|
A History of Pittsburg and Western Pennsylvania Troops in the War
By John V. Hanlon (Copyright 1919 by The Pittsburg Press)
Chapter VII
(The Pittsburg Press, Sunday, Feb. 16, 1919, pages 66-67)
Names in this chapter: Martin, Hitchman, Alexander, Baden, McLain, Coulter,
Ham, Brown, Morse, Hyde, Roosevelt
Here are a few of the brave leaders of units of the Twenty-eighth division from
Pittsburg and Western Pennsylvania who led our unconquerably doughboys in many
of their brilliant victories over the most famous regiments of the enemy. They
won upon many a bloody field their right to a high place in the esteem of all
mankind. Like the Conscript Fathers they wrote their names where time shall not
destroy and brought honor to their nation and their state.
THE PITTSBURG AND WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA TROOPS OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DIVISION
CONTINUE THEIR DRIVE AGAINST THE RETREATING HUNS NORTH OF THE MARNE RIVER. ONE
HUNDRED AND SEVENTH ARTILLERY COMES INTO FIGHTING ZONE FOR FIRST TIME. OTHER
UNITS OF THE DIVISION ALSO ARRIVE. OUR BOYS PASS LIEUTENANT ROOSEVELT’S GRAVE
WHILE ON MARCH TOWARD VESLE.
The night of July 30, after the capture of Grimpelle’s
wood, the regimental headquarters of the One Hundred and Tenth was moved up to
Courmont, only 700 yards behind the wood. Maj. Martin summoned his staff about
him to work out plans for the next day. They were bending over a big table,
studying the maps when a six-inch shell struck the headquarters building
squarely. Twenty-two enlisted men and several officers were injured. Maj.
Martin; Capt. John D. Hitchman, Mt. Pleasant, the regimental adjutant; Lieut.
Alexander, the intelligence officer, and Lieut. Albert G. Baden, of Washington,
Pa., were knocked about somewhat, but not injured.
For a second time within a few days Lieut. Alexander had flirted with death. The
first time he was blown through an open doorway into the road by the explosion
of a shell that killed two German officers who were facing him, men he was
examining. This time, when the Courmont headquarters was blown up, he was
examining a German captain and a sergeant, the other officers making use of the
answers of the prisoners in studying the maps and trying to determine the
disposition of the enemy forces. Almost exactly the same thing happened again to
Lieut. Alexander. Both prisoners were killed and he was blown out of the
building uninjured.
“Getting to be a habit with you,” said Major Martin.
“This if the life,” said the lieutenant.
“Fritz hasn’t got a shell with Lieut. Alexander’s
number on it,” said the men in the ranks.
Capt. Lucius M. Phelps, Oil City
OLD TENTH MAN KILLED
The shell that demolished regimental headquarters was
only one of thousands with which the Boche raked our lines and back areas. As
soon as American occupancy of the wood had been established definitely, the Hun
turned loose an artillery “hate” that made life miserable for the
Pennsylvanians. In the One Hundred and Tenth alone there were 22 deaths and a
total of 102 casualties.
Capt. Charles L. McLain, Indiana, Pa.
The village of Sergy, just north of Grimpette’s wood,
threatened to be another severe test for our boys. Like some of the other
villages, it was understood to be strongly organized by the Germans who were
prepared to offer every possible resistance to the advancing Americans. The
Pennsylvanians were sent into the direct assault in company with regiments from
other divisions.
The utter razing of Epieds and other towns by artillery
fire in order the [sic] blast the Germans out of their stronghold led to a
decision to avoid such destructive methods whenever possible, because it was
French territory and too much of France had been destroyed already by the
ravaging Huns. The taking of Sergy was almost entirely an infantry and machine
gun battle.
It was marked, as so many other of the Pennsylvanians’
fights were, by the “never-say-die” spirit that refused to know defeat. There
was something unconquerable about the terrible persistence of the Americans that
seemed to daunt the Germans.
The American forces swept into the town and drove the
enemy forces slowly and reluctantly out to the north. The usual groups of Huns
were still in hiding in dugouts and cellars and other strong points, where they
were able to keep up a sniping fire on our men. Before the positions could be
moved up and organized the Germans were strengthened by fresh forces, and they
reorganized and took the town again. Four times this contest of attack and
counter-attack was carried out before our men established themselves in
sufficient force to hold the place. Repeatedly the Germans strove to obtain a
foothold again, but their hold on Sergy was gone forever. They realized this at
last and then turned loose the customary sullen shelling and shrapnel, high
explosives and gas.
MARVELOUS ENDURANCE
It was about this time that the Pittsburgers and
Western Pennsylvanians were suffering from lack of both food and sleep and
officers marveled at the way the men marched and fought when they must have been
almost at the end of their physical resources. There were innumerable instances
of their going 48 hours without either food or water. The thirst was worse than
the hunger and the longing for sleep was almost overpowering. The troops had
been advancing so fast that it was almost impossible for the commissary to keep
up with them and thus furnish the supplies regularly. Whenever opportunity
offered, the [sic] got a substantial meal, but these were few and far between.
The One Hundred and Ninth regiment had marched away to
the west to flank the village and reached a position in the woods just northwest
of Sergy. Scouts were sent forward to ascertain the position of the enemy, only
to have them come back with word that the town already was in the hands of the
One Hundred and Tenth. However, the One Hundred and Ninth was in for some trying
hours. A wood just north of Sergy was selected as an abiding place for the night
and, watching for a chance when Boche flyers were busy elsewhere, the regiment
made its way into the shelter and prepared to get a night’s rest.
They had escaped the eyes of the enemy airmen but,
unknown to the officers of the regiment the wood lay close to an enemy
ammunition dump, which the retiring Huns had not had time to destroy. Naturally
the German artillery knew perfectly the location of this dump and set about to
explode it by means of artillery fire.
PERILOUS HOURS
By the time the men of the One Hundred and Ninth,
curious as to the marked attention they were receiving from the Hun guns,
discovered the dump, it was too late to seek other shelter, so all they could do
was to contrive such protection as was possible and hug the ground, expecting
each succeeding shell to land in the midst of the dump and set off an explosion
that probably would leave nothing of the regiment but its traditions.
Probably half the shells intended for the ammunition
pile landed in the woods. Terrible as such a bombardment always is, the men of
the One Hundred and Ninth fairly gasped with relief when each screeching shell
ended with a bang among the trees, for shells that landed there were in no
danger of exploding that heap of ammunition. Strange as it may seem, the Boche
gunners were unable to reach the dump despite the fact that they knew exactly
where it was located and our boys began to have less respect for the accuracy of
the enemy artillery.
Lt. John H. Shenkel, Pittsburg
Lt. Marshall L. Barron, Latrobe, Pa.
In the night, a staff officer from brigade headquarters
had found Col. Brown and informed him that he was to relinquish command of the
regiment to become adjutant to the commanding officer of a port of debarkation.
Lieut. Col. Henry W. Coulter of Greensburg, took command of the regiment. Col.
Coulter is a brother of Brig. Gen Richard Coulter, one time commander of the old
Tenth Pennsylvania, and who was at that time a commander of an American port in
France. A few days later Col. Coulter was wounded in the foot and Col. Samuel V.
Ham, a regular army officer, became commander. As an evidence of the
vicissitudes of the Pennsylvania regiments, the One Hundred and Ninth had eight
regimental commanders in two months. All except Col. Brown and Col. Coulter were
regular army men.
Maj. Allen Donnelly
REASONS WHY MEN “FIDGETED”
August 1 and 2, the Pennsylvanians were relieved and
dropped back to rest for the two days. The men were nervous and “fidgety” to
quote one of the officers, for the first time since their first “bath of steel,”
south of the Marne. Both nights they were supposed to be resting they were
shelled and bombed from the air continuously, and both days were put in at the
“camions sanitaire,” or “delousing machines,” where each man got a hot bath and
had his clothes thoroughly disinfected and cleaned. There was evidently
“reasons” in large numbers why the men were “fidgety.”
Thus neither night or day could be called restful
although it was undoubtedly a great comfort for the men to be rid of their
well-developed crops of cooties and to have their bodies and clothes clean for
the first time in weeks. Anyway, the stop bolstered up the spirits of the men,
and when the two-day period was ended they were on the march again towards the
north. They were headed for the Vesle and worse things than they had ever
endured before.
It was about this time that the first of the
Pennsylvania artillery, a battalion of the One Hundred and Seventh regiment,
came into the fighting zone where the division was operating, and soon its big
guns began to roar back at the Germans in company with the French and other
American artillery.
The gun crews had troubles of their own in forging to
the front, although most of it was of a kind they could look back on later with
a laugh, and not the soul-trying, mind-searing experiences of the infantry.
The roads that had been so hard for the foot soldiers
to traverse were many times worse for the big guns. One of the Pennsylvania
artillery regiments of the Twenty-eighth division, for instance, at one time was
12 hours in covering eight miles of road.
Lt. Cedric H. Benz, Pittsburg
When it came to crossing the Marne, in order to speed
up the crossing the regiment was divided, half being sent farther up the river.
When night fell it was learned that the half that had crossed lower down had the
field kitchen and no rations, and the other half had all the rations and no
field kitchen to cook them. Other organizations came to the rescue in both
instances.
At 6 o’clock one evening, not yet having had evening
mess, the regiment was ordered to move to another town, which it had reached at
9 o’clock. Men and horses had been settled down for the night by 10 o’clock and,
as all was quiet, the officers went to the village. There they found an
innkeeper bemoaning the fact that, just as he had gotten a substantial meal
ready for the officers of another regiment, they had been ordered away, and the
food was ready, with nobody to eat it.
The hungry officers looked over the “spread.” There was soup, fried chicken,
cold ham, string beans, peas, sweet potatoes, jam, bread and butter and wine.
They assured the innkeeper he need worry no further about losing his food, and
promptly took their places about the table. The first spoonsful [sic] of soup
just were being lifted when an orderly entered, bearing orders for the regiment
to move on at once. They were under way again, the officers still hungry, by
11:45 o’clock, and marched until 6:30 a.m., covering 30 kilometres, or more that
18 miles.
WORK UNDER TERRIFIC FIRE
The One Hundred and Third Ammunition train also had
come up now, after experiences that prepared it somewhat for what was to come
later. For instance, when delivering ammunition to a battery under heavy
shellfire, a detachment of the train had to cross a small stream on a little
flat bridge, without guard rails. A swing horse of one of the wagons became
frightened when a shell fell close by. The horse shied and plunged over the
edge, wedging itself between the bridge and a small footbridge alongside.
The stream was in a small valley, quite open to enemy
fire, and for the company to have waited while the horse was gotten out would
have been suicidal. So the main body passed on and the caisson crew and drivers,
12 men in all, were left to pry the horse out. For three hours they worked,
patiently and persistently, until the frantic animal was freed.
They were under continuous and venomous fire all the
while. Shrapnel cut the tops of trees a bare 10 feet away. Most of the time they
and the horses were compelled to wear gas masks, as the Hun tossed over a gas
shell every once in a while for variety – he was “mixing them.” The gas hung
long in the valley, for it has “an affinity,” as the chemists say, for water,
and will follow the course of a stream.
High explosives “cr-r-rumped” in places within 200
feet, but the ammunition carriers never even glanced up from their work, nor
hesitated a minute. Just before dawn they got the horse free and started back
for their own lines. Fifteen minutes later a high explosive shell landed fairly
on the little bridge and blew it to atoms.
SIGNALMEN DO HEROIC WORK
The One Hundred and Third Field Signal battalion,
composed of companies chiefly from Pittsburg, but with members from many other
parts of the state, performed valiant service in maintaining lines of
communication. Repeatedly men of the battalion, commanded by Maj. Fred G.
Miller, of Pittsburg, exposed themselves daringly in a welter of fire to extend
telephone and telegraph lines, sometimes running them through trees and bushes,
again laying them in hastily scooped out grooves in the earth.
Frequently communication no sooner was established than
a chance shell would sever the line, and the work was to do all over again. With
cool disregard of danger, the signalmen went about their tasks, incurring all
the danger to be found anywhere – but without the privilege and satisfaction of
fighting back.
Under sniping rifle fire, machine gun and big shell
bombardment and frequently drenched with gas, the gallant signalmen carried
their work forward. There was a little of the picturesque about it, but nothing
in the service was more essential. Many of the men were wounded and gassed, a
number killed, and several were cited and decorated for bravery.
When the grip of the enemy along the Ourcq was torn
loose there was no other stopping place short of the Vesle, and so he hurried
back toward this point as fast as he could move his armies and equipment.
Machine gun and sniping rear guards were left behind to protect the retreat and
impede the pursuers as much as possible, but even these rear guards did not
remain very long and it was difficult at times for the Americans to keep in
contact with Jerry.
The Thirty-second division, composed of Michigan and
Wisconsin national guards, had slipped into the front lines and with regiments
of the Rainbow division pressed the pursuit. The Pennsylvania regiments, with
the One Hundred and Third engineers and the One Hundred and Eleventh and One
Hundred and Twelfth infantries leading, followed by the One Hundred and Ninth
and then the One Hundred and Tenth infantry, went forward in their rear, mopping
up the few Huns the Thirty-second had left in its wake, and who still showed
fight.
GET HUN ON THE RUN AT LAST
It had begun to rain – a heavy dispiriting downpour,
such as Northern France is subjected to frequently. The fields became small
lakes and the roads, cut up by heavy traffic, were turned to quagmires. The
distorted remains of what had been wonderful old trees, stripped of their
foliage and blackened and torn by the breaths of monster guns, dripped dismally.
In all that ruined, tortured land of horror there was not one bright spot, and
there was only one thing to keep up the spirits of the soldiers – the Hun was
definitely on the run.
Capt. W. R. Dunlap, Pittsburg
The men were wading in mud up to their knees, amid the
ruck and confusion of an army’s wake and always drenched to the skin. They
trudged wearily but resolutely forward, seemingly inured to hardships and
insensible to ordinary discomforts. They were possessed on only one great
desire, ant that was to come to grips once more with the hateful foe and inflict
all the punishment within their power in revenge for the gallant lads who had
gone from their ranks.
And during this march there was hardly a moment when
they were not subjected to long-distance shelling for the Huns strafed the
country to the southward in the hope of hampering transport facilities and
breaking up marching columns. At all times Boche fliers passed overhead,
sometimes sweeping low enough to slash at the columns with machine guns, and, at
frequent intervals, releasing bombs. There were casualties daily, although not,
of course, on the same scale as in actual battle.
PASS ROOSEVELT’S GRAVE
Through Coulonges, Cohan, Dragegny, Longeville, Mont-Sar-Courville
and St. Gilles they plunged on relentlessly, and close by the hamlet of Chamery,
near Cohan, our boys passed by the grave of that intrepid soldier of the air,
Lieut. Quentin Roosevelt, gallant son of that great American, the late Col.
Theodore Roosevelt. Lieut. Roosevelt had been brought down here by an enemy
airman a few weeks before and was buried by the Germans.
French troops, leading the allied pursuit, had come on
the grave first and immediately established a military guard of honor over it.
They also supplanted the rude cross and inscription over it which had been
erected by the Germans, with a neater and more ornate marking. But it was always
thus with both men and women of France. The grave of an American was always
sacred to them and to care for it and do honor to the brace man who rested
therein was a work dear to their hearts.
When the Americans arrived the French guard was withdrawn and the
comrades-in-arms from the dead lieutenant’s own country mounted guard over the
last resting place of the son of a former president.
Below Longeville the Pennsylvanians came into an area
where the fire was intensified to the equal of anything they had passed through
since leaving the Marne. All the varieties of projectiles the Hun had to offer
were turned loose in their direction, high explosives, shrapnel and gas. Once
more the misery and discomfort of the gas mask had to be undergone, but by this
time the Pennsylvanians had learned well and truly the value of that little
piece of equipment and had a thorough respect for the doctrine that, unpleasant
as it might be, the mask was infinitely better than a whiff of that dread,
sneaking, penetrating vapor with which the Hun poisoned the air.
Lt. Wm. H. Allen, Pittsburg
ON THE WAY TO FISMES
The objective point on the Vesle river for the
Pennsylvanians was Fismes. This was a town near the junction of the Vesle and
Andre rivers, which before the war had a population of a little more than 3,000.
It was on a railroad running through Rheims to the east. A few miles west of
Fismes the railroad divides, one branch winding away southwestward towards
Paris, the other running west through Soissons and Compiegne. The town was one
of the largest German munition depots of the Soissons-Rheims sector and second
only in importance to Soissons itself. The past tense is used, because in the
process of breaking the Hun’s grip on the Vesle both Fismes and Fismette, which
was just across the river, were virtually wiped off the map. Here was the Huns’
Vesle river barrier, and when he was shaken loose he had to move hastily
northward towards the next barrier, the Aisne. The railroad in Fismes and its
vicinity runs along the top of an embankment, raising it above the surrounding
territory. There was a time, before the Americans were able to cross the
railroad, that the embankment became virtually the barrier dividing redeemed
France from the darkest Hunland along that front. At night patrols from both
sides would move forward to the railroad, and burrowed in holes – the Germans in
the north side and the Americans in the south – would watch and wait and listen
for signs of an attack.
PATROLS CLOSE TOGETHER
Each knew the other was only a few feet away; at times,
in fact, they could hear each other talking, and once in a while defiant
bandiage would be exchanged in weird German from the south and in ragtime,
vaudeville English from the north. Appearance of a head above the embankment on
either side was a signal for a storm of lead and steel.
The Americans had this advantage over the Germans: They
knew the Huns were doomed to continue their retreat, and that the holdup along
the railroad was only temporary, and the Germans now realized the same thing.
Therefore, the Americans fought triumphantly, with vigor and dash; the Germans,
sullenly and in desperation.
One man of the One Hundred and Tenth went to sleep in a
hole in the night and did not hear the withdrawal just before dawn. Obviously
his name could not be made public. When he woke it was broad daylight, and he
was only partly concealed by a little hole in the railroad bank. There was
nothing he could do. If he had tried to run for his regimental lines he would
have been drilled like a sieve before he had gone 50 yards. Soon the German
batteries would begin shelling so he simply dug deeper into the embankment.
“I just drove myself into that bank like a nail,” he
told his comrades later. He got away the next night.
FOUR DAYS IN “NO MAN’S LAND”
Richard Morse, of the One Hundred and Tenth, whose home
is in Harrisburg, went out with a raiding party. The Germans discovered the
advance of the group and opened a concentrated fire, forcing them back. Morse
was struck in the leg and fell. He was able to crawl, however, and crawling was
all he could have done anyway, because the only line of retreat open to him was
being swept by a hail of machine gun bullets. As he crawled he was hit by a
second bullet. Then a third one creased the muscles of his back. A few feet
farther and two more struck him, making five in all.
Then he tumbled into a shell hole. He waited until the
threshing fire veered from his vicinity and he had regained a little strength,
then crawled to a better hole and flopped himself into that. Incredible as it
may seem, he regained his own lines the fourth day and started back to the
hospital with every prospect of a quick recovery. He had been given up for dead,
and the men of his own and neighboring companies gave him a rousing welcome. He
had nothing to eat during those four days, but had found an empty tin can, and
when it rained caught enough water in that to assuage his thirst.
Corp. George D. Hyde, of Mt. Pleasant, Co. E, One
Hundred and Tenth, hid in a shell hole in the side of the railroad embankment
for 36 hours on the chance of obtaining valuable information. When returning a
piece of shrapnel struck the pouch in which he carried his grenades. Examining
them, he found the cap of one driven well in. It was a miracle it had not
exploded and torn a hole through him.
“You ought to have seen me throw that grenade away,” he
said.
|
