"And they thought we wouldn't fight"
by Floyd Phillips Gibbons · English · Gutenberg #31086 · 690,850 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: "And they thought we wouldn't fight"
Author: Floyd Phillips Gibbons
Release date: January 26, 2010 [eBook #31086]
Language: English
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Transcribers Notes
1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
2. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
3. Minor printers errors have been corrected. A detailed list can be
found at the end of this text.
4. Text spelling was common at the time of its publication.
5. All dialect spelling has been retained.
* * * * *
"AND THEY THOUGHT WE WOULDN'T FIGHT"
FLOYD GIBBONS
[Illustration: FLOYD GIBBONS]
"AND THEY THOUGHT
WE WOULDN'T FIGHT"
BY
FLOYD GIBBONS
OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENT OF _THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE_,
ACCREDITED TO THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES
NEW YORK
[Illustration]
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
_Copyright, 1918,_
_By George H. Doran Company_
_Printed in the United States of America_
TO
GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING
AND
THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES
I RESPECTFULLY DEDICATE THIS INADEQUATE RECORD
IN REVERENT MEMORY OF
OUR SACRED DEAD
ON FIELDS IN FRANCE
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author expresses his hearty thanks to
_The Chicago Tribune_ for the opportunity
he enjoyed as a correspondent of that paper,
in the service of which he secured the
material for these papers.
* * * * *
Personal.
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES
OFFICE OF THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
France, August 17, 1918.
Mr. Floyd Gibbons,
Care Chicago Tribune,
420 Sue Saint-Honore,
P a r i s.
Dear Mr. Gibbons:
At this time, when you are returning to America, I wish to
express to you my appreciation of the cordial cooperation and
assistance you have always given us in your important work as
correspondent of the Chicago Tribune in France. I also wish to
congratulate you on the honor which the French government has
done you in giving you the Croix de Guerre, which is but a just
reward for the consistent devotion to your duty and personal
bravery that you have exhibited.
My personal regrets that you are leaving us at this time are
lessened by the knowledge of the great opportunity you will have
of giving to our people in America a true picture of the work of
the American soldier in France and of impressing on them the
necessity of carrying on this work to the end, which can be
accomplished only by victory for the Allied arms. You have a
great opportunity, and I am confident that you will grasp it, as
you have grasped your past opportunities, with success. You have
always played the game squarely and with courage, and I wish to
thank you.
Sincerely yours,
John J. Pershing.
* * * * *
G. Q. G. A. le July 28, 1918.
COMMANDEMENT EN CHEF
DES ARMÉES ALLIES
LE GÉNÉRAL
MONSIEUR,
I understand that you are going to the United States
to give lectures on what you have seen on the French front.
No one is more qualified than you to do this, after your
brilliant conduct in the Bois de Belleau.
The American Army has proved itself to be magnificent
in spirit, in gallantry and in vigor; it has contributed largely
to our successes. If you can thus be the echo of my opinion
I am sure you will serve a good purpose.
Very sincerely yours,
(_Signed_) F. FOCH.
MONSIEUR FLOYD GIBBONS,
War Correspondent of the Chicago _Tribune_.
* * * * *
G.Q.G.A. _Le_ 28 Juillet 1918.
_Commandement en Chef_
_des Armies Allies_
_Le Général_
Monsieur,
Je sais que vous allez donner des conférences aux
Etats-Unis pour raconter ce que vous avez vu sur le front
français.
Personne n'est plus qualifié que vous pour le faire,
après votre brillante conduite au Bois BELLEAU.
L'Armée Américaine se montre magnifique de sentiments,
de valeur et d'entrain, elle a contribué pour une large part
à nos succès. Si vous pouvez être l'écho de mon opinion, je
n'y verrai qu'avantage.
Croyez, Monsieur, à mes meilleurs sentiments.
F. Foch
Monsieur FLOYD GIBBONS
Correspondant de Guerre du CHICAGO TRIBUNE.
* * * * *
GRAND QUARTIER GÉNÉRAL
DES ARMÉES DU NORD ET DU NORD EST
ETAT-MAJOR
BUREAU DU PERSONNEL
(Decorations)
ORDER NO. 8809 D
The General Commander-in-Chief Cites for the _Croix
de Guerre_
M. FLOYD GIBBONS, War Correspondent of the Chicago
_Tribune_:
"Has time after time given proof of his courage and bravery by
going to the most exposed posts to gather information. On June 5,
1918, while accompanying a regiment of marines who were attacking
a wood, he was severely wounded by three machine gun bullets in
going to the rescue of an American officer wounded near
him--demonstrating, by this action, the most noble devotion.
When, a few hours later, he was lifted and transported to the
dressing station, he begged not to be cared for until the wounded
who had arrived before him had been attended to."
General Headquarters, August 2, 1918
THE GENERAL COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
(_Signed_) PETAIN
* * * * *
GRAND QUARTIER GENERAL
DES ARMÉES DU NORD ET DU NORD-EST
ETAT-MAJOR
BUREAU DU PERSONNEL
(Décorations)
ORDRE No 8809 D
Le Général Commandant en Chef Cite à l'Ordre de l'Armée:
_M. FLOYD GIBBONS_, Correspondant de Guerre du Chicago Tribune:
"A donné à maintes reprises des preuves de courage et de
bravoure, en allant recueillir des informations aux postes les
plus exposés. Le 5 Juin 1918, accompagnant un régiment de
Fusiliers marins qui attaquait un bois, a été très grièvement
atteint de trois balles de mitrailleuses en se portant au secours
d'un officier américain blessé à ses côtés, faisant ainsi preuve,
en cette circonstance, du plus beau dévouement. Relevé plusieurs
heures après et transporté au poste de secours, a demandé à ne
pas être soigné avant les blessés arrivés avant lui."
Au Grand Quartier Général, le 2 Aout 1918.
LE GÉNÉRAL COMMANDANT EN CHEF.
Petain
* * * * *
FOREWORD
Marshal Foch, the commander of eleven million bayonets, has written that
no man is more qualified than Gibbons to tell the true story of the
Western Front. General Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American
Expeditionary Forces, has said that it was Gibbons' great opportunity to
give the people in America a life-like picture of the work of the
American soldier in France.
The key to the book is the man.
Back in the red days on the Rio Grande, word came from Pancho Villa that
any "Gringos" found in Mexico would be killed on sight. The American
people were interested in the Revolution at the border. Gibbons went
into the Mexican hills alone and called Villa's bluff. He did more. He
fitted out a box car, attached it to the revolutionary bandits' train
and was in the thick of three of Villa's biggest battles. Gibbons
brought out of Mexico the first authoritative information on the Mexican
situation. The following year the War Department accredited him to
General Pershing's punitive expedition and he rode with the flying
column led by General Pershing when it crossed the border.
In 1917, the then Imperial German Government announced to the world that
on and after February 1st its submarines would sink without warning any
ship that ventured to enter a zone it had drawn in the waters of the
North Atlantic.
Gibbons sensed the meaning of this impudent challenge. He saw ahead the
overt act that was bound to come and be the cause of the United States
entering the war. In these days the cry of "Preparedness" was echoing
the land. England had paid dearly for her lack of preparedness. The
inefficient volunteer system had cost her priceless blood. The _Chicago
Tribune_ sought the most available newspaper man to send to London and
write the story of England's costly mistakes for the profit of the
American people. Gibbons was picked for the mission and arrangement was
made for him to travel on the steamer by which the discredited Von
Bernstorff was to return to Germany. The ship's safe conduct was
guaranteed. Gibbons did not like this feature of the trip. He wanted to
ride the seas in a ship without guarantees. His mind was on the overt
act. He wanted to be on the job when it happened. He cancelled the
passage provided for him on the Von Bernstorff ship and took passage on
the largest liner in port, a ship large enough to be readily seen
through a submarine periscope and important enough to attract the
special attention of the German Admiralty. He sailed on the _Laconia_,
an eighteen thousand ton Cunarder.
On the night of February 27, 1917, when the _Laconia_ was two hundred
miles off the coast of Ireland, the Gibbons' "hunch" was fulfilled. The
_Laconia_ was torpedoed and suck. After a perilous night in a small boat
on the open sea, Gibbons was rescued and brought into Queenstown. He
opened the cables and flashed to America the most powerful call to arms
to the American people. It shook the country. It was the testimony of an
eye witness and it convinced the Imperial German Government, beyond all
reasonable doubt, of the wilful and malicious murder of American
citizens. The Gibbons story furnished the proof of the overt act and it
was unofficially admitted at Washington that it was the determining
factor in sending America into the war one month later.
Gibbons greeted Pershing on the latter's landing in Liverpool. He
accompanied the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces across
the Channel and was at his side when he put foot on French soil. He was
one of the two American correspondents to march with the first American
troops that entered the trenches on the Western front. He was with the
first American troops to cross the German frontier. He was with the
artillery battalion that fired the first American shell into Germany.
On June 6th, 1918, Gibbons went "over the top" with the first waves in
the great battle of the Bois de Belleau. Gibbons was with Major John
Berry, who, while leading the charge, fell wounded. Gibbons saw him
fall. Through the hail of lead from a thousand spitting machine guns, he
rushed to the assistance of the wounded Major. A German machine gun
bullet shot away part of his left shoulder, but this did not stop
Gibbons. Another bullet smashed through his arm, but still Gibbons kept
on. A third bullet got him. It tore out his left eye and made a compound
fracture of the skull. For three hours he lay conscious on the open
field in the Bois de Belleau with a murderous machine gun fire playing a
few inches over his head until under cover of darkness he was able to
crawl off the field. For his gallant conduct he received a citation from
General Petain, Commander-in-Chief of the French Armies, and the French
Government awarded him the Croix de Guerre with the Palm.
On July 5th, he was out of the hospital and back at the front, covering
the first advance of the Americans with the British forces before
Amiens. On July 18th he was the only correspondent with the American
troops when they executed the history-making drive against the German
armies in the Château-Thierry salient--the beginning of the German end.
He rode with the first detachment of American troops that entered
Château-Thierry upon the heels of the retreating Germans.
Floyd Gibbons was the first to sound the alarm of the danger of the
German peace offensive. Six weeks before the drive for a negotiated
peace was made by the German Government against the home flank in
America, Gibbons told that it was on the way. He crossed the Atlantic
with his crippled arm in a sling and his head bandaged, to spend his
convalescence warning American audiences against what he called the
"Crooked Kamerad Cry."
Gibbons has lived the war, he has been a part of it. "And They Thought
We Wouldn't Fight" is the voice of our men in France.
FRANK COMERFORD.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE SINKING OF THE _Laconia_ 17
II PERSHING'S ARRIVAL IN EUROPE 43
III THE LANDING OF THE FIRST AMERICAN CONTINGENT IN FRANCE 61
IV THROUGH THE SCHOOL OF WAR 78
V MAKING THE MEN WHO MAN THE GUNS 96
VI "FRONTWARD HO!" 117
VII INTO THE LINE--THE FIRST AMERICAN SHOT IN THE WAR 134
VIII THE FIRST AMERICAN SECTOR 158
IX THE NIGHT OUR GUNS CUT LOOSE 182
X INTO PICARDY TO MEET THE GERMAN PUSH 199
XI UNDER FIRE 217
XII BEFORE CANTIGNY 235
XIII THE RUSH OF THE RAIDERS--"ZERO AT 2 A. M." 251
XIV ON LEAVE IN PARIS 266
XV CHÂTEAU-THIERRY AND THE BOIS DE BELLEAU 283
XVI WOUNDED--HOW IT FEELS TO BE SHOT 305
XVII "GOOD MORNING, NURSE" 323
XVIII GROANS, LAUGHS AND SOBS IN THE HOSPITAL 338
XIX "JULY 18TH"--THE TURN OF THE TIDE 354
XX THE DAWN OF VICTORY 376
APPENDIX
PERSONNEL OF THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES IN FRANCE 399
ILLUSTRATIONS
FLOYD GIBBONS _Frontispiece_
PAGE
THE ARRIVAL IN LONDON, SHOWING GENERAL PERSHING,
MR. PAGE, FIELD MARSHAL VISCOUNT FRENCH, LORD
DERBY, AND ADMIRAL SIMS 50
GENERAL PERSHING BOWING TO THE CROWD IN PARIS 50
THE FIRST AMERICAN FOOT ON FRENCH SOIL 66
THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF FRANCE 66
CAPT. CHEVALIER, OF THE FRENCH ARMY, INSTRUCTING
AMERICAN OFFICERS IN THE USE OF THE ONE POUNDER 122
IN THE COURSE OF ITS PROGRESS TO THE VALLEY OF THE
VESLE THIS 155 MM. GUN AND OTHERS OF ITS KIND
WERE EDUCATING THE BOCHE TO RESPECT AMERICA.
THE TRACTOR HAULS IT ALONG STEADILY AND SLOWLY,
LIKE A STEAM ROLLER 122
GRAVE OF FIRST AMERICANS KILLED IN FRANCE. TRANSLATION:
HERE LIE THE FIRST SOLDIERS OF THE GREAT
REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, FALLEN
ON FRENCH SOIL FOR JUSTICE AND FOR LIBERTY, NOVEMBER
3RD, 1918 170
FIRST OF THE GREAT FRANCO-AMERICAN COUNTER-OFFENSIVE
AT CHÂTEAU-THIERRY. THE FRENCH BABY
TANKS, KNOWN AS CHARS D'ASSAUTS, ENTERING THE
WOOD OF VILLERS-COTTERETS, SOUTHWEST OF SOISSONS 226
YANKS AND POILUS VIEWING THE CITY OF CHÂTEAU-THIERRY
WHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF JULY THE YANKS
TURNED THE TIDE OF BATTLE AGAINST THE HUNS 226
MARINES MARCHING DOWN THE AVENUE PRESIDENT WILSON
ON THE FOURTH OF JULY IN PARIS 274
BRIDGE CROSSING MARNE RIVER IN CHÂTEAU-THIERRY
DESTROYED BY GERMANS IN THEIR RETREAT FROM
TOWN 274
HELMET WORN BY FLOYD GIBBONS WHEN WOUNDED,
SHOWING DAMAGE CAUSED BY SHRAPNEL 314
THE NEWS FROM THE STATES 346
SMILING WOUNDED AMERICAN SOLDIERS 346
(_Photographs Copyright by Committee on Public Information._)
"AND THEY THOUGHT WE
WOULDN'T FIGHT"
CHAPTER I
THE SINKING OF THE _Laconia_
Between America and the firing line, there are three thousand miles of
submarine infested water. Every American soldier, before encountering
the dangers of the battle-front, must first overcome the dangers of the
deep.
Geographically, America is almost four thousand miles from the war zone,
but in fact every American soldier bound for France entered the war zone
one hour out of New York harbour. Germany made an Ally out of the dark
depths of the Atlantic.
That three-thousand-mile passage represented greater possibilities for
the destruction of the United States overseas forces than any
strategical operation that Germany's able military leaders could direct
in the field.
Germany made use of that three thousand miles of water, just as she
developed the use of barbed wire entanglements along the front. Infantry
advancing across No Man's Land were held helpless before the enemy's
fire by barbed wire entanglements. Germany, with her submarine policy of
ruthlessness, changed the Atlantic Ocean into another No Man's Land
across which every American soldier had to pass at the mercy of the
enemy before he could arrive at the actual battle-front.
This was the peril of the troop ship. This was the tremendous advantage
which the enemy held over our armies even before they reached the field.
This was the unprecedented condition which the United States and Allied
navies had to cope with in the great undertaking of transporting our
forces overseas.
Any one who has crossed the ocean, even in the normal times before
shark-like Kultur skulked beneath the water, has experienced the feeling
of human helplessness that comes in mid-ocean when one considers the
comparative frailty of such man-made devices as even the most modern
turbine liners, with the enormous power of the wilderness of water over
which one sails.
In such times one realises that safety rests, first upon the kindliness
of the elements; secondly, upon the skill and watchfulness of those
directing the voyage, and thirdly, upon the dependability of such
human-made things as engines, propellers, steel plates, bolts and
rivets.
But add to the possibilities of a failure or a misalliance of any or all
of the above functions, the greater danger of a diabolical human, yet
inhuman, interference, directed against the seafarer with the purpose
and intention of his destruction. This last represents the greatest odds
against those who go to sea during the years of the great war.
A sinking at sea is a nightmare. I have been through one. I have been on
a ship torpedoed in mid-ocean. I have stood on the slanting decks of a
doomed liner; I have listened to the lowering of the life-boats, heard
the hiss of escaping steam and the roar of ascending rockets as they
tore lurid rents in the black sky and cast their red glare o'er the
roaring sea.
I have spent a night in an open boat on the tossing swells. I have been
through, in reality, the mad dream of drifting and darkness and bailing
and pulling on the oars and straining aching eyes toward an empty,
meaningless horizon in search of help. I shall try to tell you how it
feels.
I had been assigned by _The Chicago Tribune_ to go to London as their
correspondent. Almost the same day I received that assignment, the
"Imperial" Government of Germany had invoked its ruthless submarine
policy, had drawn a blockade zone about the waters of the British Isles
and the coasts of France, and had announced to the world that its
U-boats would sink without warning any ship, of any kind, under any
flag, that tried to sail the waters that Germany declared prohibitory.
In consideration of my personal safety and, possibly, of my future
usefulness, the _Tribune_ was desirous of arranging for me a safe
passage across the Atlantic. Such an opportunity presented itself in the
ordered return of the disgraced and discredited German Ambassador to the
United States, Count von Bernstorff.
Under the rules of International courtesy, a ship had been provided for
the use of von Bernstorff and his diplomatic staff. That ship was to
sail under absolute guarantees of safe conduct from all of the nations
at war with Germany and, of course, it would also have been safe from
attack by German submarines. That ship was the _Frederick VIII_. At
considerable expense the _Tribune_ managed to obtain for me a cabin
passage on that ship.
I can't say that I was over-impressed with the prospect of travel in
such company. I disliked the thought that I, an American citizen, with
rights as such to sail the sea, should have to resort to subterfuge and
scheming to enjoy those rights. There arose in me a feeling of challenge
against Germany's order which forbade American ships to sail the ocean.
I cancelled my sailing on the _Frederick VIII_.
In New York, I sought passage on the first American ship sailing for
England. I made the rounds of the steamship offices and learned that the
Cunard liner _Laconia_ was the first available boat and was about to
sail. She carried a large cargo of munitions and other materials of war.
I booked passage aboard her. It was on Saturday, February 17th, 1917,
that we steamed away from the dock at New York and moved slowly down the
East River. We were bound for Liverpool, England. My cabin accommodations
were good. The _Laconia_ was listed at 18,000 tons and was one of the
largest Cunarders in the Atlantic service. The next morning we were out
of sight of land.
Sailors were stationed along the decks of the ship and in the look-outs
at the mast heads. They maintained a watch over the surface of the sea
in all directions. On the stern of the ship, there was mounted a
six-inch cannon and a crew of gunners stood by it night and day.
Submarines had been recently reported in the waters through which we
were sailing, but we saw none of them and apparently they saw none of
us. They had sunk many ships, but all of the sinkings had been in the
day time. Consequently, there was a feeling of greater safety at night.
The _Laconia_ sailed on a constantly zig-zagging course. All of our
life-boats were swinging out over the side of the ship, so that if we
were hit they could be lowered in a hurry. Every other day the
passengers and the crew would be called up on the decks to stand by the
life-boats that had been assigned to them.
The officers of the ship instructed us in the life-boat drill. They
showed us how to strap the life-preservers about our bodies; they showed
us how to seat ourselves in the life-boats; they showed us a small keg
of water and some tin cans of biscuits, a lantern and some flares that
were stored in the boat, and so we sailed along day after day without
meeting any danger. At night, all of the lights were put out and the
ship slipped along through the darkness.
On Sunday, after we had been sailing for eight days, we entered the zone
that had been prohibited by the Kaiser. We sailed into it full steam
ahead and nothing happened. That day was February the twenty-fifth. In
the afternoon, I was seated in the lounge with two friends. One was an
American whose name was Kirby; the other was a Canadian and his name was
Dugan. The latter was an aviator in the British army. In fights with
German aeroplanes high over the Western Front he had been wounded and
brought down twice and the army had sent him to his home in Canada to
get well. He was returning once more to the battle front "to stop
another bullet," as he said.
As we talked, I passed around my cigarette case and Dugan held a lighted
match while the three of us lighted our cigarettes from it. As Dugan
blew out the match and placed the burnt end in an ash tray, he laughed
and said,
"They say it is bad luck to light three cigarettes with the same match,
but I think it is good luck for me. I used to do it frequently with my
flying partners in France and four of them have been killed, but I am
still alive."
"That makes it all right for you," said Kirby, "but it makes it look bad
for Gibbons and myself. But nothing is going to happen. I don't believe
in superstitions."
That night after dinner Dugan and I took a brisk walk around the
darkened promenade deck of the _Laconia_. The night was very dark, a
stiff wind was blowing and the _Laconia_ was rolling slightly in the
trough of the waves. Wet from spray, we returned within and in one of
the corridors met the Captain of the ship. I told him that I would like
very much to have a look at his chart and learn our exact location on
the ocean.
He looked at me and laughed because that was a very secret matter. But
he replied:
"Oh, you would, would you?" and his voice carried that particular
British intonation that seemed to say, "Well it is jolly well none of
your business."
Then I asked him when he thought we would land in Liverpool.
"I really don't know," said the ship's commander, and then, with a wink,
he added, "but my steward told me that we would get in Tuesday evening."
Kirby and I went to the smoke room on the boat deck well to the stern of
the ship. We joined a circle of Britishers who were seated in front of a
coal fire in an open hearth. Nearly every one in the lighted smoke room
was playing cards, so that the conversation was practically confined to
the mentioning of bids and the orders of drinks from the stewards.
"What do you think are our chances of being torpedoed?" was the question
I put before the circle in front of the fireplace.
The deliberative Mr. Henry Chetham, a London solicitor, was the first to
answer.
"Well," he drawled, "I should say about four thousand to one."
Lucien J. Jerome of the British Diplomatic Service, returning with an
Ecuadorian valet from South America, advanced his opinion.
I was much impressed with his opinion because the speaker himself had
impressed me deeply. He was the best monocle juggler I had ever met. In
his right eye he carried a monocle without a rim and without a ribbon
or thread to save it, should it ever have fallen from his eye.
Repeatedly during the trip, I had seen Mr. Jerome standing on the
hurrideck of the _Laconia_ facing the wind but holding the glass disk in
his eye with a muscular grip that must have been vise-like. I had even
followed him around the deck several times in a desire to be present
when the monocle blew out, but the British diplomatist never for once
lost his grip on it. I had come to the opinion that the piece of glass
was fixed to his eye and that he slept with it. After the fashion of the
British Diplomatic Service, he expressed his opinion most affirmatively.
"Nonsense," he said with reference to Mr. Chetham's estimate. "Utter
nonsense. Considering the zone that we are in and the class of the ship,
I should put the chances down at two hundred and fifty to one that we
don't meet a 'sub.'"
At that minute the torpedo hit us.
Have you ever stood on the deck of a ferry boat as it arrived in the
slip? And have you ever experienced the slight sideward shove when the
boat rubs against the piling and comes to a stop? That was the
unmistakable lurch we felt, but no one expects to run into pilings in
mid-ocean, so every one knew what it was.
At the same time, there came a muffled noise--not extremely loud nor yet
very sharp--just a noise like the slamming of some large oaken door a
good distance away. Realising that we had been torpedoed, my imagination
was rather disappointed at the slightness of the shock and the meekness
of the report. One or two chairs tipped over, a few glasses crashed from
table to floor and in an instant every man in the room was on his feet.
"We're hit," shouted Mr. Chetham.
"That's what we've been waiting for," said Mr. Jerome.
"What a lousy torpedo!" said Mr. Kirby. "It must have been a fizzer."
I looked at my watch; it was 10:30.
Five sharp blasts sounded on the _Laconia's_ whistle. Since that night,
I have often marvelled at the quick coordination of mind and hand that
belonged to the man on the bridge who pulled that whistle rope. Those
five blasts constituted the signal to abandon the ship. Every one
recognised them.
We walked hurriedly down the corridor leading from the smoke room in the
stern to the lounge which was amidships. We moved fast but there was no
crowding and no panic. Passing the open door of the gymnasium, I became
aware of the list of the vessel. The floor of the gymnasium slanted down
on the starboard side and a medicine ball and dozens of dumb bells and
Indian clubs were rolling in that direction.
We entered the lounge--a large drawing room furnished with green
upholstered chairs and divans and small tables on which the after-dinner
liqueur glasses still rested. In one corner was a grand piano with the
top elevated. In the centre of the slanting floor of the saloon was a
cabinet Victrola and from its mahogany bowels there poured the last and
dying strains of "Poor Butterfly."
The women and several men who had been in the lounge were hurriedly
leaving by the forward door as we entered. We followed them through. The
twin winding stairs leading below decks by the forward hatch were dark
and I brought into play a pocket flashlight shaped like a fountain pen.
I had purchased it before sailing in view of such an emergency and I
had always carried it fastened with a clip in an upper vest pocket.
My stateroom was B 19 on the promenade deck, one deck below the deck on
which was located the smoke room, the lounge and the life-boats. The
corridor was dimly lighted and the floor had a more perceptible slant as
I darted into my stateroom, which was on the starboard and sinking side
of the ship. I hurriedly put on a light non-sink garment constructed
like a vest, which I had come provided with, and then donned an
overcoat.
Responding to the list of the ship, the wardrobe door swung open and
crashed against the wall. My typewriter slid off the dressing table and
a shower of toilet articles pitched from their places on the washstand.
I grabbed the ship's life-preserver in my left hand and, with the
flashlight in my right hand, started up the hatchway to the upper deck.
In the darkness of the boat deck hatchway, the rays of my flashlight
revealed the chief steward opening the door of a switch closet in the
panel wall. He pushed on a number of switches and instantly the decks of
the _Laconia_ became bright. From sudden darkness, the exterior of the
ship burst into a blaze of light and it was that illumination that saved
many lives.
The _Laconia's_ engines and dynamos had not yet been damaged. The
torpedo had hit us well astern on the starboard side and the bulkheads
seemed to be holding back from the engine room the flood of water that
rushed in through the gaping hole in the ship's side. I proceeded down
the boat deck to my station opposite boat No. 10. I looked over the side
and down upon the water sixty feet below.
The sudden flashing of the lights on the upper deck made the dark
seething waters seem blacker and angrier. They rose and fell in troubled
swells.
Steam began to hiss from some of the pipes leading up from the engine
well. It seemed like a dying groan from the very vitals of the stricken
ship. Clouds of white and black smoke rolled up from the giant grey
funnels that towered above us.
Suddenly there was a roaring swish as a rocket soared upward from the
Captain's bridge, leaving a comet's tail of fire. I watched it as it
described a graceful arc and then with an audible pop it burst in a
flare of brilliant colour. Its ascent had torn a lurid rent in the black
sky and had cast a red glare over the roaring sea.
Already boat No. 10 was loading up and men and boys were busy with the
ropes. I started to help near a davit that seemed to be giving trouble
but was sternly ordered to get out of the way and to get into the boat.
Other passengers and members of the crew and officers of the ship were
rushing to and fro along the deck strapping their life-preservers to
them as they rushed. There was some shouting of orders but little or no
confusion. One woman, a blonde French actress, became hysterical on the
deck, but two men lifted her bodily off her feet and placed her in the
life-boat.
We were on the port side of the ship, the higher side. To reach the
boats, we had to climb up the slanting deck to the edge of the ship.
On the starboard side, it was different. On that side, the decks slanted
down toward the water. The ship careened in that direction and the
life-boats suspended from the davits swung clear of the ship's side.
The list of the ship increased. On the port side, we looked down the
slanting side of the ship and noticed that her water line on that side
was a number of feet above the waves. The slant was so pronounced that
the life-boats, instead of swinging clear from the davits, rested
against the side of the ship. From my position in the life-boat I could
see that we were going to have difficulty in the descent to the water.
"Lower away," some one gave the order and we started downward with a
jerk toward the seemingly hungry, rising and falling swells. Then we
stopped with another jerk and remained suspended in mid-air while the
men at the bow and the stern swore and tusseled with the ropes.
The stern of the boat was down; the bow up, leaving us at an angle of
about forty-five degrees. We clung to the seats to save ourselves from
falling out.
"Who's got a knife? A knife! A knife!" shouted a fireman in the bow. He
was bare to the waist and perspiration stood out in drops on his face
and chest and made streaks through the coal dust with which his skin was
grimed.
"Great Gawd! Give him a knife," bawled a half-dressed jibbering negro
stoker who wrung his hands in the stern.
A hatchet was thrust into my hands and I forwarded it to the bow. There
was a flash of sparks as it was brought down with a clang on the holding
pulley. One strand of the rope parted.
Down plunged the bow of the boat too quickly for the men in the stern.
We came to a jerky stop, this time with the stern in the air and the bow
down, the dangerous angle reversed.
One man in the stern let the rope race through his blistered fingers.
With hands burnt to the quick, he grabbed the rope and stopped the
precipitous descent just in time to bring the stern level with the bow.
Then bow and stern tried to lower away together. The slant of the ship's
side had increased, so that our boat instead of sliding down it like a
toboggan was held up on one side when the taffrail caught on one of the
condenser exhaust pipes projecting slightly from the ship's side.
Thus the starboard side of the life-boat stuck fast and high while the
port side dropped down and once more we found ourselves clinging on at a
new angle and looking straight down into the water.
A hand slipped into mine and a voice sounded huskily close to my ear. It
was the little old Jewish travelling man who was disliked in the smoke
room because he used to speak too certainly of things about which he was
uncertain. His slightly Teutonic dialect had made him as popular as the
smallpox with the British passengers.
"My poy, I can't see nutting," he said. "My glasses slipped and I am
falling. Hold me, please."
I managed to reach out and join hands with another man on the other side
of the old man and together we held him in. He hung heavily over our
arms, grotesquely grasping all he had saved from his stateroom--a
gold-headed cane and an extra hat.
Many feet and hands pushed the boat from the side of the ship and we
renewed our sagging, scraping, sliding, jerking descent. It ended as the
bottom of the life-boat smacked squarely on the pillowy top of a rising
swell. It felt more solid than mid-air at least.
But we were far from being off. The pulleys twice stuck in their
fastings, bow and stern, and the one axe was passed forward and back
(and with it my flashlight) as the entangling mesh of ropes that held
us to the sinking _Laconia_ was cut away.
Some shout from that confusion of sound caused me to look up. I believe
I really did so in the fear that one of the nearby boats was being
lowered upon us.
Tin funnels enamelled white and containing clusters of electric bulbs
hung over the side from one of the upper decks. I looked up into the
cone of one of these lights and a bulky object shot suddenly out of the
darkness into the scope of the electric rays.
It was a man. His arms were bent up at the elbows; his legs at the
knees. He was jumping, with the intention, I feared, of landing in our
boat, and I prepared to avoid the impact. But he had judged his distance
well.
He plunged beyond us and into the water three feet from the edge of the
boat. He sank from sight, leaving a white patch of bubbles and foam on
the black water. He bobbed to the surface almost immediately.
"It's Dugan," shouted a man next to me.
I flashed a light on the ruddy, smiling face and water plastered hair of
the little Canadian aviator, our fellow saloon passenger. We pulled him
over the side and into the boat. He spluttered out a mouthful of water.
"I wonder if there is anything to that lighting three matches off the
same match," he said. "I was trying to loosen the bow rope in this boat.
I loosened it and then got tangled up in it. When the boat descended, I
was jerked up back on the deck. Then I jumped for it. Holy Moses, but
this water is cold."
As we pulled away from the side of the ship, its receding terraces of
glowing port holes and deck lights towered above us. The ship was slowly
turning over.
We were directly opposite the engine room section of the _Laconia_.
There was a tangle of oars, spars and rigging on the seats in our boat,
and considerable confusion resulted before we could manage to place in
operation some of the big oars on either side.
The jibbering, bullet-headed negro was pulling a sweep directly behind
me and I turned to quiet him as his frantic reaches with the oar were
jabbing me in the back.
In the dull light from the upper decks, I looked into his slanting
face--his eyes all whites and his lips moving convulsively. He shivered
with fright, but in addition to that he was freezing in the thin cotton
shirt that composed his entire upper covering. He worked feverishly at
the oar to warm himself.
"Get away from her. My Gawd, get away from her," he kept repeating.
"When the water hits her hot boilers she'll blow up the whole ocean and
there's just tons and tons of shrapnel in her hold."
His excitement spread to other members of the crew in our boat. The
ship's baker, designated by his pantry headgear of white linen, became a
competing alarmist and a white fireman, whose blasphemy was nothing
short of profound, added to the confusion by cursing every one.
It was the tension of the minute--it was the give way of overwrought
nerves--it was bedlam and nightmare.
I sought to establish some authority in our boat which was about to
break out into full mutiny. I made my way to the stern. There, huddled
up in a great overcoat and almost muffled in a ship's life-preserver, I
came upon an old white-haired man and I remembered him.
He was a sea-captain of the old sailing days. He had been a second cabin
passenger with whom I had talked before. Earlier in the year he had
sailed out of Nova Scotia with a cargo of codfish. His schooner, the
_Secret_, had broken in two in mid-ocean, but he and his crew had been
picked up by a tramp and taken back to New York.
From there he had sailed on another ship bound for Europe, but this
ship, a Holland-American Liner, the _Ryndam_, had never reached the
other side. In mid-Atlantic her captain had lost courage over the U-boat
threats. He had turned the ship about and returned to America. Thus, the
_Laconia_ represented the third unsuccessful attempt of this grey-haired
mariner to get back to his home in England. His name was Captain Dear.
"Our boat's rudder is gone, but we can stear with an oar," he said, in a
weak-quavering voice--the thin high-pitched treble of age. "I will take
charge, if you want me to, but my voice is gone. I can tell you what to
do, but you will have to shout the orders. They won't listen to me."
There was only one way to get the attention of the crew, and that was by
an overpowering blast of profanity. I called to my assistance every
ear-splitting, soul-sizzling oath that I could think of.
I recited the lurid litany of the army mule skinner to his gentle
charges and embellished it with excerpts from the remarks of a Chicago
taxi chauffeur while he changed tires on the road with the temperature
ten below.
It proved to be an effective combination, this brim-stoned oration of
mine, because it was rewarded by silence.
"Is there a ship's officer in this boat?" I shouted. There was no
answer.
"Is there a sailor or a seaman on board?" I inquired, and again there
was silence from our group of passengers, firemen, stokers and deck
swabs.
They appeared to be listening to me and I wished to keep my hold on
them. I racked my mind for some other query to make or some order to
direct. Before the spell was broken I found one.
"We will now find out how many of us there are in this boat," I
announced in the best tones of authority that I could assume. "The first
man in the bow will count one and the next man to him will count two. We
will count from the bow back to the stern, each man taking a number.
Begin."
"One," came the quick response from a passenger who happened to be the
first man in the bow. The enumeration continued sharply toward the
stern. I spoke the last number.
"There are twenty-three of us here," I repeated, "there's not a ship's
officer or seaman among us, but we are extremely fortunate to have with
us an old sea-captain who has consented to take charge of the boat and
save our lives. His voice is weak, but I will repeat the orders for him,
so that all of you can hear. Are you ready to obey his orders?"
There was an almost unanimous acknowledgment of assent and order was
restored.
"The first thing to be done," I announced upon Captain Dear's
instructions, "is to get the same number of oars pulling on each side of
the boat; to seat ourselves so as to keep on an even keel and then to
keep the boat's head up into the wind so that we won't be swamped by the
waves."
With some little difficulty, this rearrangement was accomplished and
then we rested on our oars with all eyes turned on the still lighted
_Laconia_. The torpedo had hit at about 10:30 P. M. according to our
ship's time. Though listing far over on one side, the _Laconia_ was
still afloat.
It must have been twenty minutes after that first shot that we heard
another dull thud, which was accompanied by a noticeable drop in the
hulk. The German submarine had despatched a second torpedo through the
engine room and the boat's vitals from a distance of two hundred yards.
We watched silently during the next minute as the tiers of lights dimmed
slowly from white to yellow, then to red and then nothing was left but
the murky mourning of the night which hung over all like a pall.
A mean, cheese-coloured crescent of a moon revealed one horn above a rag
bundle of clouds low in the distance. A rim of blackness settled around
our little world, relieved only by a few leering stars in the zenith,
and, where the _Laconia's_ lights had shown, there remained only the dim
outlines of a blacker hulk standing out above the water like a jagged
headland, silhouetted against the overcast sky.
The ship sank rapidly at the stern until at last its nose rose out of
the water, and stood straight up in the air. Then it slid silently down
and out of sight like a piece of scenery in a panorama spectacle.
Boat No. 3 stood closest to the place where the ship had gone down. As a
result of the after suction, the small life-boat rocked about in a
perilous sea of clashing spars and wreckage.
As the boat's crew steadied its head into the wind, a black hulk,
glistening wet and standing about eight feet above the surface of the
water, approached slowly. It came to a stop opposite the boat and not
ten feet from the side of it. It was the submarine.
"Vot ship vass dot?" were the first words of throaty guttural English
that came from a figure which projected from the conning tower.
"The _Laconia_," answered the Chief Steward Ballyn, who commanded the
life-boat.
"Vot?"
"The _Laconia_, Cunard Line," responded the steward.
"Vot did she weigh?" was the next question from the submarine.
"Eighteen thousand tons."
"Any passengers?"
"Seventy-three," replied Ballyn, "many of them women and children--some
of them in this boat. She had over two hundred in the crew."
"Did she carry cargo?"
"Yes."
"Iss der Captain in dot boat?"
"No," Ballyn answered.
"Well, I guess you'll be all right. A patrol will pick you up some time
soon." Without further sound save for the almost silent fixing of the
conning tower lid, the submarine moved off.
"I thought it best to make my answers sharp and satisfactory, sir," said
Ballyn, when he repeated the conversation to me word for word. "I was
thinking of the women and children in the boat. I feared every minute
that somebody in our boat might make a hostile move, fire a revolver, or
throw something at the submarine. I feared the consequence of such an
act."
There was no assurance of an early pickup so we made preparations for a
siege with the elements. The weather was a great factor. That black rim
of clouds looked ominous. There was a good promise of rain. February has
a reputation for nasty weather in the north Atlantic. The wind was cold
and seemed to be rising. Our boat bobbed about like a cork on the
swells, which fortunately were not choppy.
How much rougher seas could the boat weather? This question and
conditions were debated pro and con.
Had our rockets been seen? Did the first torpedo put the wireless out of
commission? If it had been able to operate, had anybody heard our S. O.
S.? Was there enough food and drinking water in the boat to last?
This brought us to an inventory of our small craft. After considerable
difficulty, we found the lamp, a can of powder flares, the tin of ship's
biscuit, matches and spare oil.
The lamp was lighted. Other lights were now visible. As we drifted in
the darkness, we could see them every time we mounted the crest of the
swells. The boats carrying these lights remained quite close together at
first.
One boat came within sound and I recognised the Harry Lauder-like voice
of the second assistant purser whom I had last heard on Wednesday at the
ship's concert. Now he was singing--"I Want to Marry 'arry," and "I Love
to be a Sailor."
There were an American woman and her husband in that boat. She told me
later that an attempt had been made to sing "Tipperary," and "Rule
Britannia," but the thought of that slinking dark hull of destruction
that might have been a part of the immediate darkness resulted in the
abandonment of the effort.
"Who's the officer in that boat?" came a cheery hail from the nearby
light.
"What the hell is it to you?" our half frozen negro yelled out for no
reason apparent to me other than possibly the relief of his feelings.
"Will somebody brain that skunk with a pin?" was the inquiry of our
profound oathsman, who also expressed regret that he happened to be
sitting too far away from the negro to reach him. He accompanied the
announcement with a warmth of language that must have relieved the negro
of his chill.
The fear of the boats crashing together produced a general inclination
toward maximum separation on the part of all the little units of
survivors, with the result that soon the small crafts stretched out for
several miles, their occupants all endeavoring to hold the heads of the
boats into the wind.
Hours passed. The swells slopped over the sides of our boat and filled
the bottom with water. We bailed it continually. Most of us were wet to
the knees and shivering from the weakening effects of the icy water. Our
hands were blistered from pulling at the oars. Our boat, bobbing about
like a cork, produced terrific nausea, and our stomachs ached from vain
wrenching.
And then we saw the first light--the first sign of help coming--the
first searching glow of white radiance deep down the sombre sides of the
black pot of night that hung over us. I don't know what direction it
came from--none of us knew north from south--there was nothing but water
and sky. But the light--it just came from over there where we pointed.
We nudged dumb, sick boat mates and directed their gaze and aroused them
to an appreciation of the sight that gave us new life.
It was 'way over there--first a trembling quiver of silver against the
blackness, then drawing closer, it defined itself as a beckoning finger,
although still too far away to see our feeble efforts to attract it.
Nevertheless, we wasted valuable flares and the ship's baker,
self-ordained custodian of the biscuit, did the honours handsomely to
the extent of a biscuit apiece to each of the twenty-three occupants of
the boat.
"Pull starboard, sonnies," sang out old Captain Dear, his grey chin
whiskers bristling with joy in the light of the round lantern which he
held aloft.
We pulled--pulled lustily, forgetting the strain and pain of innards
torn and racked with violent vomiting, and oblivious of blistered palms
and wet, half-frozen feet.
Then a nodding of that finger of light,--a happy, snapping,
crap-shooting finger that seemed to say: "Come on, you men," like a dice
player wooing the bones--led us to believe that our lights had been
seen.
This was the fact, for immediately the oncoming vessel flashed on its
green and red sidelights and we saw it was headed for our position. We
floated off its stern for a while as it manoeuvred for the best
position in which it could take us on with a sea that was running higher
and higher.
The risk of that rescuing ship was great, because there was every reason
to believe that the submarine that had destroyed the _Laconia_ still
lurked in the darkness nearby, but those on board took the risk and
stood by for the work of rescue.
"Come along side port!" was megaphoned to us. As fast as we could, we
swung under the stern and felt our way broadside toward the ship's side.
Out of the darkness above, a dozen small pocket flashlights blinked down
on us and orders began to be shouted fast and thick.
When I look back on the night, I don't know which was the more
hazardous, going down the slanting side of the sinking _Laconia_ or
going up the side of the rescuing vessel.
One minute the swells would lift us almost level with the rail of the
low-built patrol boat and mine sweeper, but the next receding wave would
swirl us down into a darksome gulf over which the ship's side glowered
like a slimy, dripping cliff.
A score of hands reached out and we were suspended in the husky,
tattooed arms of those doughty British Jack Tars, looking up into their
weather-beaten youthful faces, mumbling our thankfulness and reading in
the gold lettering on their pancake hats the legend, "H. M. S.
_Laburnum_." We had been six hours in the open boat.
The others began coming alongside one by one. Wet and bedraggled
survivors were lifted aboard. Women and children first was the rule.
The scenes of reunion were heart-gripping. Men who had remained
strangers to one another aboard the _Laconia_, now wrung each other by
the hand or embraced without shame the frail little wife of a Canadian
chaplain who had found one of her missing children delivered up from
another boat. She smothered the child with ravenous mother kisses while
tears of gladness streamed down her face.
Boat after boat came alongside. The water-logged craft containing the
Captain came last.
A rousing cheer went up as he stepped on the deck, one mangled hand
hanging limp at his side.
The sailors divested themselves of outer clothing and passed the
garments over to the shivering members of the _Laconia's_ crew.
The cramped officers' quarters down under the quarter deck were turned
over to the women and children. Two of the _Laconia's_ stewardesses
passed boiling basins of navy cocoa and aided in the disentangling of
wet and matted tresses.
The men grouped themselves near steam-pipes in the petty officers'
quarters or over the grating of the engine rooms, where new life was to
be had from the upward blasts of heated air that brought with them the
smell of bilge water and oil and sulphur from the bowels of the vessel.
The injured--all minor cases, sprained backs, wrenched legs or mashed
hands--were put away in bunks under the care of the ship's doctor.
Dawn was melting the eastern ocean grey to pink when the task was
finished. In the officers' quarters, which had now been invaded by the
men, the roll of the vessel was most perceptible. Each time the floor of
the room slanted, bottles and cups and plates rolled and slid back and
forth.
On the tables and chairs and benches the women rested. Sea-sick mothers,
trembling from the after-effects of the terrifying experience of the
night, sought to soothe their crying children.
Then somebody happened to touch a key on the small wooden organ that
stood against one wall. This was enough to send some callous seafaring
fingers over the ivory keys in a rhythm unquestionably religious and so
irresistible under the circumstances that, although no one seemed to
know the words, the air was taken up in a reverent, humming chant by all
in the room.
At the last note of the Amen, little Father Warring, his black garb
snaggled in places and badly soiled, stood before the centre table and
lifted back his head until the morning light, filtering through the
opened hatch above him, shown down on his kindly, weary face. He recited
the Lord's prayer and all present joined. The simple, impressive service
of thanksgiving ended as simply as it had begun.
Two minutes later I saw the old Jewish travelling man limping about on
one lame leg with a little boy in his arms. He was collecting big, round
British pennies for the youngster.
A survey and cruise of the nearby waters revealed no more occupied boats
and our mine sweeper, with its load of survivors numbering two hundred
and sixty-seven, steamed away to the east. A half an hour steaming and
the vessel stopped within hailing distance of two sister ships, toward
one of which an open boat manned by jackies was being pulled.
I saw the hysterical French actress, her blonde hair wet and bedraggled,
lifted out of the boat and carried up the companionway. Then a little
boy, his fresh pink face and golden hair shining in the morning sun, was
passed upward, followed by some other survivors, numbering fourteen in
all, who had been found half-drowned and almost dead from exposure in a
partially wrecked boat that was picked up just as it was sinking. It was
in that boat that one American woman and her daughter died. One of the
survivors of the boat told me the story. He said:
"Our boat was No. 8. It was smashed in the lowering. I was in the bow.
Mrs. Hoy and her daughter were sitting toward the stern. The boat filled
with water rapidly.
"It was no use trying to bail it out. There was a big hole in the side
and it came in too fast. The boat's edge sank to the level of the water
and only the air-tanks kept it afloat.
"It was completely awash. Every swell rode clear over our heads and we
had to hold our breath until we came to the surface again. The cold
water just takes the life out of you.
"We saw the other boats showing their lights and drifting further and
further away from us. We had no lights. And then, towards morning, we
saw the rescuing ship come up into the cluster of other life-boats that
had drifted so far away from us. One by one we saw their lights
disappear as they were taken on board.
"We shouted and screamed and shrieked at the tops of our voices, but
could not attract the attention of any of the other boats or the
rescuing ship, and soon we saw its lights blink out. We were left there
in the darkness with the wind howling and the sea rolling higher every
minute.
"The women got weaker and weaker. Maybe they had been dead for some
time. I don't know, but a wave came and washed both Mrs. Hoy and her
daughter out of the boat. There were life-belts around their bodies and
they drifted away with their arms locked about one another."
With such stories ringing in our ears, with exchanges of experiences
pathetic and humorous, we steamed into Queenstown harbour shortly after
ten o'clock that night. We had been attacked at a point two hundred
miles off the Irish coast and of our passengers and crew, thirteen had
been lost.
As I stepped ashore, a Britisher, a fellow-passenger aboard the
_Laconia_, who knew me as an American, stepped up to me. During the
voyage we had had many conversations concerning the possibility of
America entering the war. Now he slapped me on the back with this
question,
"Well, old Casus Belli," he said, "is this your blooming overt act?"
I did not answer him, but thirty minutes afterward I was pounding out on
a typewriter the introduction to a four thousand word newspaper article
which I cabled that night and which put the question up to the American
public for an answer.
Five weeks later the United States entered the war.
CHAPTER II
PERSHING'S ARRIVAL IN EUROPE
Lean, clean, keen--that's the way they looked--that first trim little
band of American fighting men who made their historic landing on the
shores of England, June 8th, 1917.
I went down from London to meet them at the port of arrival. In my
despatches of that date, I, nor none of the other correspondents, was
permitted to mention the name of the port. This was supposed to be the
secret that was to be religiously kept and the British censor was on the
job religiously.
The name of the port was excluded from all American despatches but the
British censor saw no reason to withhold transmission of the following
sentence--"Pershing landed to-day at an English port and was given a
hearty welcome by the Mayor of Liverpool."
So I am presuming at this late date of writing that it would serve no
further purpose to refrain from announcing flatly that General John J.
Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces
overseas, and his staff, landed on the date above mentioned, at
Liverpool, England.
The sun was shining brightly on the Mersey when the giant ocean liner,
the _Baltic_, came slowly up the harbour in the tow of numerous puffing
tugs. The great grey vessel that had safely completed the crossing of
the submarine zone, was warped to the dock-side.
On the quay there were a full brass band and an honourary escort of
British soldiers. While the moorings were being fastened, General
Pershing, with his staff, appeared on the promenade deck on the shore
side of the vessel.
His appearance was the signal for a crash of cymbals and drums as the
band blared out the "Star Spangled Banner." The American commander and
the officers ranged in line on either side of him, stood stiffly at
attention, with right hands raised in salute to the visors of their
caps.
On the shore the lines of British soldiery brought their arms to the
present with a snap. Civilian witnesses of the ceremony bared their
heads. The first anthem was followed by the playing of "God Save the
King." All present remained at the salute.
As the gangplank was lashed in place, a delegation of British military
and civilian officials boarded the ship and were presented to the
General. Below, on the dock, every newspaper correspondent and
photographer in the British Isles, I think, stood waiting in a group
that far outnumbered the other spectators.
There was reason for this seeming lack of proportion. The fact was that
but very few people in all of England, as well as in all of the United
States, had known that General Pershing was to land that day.
Few had known that he was on the water. The British Admiralty, then in
complete control of the ocean lines between America and the British
Isles, had guarded well the secret. England lost Kitchener on the sea
and now with the sea peril increased a hundredfold, England took pains
to guard well the passage of this standard-bearer of the American
millions that were to come.
Pershing and his staff stepped ashore. Lean, clean, keen--those are the
words that described their appearance. That was the way they impressed
their critical brothers in arms, the all-observing military dignities
that presented Britain's hearty, unreserved welcome at the water's edge.
That was the way they appeared to the proud American citizens, residents
of those islands, who gathered to meet them.
The British soldiers admired the height and shoulders of our first
military samples. The British soldier approves of a greyhound trimness
in the belt zone. He likes to look on carriage and poise. He appreciates
a steady eye and stiff jaw. He is attracted by a voice that rings sharp
and firm. The British soldier calls such a combination, "a real
soldier."
He saw one, and more than one, that morning shortly after nine o'clock
when Pershing and his staff committed the date to history by setting
foot on British soil. Behind the American commander walked a staff of
American officers whose soldierly bearing and general appearance brought
forth sincere expressions of commendation from the assemblage on the
quay.
At attention on the dock, facing the sea-stained flanks of the liner
_Baltic_, a company of Royal Welsh Fusiliers Stood like a frieze of clay
models in stainless khaki, polished brass and shining leather.
General Pershing inspected the guard of honour with keen interest.
Walking beside the American commander was the considerably stouter and
somewhat shorter Lieutenant General Sir William Pitcairn Campbell,
K.C.B., Chief of the Western Command of the British Home Forces.
Pershing's inspection of that guard was not the cursory one that these
honourary affairs usually are. Not a detail of uniform or equipment on
any of the men in the guard was overlooked. The American commander's
attention was as keen to boots, rifles and belts, as though he had been
a captain preparing the small command for a strenuous inspection at the
hands of some exacting superior.
As he walked down the stiff, standing line, his keen blue eyes taking in
each one of the men from head to foot, he stopped suddenly in front of
one man in the ranks. That man was File Three in the second set of
fours. He was a pale-faced Tommy and on one of his sleeves there was
displayed two slender gold bars, placed on the forearm.
The decoration was no larger than two matches in a row and on that day
it had been in use hardly more than a year, yet neither its minuteness
nor its meaning escaped the eyes of the American commander.
Pershing turned sharply and faced File Three.
"Where did you get your two wounds?" he asked.
"At Givenchy and Lavenze, sir," replied File Three, his face pointed
stiffly ahead. File Three, even now under twenty-one years of age, had
received his wounds in the early fighting that is called the battle of
Loos.
"You are a man," was the sincere, all-meaning rejoinder of the American
commander, who accompanied his remark with a straightforward look into
the eyes of File Three.
Completing the inspection without further incident, General Pershing and
his staff faced the honour guard and stood at the salute, while once
more the thunderous military band played the national anthems of America
and Great Britain.
The ceremony was followed by a reception in the cabin of the _Baltic_,
where General Pershing received the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, the Lady
Mayoress, and a delegation of civil authorities. The reception ended
when General Pershing spoke a few simple words to the assembled
representatives of the British and American Press.
"More of us are coming," was the keynote of his modest remarks.
Afterward he was escorted to the quay-side station, where a special
train of the type labelled Semi-Royal was ready to make the express run
to London.
The reception at the dock had had none of the features of a
demonstration by reason of the necessity for the ship's arrival being
secret, but as soon as the _Baltic_ had landed, the word of the American
commander's arrival spread through Liverpool like wildfire.
The railroad from the station lay through an industrial section of the
city. Through the railroad warehouses the news had preceded the train.
Warehouse-men, porters and draymen crowded the tops of the cotton bales
and oil barrels on both sides of the track as the train passed through.
Beyond the sheds, the news had spread through the many floors of the
flour mills and when the Pershing train passed, handkerchiefs and caps
fluttered from every crowded door and window in the whitened walls. Most
of the waving was done by a new kind of flour-girl, one who did not wave
an apron because none of them were dressed that way.
From his car window, General Pershing returned the greetings of the
trousered girls and women who were making England's bread while their
husbands, fathers, brothers, sweethearts and sons were making German
cemeteries.
In London, General Pershing and his staff occupied suites at the Savoy
Hotel, and during the four or five days of the American commander's
sojourn in the capital of the British Empire, a seemingly endless line
of visitors of all the Allied nationalities called to present their
compliments.
The enlisted men of the General's staff occupied quarters in the old
stone barracks of the Tower of London, where they were the guests of the
men of that artillery organisation which prefixes an "Honourable" to its
name and has been assigned for centuries to garrison duty in the Tower
of London.
Our soldiers manifested naïve interest in some of England's most revered
traditions and particularly in connection with historical events related
to the Tower of London. On the second day of their occupation of this
old fortress, one of the warders, a "Beef-eater" in full mediæval
regalia, was escorting a party of the Yanks through the dungeons.
He stopped in one dungeon and lined the party up in front of a stone
block in the centre of the floor. After a silence of a full minute to
produce a proper degree of impressiveness for the occasion, the warder
announced, in a respectful whisper:
"This is where Anne Boleyn was executed."
The lined-up Yanks took a long look at the stone block. A silence
followed during the inspection. And then one regular, desiring further
information, but not wishing to be led into any traps of British wit,
said:
"All right, I'll bite; what did Annie do?"
Current with the arrival of our men and their reception by the honour
guard of the Welsh Fusiliers there was a widespread revival of an old
story which the Americans liked to tell in the barrack rooms at night.
When the Welsh Fusiliers received our men at the dock of Liverpool, they
had with them their historical mascot, a large white goat with horns
encased in inscribed silver. The animal wore suspended from its neck a
large silver plate, on which was inscribed a partial history of the
Welsh Fusiliers.
Some of these Fusiliers told our men the story.
"It was our regiment--the Welsh Fusiliers," one of them said, "that
fought you Yanks at Bunker Hill. And it was at Bunker Hill that our
regiment captured the great-great-granddaddy of this same white goat,
and his descendants are ever destined to be the mascot of our regiment.
You see, we have still got your goat."
"But you will notice," replied one of the Yanks, "we've got the hill."
During the four days in London, General Pershing was received by King
George and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace. The American commander
engaged in several long conferences at the British War Office, and then
with an exclusion of entertainment that was painful to the Europeans, he
made arrangements to leave for his new post in France.
A specially written permission from General Pershing made it possible
for me to accompany him on that historic crossing between England and
France. Secret orders for the departure were given on the afternoon and
evening of June 12th. Before four o'clock of the next morning, June
13th, I breakfasted in the otherwise deserted dining-room of the Savoy
with the General and his staff.
Only a few sleepy-eyed attendants were in the halls and lower rooms of
the Savoy. In closed automobiles we were whisked away to Charing Cross
Station. We boarded a special train whose destination was unknown. The
entire party was again in the hands of the Intelligence Section of the
British Admiralty, and every possible means was taken to suppress all
definite information concerning the departure.
The special train containing General Pershing and his staff reached
Folkstone at about seven o'clock in the morning. We left the train at
the dockside and boarded the swift Channel steamer moored there. A small
vociferous contingent of English Tommies returning to the front from
leave in "Blighty" were crowded on all decks in the stern.
With life-boats swinging out over the side and every one wearing
life-preservers, we steamed out of Folkstone harbour to challenge the
submarine dangers of the Channel.
The American commander occupied a forward cabin suite on the upper deck.
His aides and secretaries had already transformed it into a
business-like apartment. In the General's mind there was no place or
time for any consideration of the dangers of the Channel crossing.
Although the very waters through which we dashed were known to be
infested with submarines which would have looked upon him as capital
prey, I don't believe the General ever gave them as much as a thought.
Every time I looked through the open door of his cabin, he was busy
dictating letters to his secretaries or orders or instructions to his
aides or conferring with his Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Harbord.
To the American commander, the hours necessary for the dash across the
Channel simply represented a little more time which he could devote to
the plans for the great work ahead of him.
Our ship was guarded on all sides and above. Swift torpedo destroyers
dashed to and fro under our bow and stern and circled us continually. In
the air above hydro-airplanes and dirigible balloons hovered over the
waters surrounding us, keeping sharp watch for the first appearance of
the dark sub-sea hulks of destruction.
[Illustration: THE ARRIVAL IN LONDON, SHOWING GENERAL PERSHING, MR.
PAGE, FIELD MARSHAL VISCOUNT FRENCH, LORD DERBY, AND ADMIRAL SIMS]
[Illustration: GENERAL PERSHING BOWING TO THE CROWD IN PARIS]
We did not learn until the next day that while we were making that
Channel crossing, the German air forces had crossed the Channel in a
daring daylight raid and were at that very hour dropping bombs on London
around the very hotel which General Pershing had just vacated. Some day,
after the war, I hope to ascertain whether the commander of that flight
of bombing Gothas started on his expedition over London with a special
purpose in view and whether that purpose concerned the supposed presence
there of the commander-in-chief of the American millions that were later
to change the entire complexion of the war against Germany.
It was a beautiful sunlight day. It was not long before the coast line
of France began to push itself up through the distant Channel mists and
make itself visible on the horizon. I stood in the bow of the ship
looking toward the coast line and silent with thoughts concerning the
momentousness of the approaching historical event.
It happened that I looked back amidships and saw a solitary figure
standing on the bridge of the vessel. It was General Pershing. He seemed
rapt in deep thought. He wore his cap straight on his head, the visor
shading his eyes. He stood tall and erect, his hands behind him, his
feet planted slightly apart to accommodate the gentle roll of the ship.
He faced due east and his eyes were directed toward the shores of that
foreign land which we were approaching. It seemed to me as I watched him
that his mind must have been travelling back more than a century to that
day in history when another soldier had stood on the bridge of another
vessel, crossing those same waters, but in an almost opposite direction.
It seemed to me that he must have been thinking of that historical
character who made just such a journey more than a hundred years
before,--a great soldier who left his homeland to sail to other foreign
shores halfway around the world and there to lend his sword in the fight
for the sacred principles of Democracy. It seemed to me that day that
Pershing thought of Lafayette.
As we drew close to the shore, I noticed an enormous concrete breakwater
extending out from the harbour entrance. It was surmounted by a wooden
railing and on the very end of it, straddling the rail, was a small
French boy. His legs were bare and his feet were encased in heavy wooden
shoes. On his head he wore a red stocking cap of the liberty type. As we
came within hailing distance, he gave to us the first greeting that came
from the shores of France to these first arriving American soldiers.
"_Vive l'Amérique!_" he shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth and
sending his shrill voice across the water to us. Pershing on the bridge
heard the salutation. He smiled, touched his hand to his hat and waved
to the lad on the railing.
We landed that day at Boulogne, June 13th, 1917. Military bands massed
on the quay, blared out the American National Anthem as the ship was
warped alongside the dock. Other ships in the busy harbour began blowing
whistles and ringing bells, loaded troop and hospital ships lying nearby
burst forth into cheering. The news spread like contagion along the
harbour front.
As the gangplank was lowered, French military dignitaries in dress
uniforms resplendent with gold braid, buttons and medals, advanced to
that part of the deck amidships where the General stood. They saluted
respectfully and pronounced elaborate addresses in their native tongue.
They were followed by numerous French Government officials in civilian
dress attire. The city, the department and the nation were represented
in the populous delegations who presented their compliments, and
conveyed to the American commander the of the entire people of France.
Under the train sheds on the dock, long stiff, standing ranks of French
poilus wearing helmets and their light blue overcoats pinned back at the
knees, presented arms as the General walked down the lines inspecting
them. At one end of the line, rank upon rank of French marines, and
sailors with their flat hats with red tassels, stood at attention
awaiting inspection.
The docks and train sheds were decorated with French and American flags
and yards and yards of the mutually-owned red, white and blue. Thousands
of spectators began to gather in the streets near the station, and their
continuous cheers sufficed to rapidly augment their own numbers.
Accompanied by a veteran French colonel, one of whose uniform sleeves
was empty, General Pershing, as a guest of the city of Boulogne, took a
motor ride through the streets of this busy port city. He was quickly
returned to the station, where he and his staff boarded a special train
for Paris. I went with them.
That train to Paris was, of necessity, slow. It proceeded slowly under
orders and with a purpose. No one in France, with the exception of a
select official circle, had been aware that General Pershing was
arriving that day until about thirty minutes before his ship was warped
into the dock at Boulogne. It has always been a mystery to me how the
French managed to decorate the station at Boulogne upon such short
notice.
Thus it was that the train crawled slowly toward Paris for the purpose
of giving the French capital time to throw off the coat of war
weariness that it had worn for three and a half years and don gala
attire for this occasion. Paris made full use of every minute of that
time, as we found when the train arrived at the French capital late in
the afternoon. The evening papers in Paris had carried the news of the
American commander's landing on the shores of France, and Paris was
ready to receive him as Paris had never before received a world's
notable.
The sooty girders of the Gare du Nord shook with cheers when the special
train pulled in. The aisles of the great terminal were carpeted with red
plush. A battalion of bearded poilus of the Two Hundred and
Thirty-seventh Colonial Regiment was lined up on the platform like a
wall of silent grey, bristling with bayonets and shiny trench helmets.
General Pershing stepped from his private car. Flashlights boomed and
batteries of camera men manoeuvred into positions for the lens
barrage. The band of the Garde Républicaine blared forth the strains of
the "Star Spangled Banner," bringing all the military to a halt and a
long standing salute. It was followed by the "Marseillaise."
At the conclusion of the train-side greetings and introductions, Marshal
Joffre and General Pershing walked down the platform together. The tops
of the cars of every train in the station were crowded with workmen. As
the tall, slender American commander stepped into view, the privileged
observers on the car-tops began to cheer.
A minute later, there was a terrific roar from beyond the walls of the
station. The crowds outside had heard the cheering within. They took it
up with thousands of throats. They made their welcome a ringing one.
Paris took Pershing by storm.
The General was ushered into the specially decorated reception chamber,
which was hung and carpeted with brilliant red velvet and draped with
the Allied flags. After a brief formal exchange of greetings in this
large chamber, he and his staff were escorted to the line of waiting
automobiles at the side of the station in the Rue de Roubaix.
Pershing's appearance in the open was the cue for wild, unstinted
applause and cheering from the crowds which packed the streets and
jammed the windows of the tall buildings opposite.
General Pershing and M. Painlevé, Minister of War, took seats in a large
automobile. They were preceded by a motor containing United States
Ambassador Sharp and former Premier Viviani. The procession started to
the accompaniment of martial music by massed military bands in the
courtyard of the station. It passed through the Rue de Compiègne, the
Rue de Lafayette, the Place de l'Opéra, the Boulevard des Capucines, the
Place de la Madeleine, the Rue Royale, to the Place de la Concorde.
There were some fifty automobiles in the line, the rear of which was
brought up by an enormous motor-bus load of the first American soldiers
from the ranks to pass through the streets of Paris.
The crowds overflowed the sidewalks. They extended from the building
walls out beyond the curbs and into the streets, leaving but a narrow
lane through which the motors pressed their way slowly and with the
exercise of much care. From the crowded balconies and windows
overlooking the route, women and children tossed down showers of flowers
and bits of coloured paper.
The crowds were so dense that other street traffic became marooned in
the dense sea of joyously excited and gesticulating French people.
Vehicles thus marooned immediately became islands of vantage. They were
soon covered with men and women and children, who climbed on top of them
and clung to the sides to get a better look at the khaki-clad occupants
of the autos.
Old grey-haired fathers of French fighting men bared their heads and
with tears streaming down their cheeks shouted greetings to the tall,
thin, grey-moustached American commander who was leading new armies to
the support of their sons. Women heaped armfuls of roses into the
General's car and into the cars of other American officers that followed
him. Paris street gamins climbed the lamp-posts and waved their caps and
wooden shoes and shouted shrilly.
American flags and red, white and blue bunting waved wherever the eye
rested. English-speaking Frenchmen proudly explained to the uninformed
that "Pershing" was pronounced "Peur-chigne" and not "Pair-shang."
Paris was not backward in displaying its knowledge of English. Gay
Parisiennes were eager to make use of all the English at their command,
that they might welcome the new arrivals in their native tongue.
Some of these women shouted "Hello," "Heep, heep, hourrah," "Good
morning," "How are you, keed?" and "Cock-tails for two." Some of the
expressions were not so inappropriate as they sounded.
Occasionally there came from the crowds a good old genuine American
whoop-em-up yell. This happened when the procession passed groups of
American ambulance workers and other sons of Uncle Sam, wearing the
uniforms of the French, Canadian and English Corps.
They joined with Australians and South African soldiers on leave to
cheer on the new-coming Americans with such spontaneous expressions as
"Come on, you Yanks," "Now let's get 'em," and "Eat 'em up, Uncle Sam."
The frequent stopping of the procession by the crowds made it happen
quite frequently that the automobiles were completely surrounded by
enthusiasts, who reached up and tried to shake hands with the occupants.
Pretty girls kissed their hands and blew the invisible confection toward
the men in khaki.
The bus-load of enlisted men bringing up the rear received dozens of
bouquets from the girls. The flowers were hurled at them from all
directions. Every two hundred feet the French would organise a rousing
shout, "_Vive l'Amérique!_" for them.
Being the passive recipients of this unusual adulation produced only
embarrassment on the part of the regulars who simply had to sit there,
smiling and taking it. Just to break the one-sided nature of the
demonstrations, one of the enlisted men stood up in his seat and,
addressing himself to his mates, shouted:
"Come on, fellows, let's give 'em a 'veever' ourselves. Now all
together."
The bus-load rose to its feet like one man and shouted "Veever for
France." Their "France" rhymed with "pants," so that none of the French
understood it, but they did understand the sentiment behind the husky
American lungs.
Through such scenes as these, the procession reached the great Place de
la Concorde. In this wide, paved, open space an enormous crowd had
assembled. As the autos appeared the cheering, the flower throwing, the
tumultuous kiss-blowing began. It increased in intensity as the motors
stopped in front of the Hôtel Crillon into which General Pershing
disappeared, followed by his staff.
Immediately the cheering changed to a tremendous clamorous demand for
the General's appearance on the balcony in front of his apartments.
"_Au balcon, au balcon_," were the cries that filled the Place. The
crowd would not be denied.
General Pershing stepped forth on the balcony. He stood behind the low
marble railing, and between two enormous white-stoned columns. A cluster
of the Allied flags was affixed to each column. The American commander
surveyed the scene in front of him.
There are no trees or shrubbery in the vast Place de la Concorde. Its
broad paved surface is interrupted only by artistically placed groups of
statuary and fountains.
To the General's right, as he faced the Place, were the trees and
greenery of the broad Champs Elysées. On his left were the fountains and
the gardens of the Tuilleries. At the further end of the Place, five
hundred feet straight in front of him, were the banks and the ornamental
bridges of the Seine, beyond which could be seen the columned façade of
the Chambre des Deputies, and above and beyond that, against the blue
sky of a late June afternoon, rose the majestic golden dome of the
Invalides, over the tomb of Napoleon.
General Pershing looked down upon the sea of faces turned up toward him,
and then it seemed that nature desired to play a part in the ceremony of
that great day. A soft breeze from the Champs Elysées touched the
cluster of flags on the General's right and from all the Allied emblems
fastened there it selected one flag.
The breeze tenderly caught the folds of this flag and wafted them across
the balcony on which the General bowed. He saw and recognised that flag.
He extended his hand, caught the flag in his fingers and pressed it to
his lips. All France and all America represented in that vast throng
that day cheered to the mighty echo when Pershing kissed the tri-colour
of France.
It was a tremendous, unforgettable incident. It was exceeded by no other
incident during those days of receptions and ceremonies, except one.
That was an incident which occurred not in the presence of thousands,
but in a lonely old burial ground on the outskirts of Paris. This
happened several days after the demonstration in the Place de la
Concorde.
On that day of bright sunshine, General Pershing and a small party of
officers, French and American, walked through the gravel paths of Picpus
Cemetery in the suburbs of Paris, where the bodies of hundreds of those
who made the history of France are buried.
Several French women in deep mourning courtesied as General Pershing
passed. His party stopped in front of two marble slabs that lay side by
side at the foot of a granite monument. From the General's party a
Frenchman stepped forward and, removing his high silk hat, he addressed
the small group in quiet, simple tones and well-chosen English words. He
was the Marquis de Chambrun. He said:
"On this spot one can say that the historic ties between our nations
are not the result of the able schemes of skilful diplomacy. No, the
principles of liberty, justice and independence are the glorious
links between our nations.
"These principles have enlisted the hearts of our democracies. They
have made the strength of their union and have brought about the
triumph of their efforts.
"To-day, when, after nearly a century and a half, America and France
are engaged in a conflict for the same cause upon which their early
friendship was based, we are filled with hope and confidence.
"We know that our great nations are together with our Allies
invincible, and we rejoice to think that the United States and
France are reunited in the fight for liberty, and will reconsecrate,
in a new victory, their everlasting friendship of which your
presence to-day at this grave is an exquisite and touching token."
General Pershing advanced to the tomb and placed upon the marble slab an
enormous wreath of pink and white roses. Then he stepped back. He
removed his cap and held it in both hands in front of him. The bright
sunlight shone down on his silvery grey hair. Looking down at the grave,
he spoke in a quiet, impressive tone four simple, all-meaning words:
"Lafayette, we are here."
CHAPTER III
THE LANDING OF THE FIRST AMERICAN CONTINGENT IN FRANCE
The first executive work of the American Expeditionary Forces overseas
was performed in a second floor suite of the Crillon Hotel on the Place
de la Concorde in Paris. This suite was the first temporary headquarters
of the American commander.
The tall windows of the rooms looked down on the historic Place which
was the scene of so many momentous events in French history. The windows
were hardly a hundred yards from the very spot where the guillotine
dripped red in the days of the Terror. It was here that the heads of
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette dropped into the basket.
During General Pershing's comparatively brief occupancy of these
headquarters, the reception rooms were constantly banked with fresh-cut
flowers, the daily gifts of the French people,--flowers that were
replenished every twenty-four hours. The room was called the "Salon des
Batailles."
In one corner of the room, near a window overlooking the Place, was
General Pershing's table. It was adorned with a statuette of General
Joffre and a cluster of miniatures of captured German standards.
Extending from the floor to the ceiling on one of the walls were two
enormous oil copies of "La Bataille de Fontenoy" and the "Passage du
Rhin." A large flag-draped photograph of President Wilson occupied a
place of honour on an easel at one end of the room.
During the first week that General Pershing stopped at the hotel, the
sidewalk and street beneath his windows were constantly crowded with
people. The crowds waited there all day long, just in the hope of
catching a glimpse of the American commander if he should happen to be
leaving or returning to his quarters. It seemed as if every Parisienne
and Parisian had taken upon herself and himself the special duty of
personally observing General Pershing, of waving him an enthusiastic
"vive" and possibly being within the scope of his returning salute.
But the American commander would not permit demonstrations and
celebrations to interfere with the important duties that he faced. Two
days are all that were devoted to these social ceremonies which the
enthusiastic and hospitable French would have made almost endless.
Dinners, receptions and parades were ruthlessly erased from the working
day calendar. The American commander sounded the order "To work" with
the same martial precision as though the command had been a sudden call
"To arms."
On the morning of the third day after General Pershing's arrival in
Paris, the typewriters began clicking incessantly and the telephones
began ringing busily in the large building which was occupied on that
day as the headquarters of the American Expeditionary Forces in France.
This building was Numbers 27 and 31 Rue de Constantine. It faced the
trees and shrubbery bordering the approach to the Seine front of the
Invalides. The building was two stories high with grey-white walls and a
mansard roof. At that time it could be immediately identified as the one
in front of which stood a line of American motor cars, as the one where
trim United States regulars walked sentry post past the huge doors
through which frequent orderlies dashed with messages.
Ten days before, the building had been the residence of a Marquis and
had contained furniture and art valued at millions of francs. All of
those home-like characteristics had been removed so effectively that
even the name of the kindly Marquis had been forgotten. I am sure that
he, himself, at the end of that ten-day period could not have recognised
his converted salons where the elaborate ornamentation had been changed
to the severe simplicity typical of a United States Army barracks.
General Pershing's office was located on the second floor of the house
and in one corner. In those early days it was carpetless and contained
almost a monkish minimum of furniture. There were the General's chair,
and his desk on which there stood a peculiar metal standard for one of
those one-piece telephone sets with which Americans are familiar only in
French stage settings. A book-case with glass doors, a stenographer's
table and chair, and two red plush upholstered chairs, for visitors,
comprised the furniture inventory of the room.
One of the inner walls of the room was adorned with a large mirror with
a gilt frame, and in the other wall was a plain fireplace. There were
tall windows in the two outer walls which looked out on the Rue de
Constantine and the Rue de Grenelle. Opposite the Rue de Grenelle
windows there was a small, deeply shaded park where children rolled
hoops during the heat of the day and where convalescent French soldiers
sat and watched the children at play or perhaps discussed the war and
other things with the nurse-maids.
This was the first workshop in France of the American
commander-in-chief. Adjoining rooms to the left and right were occupied
by the General's staff and his aides. And it was in these rooms that
the overseas plans for the landing of the first American armed
contingent in France were formulated.
It is safe now to mention that St. Nazaire on the west coast of France
was the port at which our first armed forces disembarked. I was in Paris
when the information of their coming was whispered to a few chosen
correspondents who were to be privileged to witness this historical
landing.
This was the first time in the history of our nation that a large force
of armed Americans was to cross the seas to Europe. For five and a half
months prior to the date of their landing, the ruthless submarine policy
of the Imperial German Government had been in effect, and our troop
ships with those initial thousands of American soldiers represented the
first large Armada to dare the ocean crossing since Germany had
instituted her sub-sea blockade zone in February of that same year.
Thus it was that any conversation concerning the fact that our men were
on the seas and at the mercy of the U-boats was conducted with the
greatest of care behind closed doors. In spite of the efforts of the
French agents of contra espionage, Paris and all France, for that
matter, housed numerous spies. There were some anxious moments while
that first contingent was on the water.
Our little group of correspondents was informed that we should be
conducted by American officers to the port of landing, but the name of
that port was withheld from us. By appointment we met at a Paris
railroad station where we were provided with railroad tickets. We took
our places in compartments and rode for some ten or twelve hours,
arriving early the next morning at St. Nazaire.
This little village on the coast of Brittany was tucked away there in
the golden sands of the seashore. Its houses had walls of white stucco
and gabled roofs of red tile. In the small rolling hills behind it were
green orchards and fields of yellow wheat. The villagers, old women in
their starched white head-dresses and old men wearing faded blue smocks
and wooden shoes, were unmindful of the great event for which history
had destined their village.
On the night before the landing the townspeople had retired with no
knowledge of what was to happen on the following day. In the morning
they awoke to find strange ships that had come in the night, riding
safely at anchor in the harbour. The wooden shutters began to pop open
with bangs as excited heads, encased in peaked flannel nightcaps,
protruded themselves from bedroom windows and directed anxious queries
to those who happened to be abroad at that early hour.
St. Nazaire came to life more quickly that morning than ever before in
its history. The Mayor of the town was one of the busiest figures on the
street. In high hat and full dress attire, he hurried about trying to
assemble the village orchestra of octogenarian fiddlers and flute
players to play a welcome for the new arrivals. The townspeople
neglected their _café au lait_ to rush down to the quay to look at the
new ships.
The waters of the harbour sparkled in the early morning sunlight. The
dawn had been grey and misty, but now nature seemed to smile. The
strange ships from the other side of the world were grey in hulk but now
there were signs of life and colour aboard each one of them.
Beyond the troop ships lay the first United States warships, units of
that remarkable fighting organisation which in the year that was to
immediately follow that very day were to escort safely across three
thousand miles of submarine-infested water more than a million and a
half American soldiers.
The appearance of these first warships of ours was novel to the French
townspeople. Our ships had peculiar looking masts, masts which the
townspeople compared to the baskets which the French peasants carry on
their backs when they harvest the lettuce. Out further from the shore
were our low-lying torpedo destroyers, pointed toward the menace of the
outer deep.
Busy puffing tugs were warping the first troop ship toward the
quay-side. Some twenty or thirty American sailors and soldiers, who had
been previously landed by launch to assist in the disembarkation, were
handling the lines on the dock.
When but twenty feet from the quay-side, the successive decks of the
first troop ship took on the appearance of mud-coloured layers from the
khaki uniforms of the stiff standing ranks of our men. A military band
on the forward deck was playing the national anthems of France and
America and every hand was being held at the salute.
As the final bars of the "Star Spangled Banner" crashed out and every
saluting hand came snappily down, one American soldier on an upper deck
leaned over the rail and shouted to a comrade on the shore his part of
the first exchange of greetings between our fighting men upon this
historic occasion. Holding one hand to his lips, he seriously enquired:
"Say, do they let the enlisted men in the saloons here?"
[Illustration: THE FIRST AMERICAN FOOT ON FRENCH SOIL]
[Illustration: THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF FRANCE]
Another soldier standing near the stern rail had a different and more
serious interrogation to make. He appeared rather blasé about it as he
leaned over the rail and, directing his voice toward a soldier on the
dock, casually demanded:
"Say, where the Hell is all this trouble, anyhow?"
These two opening sorties produced a flood of others. The most common
enquiry was: "What's the name of this place?" and "Is this France or
England?" When answers were made to these questions, the recipients of
the information, particularly if they happened to be "old-timers in the
army," would respond by remarking, "Well, it's a damn sight better than
the Mexican border."
As our men came over the ship's side and down the runways, there was no
great reception committee awaiting them. Among the most interested
spectators of the event were a group of stolid German prisoners of war
and the two French soldiers guarding them. The two Frenchmen talked
volubly with a wealth of gesticulation, while the Germans maintained
their characteristic glumness.
The German prisoners appeared to be anything but discouraged at the
sight. Some of them even wore a smile that approached the supercilious.
With some of them that smile seemed to say: "You can't fool us. We know
these troops are not Americans. They are either Canadians or Australians
coming from England. Our German U-boats won't let Americans cross the
ocean."
Some of those German prisoners happened to have been in America before
the war. They spoke English and recognised the uniforms of our men.
Their silent smiles seemed to say: "Well, they don't look so good at
that. We have seen better soldiers. And, besides, there is only a
handful of them. Not enough can come to make any difference. Anyhow, it
is too late now. The war will be over before any appreciable number can
get here."
But the stream of khaki continued to pour out of the ship's side.
Company after company of our men, loaded down with packs and full field
equipment, lined up on the dock and marched past the group of German
prisoners.
"We're passing in review for you, Fritzie," one irrepressible from our
ranks shouted, as the marching line passed within touching distance of
the prisoner group. The Germans responded only with quizzical little
smiles and silence.
Escorted by our own military bands, the regiments marched through the
main street of the village. The bands played "Dixie"--a new air to
France. The regiments as a whole did not present the snappy, marching
appearance that they might have presented. There was a good reason for
this. Sixty per cent. of them were recruits. It had been wisely decided
to replace many of the old regular army men in the ranks with newly
enlisted men, so that these old veterans could remain in America and
train the new drafts.
However, that which impressed the French people was the individual
appearance of these samples of American manhood. Our men were tall and
broad and brawny. They were young and vigorous. Their eyes were keen and
snappy. Their complexions ranged in shade from the swarthy sun-tanned
cheeks of border veterans to the clear pink skins of city youngsters.
But most noticeable of all to the French people were the even white rows
of teeth which our men displayed when they smiled. Good dentistry and
clean mouths are essentially American.
The villagers of St. Nazaire, old men and women, girls and school
children, lined the curbs as our men marched through the town. The line
of march was over a broad esplanade that circled the sandy beach of the
bay, and then wound upward into the higher ground back of the town. The
road here was bordered on either side with ancient stone walls covered
with vines and over the tops of the walls there extended fruit-laden
branches to tempt our men with their ripe, red lusciousness. As they
marched through the heat and dust of that June day, many succumbed to
the temptations and paid for their appetites with inordinately violent
colics that night.
A camp site had been partially prepared for their reception. It was
located close to a French barracks. The French soldiers and gangs of
German prisoners, who had been engaged in this work, had no knowledge of
the fact that they were building the first American cantonment in
France. They thought they were constructing simply an extension of the
French encampment.
That first contingent, composed of United States Infantrymen and
Marines, made its first camp in France with the smallest amount of
confusion, considering the fact that almost three-quarters of them
hadn't been in uniform a month. It was but several hours after arriving
at the camp that the smoke was rising from the busy camp stoves and the
aroma of American coffee, baked beans and broiled steaks was in the air.
On the afternoon of that first day some of the men were given permission
to visit the town. They began to take their first lessons in French as
they went from café to café in futile efforts to connect up with such
unknown commodities as cherry pie or ham and egg sandwiches. Upon
meeting one another in the streets, our men would invariably ask: "Have
you come across any of these FROGS that talk American?"
There was nothing disrespectful about the terms Frogs or Froggies as
applied to their French comrades in arms. American officers hastened to
explain to French officers that the one piece of information concerning
France most popularly known in America was that it was the place where
people first learned to eat frog legs and snails.
The Frenchmen, on the other hand, were somewhat inclined to believe that
these first Americans didn't live up to the European expectations of
Americans. Those European expectations had been founded almost entirely
upon the translations of dime novels and moving picture thrillers of the
Wild West and comedy variety.
Although our men wore the high, broad-brimmed felt hats, they didn't
seem sufficiently cowboyish. Although the French people waited
expectantly, none of these Americans dashed through the main street of
the village on bucking bronchos, holding their reins in their teeth and
at the same time firing revolvers from either hand. Moreover, none of
our men seemed to conclude their dinners in the expected American
fashion of slapping one another in the face with custard pies.
There was to be seen on the streets of St. Nazaire that day some
representative black Americans, who had also landed in that historical
first contingent. There was a strange thing about these negroes.
It will be remembered that in the early stages of our participation in
the war it had been found that there was hardly sufficient khaki cloth
to provide uniforms for all of our soldiers. That had been the case with
these American negro soldiers.
But somewhere down in Washington, somehow or other, some one resurrected
an old, large, heavy iron key and this, inserted into an ancient rusty
lock, had opened some long forgotten doors in one of the Government
arsenals. There were revealed old dust-covered bundles wrapped up in
newspapers, yellow with age, and when these wrappings of the past were
removed, there were seen the uniforms of old Union blue that had been
laid away back in '65--uniforms that had been worn by men who fought and
bled and died to free the first black American citizens.
And here on this foreign shore, on this day in June more than half a
century later, the sons and the grandsons of those same freed slaves
wore those same uniforms of Union blue as they landed in France to fight
for a newer freedom.
Some of these negroes were stevedores from the lower Mississippi levees.
They sang as they worked in their white army undershirts, across the
chest of which they had penciled in blue and red, strange mystic
devices, religious phrases and hoodoo signs, calculated to contribute
the charm of safety to the running of the submarine blockade.
Two of these American negroes, walking up the main street of St.
Nazaire, saw on the other side of the thoroughfare a brother of colour
wearing the lighter blue uniform of a French soldier. This French negro
was a Colonial black from the north of Africa and of course had spoken
nothing but French from the day he was born.
One of the American negroes crossed the street and accosted him.
"Looka here, boy," he enquired good-naturedly, "what can you all tell me
about this here wah?"
"Comment, monsieur?" responded the non-understanding French black, and
followed the rejoinder with a torrent of excited French.
The American negro's mouth fell open. For a minute he looked startled,
and then he bulged one large round white eye suspiciously at the French
black, while he inwardly debated on the possibility that he had become
suddenly colour blind. Having reassured himself, however, that his
vision was not at fault, he made a sudden decision and started on a new
tack.
"Now, never mind that high-faluting language," he said. "You all just
tell me what you know about this here wah and quit you' putting on
aihs."
The puzzled French negro could only reply with another explosion of
French interrogations, coupled with vigorous gesticulations. The
American negro tried to talk at the same time and both of them
endeavouring to make the other understand, increased the volumes of
their tones until they were standing there waving their arms and
shouting into one another's faces. The American negro gave it up.
"My Gawd," he said, shaking his head as he recrossed the street and
joined his comrades, "this is shore some funny country. They got the
mos' ignorantest niggers I ever saw."
Still, those American blacks were not alone in their difficulties over
the difference in languages. I discussed the matter with one of our
white regulars who professed great experience, having spent almost one
entire day on mutual guard with a French sentry over a pile of baggage.
"You know," he said, "I don't believe these Frenchies ever will learn to
speak English."
Our veterans from Mexico and the border campaigns found that their
smattering of Spanish did not help them much. But still every one seemed
to manage to get along all right. Our soldiers and the French soldiers
in those early days couldn't understand each other's languages, but they
could understand each other.
This strange paradox was analysed for me by a young American Lieutenant
who said he had made a twelve-hour study of the remarkable camaraderie
that had immediately sprung up between the fighting men of France and
the fighting men of America. In explaining this relationship, he said:
"You see, we think the French are crazy," he said, "and the French know
damn well we are."
Those of our men who had not brought small French and English
dictionaries with them, made hurried purchases of such handy articles
and forthwith began to practice. The French people did likewise.
I saw one young American infantryman seated at a table in front of one
of the sidewalk cafés on the village square. He was dividing his
attention between a fervent admiration of the pretty French waitress,
who stood smiling in front of him, and an intense interest in the pages
of his small hand dictionary.
She had brought his glass of beer and he had paid for it, but there
seemed to be a mutual urge for further conversation. The American would
look first at her and then he would look through the pages of the book
again. Finally he gave slow and painful enunciation of the following
request:
"Mad-am-moy-sell, donnie moy oon baysa."
She laughed prettily as she caught his meaning almost immediately, and
she replied:
"Doughboy, ware do you get zat stuff?"
"Aw, Hell," said the young Infantryman, as he closed the book with a
snap. "I knew they'd let those sailors ashore before us."
From the very first day of the landing we began to learn things from the
French and they began to learn things from us. Some of our men learned
that it was quite possible to sip an occasional glass of beer or light
wine without feeling a sudden inclination to buy and consume all there
remained in the café.
The French soldiers were intensely interested in the equipment of our
land forces and in the uniforms of both our soldiers and sailors. They
sought by questions to get an understanding of the various insignia by
which the Americans designated their rank.
One thing that they noticed was a small, round white pasteboard tag
suspended on a yellow cord from the upper left hand breast pocket of
either the blue jackets of our sailors or the khaki shirts of our
soldiers. So prevalent was this tag, which in reality marked the wearer
as the owner of a package of popular tobacco, that the French almost
accepted it as uniform equipment.
The attitude of our first arriving American soldiers toward the German
prisoners who worked in gangs on construction work in the camps and
rough labour along the docks was a curious one. Not having yet
encountered in battle the brothers of these same docile appearing
captives, our men were even inclined to treat the prisoners with
deference almost approaching admiration.
In a measure, the Germans returned this feeling. The arrival of the
Americans was really cheering to them. The prisoners disliked the French
because they had been taught to do so from childhood. They hated the
English because that was the hate with which they went into battle.
It sounds incongruous now but, nevertheless, it was a fact then that the
German prisoners confined at that first American sea-base really seemed
to like the American soldiers. Maybe it was because any change of
masters or guards was a relief in the uneventful existence which had
been theirs since the day of their capture. Perhaps the feeling was one
of distinct kindred, based on a familiarity with Americans and American
customs--a familiarity which had been produced by thousands of letters
which Germans in America had written to their friends in Germany before
the war. On the other hand, it may simply have been by reason of
America's official disavowal of any animosity toward the German people.
One day I watched some of those prisoners unloading supplies at one of
the docks in St. Nazaire, more or less under the eyes of an American
sentry who stood nearby. One group of four Germans were engaged in
carrying what appeared to be a large wooden packing case. Casually, and
as if by accident, the case was dropped to the ground and cracked.
Instantly one of the prisoners' hands began to furtively investigate the
packages revealed by the break. The other prisoners busied themselves as
if preparing to lift the box again. The first German pulled a spoon from
his bootleg, plunged it into the crevice in the broken box and withdrew
it heaped with granulated sugar. With a quick movement he conveyed the
stolen sweet to his mouth and that gapping orifice closed quickly on the
sugar, while his stoical face immediately assumed its characteristic
downcast look. He didn't dare move his lips or jaws for fear of
detection.
Of course these Germans had been receiving but a scant ration of sugar,
but their lot had been no worse than that of the French soldiers
guarding them previously, who got no sugar either. American soldiers
then guarding those prisoners reported only a few of them for
confinement for these human thefts.
Surreptitiously, the American guards would sometimes leave cigarettes
where the prisoners could get them, and even though the action did
violate the rules of discipline, it helped to develop further the human
side of the giver and the recipient and at the same time had the result
of making the prisoners do more work for their new guards.
It should be specially stated that lenience could not and was not
extended to the point of fraternisation. But the relationship that
seemed to exist between the German prisoners and American soldiers at
that early date revealed undeniably the absence of any mutual hate.
Around one packing case on the dock I saw, one day, a number of German
prisoners who were engaged in unpacking bundles from America, and
passing them down a line of waiting hands that relayed them to a freight
car. One of the Germans leaning over the case straightened up with a
rumpled newspaper in his hand. He had removed it from a package. A look
of indescribable joy came across his face.
"Deutscher, Deutscher," he cried, pointing to the Gothic type. The paper
was a copy of the New York _Staats-Zeitung_.
The lot of those prisoners was not an unhappy one. To me it seemed very
doubtful whether even a small percentage of them would have accepted
liberty if it carried with it the necessity of returning to German
trenches.
Those men knew what war was. They had crossed No Man's Land. Now they
were far back from the blazing front in a comparatively peaceful country
beyond the sound of the guns. If their lot at that time was to be
characterised as "war," then in the opinion of those Germans, war was
not what Sherman said it was.
Their attitude more resembled that of the unkissed spinster who was
taken captive when the invading army captured the town. She flung
herself into the arms of the surprised commander of the invaders and
smilingly whispered, "War is war."
The German prison camps at St. Nazaire were inspected by General
Pershing on the third day of the American landing when he, with his
staff, arrived from Paris. The General and his party arrived early in
the morning in a pouring rain. The American commander-in-chief then held
the rank of a Major General. In the harbour was the flagship of Rear
Admiral Gleaves.
There was no delay over the niceties of etiquette when the question
arose as to whether the Rear Admiral should call on the Major General or
the Major General should call on the Rear Admiral.
The Major General settled the subject with a sentence. He said, "The
point is that I want to see him," and with no further ado about it
General Pershing and his staff visited the Admiral on his flagship.
After his inspection of our first contingent, General Pershing said:
"This is the happiest day of the busy days which I have spent in
France preparing for the arrival of the first contingent. To-day I
have seen our troops safe on French soil, landing from transports
that were guarded in their passage overseas by the resourceful
vigilance of our Navy.
"Now, our task as soldiers lies before us. We hope, with the aid of
the French leaders and experts who have placed all the results of
their experience at our disposal, to make our forces worthy in skill
and in determination, to fight side by side in arms with the armies
of France."
CHAPTER IV
THROUGH THE SCHOOL OF WAR
Clip the skyline from the Blue Ridge, arch it over with arboreal vistas
from the forests of the Oregon, reflect the two in the placid waters of
the Wisconsin--and you will have some conception of the perfect Eden of
beauty in which the first contingent of the American Expeditionary
Forces trained in France.
Beckoning white roads curl through the rolling hills like ribbons of
dental cream squeezed out evenly on rich green velour. Châteaux, pearl
white centres in settings of emerald green, push their turrets and
bastions above the mossy plush of the mountain side. Lazy little streams
silver the valleys with their aimless wanderings.
It was a peaceful looking garden of pastoral delight that United States
soldiers had picked out for their martial training ground. It was a
section whose physical appearance was untouched by the three years of
red riot and roar that still rumbled away just a few miles to the north.
The training area was located in the Vosges, in east central France. By
train, it was a nine-hour day trip from Paris. It was located about an
hour's motor ride behind the front lines, which at that time were close
to the north of the cities of Nancy and Toul.
The troops were billeted in a string of small villages that comprised
one side of the letter V. French troops and instructing officers
occupied the other converging line of the letter. Between the two lines
was the area in which our men trained. Where the two lines converged
was the town of Gondercourt, the headquarters of Major General Seibert,
the Commander of the first American division in France.
The area had long since been stripped of male civilian population that
could be utilised for the French ranks. The war had taken the men and
the boys, but had left the old people and children to till the fields,
tend the cattle, prune the hedges and trim the roads.
With the advent of our troops, the restful scene began to change.
Treeless ridges carpeted with just enough green to veil the rocky
formation of the ground began to break out with a superficial rash of
the colour of fresh earth. In rows and circles, by angles and zigzags,
the training trenches began to take form daily under the pick and shovel
exercises of French and Americans working side by side.
Along the white roads, clay-coloured rectangles that moved evenly, like
brown caravans, represented the marching units of United States troops.
The columns of bluish-grey that passed them with shorter, quicker steps,
were companies of those tireless Frenchmen, who after almost three years
of the front line real thing, now played at a mimic war of make-believe,
with taller and heavier novitiates.
Those French troops were Alpine Chasseurs--the famous Blue Devils. They
wore dark blue caps, which resemble tam o'shanters, but are not. They
were proud of the distinction which their uniform gave them. They were
proud of their great fighting records. One single battalion of them
boasted that of the twenty-six officers who led it into the first fight
at the opening of the war, only four of them existed.
It was a great advantage for our men to train under such instructors.
Correspondents who had been along the fronts before America's entry
into the war, had a great respect for the soldierly capacity of these
same fighting Frenchmen; not only these sturdy young sons of France who
wore the uniform, but the older French soldiers--ranging in age from
forty to fifty-five years--who had been away to the fronts since the
very beginning of the war.
We had seen them many, many times. Miles upon miles of them, in the
motor trucks along the roads. Twenty of them rode in each truck. They
sat on two side benches facing the centre of the trucks. They were men
actually bent forward from the weight of the martial equipment strapped
to their bodies. They seemed to carry inordinate loads--knapsacks,
blanket roll, spare shoes, haversacks, gas masks, water bottles,
ammunition belts, grenade aprons, rifle, bayonet and helmet.
Many of them were very old men. They had thick black eyebrows and wore
long black beards. They were tired, weary men. We had seen them in the
camions, each man resting his head on the shoulder of the man seated
beside him. The dust of the journey turned their black beards grey. On
the front seat of the camion a sleepless one handled the wheel, while
beside him the relief driver slept on the seat.
Thus they had been seen, mile upon mile of them, thousand upon thousand
of them, moving ever up and down those roads that paralleled the six
hundred and fifty miles of front from Flanders to the Alps--moving
always. Thus they had been seen night and day, winter and summer, for
more than three long years, always trying to be at the place where the
enemy struck. The world knows and the world is thankful that they always
were there.
It was under such veteran instructors as these that our first Americans
in France trained, there, in the Vosges, in a garden spot of beauty, in
the province that boasts the birthplace of Jeanne d'Arc. On the few
leave days, many of our men, with permission, would absent themselves
from camp, and make short pilgrimages over the hills to the little town
of Domremy to visit the house in which the Maid of Orleans was born.
Our men were eager to learn. I observed them daily at their training
tasks. One day when they had progressed as far as the use of the New
French automatic rifles, I visited one of the ranges to witness the
firing.
Just under the crest of the hill was a row of rifle pits, four feet deep
in the slaty white rock. On the opposite hill, across the marshy hollow,
at a distance of two hundred yards, was a line of wooden targets,
painted white with black circles. Poised at intervals on the forward
edge of the pits were a number of automatic rifles of the type used by
the French army. An American soldier and a French soldier attended each
one, the former in the firing position and the latter instructing.
The rear bank of the pits was lined with French and American officers.
The order, "Commence firing," was given, and white spurts of rock dust
began dancing on the opposite hill, while splinters began to fly from
some of the wooden targets.
At one end of the firing trench a raw American recruit, who admitted
that he had never handled an automatic rifle before, flushed to his
hat-brim and gritted his teeth viciously as his shots, registering ten
feet above the targets, brought forth laughter and exclamations from the
French soldiers nearby. He rested on his gun long enough to ask an
interpreter what the Frenchmen were talking about.
"They say," the interpreter replied, "that you belong to the
anti-aircraft service."
The recruit tightened his grip on his rifle and lowered his aim with
better results. At the end of his first fifty shots he was placing one
in three on the target and the others were registering close in.
"Bravo!" came from a group of French officers at the other end of the
trench, where another American, older in the service, had signalised his
first experiences with the new firearm by landing thirty targets out of
thirty-four shots, and four of the targets were bull's-eyes. The French
instructors complimented him on the excellence of his marksmanship,
considering his acknowledged unfamiliarity with the weapon.
Further along the depression, in another set of opposing trenches and
targets, a row of French machine guns manned by young Americans, sprayed
lead with ear-splitting abandon, sometimes reaching the rate of five
hundred shots a minute. Even with such rapidity, the Americans
encountered no difficulties with the new pieces.
French veterans, who for three years had been using those same guns
against German targets, hovered over each piece, explaining in half
French and half English, and answering in the same mixture questions on
ways and means of getting the best results from the weapons.
Here a chasseur of the ranks would stop the firing of one American
squad, with a peremptory, "Regardez." He would proceed with pantomime
and more or less connected words, carrying the warning that firing in
such a manner would result in jamming the guns, a condition which would
be fatal in case the targets in the other trenches were charging upon
the guns.
Then he showed the correct procedure, and the Yanks, watchfully alert to
his every move, changed their method and signified their pleasure with
the expression of "Trays beans," and "Mercy's."
"Do you think it would have resulted in a quicker and possibly more
understanding training if these Americans were instructed by British
veterans instead of French?" I asked an American Staff Officer, who was
observing the demonstration.
"I may have thought so at first," the officer replied, "but not now. The
explanations which our men in the ranks are receiving from the French
soldiers in the ranks are more than word instructions. They are object
lessons in which gesticulation and pantomime are used to act out the
movement or subject under discussion.
"The French are great actors, and I find that American soldiers
unacquainted with the French language are able to understand the French
soldiers who are unacquainted with the English language much better than
the American officers, similarly handicapped, can understand the French
officers.
"I should say that some time would be lost if all of our troops were to
be trained by French soldiers, but I believe that this division under
French tutelage will be better able to teach the new tactics to the new
divisions that are to follow than it would be if it had speedily passed
through training camps like the British system, for instance, where it
must be taken for granted that verbal, instead of actual, instruction is
the means of producing a speeding up of training."
Thus it was that our first American contingent in France was in training
for something more than service on the line. It rapidly qualified into
an expert corps from which large numbers of capable American instructors
were later withdrawn and used for the training of our millions of men
that followed.
This achievement was only accomplished by the exercise of strict
disciplinarian measures by every American officer in the then small
expedition. One day, in the early part of August, 1917, a whirlwind
swept through the string of French villages where the first contingent
was training.
The whirlwind came down the main road in a cloud of dust. It sped on the
fleeting tires of a high-powered motor which flew from its dust-grey
hood a red flag with two white stars. It blew into the villages and out,
through the billets and cook tents, mess halls, and picket lines. The
whirlwind was John J. Pershing.
The commander-in-chief "hit" the training area early in the morning and
his coming was unannounced. Before evening he had completed a stern
inspection which had left only one impression in the minds of the
inspected, and that impression was to the effect that more snap and pep,
more sharpness and keenness were needed.
At the conclusion of the inspection all of the officers of the
contingent were agreeing that the whirlwind visitation was just what had
been needed to arouse the mettle and spirit in an organisation comprised
of over fifty per cent. raw recruits. Many of the officers themselves
had been included in the pointed criticisms which the commander directed
against the persons and things that met disfavour in his eyes.
The night following that inspection or "raid," as it was called, it
would have been safe to say that nowhere in the area was there a recruit
who did not know, in a manner that he would not forget, the correct
position of a soldier--the precise, stiff, snappy attitude to be
presented when called to attention. The enlisted men whose heels did not
click when they met, whose shoulders slouched, whose chins missed the
proper angle, whose eyes were not "front" during the inspection,
underwent embarrassing penalties, calculated to make them remember.
"Have this man fall out," General Pershing directed, as he stood before
a recruit whose attitude appeared sloppy; "teach him the position of a
soldier and have him stand at attention for five minutes."
One company which had prided itself upon having some of the best
embryonic bomb-throwers in the contingent, contributed a number of
victims to the above penalties, and as the General's train of
automobiles swirled out of the village, the main street seemed to be
dotted with silent khaki-clad statues doing their five minute sentences
of rigidity.
"What about your men's shoes?" General Pershing asked a captain sharply,
while he directed his eyes along a company line of feet whose casings
seemed to be approaching the shabby.
"We need hobnails, sir," replied the captain.
"Get them"--the words snapped out from beneath Pershing's close-cropped
grey moustache. "Requisition hobnails. Your men need them. Get them from
the quartermaster."
The American commander stepped into the darkness of a large stone-walled
stable, which represented the billeting accommodations for ten American
soldiers. A dog curled in the doorway growled and showed its teeth. The
General stepped past the menacing animal, and without heeding its snarls
close to his heels, started questioning the sergeants in charge.
"Are any cattle kept in here?" he asked.
"No, sir," replied the sergeant.
"Detail more men with brooms and have it aired thoroughly every day."
Observed from a distance, when he was speaking with battalion and
regimental commanders, the commander manifested no change of attitude
from that which marked his whole inspection. He frequently employed his
characteristic gesture of emphasis--the wadding of his left palm with
his right fist or the energetic opening and closing of the right hand.
When the Pershing whirlwind sped out of the training area that night,
after the first American inspection in France, it left behind it a
thorough realisation of the sternness of the work which was ahead of our
army.
The development of a rigid discipline was the American commander's first
objective in the training schedules which he ordered his staff to
devise. After this schedule had been in operation not ten days, I
happened to witness a demonstration of American discipline which might
be compared to an improved incident of Damocles dining under the
suspended sword at the feast of Dionysius.
A battalion of American Infantry was at practice on one of the training
fields. The grenade-throwing exercises had been concluded and the order
had been given to "fall in" preparatory to the march back to the camp.
Upon the formation of the long company lines, end on end down the side
of the hill, the order, "attention," was sharply shouted bringing the
men to the rigid pose which permits the eyes to wander neither to the
right nor to the left, above nor below, but straightforward.
As the thousand men stood there, rigid and silent, a sudden disturbance
took place in the sky above them. Shells began exploding up there. At
the same time the men in the ranks could distinctly hear the whirr and
the hum of aeroplane motors above them.
Almost every day reports had been received that German planes had evaded
the Allied aerial patrols along the front and had made long flights
behind our lines for the dual purposes of observing and bombing.
As the American battalion stood stiff and motionless, I knew that the
thought was passing through the minds of every man there that here, at
last, was the expected visitation of the German flyers and that a
terrific bomb from above would be the next event on the programme. The
men recognised the reports of the anti-aircraft guns blazing away, and
the sound of the motors suggested a close range target.
The sound seemed to indicate that the planes were flying low. The
American ranks knew that something was going on immediately above them.
They did not know what it was, but it seems needless to state that they
wanted to know. Still the ranks stood as stiff as rows of clay-coloured
statues.
An almost irresistible impulse to look upward, a strong instinctive
urging to see the danger that impended, and the stern regulations of
"eyes front" that goes with the command "attention," comprised the
elements of conflict that went on in each of the thousand heads in that
battalion line.
In front of each platoon, the lieutenants and captains stood with the
same rigid eyes front facing the men. If one of the company officers had
relaxed to the extent of taking one fleeting upward glance, it is
doubtful whether the men could have further resisted the same
inclination, but not a man shifted his gaze from the direction
prescribed by the last command.
One plane passed closely overhead and nothing happened. Three more
followed and still no bombs fell, and then the tense incident was closed
by the calling out of the order of the march and, in squads of four, the
battalion wheeled into the road and marched back to billets.
As one company went by singing (talking was permitted upon the freedom
of routstep), I heard one of the men say that he had thought all along
that the officers would not have made them stand there at attention if
the danger had not been over.
"As far as I knew, it was over," a comrade added. "It was right over my
head." And in this light manner the men forgot the incident as they
resumed their marching song.
When Mr. W. Hollenzollern of Potsdam put singing lessons in the
curriculum of his soldiers' training, a tremor of military giggling was
heard around the world. But in August, 1914, when Mars smiled at the
sight of those same soldiers, marching across the frontiers east, south
and west, under their throaty barrage of "Deutschland, Deutschland, Über
Alles," the derisive giggles completely died out. It immediately became
a case of he who laughs first, lives to yodel.
The American forces then in training took advantage of this. They not
only began to sing as they trained, but they actually began to be
trained to sing. Numerous company commanders who had held strong
opinions against this vocal soldiering, changed their minds and
expressed the new found conviction that the day was past when singing
armies could be compared solely with male coryphées who hold positions
well down stage and clink empty flagons of brown October ale.
"It's a great idea," a company commander told me. "We learned it from
the Blue Devils. They are the toughest set of undersized gentry that I
have run into in France. They have forearms as big as three-inch shells,
and as hard. Their favourite pastime is juggling hand-grenades that
can't possibly explode unless they just lightly touch one another.
"Yesterday we watched them, bared to the waist, as they went through
three hours of grenade and bombing practice that was the last word in
strenuosity. Keeping up with their exercises was hard work for our men,
whose arms soon began to ache from the unaccustomed, overhand heaving.
"Then we watched them as their commander assembled them for the march
back to the village. At the command, 'attention,' their heels clicked,
their heads went back, their chins up and their right hands were pasted
rigidly against their right trouser leg.
"At the command 'march' all of them started off, punctuating their first
step with the first word of their marching song. It was not any sickly
chorus either. There was plenty of beef and lung power behind every
note. My men lined up opposite were not missing a bit of it. Most of
them seemed to know what was expected when I said:
"'On the command of "march," the company will begin to sing, keeping
step with the song. The first sergeant will announce the song.'
"My first sergeant responded without a change of colour as if the
command to sing had been an old regulation. I knew that he was puzzled,
but he did it well. The name of the song chosen was passed down the line
from man to man.
"When I gave the command to march, the company, almost half of them new
recruits, wheeled in squads of fours, and started off down the road
singing, 'Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here.' There were some who were
kind of weak on the effort, but there was a noticeable crescendo when
the sergeant passed the word down the squad that the company would be
kept marching until everybody had joined in the singing.
"We swung into camp that night with every voice raising lustily on 'One
Grasshopper Hopped Right Over Another Grasshopper's Back,' and after
dinner the billets just sprouted melody, everything from ragtime to
Christmas carols and baby lullabies."
One noticeable characteristic about our soldiers during that training
period before they had come in contact with the enemy, was a total
absence of violent antipathy toward all persons and things Teutonic.
On the march the men then sang "We'll Hang the Damned Old Kaiser to a
Sour Apple Tree," but at that time I never heard any parodies on the
"Gott Straffe Germany" theme. Our soldiers were of so many different
nationalistic extractions and they had been thrown together for so short
a time, that as yet no especial hatred of the enemy had developed.
An illustration of this very subject and also the manner in which our
boys got along with the civilian populations of the towns they occupied
came to my notice.
A driving rain which filled the valley with mist and made the hills look
like mountain tops projecting above the clouds, had resulted in the
abandonment of the usual daily drills. The men had spent the day in
billets writing letters home, hearing indoor lectures from instructors,
playing with the French children in the cottage doorways, or taking
lessons in French from the peasant girls, whose eyes were inspirations
to the dullest pupils.
I spent several hours in a company commander's quarters while he
censored letters which the men had submitted for transmission back home.
The Captain looked long at a letter in his hand, smiled and called for
his orderly.
"Tell Private Blank I want to see him here right away," were the
Captain's instructions. Blank's name was not quite so German as
Sourkraut, but it had a "berger" ending that was reminiscent of beer,
pretzels and wooden shoes.
"Here's a letter written in German," said the Captain to me, referring
to the open missive. "It's addressed to somebody by the same name as
Blank, and I presume it is to some one in his family. Blank is one of
the best men in my company, and I know that the letter is harmless, but
it is impossible for me to pass it when written in an enemy language."
The door opened and a tall, blonde enlisted man stepped in, shaking the
rain from his hat. He stood at respectful attention, saluted and said:
"Did the Captain wish to see me?"
"Yes, Blank, it is about this letter written in German," the Captain
replied. "Who is it addressed to?"
"My father, in Cincinnati, sir," Blank replied.
"I am unfamiliar with German," the Captain said. "I notice the letter is
brief. Is there anything in it which the company has been ordered to
omit mentioning?"
"No, sir," Blank replied.
"Will you translate it for me?" the Captain asked.
"Yes, sir," said Blank, with just a bare suggestion of a blush. Then he
read as follows:
"Dear Father: I am in good health. Food is good and we are learning
much. I am becoming an expert grenadier. In this village where we
are billeted there is a French girl named Germain. Before the war
she lived in northern France, near the German frontier, and she
speaks German. So it is possible for us to talk together. She fled
before the German troops reached her village. She lives here now
with her aunt.
"I carry water from a well for her and she has given me each day a
roll of fresh made butter for our mess. In the evening we sit on the
front seat of her uncle's small carriage, which is in the front
yard, and we imagine we are taking a drive, but of course there are
no horses. Her uncle's horses were taken by the army a long time
ago. She is very anxious to know all about America, and I have told
her all about you and mother and our home in Cincinnati.
"She asked me what I am going to do after the war, and I told her
that I would return to Cincinnati to help you at the store. She
cried because she said she did not know where she was going after
the war. Her father and two brothers have been killed and her aunt
and uncle are very old.
"I have some more to write to you about Germain later. But must stop
here because the Sergeants are assembling the men for indoor
instruction. Love to all. It is raining very hard. Your son, ----"
Blank's face seemed to redden as he hesitated over a postscript line at
the bottom of the page.
"This is nothing," he said. "I just asked father to ask mother to send
me one of the photographs I had taken on the day I enlisted."
"For Germain?" the Captain enquired, smilingly.
"Yes, sir," replied Blank.
"Why didn't you write this in English?" the Captain asked.
"My father reads only German," Blank replied.
Blank was instructed to rewrite his letter in English and address it to
some friend who could translate it into German for his father. As the
door closed on this American soldier of German extraction, I asked the
Captain, "Do you think Germain could stand for Blank's German name,
after all she has lost at the hands of the Germans?"
"She'll probably be wearing it proudly around Cincinnati within a year
after the war is over," the Captain replied.
It might be reassuring at this point to remark that girls in America
really have no occasion to fear that many of our soldiers will leave
their hearts in France. The French women are kind to them, help them in
their French lessons, and frequently feed them with home delicacies
unknown to the company mess stoves, but every American soldier overseas
seems to have that perfectly natural hankering to come back to the girls
he left behind.
The soldier mail addressed daily to mothers and sweethearts back in the
States ran far into the tons. The men were really homesick for their
American women folks. I was aware of this even before I witnessed the
reception given by our men to the first American nurses to reach the
other side.
The hospital unit to which they belonged had been transported into that
training area so quickly and so secretly that its presence there was
unknown for some time. I happened to locate it by chance.
Several of us correspondents seeking a change of diet from the
monotonous menu provided by the hard-working madam of our modest
hostelry, motored in a new direction, over roads that opened new vistas
in this picture book of the world.
Long straight avenues of towering trees whose foliage roofed the
roadways were sufficient to reanimate recollections of old masters of
brush realism. Ploughed fields veiled with the low-hanging mist of
evening time, and distant steeples of homely simplicity faintly glazed
by the last rays of the setting sun, reproduced the tones of "The
Angelus" with the over-generous hugeness of nature.
And there in that prettiest of French watering places--Vittel--we came
upon those first American nurses attached to the American Expeditionary
Forces. They told us that all they knew was the name of the place they
were in, that they were without maps and were not even aware of what
part of France they were located in.
It developed that the unit's motor transportation had not arrived and,
other automobiles being as scarce as German flags, communication with
the nearby camps had been almost non-existent. Orders had been received
from field headquarters and acknowledged, but its relation in distance
or direction to their whereabouts were shrouded in mystery. But not for
long.
Soon the word spread through the training area that American nurses had
a hospital in the same zone and some of the homesick Yanks began to make
threats of self-mutilation in order that they might be sent to that
hospital.
The hospital unit was soon followed by the arrival of numerous American
auxiliary organisations and the kindly activities of the workers as well
as their numbers became such as to cause the men to wonder what kind of
a war they were in.
I happened to meet an old top sergeant of the regular army, a man I had
known in Mexico, with the American Punitive Expedition. He had just
received a large bundle of newspapers from home and he was bringing
himself up-to-date on the news. I asked him what was happening back
home.
"Great things are going on in the States," he said, looking up from his
papers. "Here's one story in the newspaper that says the Y. M. C. A. is
sending over five hundred secretaries to tell us jokes and funny
stories. And here's another account about the Red Cross donating half a
million dollars to build recreation booths for us along the front. And
here's a story about a New York actor getting a committee of
entertainers together to come over and sing and dance for us. And down
in Philadelphia they're talking about collecting a million dollars to
build tabernacles along the front so's Billy Sunday can preach to us.
What I'm wondering about is, when in hell they're going to send the army
over."
But that was in the early fall of 1917, and as I write these lines now,
in the last days of 1918, I am aware and so is the world, that in all of
France nobody will ever ask that question again.
That army got there.
CHAPTER V
MAKING THE MEN WHO MAN THE GUNS
While our infantry perfected their training in the Vosges, the first
American artillery in France undertook a schedule of studies in an old
French artillery post located near the Swiss frontier. This place is
called Valdahon, and for scores of years had been one of the training
places for French artillery. But during the third and fourth years of
the war nearly all of the French artillery units being on the front, all
subsequent drafts of French artillerymen received their training under
actual war conditions.
So it was that the French war department turned over to the Americans
this artillery training ground which had been long vacant. Three
American artillery regiments, the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh, comprising
the first U. S. Artillery Brigade, began training at this post.
The barracks had been long unoccupied and much preparatory work was
necessary before our artillerymen could move in. Much of this work
devolved upon the shoulders of the Brigade Quartermaster.
The first difficulty that he encountered was the matter of illumination
for the barracks, mess halls and lecture rooms. All of the buildings
were wired, but there was no current. The Quartermaster began an
investigation and this was what he found:
The post had been supplied with electricity from a generating plant
located on a river about ten miles away. This plant had supplied
electrical energy for fifteen small French towns located in the
vicinity. The plant was owned and operated by a Frenchman, who was
about forty years old. The French Government, realising the necessity
for illumination, had exempted this man from military service, so that
he remained at his plant and kept the same in operation for the benefit
of the camp at Valdahon and the fifteen small towns nearby.
Then the gossips of the countryside got busy. These people began to say
that Monsieur X, the operator of the plant, was not patriotic, in other
words, that he was a slacker for not being at the front when all of
their menfolk had been sent away to the war.
Now it so happened that Monsieur X was not a slacker, and his
inclination had always been to get into the fight with the Germans, but
the Government had represented to him that it was his greater duty to
remain and keep his plant in operation to provide light for the
countryside.
When the talk of the countryside reached Monsieur X's ears, he being a
country-loving Frenchman was infuriated. He denounced the gossips as
being unappreciative of the great sacrifice he had been making for their
benefit, and, to make them realise it, he decided on penalising them.
Monsieur X simply closed down his plant, locked and barred the doors and
windows, donned his French uniform and went away to the front to join
his old regiment. That night those villagers in the fifteen nearby
towns, who had been using electrical illumination, went to bed in the
dark.
It required considerable research on the part of the Artillery
Quartermaster to reveal all these facts. The electric lights had been
unused for fifteen months when he arrived there, and he started to see
what he could do to put the plant back to work. It required nothing
less finally than a special action by the French Minister of War whereby
orders were received by Monsieur X commanding him to leave his regiment
at the front and go back to his plant by the riverside and start making
electricity again.
With the lights on and water piped in for bathing facilities, and
extensive arrangements made for the instalment of stoves and other
heating apparatus, the purchase of wood fuel and fodder for the animals,
the Brigade moved in and occupied the camp.
The American officer in command of that post went there as a Brigadier
General. As I observed him at his work in those early days, I seemed to
see in his appearance and disposition some of the characteristics of a
Grant. He wore a stubby-pointed beard and he clamped his teeth tight on
the butt end of a cigar. I saw him frequently wearing the $11.50
regulation issue uniform of the enlisted men. I saw him frequently in
rubber boots standing hip deep in the mud of the gun pits, talking to
the men like a father--a kindly, yet stern father who knew how to
produce discipline and results.
While at the post, he won promotion to a Major General's rank, and in
less than six months he was elevated to the grade of a full General and
was given the highest ranking military post in the United States. That
man who trained our first artillerymen in France was General Peyton C.
March, Chief of Staff of the United States Army.
Finding the right man for the right place was one of General March's
hobbies. He believed in military mobilisation based on occupational
qualifications. In other words, he believed that a man who had been a
telephone operator in civilian life would make a better telephone
operator in the army than he would make a gunner.
I was not surprised to find that this same worthy idea had permeated in
a more or less similar form down to the lowest ranks in General March's
command at that time. I encountered it one cold night in October, when I
was sitting in one of the barrack rooms talking with a man in the ranks.
That man's name was Budd English. I met him first in Mexico on the
American Punitive Expedition, where he had driven an automobile for
Damon Runyon, a fellow correspondent. English, with his quaint
Southwestern wit, had become in Mexico a welcome occupant of the large
pyramidal tent which housed the correspondents attached to the
Expedition. We would sit for hours hearing him tell his stories of the
plains and the deserts of Chihuahua.
English and I were sitting on his bed at one corner of the barrack room,
rows of cots ranged each side of the wall and on these were the snoring
men of the battery. The room was dimly illuminated by a candle on a
shelf over English's head and another candle located on another shelf in
the opposite corner of the room. There was a man in bed in a corner
reading a newspaper by the feeble rays of the candle.
Suddenly we heard him growl and tear the page of the newspaper in half.
His exclamation attracted my attention and I looked his way. His hair
was closely cropped and his head, particularly his ears and forehead,
and jaw, stamped him as a rough and ready fighter.
"That's Kid Ferguson, the pug," English whispered to me, and then in
louder tones, he enquired, "What's eating on you, kid?"
"Aw, this bunk in the paper," replied Ferguson. Then he glared at me
and enquired, "Did you write this stuff?"
"What stuff?" I replied. "Read it out."
Ferguson picked up the paper and began to read in mocking tones
something that went as follows:
"Isn't it beautiful in the cold early dawn in France, to see our dear
American soldiers get up from their bunks and go whistling down to the
stables to take care of their beloved animals."
English laughed uproariously.
"The Kid don't like horses no more than I do," he said. "Neither one of
us have got any use for them at all. And here, that's all they keep us
doing, is tending horses. I went down there the other morning with a
lantern and one of them long-eared babies just kicked it clean out of my
hand. The other morning one of them planted two hoofs right on
Ferguson's chest and knocked him clear out of the stable. It broke his
watch and his girl's picture.
"You know, Mr. Gibbons, I never did have any use for horses. When I was
about eight years old a horse bit me. When I was about fifteen years old
I got run over by an ice-wagon. Horses is just been the ruination of me.
"If it hadn't been for them I might have gone through college and been
an officer in this here army. You remember that great big dairy out on
the edge of the town in El Paso? Well, my dad owned that and he lost all
of it on the ponies in Juarez. I just hate horses.
"I know everything there is to know about an automobile. I have driven
cross country automobile races and after we come out of Mexico, after we
didn't get Villa, I went to work in the army machine shops at Fort Bliss
and took down all them motor trucks and built them all over again.
"When Uncle Sam got into the war against Germany, this here Artillery
Battalion was stationed out at Fort Bliss, and I went to see the Major
about enlisting, but I told him I didn't want to have nothing to do with
no horses.
"And he says, 'English, don't you bother about that. You join up with
this here battalion, because when we leave for France we're going to
kiss good-bye to them horses forever. This here battalion is going to be
motorised.'
"And now here we are in France, and we still got horses, and they don't
like me and I don't like them, and yet I got to mill around with 'em
every day. The Germans ain't never going to kill me. They ain't going to
get a chance. They just going to find me trampled to death some morning
down in that stable."
Two or three of the occupants of nearby beds had arisen and taken seats
on English's bed. They joined the conversation. One red-headed
youngster, wearing heavy flannel underwear in lieu of pajamas, made the
first contribution to the discussion.
"That's just what I'm beefing about," he said. "Here I've been in this
army two months now and I'm still a private. There ain't no chance here
for a guy that's got experience."
"Experience? Where do you get that experience talk?" demanded English.
"What do you know about artillery?"
"That's just what I mean, experience," the red-headed one replied with
fire. "I got experience. Mr. Gibbons knows me. I'm from Chicago, the
same as he is. I worked in Chicago at Riverview Park. I'm the guy that
fired the gattling gun in the Monitor and Merrimac show--we had two
shows a day and two shows in the evening and----"
"Kin you beat that," demanded English. "You know, if this here
red-headed guy don't get promotion pretty quick, he's just simply going
to quit this army and leave us flat here in France facing the Germans.
"Let me tell you about this gattling gun expert. When they landed us off
of them boats down on the coast, the battalion commander turned us all
loose for a swim in the bay, and this here bird almost drowned. He went
down three times before we could pull him out.
"Now, if they don't make him a Brigadier General pretty quick, he's
going to get sore and put in for a transfer to the Navy on the grounds
of having submarine experience. But he's right in one thing--experience
don't count for what it should in the army.
"Right here in our battery we got a lot of plough boys from Kansas that
have been sitting on a plough and looking at a horse's back all their
lives, and they got them handling the machinery on these here guns. And
me, who knows everything there is to know about machinery, they won't
let me even find out which end of the cannon you put the shell in and
which end it comes out of. All I do all day long is to prod around a
couple of fat-hipped hayburners. My God, I hate horses."
But regardless of these inconveniences those first American artillerymen
in our overseas forces applied themselves strenuously to their studies.
They were there primarily to learn. It became necessary for them at
first to make themselves forget a lot of things that they had previously
learned by artillery and adapt themselves to new methods and instruments
of war.
Did you ever hear of "Swansant, Kansas"? You probably won't find it on
any train schedule in the Sunflower State; in fact, it isn't a place at
all. It is the name of the light field cannon that France provided our
men for use against the German line.
"Swansant, Kansas" is phonetic spelling of the name as pronounced by
American gunners. The French got the same effect in pronunciation by
spelling the singular "soixante quinze," but a Yankee cannoneer trying
to pronounce it from that orthography was forced to call it a "quince,"
and that was something which it distinctly was not.
One way or the other it meant the "Seventy-fives"--the "Admirable
Seventy-five"--the seventy-five millimetre field pieces that stopped the
Germans' Paris drive at the Marne--the same that gave Little Willie a
headache at Verdun,--the inimitable, rapid firing, target hugging, hell
raising, shell spitting engine of destruction whose secret of recoil
remained a secret after almost twenty years and whose dependability was
a French proverb.
At Valdahon where American artillery became acquainted with the
Seventy-five, the khaki-clad gun crews called her "some cannon." At
seven o'clock every morning, the glass windows in my room at the post
would rattle with her opening barks, and from that minute on until noon
the Seventy-fives, battery upon battery of them, would snap and bark
away until their seemingly ceaseless fire becomes a volley of sharp
cracks which sent the echoes chasing one another through the dark
recesses of the forests that conceal them.
The targets, of course, were unseen. Range elevation, deflection, all
came to the battery over the signal wires that connected the firing
position with some observation point also unseen but located in a
position commanding the terrain under fire.
A signalman sat cross-legged on the ground back of each battery. He
received the firing directions from the transmitter clamped to his ears
and conveyed them to the firing executive who stood beside him. They
were then megaphoned to the sergeants chief of sections.
The corporal gunner, with eye on the sighting instruments at the side of
each gun, "laid the piece" for range and deflection. Number one man of
the crew opened the block to receive the shell, which was inserted by
number two. Number three adjusted the fuse-setter, and cut the fuses.
Numbers four and five screwed the fuses in the shells and kept the
fuse-setter loaded.
The section chiefs, watch in hand, gave the firing command to the gun
crews, and number one of each piece jerked the firing lanyard at ten
second intervals or whatever interval the command might call for. The
four guns would discharge their projectiles. They whined over the damp
wooded ridge to distant imaginary lines of trenches, theoretical
cross-roads, or designated sections where the enemy was supposed to be
massing for attack. Round after round would follow, while telephoned
corrections perfected the range, and burst. The course of each shell was
closely observed as well as its bursting effect, but no stupendous
records were kept of the individual shots. That was "peace time stuff."
These batteries and regiments were learning gunnery and no scarcity of
shells was permitted to interfere with their education. One officer told
me that it was his opinion that one brigade firing at this schooling
post during a course of six weeks, had expended more ammunition than all
of the field artillery of the United States Army has fired during the
entire period since the Civil War. The Seventy-five shells cost
approximately ten dollars apiece, but neither the French nor American
artillery directors felt that a penny's worth was being wasted. They
said cannon firing could not be learned entirely out of a book.
I had talked with a French instructor, a Yale graduate, who had been two
years with the guns at the front, and I had asked him what in his
opinion was the most disconcerting thing that could happen to effect the
morale of new gunners under actual fire. I wanted some idea of what
might be expected of American artillerymen when they made their initial
appearance on the line.
We discussed the effect of counter battery fire, the effect on gun crews
of asphyxiating gas, either that carried on the wind from the enemy
trenches or that sent over in gas shells. We considered the demoralising
influences of aerial attacks on gun positions behind the line.
"They are all bad," my informant concluded. "But they are expected. Men
can stand without complaint and without qualm any danger that is
directed at them by the foe they are fighting. The thing that really
bothers, though, is the danger of death or injury from their own weapons
or ammunition. You see, many times there is such a thing as a faulty
shell, although careful inspection in the munitions plants has reduced
this danger to a percentage of about one in ten thousand.
"At the beginning of the war when every little tin shop all over the
world was converted into a munitions factory to supply the great need of
shells, much faulty ammunition reached the front lines. Some of the
shells would explode almost as soon as they left the gun. They are
called shorts. The English, who had the same trouble, call them 'muzzle
bursts.'
"Sometimes the shell would explode in the bore of the cannon, in which
case the cannoneers were usually killed either by pieces of the shell
itself or bits of the cannon. The gunners have to sit beside the cannon
when it is fired, and the rest of the gun crew are all within eight feet
of it. If there is an explosion in the breech of the gun, it usually
wipes out most of the crew. A muzzle burst, or a breech explosion, is
one of the most disconcerting things that could happen in a battery.
"The other men in the battery know of course that a faulty shell caused
the explosion. They also know that they are firing ammunition from the
same lot. After that, as they pull the trigger on each shot, they don't
know whether the shell is going out of the gun all right or whether it
is going to explode in the breech and kill all of them. That thought in
a man's mind when he pulls the firing lanyard, that thought in the minds
of the whole crew as they stand there waiting for the crash, is
positively demoralising.
"When it happens in our French artillery the cannoneers lose confidence
in their pieces. They build small individual dugouts a safe ways back
from the gun and extend the lanyard a safe distance. Then, with all the
gun crew under cover, they fire the piece. This naturally removes them
from their regular firing positions beside the pieces, reduces the
accuracy and slows up the entire action of the battery. The men's
suspicions of the shells combined with the fear of death by their own
weapons, which is greater than any fear of death at the hands of the
enemy, all reduce the morale of the gun crews."
Now, for an incident. A new shipment of ammunition had reached the post.
The caissons were filled with it. Early the following morning when the
guns rumbled out of camp to the practice grounds, Battery X was firing
in the open. At the third shot the shell from piece number two exploded
prematurely thirty yards from the muzzle. Pieces three and four fired
ten and twenty seconds later with every man standing on his toes in his
prescribed position.
Ten rounds later, a shell from number three gun exploded thirty feet
after leaving the bore. Shell particles buried themselves in the ground
near the battery. Piece number four, right next to it, was due to fire
in ten seconds. It discharged its projectiles on the dot. The gun crews
knew what they were up against. They were firing faulty ammunition. They
passed whispered remarks but reloaded with more of the same ammunition
and with military precision on the immediate command. Every man stuck to
his position. As each gun was fired the immediate possibilities were not
difficult to imagine.
Then it happened.
"Commence firing," megaphoned the firing executive. The section chief of
number one piece dropped his right hand as the signal for the discharge.
The corporal gunner was sitting on the metal seat in front of his
instruments and not ten inches to the left of the breech. Cannoneer
number one of the gun crew occupied his prescribed position in the same
location to the immediate right of the breech. Gunner number two was
standing six feet behind the breech and slightly to the left ready to
receive the ejected cartridge case. Gunner number three was kneeling
over the fuse setter behind the caisson which stood wheel to wheel with
the gun carriage. Gunners four and five were rigid statues three feet
back of him. Every man in the crew had seen the previous bursts of
dangerous ammunition.
Number one's eye caught the descending hand of the section chief. He
pulled the lanyard.
There was an eruption of orange coloured flame, a deafening roar, a
crash of rendered steel, a cloud of smoke blue green, and yellow.
A black chunk of the gun cradle hurtled backward through the air with a
vicious swish. A piece of the bore splintered the wheels and buried
itself in the ammunition caisson. Thick hunks of gun metal crumbling
like dry cake filled the air. The ground shook.
The corporal gunner pitched backward from his seat and collapsed on the
ground. His mate with fists buried in his steel seared eyes staggered
out of the choking fumes. The rest of the crew picked themselves up in a
dazed condition. Fifty yards away a horse was struggling to regain his
feet.
Every man in the three other gun crews knew what had happened. None of
them moved from their posts. They knew their guns were loaded with
shells from the same lot and possibly with the same faults. No man knew
what would happen when the next firing pin went home. The evidence was
before them. Their eyes were on the exploded gun but not for long.
"Crash," the ten second firing interval had expired. The section chief
of piece number two had dropped his hand. The second gun in the battery
had fired.
"Number two on the way," sang out the signalman over the telephone wire
to the hidden observation station.
Ten seconds more for another gun crew to cogitate on whether disaster
hung on the dart of a firing pin.
"Crash."
"Number three on the way."
Another ten seconds for the last section to wonder whether death would
come with the lanyard jerk.
"Crash."
"Number four on the way." Round complete. The signalman finished his
telephone report.
Four horses drawing an army ambulance galloped up from the ravine that
sheltered them. The corporal gunner, unconscious and with one leg
pulverised was lifted in. Two other dazed members of the crew were
helped into the vehicle. One was bleeding from the shoulder. The lead
horses swung about; the ambulance rattled away.
"Battery ready to fire. Piece number one out of action." It was the
signalman reporting over the wire to the observer.
Battery X fired the rest of the morning and they used ammunition from
the same lot and every man knew what might happen any minute and every
man was in his exact position for every shot and nobody happened to
think about hiding in a dugout and putting a long string on the firing
lanyard.
It had been an unstaged, unconscious demonstration of nerve and grit and
it proved beyond all question the capacity of American artillerymen to
stand by the guns.
The gunner corporal told the nurse at his bedside how it all happened,
but he was still under the effects of the anesthetic. He did not refer
to the morale of his battery mates because it had not occurred to him
that there was anything unusual in what they did. But he did think that
he could wiggle the toes on his right leg. The doctor told me that this
was a common delusion before the patient had been informed of the
amputation.
Incidents such as the one related had no effect whatever upon the
progress of the work. From early dawn to late at night the men followed
their strenuous duties six days a week and then obtained the necessary
relief on the seventh day by trips down to the ancient town of Besançon.
In this picturesque country where countless thousands fought and died,
down through the bloody centuries since and before the Christian era,
where Julius Cæsar paused in his far flung raids to dictate new inserts
to his commentaries, where kings and queens and dukes and pretenders
left undying traces of ambition's stormy urgings, there it was that
American soldiers, in training for the war of wars, spent week-end
holidays and mixed the breath of romance with the drag of their
cigarettes.
The extender of Roman borders divided that region into three parts,
according to the testimony of the first Latin class, but he neglected to
mention that of these three parts the one decreed for American
occupation was the most romantic of them all.
* * * * *
It is late on a Saturday afternoon and I accept the major's offer of a
seat in his mud-bespattered "Hunka Tin." The field guns have ceased
their roar for the day and their bores will be allowed to cool over
Sunday. Five per cent. of the men at the post have received the coveted
town leave.
They form a khaki fresco on the cab and sides of the giant commissary
trucks that raise the dust along the winding white road over the hills.
Snorting motorcycles with two men over the motor and an officer in the
side car skim over the ground, passing all others. A lukewarm sun
disappears in a slot in the mountains and a blue grey mist forms in the
valleys. A chill comes over the air and a cold new moon looks down and
laughs.
It is a long ride to the ancient town, but speed laws and motor traps
are unknown and the hood of the Detroit Dilemma shakes like a wet dog as
her sizzling hot cylinders suck juice from a full throttle. We cross one
divide through a winding road bordered by bushy trees and as orderly as
a national park. We coast through a hillside hamlet of barking dogs and
saluting children who stand at smiling attention and greet our passage
with a shrill "Veev La Mereek" (Vive l'Amérique).
We scud across a broad, level road built well above the lowland, and
climb through zig-zagging avenues of stately poplars to the tunnel that
pierces the backbone of the next ridge.
While the solid rock walls of the black bore reverberate with the echoes
from our exhaust, we emerge on a road that turns sharply to the left and
hugs a cliff. Below winds a broad river that looks like mother of pearl
in the moonlight. The mountain walls on either side rise at angles
approximating 45 degrees, and in the light their orderly vineyards look
like the squares on a sloping checkerboard. In front of us and to the
right the flanking ridges converge to a narrow gorge through which the
river Doub runs to loop the town.
Commanding this gorge from the crests of the two rocky heights are
sinister sentinels whose smooth, grey walls and towers rise sheer from
the brink of the cliffs. The moonlight now catching the ramparts of the
em-battlements splashes them with strokes of white that seem ever
brighter in contrast with the darker shadows made by projecting portions
of the walls. Spaniard and Moor knew well those walls, and all the
kingly glory that hurried France to the reign of terror has slept within
their shadows.
Our way down the cliff side is hewn out of the beetling rock. To our
left, a jagged wall of rock rises to the sky. To our right, a step,
rock-tumbled declivity drops to the river's edge.
The moonlight brings funny fancies, and our yellow headlights, wavering
in concentric arcs with each turn of the course, almost seem to glint on
the helmets and shields of the spear-bearing legionaries that marched
that very way to force a southern culture on the Gauls. We slow down to
pass through the rock-hewn gate that once was the Roman aqueduct
bringing water down from mountain springs to the town.
Through the gate, a turn to the left and we reach the black bottom of
the gorge untouched by the rising moon. We face a blast of wind that
slows our speed and brings with it the first big drops of rain. We stop
at the "Octroi" and assure the customs collector that we are military,
and that we carry no dutiable wine, or beans or wood into the town.
Yet another gate, built across the narrow road between the cliff and the
river, and we enter the town. It has been raining and the cobblestones
are slippery. They shine in the gleams of pale light that come from the
top-heavy street lamps. Gargoyle water spouts drip drainage from the
gables of moss-speckled tiles.
We pass a fountain that the Romans left, and rounded arches further on
show where the hooded Moor wrote his name in masonry. Barred windows and
stone balconies projecting over the street take one's mind off the
rattling motor and cause it to wander back to times when serenading
lovers twanged guitars beneath their ladies' windows and were satisfied
with the flower that dropped from the balcony.
The streets are wet and dark now and through their narrow windings our
headlights reveal tall figures in slickers or khaki overcoats topped by
peaked felt hats with the red cords of American artillerymen. Their
identification is a surprise to the dreamer, because one rather expects
these figures to sulk in the deeper shadows and screen their dark,
bearded faces with the broad brims of black felt hats or muffle
themselves to the chin in long, flowing black cloaks that hide rapiers
and stilettos and other properties of mediæval charm.
We dine in a room three hundred years old. The presence of our
automobile within the inner quadrangle of the ancient building jars on
the sense of fitness. It is an old convent, now occupied by irreligious
tenants on the upper three floors, restaurants and estaminets on the
lower floor. These shops open on a broad gallery, level with the
courtyard, and separated from it only by the rows of pillars that
support the arches. It extends around the four sides of the court.
Centuries ago shrouded nuns, clasping beads or books of office, walked
in uncommunicative pairs and mumbled their daily prayers beneath these
time-worn arches, and to-night it affords a promenade for officers
waiting for their meals to be served at madame's well laid tables
within.
Madame's tables are not too many. There is not the space economy of an
American café, where elbows interlock and waiters are forced to navigate
fearsome cargoes above the diners' heads. Neither is there the
unwholesome, dust-filled carpet of London's roast beef palaces.
Madame's floor is bare, but the wood has stood the scrubbings of years,
and is as spotless as grass-dried linen. The high ceiling and the walls
are of white stucco. In bas-relief are clusters of heraldic signs, of
bishops' crooks and cathedral keys, of mounted chargers and dying
dragoons, of miter and crown, and trumpet and shield, and cross.
Large mirrors, circled with wreaths of gilded leaves, adorn both end
walls, and beneath one of them remains an ornate fireplace and
mantelpiece of bologna coloured marble, surmounted with a gilt cock of
wondrous design. Beneath the other mirror madame has placed her buffet,
on which the boy who explores the dusty caves below places the cobwebbed
bottles of red wine for the last cork pulling. Large gold chandeliers,
dangling with glass prisms, are suspended from high ceiling and flood
the room with light, against which the inner shutters of the tall
windows must be shut because of danger from the sky.
There is colour in that room. The Roman conquerors would have found it
interesting. If former armed occupants of the old town could have
paraded in their ancient habiliments through the room like a procession
from the martial past, they would have found much for their attention in
this scene of the martial present. American khaki seems to predominate,
although at several tables are Canadian officers in uniforms of the same
colour but of different tailoring.
The tables are flecked with all varieties of French uniforms, from
scarlet pants with solitary black stripes down the leg, to tunics of
horizon blue. In one corner there are two turbaned Algerians with heads
bent close over their black coffee, and one horn of the hall rack shows
a red fez with a gold crescent on the crown.
Consider the company. That freckle-faced youth with the fluffed reddish
hair of a bandmaster is a French aviator, and among the row of
decorations on his dark blue coat is one that he received by reason of a
well known adventure over the German lines, which cannot be mentioned
here. That American colonel whose short grey hair blends into the white
wall behind him is a former member of the United States war college and
one of the most important factors in the legislation that shaped the
present military status of his country. That other Frenchman with the
unusual gold shoulder straps is not a member of the French army. He is
a naval officer, and the daring with which he carried his mapping chart
along exposed portions of the line at Verdun and evolved the
mathematical data on which the French fired their guns against the
German waves has been the pride of both the navy and the army.
Over there is a young captain who this time last year was a "shavetail"
second in command at a small post along the line of communications in
Chihuahua. Next to him sits a tall dark youngster wearing with pride his
first Sam Browne belt and "U. S. R." on his collar. He carted human
wreckage to the hospitals on the French front for two years before Uncle
Sam decided to end the war. There's another one not long from the
"Point," booted and spurred and moulded to his uniform. He speaks with a
twang of old Virginia on every syllable and they say his family--but
that has nothing to do with the fact that he is aid to a major general
and is in these parts on a mission.
There are three American women in the room. One who is interested in Y.
M. C. A. work and a number of newspapers, wears a feminine adaptation of
the uniform and holds court at the head of a table of five officers.
Another, Mrs. Robert R. McCormick, who is engaged in the extension of
the canteen work of a Paris organisation, is sitting at our table and
she is willing to wager her husband anything from half a dozen gloves to
a big donation check that Germany will be ready for any kind of peace
before an American offensive in the spring.
The interests of the other American woman are negative. She professes no
concern in the fact that war correspondents' life insurances are
cancelled, but she repeats to me that a dead correspondent is of no use
to his paper, and I reply that if madame puts yet another one of her
courses on the board, one correspondent will die with a fork in his hand
instead of a pencil.
The diners are leaving. Each opening of the salon door brings in a gust
of dampness that makes the tablecloths flap. Rain coats swish and rustle
in the entry. Rain is falling in sheets in the black courtyard. The moon
is gone.
A merry party trails down the stone gallery skirting the quadrangle.
Their hobnailed soles and steel plated heels ring on the stone flags.
The arches echo back their song:
"In days of old
A warrior bold
Sang merrily his lay, etc. etc. etc.
My love is young and fair.
My love has golden hair,
So what care I
Though death be nigh, etc. etc. etc."
With frequent passages where a dearth of words reduce the selection to
musical but meaningless ta-de-ta-tas, the voices melt into the blackness
and the rain.
"Great times to be alive," I say to the wife. "This place is saturated
with romance. I don't have to be back to the post until to-morrow night.
Where will we go? They are singing 'Carmen' in the old opera house on
the square. What do you say?"
"There's a Charlie Chaplin on the programme next to the hotel," the wife
replies.
Romance was slapped with a custard pie.
CHAPTER VI
"FRONTWARD HO!"
When the artillery training had proceeded to such a point that the
French instructors were congratulating our officers upon their
proficiency, the rumours spread through the post that the brigade had
been ordered to go to the front--that we were to be the first American
soldiers to actually go into the line and face the Germans.
The news was received with joy. The men were keen to try out their newly
acquired abilities upon the enemy. Harness was polished until it shone.
Brass equipment gleamed until you could almost see your face in it. The
men groomed the horses until the animals got pains from it. Enlisted men
sojourning in the Guard House for petty offences, despatched their
guards with scrawled pleadings that the sentences be changed to fines so
that they could accompany the outfits to the front.
With one special purpose in view, I made application to General March
for an assignment to Battery A of the Sixth Field Artillery. I received
the appointment. The Sixth was the first regiment of the brigade and A
was the first battery of the regiment. I knew that we would march out in
that order, that Battery A would entrain first, detrain first, go in the
line first, and I hoped to be present at the firing of the first
American shot in the war.
We pulled out of the post on schedule time early in the morning, two
days later. Officers and men had been up and dressed since midnight. Ten
minutes after their arising, blankets had been rolled and all personal
equipment packed ready for departure with the exception of mess kits.
While the stable police details fed the horses, the rest of us "leaned
up against" steak, hot biscuits, syrup and hot coffee. The cook had been
on the job all night and his efforts touched the right spot. It seemed
as if it was the coldest hour of the night and the hot "chow" acted as a
primer on the sleepy human machines.
In the darkness, the animals were packed into the gun carriages and
caissons down in the gun park, and it was 4 A. M. on the dot when the
captain's whistle sounded and we moved off the reserve. As we rattled
over the railroad crossing and took the road, the men made facetious
good-byes to the scene of their six weeks' training.
Soldiers like movement--we were on the move. Every one's spirits were up
and the animals were frisky and high-stepping in the brisk air. Chains
rattled as some of the lead pairs mussed up the traces and were brought
back into alignment by the drivers. The cannoneers, muffled in great
coats, hung on the caisson seats and chided the drivers.
We were off. Where we were going, seemed to make no difference. Rumours
could never be depended upon, so none of us knew our destination, but
all of us hoped that we were going into action. Every man in the battery
felt that the schooling was over and that the battery, if given a
chance, could prove that it needed no further training.
At the same time, some of the men expressed the fear that we were on our
way to some other training camp for some post-graduate course in firing
or maybe for the purpose of instructing other less advanced batteries.
The final consensus of opinion was, however, that "beefing" about our
prospects wouldn't change them, and that anything was better than
staying in the same place forever.
Two miles from the post the road crossed the railroad tracks. The
crossing bore a name as everything else did in that land of poetical
nomenclature. There was only one house there. It was an old grey stone
cottage, its walls covered with vines, and its garden full of shrubbery.
It was occupied by three persons, the old crossing-tender, his wife--and
one other. That other was Jeanne. Jeanne was their daughter.
We had seen her many times as she opened the crossing gates for traffic
on the road. She was about sixteen years old. Her ankles were encased in
thick grey woollen hose of her own knitting and, where they emerged from
her heavy wooden shoes, it looked as if every move in her clumsy
footgear might break them off.
As we approached the crossing, Gallagher, who rode one of the lead pair
on piece No. 2, began to give vent to his fine Irish tenor. Gallagher
was singing:
"We were sailing along
On Moonlight bay,
You could hear the voices ringing,
They seemed to say,
'You have stolen my heart
Now, don't go away,'
As we kissed and said good-bye
On Moonlight bay."
It would almost have seemed that there was need of some explanation for
Gallagher's musical demonstration on this cold, dark morning, but none
was demanded. Gallagher apparently knew what he was doing.
His pair of lead horses were walking in much too orderly a fashion for
the occasion. Apparently the occasion demanded a little greater show of
dash and spirit. Gallagher sunk his spurs into the flanks of his mount
and punched its mate in the ribs with the heavy handle of his riding
crop.
The leads lunged forward against their collars. The sudden plunge was
accompanied by a jangle of chains as the traces tightened. The gun
carriage jolted and the cannoneers swore at the unnecessary bouncing.
"Easy, Zigg-Zigg, whoa, Fini." Gallagher pulled on the lines as he
shouted in a calculated pitch the French names of his horses. And then
the reason for Gallagher's conduct developed.
A pair of wooden shutters on a first floor window of the gate-tender's
cottage opened outward. In the window was a lamp. The yellow rays from
it shone upward and revealed a tumbled mass of long black hair, black
eyes that gleamed, red cheeks and red lips. Then a sweet voice said:
"Gude-bye, Meeky."
"Orry wore, Jeen," replied Gallagher.
"_Après la guerre_, Meeky," said Jeanne.
"Orry wore, Jeen," repeated Gallagher.
"Oh, Jeanie, dear, please call me 'Meeky,'" sang out one of the men,
astride one of the wheel pair of the same gun.
The window had closed, but before the light disappeared, black eyes
flashed hate at the jester, and Gallagher, himself, two horses ahead,
turned in the saddle and told the taunter to shut his mouth, observing
at the same time that "some guys didn't know a decent girl when they saw
one."
We rode on. Soon, on the left, the sun came up cold out of
Switzerland's white topped ridges miles away, and smiling frigidly
across the snow-clad neutral Alps, dispelled the night mist in our part
of the world.
The battery warmed under its glow. Village after village we passed
through, returning the polite salutes of early rising grand-sires who
uncovered their grey heads, or wrinkled, pink-faced grandmothers, who
waved kerchiefs from gabled windows beneath the thatch and smiled the
straight and dry-lipped smile of toothless age as they wished us good
fortune in the war.
We messed at midday by the roadside, green fields and hills of France,
our table decorations, cold beef and dry bread, our fare, with canteens
full to wash it down. When the horses had tossed their nose-bags
futilely for the last grains of oats, and the captain's watch had timed
the rest at three-quarters of the hour, we mounted and resumed the
march.
The equipment rode easy on man and beast. Packs had been shifted to
positions of maximum comfort. The horses were still fresh enough to need
tight rein. The men had made final adjustments to the chin straps on
their new steel helmets and these sat well on heads that never before
had been topped with armoured covering. In addition to all other
equipment, each man carried two gas masks. Our top sergeant had an
explanation for me as to this double gas mask equipment.
"I'll tell you about it," he said, as he ruthlessly accepted the
next-to-the-last twenty-five centime Egyptian cigarette from my
proffered case. I winced as he deliberately tore the paper from that
precious fine smoke and inserted the filler in his mouth for a chew.
"You see, England and France and us is all Allies," he said. "Both of
them loves us and we love both of them. We don't know nothing about gas
masks and they knows all there is to know about them. The French say
their gas mask is the best. The British say their gas mask is the best.
"Well, you see, they both offer us gas masks. Now Uncle Sam don't want
to hurt nobody's feelings, so he says, 'Gentlemen, we won't fight about
this here matter. We'll just use both gas masks, and give each of them a
try-out.'
"So here we are carrying two of these human nose-bags. The first time we
get into a mess of this here gas, somebody will send the order around to
change masks in the middle of it--just to find out which is the best
one."
The sergeant, with seeming malice, spat some of that fine cigarette on a
roadside kilometer stone and closed the international prospects of the
subject.
Our battery jangled through a tunnelled ridge and emerged on the other
side just as a storm of rain and hail burst with mountain fury. The
hailstones rattled on our metal helmets and the men laughed at the sound
as they donned slickers. The brakes grated on the caisson wheels as we
took the steep down-grade. The road hugged the valley wall which was a
rugged, granite cliff.
I rode on ahead through the stinging hailstones and watched our battery
as it passed through the historic rock-hewn gateway that is the entrance
to the mediæval town of Besançon. The portal is located at a sharp turn
of the river. The gateway is carved through a mountain spur. Ancient
doors of iron-studded oak still guard the entrance, but they have long
since stood open. Battlements that once knew the hand of Vaubon frown
down in ancient menace to any invader.
[Illustration: CAPT. CHEVALIER, OF THE FRENCH ARMY, INSTRUCTING AMERICAN
OFFICERS IN THE USE OF THE ONE-POUNDER]
[Illustration: IN THE COURSE OF ITS PROGRESS TO THE VALLEY OF THE VESLE
THIS 155 MM. GUN AND OTHERS OF ITS KIND WERE EDUCATING THE BOCHE TO
RESPECT AMERICA. THE TRACTOR HAULS IT ALONG STEADILY AND SLOWLY, LIKE A
STEAM ROLLER]
No Roman conqueror at the head of his invading legions ever rode through
that triumphal arch with greater pride than rode our little captain
at the head of his battery. Our little captain was in stature the
smallest man in our battery, but he compensated for that by riding the
tallest horse in the battery.
He carried his head at a jaunty angle. He wore his helmet at a nifty
tilt, with the chin strap riding between his underlip and his dimpled,
upheld chin. He carried his shoulders back, and his chest out. The reins
hung gracefully in his left hand, and he had assumed a rather
moving-picture pose of the right fist on his right hip. Behind him flew
the red guidon, its stirruped staff held stiffly at the right arm's
length by the battery standard bearer.
Both of them smiled--expansive smiles of pride--into the clicking lens
of my camera. I forgave our little captain for his smile of pride. I
knew that six weeks before that very day our little captain had fitted
into the scheme of civilian life as a machinery salesman from Indiana.
And there that day, he rode at the head of his two hundred and fifty
fighting men and horses, at the head of his guns, rolling down that road
in France on the way to the front.
In back of him and towering upward, was that historic rock that had
known the tread and passage of countless martial footsteps down through
the centuries. Behind him, the gun carriages rattled through the
frowning portal. Oh, if the folks back on the Wabash could have seen him
then!
We wound through the crooked narrow streets of Besançon, our steel-tired
wheels bounding and banging over the cobblestones. Townsfolk waved to us
from windows and doorways. Old women in the market square abandoned
their baskets of beet roots and beans to flutter green stained aprons in
our direction. Our column was flanked by clattering phalanxes of
wooden-shoed street gamins, who must have known more about our movements
than we did, because they all shouted, "Gude-bye."
Six weeks' familiarity between these same artillerymen on town leave and
these same urchins had temporised the blind admiration that caused them
first to greet our men solely with shouts of "_Vive les Américains_."
Now that they knew us better, they alternated the old greeting with
shouts of that all-meaning and also meaningless French expression, "Oo
la la."
Our way led over the stone, spanned bridge that crossed the sluggish
river through the town, and on to the hilly outskirts where mounted
French guides met and directed us to the railroad loading platform.
The platform was a busy place. The regimental supply company which was
preceding us over the road was engaged in forcibly persuading the last
of its mules to enter the toy freight cars which bore on the side the
printed legend, "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8."
Several arclights and one or two acetylene flares illuminated the scene.
It was raining fitfully, but not enough to dampen the spirits of the Y.
M. C. A. workers who wrestled with canvas tarpaulins and foraged
materials to construct a make-shift shelter for a free coffee and
sandwich counter.
Their stoves were burning brightly and the hurriedly erected stove
pipes, leaning wearily against the stone wall enclosing the quay, topped
the wall like a miniature of the sky line of Pittsburgh. The boiling
coffee pots gave off a delicious steam. In the language of our battery,
the "Whime say" delivered the goods.
During it all the mules brayed and the supply company men swore. Most
humans, cognizant of the principles of safety first, are respectful of
the rear quarters of a mule. We watched one disrespecter of these
principles invite what might have been called "mulecide" with utter
contempt for the consequences. He deliberately stood in the dangerous
immediate rear of one particularly onery mule, and kicked the mule.
His name was "Missouri Slim," as he took pains to inform the object of
his caress. He further announced to all present, men and mules, that he
had been brought up with mules from babyhood and knew mules from the
tips of their long ears to the ends of their hard tails.
The obdurate animal in question had refused to enter the door of the car
that had been indicated as his Pullman. "Missouri Slim" called three
other ex-natives of Champ Clark's state to his assistance. They
fearlessly put a shoulder under each of the mule's quarters. Then they
grunted a unanimous "heave," and lifted the struggling animal off its
feet. As a perfect matter of course, they walked right into the car with
him with no more trouble than if he had been an extra large bale of hay.
"Wonderful mule handling in this here army," remarked a quiet,
mild-mannered man in uniform, beside whom I happened to be standing. He
spoke with a slow, almost sleepy, drawl. He was the new veterinarian of
the supply company, and there were a number of things that were new to
him, as his story revealed. He was the first homesick horse doctor I
ever met.
"I come from a small town out in Iowa," he told me. "I went to a
veterinary college and had a nice little practice,--sorter kept myself
so busy that I never got much of a chance to think about this here war.
But one day, about two months ago, I got a letter from the War
Department down in Washington.
"They said the hoss doctor college had given them my name as one of the
graduates and the letter said that the War Department was making out a
list of hoss doctors. The letter asked me to fill out the blank and send
it to Washington.
"'Joe,' my wife says to me, 'this here is an honour that the country is
paying to you. The Government just wants the names of the patriotic
professional citizens of the country.' So we filled out the blank and
mailed it and forgot all about it.
"Well, about two weeks later, I got a letter from Washington telling me
to go at once to Douglas, Arizona. It sorter scared the wife and me at
first because neither of us had ever been out of Iowa, but I told her
that I was sure it wasn't anything serious--I thought that Uncle Sam
just had some sick hosses down there and wanted me to go down and look
them over.
"Well, the wife put another shirt and a collar and an extra pair of
socks in my hand satchel along with my instruments and I kissed her and
the little boy good-bye and told them that I would hurry up and
prescribe for the Government hosses and be back in about five days.
"Two days later I landed in Douglas, and a major shoved me into a
uniform and told me I was commissioned as a hoss doctor lieutenant. That
afternoon I was put on a train with a battery and we were on our way
east. Six days later we were on the ocean. We landed somewhere in France
and moved way out here.
"My wife was expecting me back in five days and here it is I've been
away two months and I haven't had a letter from her and now we're moving
up to the front. It seems to me like I've been away from Iowa for ten
years, and I guess I am a little homesick, but it sure is a comfort to
travel with an outfit that knows how to handle mules like this one
does."
The supply company completed loading, and the homesick horse doctor
boarded the last car as the train moved down the track. Our battery took
possession of the platform. A train of empties was shunted into position
and we began loading guns and wagons on the flat cars and putting the
animals into the box cars.
Considerable confusion accompanied this operation. The horses seemed to
have decided scruples against entering the cars. It was dark and the
rain came down miserably. The men swore. There was considerable kicking
on the part of the men as well as the animals.
I noticed one group that was gathered around a plunging team of horses.
The group represented an entanglement of rope, harness, horses and men.
I heard a clang of metal and saw the flash of two steel-shod hoofs. A
little corporal, holding his head up with both hands, backed out of the
group,--backed clear across the platform and sat down on a bale of hay.
I went to his assistance. Blood was trickling through his fingers. I
washed his two scalp wounds with water from a cante
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