Bussiares, on the western side of the pocket, began to compel a German retirement from the Marne, that regiment was right on their heels.

The 110th and the 111th were close behind and all three soon came into contact with the fleeing enemy.

In all their engagements the greatest difficulty the officers had to contend with was the eagerness of the men to come to grips with the enemy. Repeatedly they overran their immediate objectives and several times walked into their own barrage so determinedly that officers, unable to halt the troops so hungry for revenge, had to call off the barrage to save them from being destroyed by our own guns.

The Pennsylvanians pressed on relentlessly. The 109th Infantry now was rus.h.i.+ng up from the Marne to resume its meteorlike career as a fighting unit beside its fellow regiments of the old National Guard, and word was received that the 53d Field Artillery Brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General W. G. Price, Jr., of Chester, was hurrying up to partic.i.p.ate in its first action.

Still other organizations of the Twenty-eighth Division hastening to the front were the ammunition train and the supply train. The division was being rea.s.sembled, for the first time after leaving Camp Hanc.o.c.k, as rapidly as the exigencies of hard campaigning would permit.

With the 112th and 111th in the van, the Pennsylvanians pushed northeastward after the Germans. It was at times when the Huns had stopped, apparently determined to make a stand at last, only to be blasted out of their holding positions by the Americans and continue their flight that, as so many officers wrote home, they "could not run fast enough to keep up with Fritz," and the artillery was outdistanced hopelessly.

Repeatedly our doughboys had to be held up in their headlong rush to permit the artillery to catch up. It being useless to waste life by sending infantry against the formidable German positions without artillery support, our lines were held back until the struggling field guns could come up to silence the German guns by expert counter battery work.

The Pennsylvanians were wild with eagerness and excitement. None but the officers had access to maps, and hundreds of the men, having only hazy ideas as to the geography of France or the distances they had traveled, believed they were pus.h.i.+ng straight for Germany and had not far to go.

One and all realized fully that, when they began their fighting, the Germans for months had been moving forward triumphantly. They realized just as well that the Germans now were in flight before them. Each man felt that to his particular company belonged the glory of that reversal of conditions. Thus, scores wrote home: "Our company was all that stood between the Boche and Paris, and we licked him and have him on the run"--or words to that effect.

They were like a set of rabbit hounds, almost whining in their anxiety to get at the foe. Deluged by high explosives, shrapnel and gas sh.e.l.ls, seeing their comrades mowed down by machine gun fire, bombed from the sky, alternately in pouring rain and burning sun, hungry half the time, their eyes burning from want of sleep, half suffocated from long intervals in gas masks, undergoing all the hards.h.i.+ps of a bitter campaign against a determined, vigorous and unscrupulous enemy, yet their only thought was to push on--and on--and on.

The likeness to rabbit hounds is not uncomplimentary or far-fetched. One soldier wrote home: "We have had the Boche on the run in open country, and it has been like shooting rabbits--and I am regarded as a good shot in the army."

CHAPTER VIII

IN HEROIC MOLD

Captain W. R. Dunlap, of Pittsburgh, commander of Company E, 111th Infantry, and Captain Lucius M. Phelps, Oil City, of Company G, 112th Infantry, with their troops, led the advance beyond Epieds.

They came to the western edge of the forest of Fere, and into that magnificent wooded tract the Germans fled. The occasional small woods, dotting open country, through which they had been fighting, now gave way to heavily timbered land, with here and there an open spot of varying extent.

An American brigadier-general, who has the reputation of being something of a Haroun-al-Raschid among the men, left his dugout in the rear at night and went forward to the front lines to get personal knowledge of the dangers his men were facing. Scouts having reported that the Germans were preparing to launch an attack in hope of delaying our troops, the general started for a position from which he would be able to see the attack and watch our men meet it. He became confused in the forest and arrived at the designated observation post later than he had intended.

He found it had been destroyed by a sh.e.l.l just a few moments before he reached it. Had he been on time he certainly would have lost his life.

He took up another position and Lieutenant William Robinson, Uniontown, Pa., started to lead forward the first line of Americans to break up the German formations. Standing on a little ridge, the general saw the young officer, whom he had known for years, going among his men, cheering and encouraging them, when a huge sh.e.l.l burst almost at the lieutenant's feet. A party of his men rushed to the spot, but there was not even a trace of the officer.

"I'll sleep alone on this spot with my thoughts tonight," said the saddened general, and he did, spending the night in a sh.e.l.l hole.

The Americans battled their way in little groups into the edge of the forest, like bushmen. This was the situation when night fell, with a fringe of Americans in hiding along the southern edge of the woods. The forest seemed to present an almost impenetrable barrier, through which it was utterly hopeless to continue an effort to advance in the darkness.

So scattered were the groups that had forced their way into the shelter of the wood that it was imperative headquarters should know their approximate positions in order to dispose the forces for a renewal of the a.s.sault in the morning. In this emergency Lieutenant William Allen, Jr., Pittsburgh, of Company B, 111th Infantry, volunteered to find the advanced detachments of our men.

Throughout the night he threaded his way through the woods, not knowing what instant he would stumble on Germans or be fired on or thrust through by his own men. It was a hair-raising, daredevil feat of such a nature that he won the unstinted admiration of the men and the warm praise of his superiors. When he found himself near other men he remained silent until a muttered word or even such inconsequent things as the tinkle of a distinctly American piece of equipment or the smell of American tobacco--entirely different from that in the European armies--let him know his neighbors were friends. Then a soft call "in good United States" established his own ident.i.ty and made it safe for him to approach.

As the first streamers of dawn were appearing in the sky off in the direction of Hunland, he crawled back to the main American lines, and the report he made enabled his superiors to plan their attack, which worked with clock-like precision and pushed the Boche on through the woods.

Corporal Alfred W. Davis, Uniontown, Pa., of Company D, 110th Infantry, was moving forward through the woods in this fighting, close to a lieutenant of his company, when a bullet from a sniper hidden in a tree struck the corporal's gun, was deflected and pierced the lieutenant's brain, killing him instantly. Crawling up a ravine like an Indian stalking game, Davis set off with blood in his eye in quest of revenge.

When he picked off his eighteenth German in succession it was nearly dark, so he "called it a day," as he remarked, and slept better that night for thought of the toll he had taken from the Germans to avenge his officer.

In the woods the Germans fought desperately, despite that they were dazed by the terrific artillery fire. Hidden in tree tops and under rocks, with even their steel helmets camouflaged in red, green and yellow, it was difficult for the attackers to pick them out in the flicker of the shadows on the dense foliage.

While the attacking waves were advancing it was discovered that touch had been lost with the forces on the right flank of the 110th, and Sergeant Blake Lightner, Altoona, Pa., a liaison scout from Company G, 110th, started out alone to re-establish the connection.

He ran into an enemy machine gun nest, killed the crew and captured the guns single-handed. Then he went back, brought up a machine gun crew, established a snipers' post, re-established the communications, returned to his own command and gave the co-ordinates for laying down a barrage on a line of enemy machine gun nests he had discovered.

Toward nightfall of one of these days of desperate fighting it was discovered that the ammunition supply of the first battalion of the 110th was running low, and Corporal Harold F. Wickerham, Was.h.i.+ngton, Pa., and Private Boynton David Marchand, Monongahela City, Pa., were sent back with a message for brigade headquarters. When they reached the spot where the headquarters had been they found it had been moved. They walked for miles through the woods in the darkness and finally came to a town where another regiment was stationed, and they sent their message over the military telephone.

They were invited to remain the rest of the night and sleep; fearing the message might not get through properly, however, and knowing the grave need of more ammunition, they set out again, and toward morning reached their own ammunition dump and confirmed the message orally. Again they refused a chance to rest, and set out to rejoin their command, which they reached just in time to take part in a battle in the afternoon.

Such are the characteristics of the American soldier.

Somewhat the same fate as befell Epieds, which had been completely leveled by artillery fire, came to the village of Le Charmel. After violent fighting lasting two hours, during which the village changed hands twice, it was blown to pieces by the artillery, and our men took possession, driving the Germans on northeastward.

The Pennsylvanians now began to feel the change in the German resistance as the Boche retreat reached its second line of defense, based on the Ourcq River, and the fighting became hourly more bitter and determined.

This, as well as the dense forests, where the Germans had strung a maze of barbed wire from tree to tree, slowed up the retreat and pursuit.

Also the density of the woods hampered observation of the enemy from the air and therefore slowed up our artillery fire.

The process of taking enemy positions by frontal a.s.sault, always a costly operation, gave way, wherever possible, to infiltration, by which villages and other posts were pinched off, exactly as Cambrai, St.

Quentin, Lille and other places were taken later by the British farther north.

The process of infiltration from a military standpoint means exactly the same thing as the word means in any other connection. A few men at a time filter into protected positions close to the enemy until enough have a.s.sembled to offer battle, the enemy meanwhile being kept down by strong, concentrated fire from the main body and the artillery. Although much slower than an a.s.sault, this is extremely economical of men.

During this progress from the Marne northward, the various headquarters had found some difficulty in keeping in touch with the advancing columns. A headquarters, even of a regiment, is not so mobile as the regiment itself. There is a vast amount of paraphernalia and supplies to be moved, yet it is necessary that a reasonably close touch be maintained with the fighting front.

The German method of retreat necessarily resulted in the Americans'