V 7 *,'*+ v *. v * o , <^ ^wrsjr. ^%m^'/ % ;W^ * <$ ^ ! " «> Oft O- G u r . <$* *, ^Qf \^ °~%„^ ■V ?5 o^ and his eyes burned like live coals. With his good arm behind his back He stood before what assemblage of Rainbow officers it had been possible to gather and thanked them, and through them, the men. It was a strange assemblage; scrubby-chinned men, dirty and torn, half -blind and half -choked still with gas, muscles and nerves still quivering with the long fight; and staff officers whose painful attempts at polishing up for the occasion were obvious and soldierly. He said few words, did Gouraud, but they were deep words. They said the Rainbow Divi- sion had put a new spirit into France; that be- fore the battle their mere presence had been a tonic ; that their resistance during the battle was like a promise of new life. And he announced for the first time the successful launching of an Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 69) allied offensive between Soissons and Chateau- Thierry. Officers who had not slept for days — covered with the dirt and blood of the trenches — shouted with joy. Camps of men just out of the jaws of death rang with laughter and song. The tide of war had turned. The French celebrated their Fourteenth of July on July 19, and champagne ran like water. But they say that Sergeant Lawrence Quigley, a Minneapolis man in D Battery, 151st Minne- sota Artillery, had no part in the rejoicing. His gun — his beautiful gun, "Mary Ann" — that he had been firing steadily for seventy-two hours, had gone out of commission during the last few minutes, and he was weeping like a baby. CHAPTER V THE RAINBOW'S FIRST ATTACK — ACROSS THE BLOODY OURCQ, Paris was alive with the two great pieces of news of that decisive month of July, 1918 — the successful defense before Chalons and the Allied advance before Soissons. The Rainbow Divi- sion, defenders of the Champagne, tasted swiftly of the rewards of heroes as they rolled through ISToisy-le-sec, and passed on to more fighting. Coming by rail from Chalons where long- range artillery reached hungrily even after the moving train, the Division, in order to come to La-Ferte-sous-Jouarre, had to go close to Paris, for the Germans were in Chateau- Thierry. Noisy-le-sec is a suburb of Paris. The long trains that carried the Rainbow rolled through there between July 21 and 24. It was a beauti- ful day — warm and mellow — and wherever they 70 The Rainbow's First Attack 71 could find holds for hands and feet, the men clung to open flat-cars, taking the air. Bridges across the railroad yards were crowded with Parisians, mostly women and girls. For nearly four years they had had no chance to celebrate a victory, but now they had one, and here, within sound of their voices, were the Americans who had stopped the Germans in the Champagne. They cheered wildly and threw kisses and flowers at the men in olive-drab. The men cheered back; their spirits had returned, they had seen the worst of war; there was nothing they could not tackle now. It was good to be alive on this warm July morning with Paris cheering you as a conquering hero. This was the "sort of stuff you read about." It was thus the Rainbow Division went toward the Aisne-Marne Offensive for what was to be the bloodiest battle of the outfit's history. For at this stage of the war it was "Push while the pushing is good," and no division of soldiers with such reputations as the Rainbow for steadfast- ness and valor could be permitted to rest while there were such possibilities of getting the Roche 72 The Story of the Rainbow Division on the run, not even when that division had "been in actual combat without rest since midwinter. On July 24-25 it was moving by camion from La-Ferte-sous- Jouarre to the vicinity of jEpieds. The general situation around the beautiful Marne valley, which the men of the Rainbow were now seeing for the first time, was this : When the Germans had broken through in May and June they had been finally stopped at the Marne. Their gains from Rheims to Chateau-Thierry and to Soissons made a salient reaching out and threatening Paris. The Ger- man offensive of July 15, that the Rainbow had just helped to stop, had extended down the east side of this salient to Chateau-Thierry. Down there the American Third Division, supported by the 28th — Pennsylvania National Guards- men — had opposed a crossing east of Chateau- Thierry and confined the Boche to a gain of a few miles near Fossoy. And now, with that drive definitely halted, Marshal Foch, on July 18, had opened an attack on both sides and at the point of the Chateau- SThierry salient. The Germans had gotten them- The Rainbow's First Attach 73 selves into a pocket; they had tried to broaden it and deepen it and failed. The Day of the Allies had come. The First and Second American Divisions had made a surprise attack south of Soissons. The Fourth Division had exerted some pressure on the western side near Lizy. The enemy recrossed the River Marne before he was attacked by the Fourth Division, which followed him for eight kilometers, side by side with the 26th (Yankee) Division. The 26th made the pivotal attack north of Chateau-Thierry. The rest of the at- tacking troops were French, with a few British divisions south of and close to Rheims. It is likely that after the reverse of July 15 in the Champagne, LudendorfF realized that the Chateau-Thierry salient was a menace to his army. But Foch had realized it quicker than he ; vast quantities of stores had piled up in there for use in the advance on Paris, and they could not be removed and the salient evacuated before the Allies were upon him. As the pocket shrunk under Foch's pressure the fronts of the fighting forces narrowed ; it be- 74 The Story of the Rainbow Division came practicable to take out of the line divisions that had been leading the attack. So the 26th American Division and the 167th French Divi- sion came out for a rest, and the Rainbow took over the job that both of them had been handling. The 84th Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier- General Robert A. Brown, took the sector of the 26th Division, and the 83rd Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier-General Michael J. Lenihan, took the 167th Division's sector. The 84th Bri- gade, with the 168th (Iowa) and 167th (Ala- bama) Infantry regiments, had the right of the divisional line, and the 83rd Brigade, with the 165th (New York) and 166th (Ohio) regiments, had the left. The artillery of the 26th Division stayed in position to work with the 67th Artillery Brigade of the Rainbow, commanded by Brigadier- Gen- eral George G. Gatley. Coming up for the relief on July 24, the Rain- bow Division had marched to within two kilo- meters of the front line. Seeking for the point where they were to establish the Post of Com- mand for the 168th regiment, Colonel Bennett, The Rainbow's First Attack 75 Lieutenant- Colonel Tinley, and the regimental adjutant, Captain Van Order, performed that day the novel feat of riding around No-Man's- Land in an automobile. They didn't do it purposely. This had not been a quiet sector like the sectors the Rainbow were familiar with; the landscape lacked the es- tablished institutions of rusty brown camouflage screens, old trench systems and fields of barbed wire. So the Colonel, the Lieutenant-Colonel and the adjutant, looking for woods where the "P. C." would be, suddenly found themselves in the neighborhood of new trenches. And when they had oriented themselves it dawned upon them that they were looking upon those trenches from the wrong side. They got back without waste motion and discovered they had gone about a kilometer too far to the north. This time the Rainbow Division found its work cut out for it. So to speak, it was getting up into the war's higher seats of learning, having left behind the stand-pattism of the Luneville and Baccarat sectors and the plain, old-fashioned doggedness of the Champagne. Now its job 76 The Story of the Rainbow Division was not merely to hold what ground it had but to get more ; not merely to outfight the Germans but to outwit them — to demonstrate that they knew more about driving the Boche back than the Boche knew about standing fast. Instead of defending, they were now to attack. And directly in front of the 167th and 168th Infantry regiments, as the Rainbow took over the job from the Yankee Division and the French, lay the Boche in one of the finest little nests in France. They called it La Croix Rouge Farm ; it was in a clearing surrounded by forests on four sides, and a road ran diagonally through it from southeast to northwest. The far side of the road was lined with German machine-guns; the woods on three sides were lined with them, and you couldn't see them. The division completed all its dispositions dur- ing the day and night of July 25, and without wasting a moment of time the 168th attacked La Croix Rouge Farm early on the morning of the 26th. Two platoons of F Company, commanded by Capt. Charles J. Casey, took it. They discov- The Rainbow's First Attack 77 ered a little ditch leading up to it, and, sneaking through this in the morning mists, surprised the Germans, killed or captured them and turned the machine-guns eastward upon the enemy in the woods. All that afternoon the wooded slopes around La Croix Rouge Farm formed the ring in which a terrific battle went on. The men of the Rain- bow — Alabamians on the left of the farm and Iowans on the right — had their first experience with those withering blasts of machine-gun fire with which the German Army protected its masterly retreat during all the days that fol- lowed. The morale of the Boche was still high — as high as ever, in fact. While von LudendorfF would have liked to withdraw from the Chateau- Thierry pocket at his own will, taking his sup- plies with him, he was nevertheless prepared to try to delay even a dashing American effort to drive him out. And the beginning and the end of his preparation was the machine-gun — hun- dreds and thousands of machine-guns — with men behind them who knew the weapon and had high 78 The Story of the Rainbow Division confidence in it and no small amount of courage in handling it. These things the battle for La Croix Rouge Farm taught the Rainbow Division at the outset of its participation in the Aisne-Marne Offensive. These things it had impressed upon it again and again — hour after hour in blood and death — while it struggled for new footholds always farther northward, through yellow wheat-fields where death lurked and over ridges whose crim- son hue at evening was not always of the sunset. The Rainbow gave ground that 26th of July, gave up La Croix Rouge Farm deliberately and retired, and it was not the lesser part of valor that they did. This new thing, this machine-gun resistance, was dawning on them; to capture a place and to be basking in contentment, and then to discover that there was no contentment be- cause just beyond was the German with his ma- chine-guns and their newly-won prize was his field of fire. Always it must be on, and on, and on, with no end in sight except death for the Ger- mans or for them. But that night the Germans evacuated La The Rainbow's First Attack 79* Croix Rouge Farm for the second time. It was the key to the position on that line, and rinding it too hot to hold they retired nearly six kilometers to a new defensive line across the Ourcq River. Here was a new situation — an unpleasant one. True, the enemy had given up six kilometers, but now he was in a great natural fortress, with the village of Sergy in the valley backed by bare hills that sloped up to plateaus eighty meters high. On the east there was flank protection for the Ger- mans in groups of small woodlands, and there was flank protection on the west in a small creek called the Ru du Pont Brule. Meurcy Farm and more woodland lay in the valley of this creek near its junction with the Ourcq, and farther up the creek was the village and chateau of Nesles. Farther to the right the village of Seringes com- manded Meurcy Farm and the Forest of Nesles was behind the village of that name. It was the tried, veteran army of Imperial Germany fighting desperately near the end of its fourth year of superhuman effort and ideally situated for defense, against the new, untried soldiers from the United States, who had no ad- 80 The Story of the Rainbow Division vantages except freshness in the general matter of war, and not much of that, considering the gruelling struggle in the Champagne. But the Rainbow Division went to it. Over the six kilometers the Germans had given up after evacuating La Croix Rouge Farm the division moved with little trouble, disposing eas- ily of sacrifice detachments of machine-gunners left behind to delay the advance. Only at La Croix Blanche Farm, northeast of La Croix Rouge Farm, was there anything much resem- bling a battle. On the night of July 27th, the division regained contact with the enemy's new line. Machine-gun fire from the north bank of the Ourcq fell upon armored cars that were re- connoitering ahead of the infantry, and the col- umns halted for the night about a kilometer south of the little river. At dawn next morning the fight to cross the Ourcq began. The Germans had blown up two bridges near Sergy ; the stream was swollen with rains to a width of fourteen meters and a depth of four, and the men had to struggle through the little torrent. Machine guns opened on them The Rainbow's First Attach 81 from Sergy directly in front and Meurcy Farm on the flank and the stream ran red with the blood of the Rainbow. The men of New York's old 69th, commanded then by Colonel Frank McCoy, got the first foot- hold on the opposite bank and before noon the other four regiments were coming over, Ohioans of the 166th on the extreme left, New Yorkers next, then the Alabamians of the 167th, and on the extreme right the 168th from Iowa. The struggle for Sergy and Meurcy Farm lasted all that day, all night and throughout the morning of July 29th. Once on the enemy's side of the Ourcq, Colonel Screws' men from Alabama and Colonel Bennett's men from Iowa rushed Sergy and took it. They were swept back to the river bank by machine-gun blasts from the woods on the left. They rallied, rushed the village again, and this time ran into one of the best divisions in the German Army, the Fourth Prussian Guards. Americans who were at home then will remem- ber the thrilling message of M. Andre Tardieu — "Today" (or words to that effect) "American 82 The Story of the Rainbow Division soldiers met and defeated on the River Ourcq the best troops of the Prussian Guard." Amer- ican troops did defeat the best troops of the Prus- sian Guard and it was of this battle and of the Rainbow Division that M. Tardieu spoke that day. They defeated the Prussians but at what seemed then a terrible cost. Throughout the whole of July 28th, the lines rolled back and forth. Now the Americans had Sergy; now the Germans had it. To the right the 28th Divi- sion fought for Hill 220; to the left the 83rd Brigade of the Rainbow struggled for Meurcy Farm. Again, as in Champagne, the Rainbow had to fight an air-battle as well as a ground battle. Swarms of German combat planes were over them constantly, darting earthward and firing machine-guns into them. All Allied planes seemed to have been driven from the sky; Ger- man air supremacy seemed complete. But as the Champagne had produced Corporal Doty of the 165th, as a stalker of bird-men, so the Bat- tle of the Ourcq produced a "ground-ace" in Ser- The Rainbow's First Attack 83 geant Frank Gardello, Jr., of the same regi- ment's machine-gun company, who brought down two planes with one burst. Both were flying low, one directly over the other. Gardello's fire riddled the upper one and when he fell he landed squarely on the lower one. Both aviators were killed. Never before or since in the whole history of the war, was a similar feat performed. It was growing dusk on July 28th when the Alabamians and Iowans rushed Sergy for the last time that day — and held it. The German artillery shelled it savagely all night and clouds of bombing planes circled around and around it, dropping tons of bombs, but the Rainbows hud- dled closer and closer behind ruined house-walls, and stuck. Then early in the morning of the 29th the Prussian Guard returned to the battle and in a final desperate charge drove the doughboys out of Sergy for the seventh time; drove them back to the banks of the Ourcq. Thus after two days of fighting after the German retirement from La Croix Rouge Farm, the Rainbow had made no 84 The Story of the Rainbow Division permanent gains and its casualties had been heavy. Meurcy Farm, Sergy and Hill 220 were still German strongholds, commanded by ma- chine-guns in other German strongholds farther on. Something had to be done. The thing that was done was the thing that, more than any other one battle move, broke the morale of the German army and bade fair, later on to turn its splendid rear-guard action into a rout. The Rainbow Division, having fought nothing but stand-up fights against a foe who could either be bayoneted or sniped, entered the battle of the Ourcq knowing nothing of the Boches' perfection in machine-gun defense. The Germans simply "had the reach on them." No soldiers in the world were more willing than the Americans to come to close quarters with the enemy and fight it out with bayonets. The difficulty the Rain- bow was finding here on the Ourcq was in get- ting to close quarters without being killed or dis- abled. Rushing through the open up to the con- cealed German machine-guns in the hope of frightening the gunners into surrender, or of The Rainbow's First Attack 85 catching them off their guard, was sheer suicide. That was now certain. So then and there the Rainbow conceived and launched a typically American style of attack; launched it as extemporaneously as a great ora- tor in the heat of a debate launches an immortal phrase. It claims no credit for having orig- inated it. In one form or another the American divisions who had fought in Belleau Wood and up to La Croix Rouge Farm and before Sois- sons had used the same method of capturing German machine-gun nests. But the Rainbow knew nothing about that. It had had no school- ing in such work. Without time for either rest or schooling it had come from a sector of patrols and raids to a sector of defense and from there directly to a sector of offense, and what it learned it had to learn by bitter, costly experience. What it did now, with Sergy, Meurcy Farm, Seringes, Hill 220 and the whole line of other flank positions still in German hands after nearly two days of fighting, was an inspiration born of desperation; the grim, determined desperation 86 The Story of the Rainbow Division of baffled men bound to beat an opponent at his own game if it takes a lifetime. On the morning of the 29th the entire Rain- bow Division made a general attack, not only upon Sergy and Meurcy Farm but upon the pla- teau between. It was not a rush this time; it was a painfully slow crawl. German machine- guns blazed from fields of tall, yellow wheat on top of the plateau. Then from the tall grass a brown streak would suddenly shoot ahead for a yard or two and disappear from view while the German guns blazed at it. A moment of quiet, then off to the left another brown streak and a burst of bullets from the wheat. Then in the center another, then another to the right, until a half-dozen men were headed toward that single German machine-gun, advancing in quick dives, now left, now right, now center ; and whenever a man dived a volley of rifles from his comrades an- swered the stutter of the machine-gun. And soon — though it might be a half hour or an hour and though a sheaf of bullets might have caught one of those brown streaks in midair so that it never dived again — a little ring of men in The Rainbow's First Attach 87 olive-drab would be around that machine-gun nest, and "a kill" would be on. One by one the German machine-gun nests grew silent. As the day waned the clatter of them, like the clatter of rivetting hammers, came from farther and farther to the north. The Iowans took Sergy. They got some machine- guns to a near crest of Hill 220, from which they could lire into the German nests in the Arbre les Jomblets and the Bois de Planchette. Here on Hill 220, Sergeant B. W. Hamilton of M Company, 168th Infantry, wounded while out ahead of his own line, was attacked by ten Prussian Guardsmen. He shot five and the rest ran away. The Alabamians got well on toward the top of the plateau, and the 185th, unsuccessful at Meurcy Farm with the new "Indian method" of attack on machine-guns, called for a long con- centration of artillery fire on the place; and finally their Irish tempers got the best of them and they went at it with their bayonets as they had gone over the top in the Champagne. They 88 The Story of the Rainbow Division killed the German machine-gunners in hand-to- hand fighting. In the afternoon Colonel Hough's men of the 166th Ohio regiment stormed Seringes on its high, bare hill. It was a gallant charge across twelve hundred meters of ground entirely with- out cover while machine-gun nests flanked it and heavy fire came from the village. Instead of taking it by direct attack the Ohioans worked around it and took Hill 184 to the northwest. From there they silenced the machine-guns in Seringes and then went down and bayoneted the gunners who were left. It was shortly after this, you will remember, that stories became current about Germans be- ing found chained to their machine-guns in the woods. There also began coming, from German sources, stories of inhuman cruelty of American soldiers. There had been many other stories theretofore, bearing on the inhuman treatment of German soldiers by their officers, and there had been much German propaganda intended to counteract stories of German flendishness and cruelty. The Rainbow's First Attack 89! But behind those stories in those days of late July and early August, 1918, was something more than propaganda. There was looming up in the German army a feeling of terror of these quick, forward-moving men in olive-drab, who were not afraid even of the wonderful German machine-guns, but who dived and wriggled toward them and were suddenly all around them in desperate little rings. German gunners were being chained to their guns; it was becoming necessary. And since men at bay will always fight for their lives, the fights around the machine-gun nests in the Bat- tle of the Ourcq were nearly always fights to the death. The Bainbow Division took few prison- ers in that battle; its record of prisoners cap- tured throughout the war falls short of the rec- ords of one or two other divisions; it usually fought to kill. That was the cruelty of which the Germans spoke. With this advance of the Bainbow through the first of the Ourcq's great defenses, the German High Command, too, became alarmed for the dignity of its retirement from the Chateau- 90 The Story of the Rainbow Division Thierry Salient. It began putting in reserves. Opposite the Rainbow there was now from left to right, the 10th Landwehr Division, the 6th Bavarian Reserve, the Fourth Prussian Guard and the 201st Division. Nowhere else along the whole righting front were German troops massed so densely as opposite the Rainbow, the 28th and the 3rd American Divisions at this stage of the Ourcq Battle. By eight o'clock on the night of July 30, Colonel Fairchild, the Rainbow Division Sur- geon, had reported the losses in wounded alone as 3,276 men, from the beginning of the fighting at La Croix Rouge Farm. Of the killed no rec- ord could be kept at that time. The brave men who had died were out there in the waving wheat- fields and the bodies of some of them had floated down the Ourcq. But neither losses nor German reinforcements, could stop the Rainbow Division now that it had started. The Foret de Nesles lay before it, full of German defenses, and from the woods on Hill 220 machine-guns still raked the positions of the 168th. At nine a. m. on the 10th Colonel Screws The Rainbow's First Attach 91 and his 167th Alabamians started through the wheat toward the Chateau de Nesles, and with the aid of the sniping guns of the 26th Division's artillery which had blasted out machine-gun nests, crossed the plateau and dug in close to the Chateau. The 168th had to dig in after progress- ing about five hundred yards. In Meurcy Farm Colonel McCoy's New York- ers could only dig in and seek shelter from the withering fire down the valley of the Ru du Pont Brule. Light field batteries and machine-guns played constantly on the ruins, and an unceasing duel went on between them and the 151st Ar- tillery from Minnesota. The most of the 165th could have done was hold and they did that with heroic tenacity. That night the Ohioans of the 166th, finding Seringes a rather hot place to hold, worked a ruse. They deserted the village. During the afternoon enemy patrols, filtering into it, found it empty. More came in and still more, until by nightfall a large body of them were there, probably preparing new machine-gun positions, if not preparing a counter-attack. 92 The Story of the Rainbow Division And all this time Colonel Hough's men were hanging to the edge of Hill 184, and when dark- ness had fallen they surrounded Seringes, at- tacked it from every side, and in a fierce hand-to- hand battle mopped it as clean of Germans as a new bathroom floor. The 168th fought its last fight of the Ourcq campaign on August 1, when it took Hill 212. It was a terrible task and the fight lasted all through the hot day. The whole regiment was in the battle at one stage or another with Major Claude Stanley's second battalion leading the first attack, Major Emory Worthington's First Battalion relieving Stanley, and the Third Bat- talion under Major Guy Brewer coming in toward the end of the day. The Third Battal- ion was the first to get a firm foothold on the hill. It was Private Burke, Major Brewer's per- sonal orderly, who carried to regimental head- quarters at La Motte Farm the message that Hill 212 had at last been captured, after three runners who had started with the same message had been killed by German artillery. Shells fell in the whole Ourcq valley that day like rain. The Rainbow's First Attack 93 Hill 212 commanded the Foret de Nesles, which was now the only strong position the Boche had left in his whole Ourcq system. French and American artillery concentrating upon it, silenced the German batteries and they began to withdraw. And on the night of August 1, the German infantry pulled itself together quietly, and silently stole away toward the River Vesle. The Rainbow had outwitted, outgamed and outfought the best soldiers in the German army. They were now in full retreat from the Ourcq. The pursuit started next morning. The 168th, exhausted after six days and nights of constant fighting of the hardest kind, was relieved by the 117th Engineers from California and South Carolina, commanded by Colonel Kelly. This regiment, ready now to attack as infantry as they had been ready to defend in the Champagne, carried on the chase with the Ohio, Alabama and New York infantry regiments. That day the Rainbow advanced through the Foret de Nesles nearly five kilometers beyond the point from which it had started in the morn- 94 The Story of the Rainbow Division ing. The Germans in their hurry to get away blew up great ammunition dumps, but the Rain- bow came so closely upon their heels that they deserted nearly thirty thousand shells which the division captured intact. A line running between Mont St. Martin and Chery Chartreuve was the limit of the Rainbow's advance; between the first named point and La Croix Rouge Farm the distance was seventeen kilometers — the longest advance by any division attacking between Soissons and Rheims. There a relief of the Rainbow by the Fourth Division, which had been progressing during the pursuit, was completed, but the artillery stayed in position for several days assisting the Fourth to maintain a footing beyond the Vesle River. The weather was hot, and the country full of ruined villages, dead, unburied bodies — Boche and American — and thousands of dead horses. The men were dirty; baths were next to impos- sible. Rut instead of being withdrawn from the salient which seemed on the verge of becoming a pest-hole, the Rainbow Division infantry was The Rainbow's First Attach 95 held in reserve for nearly a week. Sickness broke out. And into the middle of this filthy backyard of war with its sickening smells and sights and its unkempt, lousy men there bounded on a fine afternoon one Elsie Janis — fluffy, beautiful, piquant — not at all unlike a goddess just step- ping out of the clouds for a bit to see what it was all about down here below. That's what it seemed like to the Rainbow Division. They hauled a wagon-bed into an open field and made a stage of it, and there Elsie Janis danced and sang before a vast concourse of un- washed doughboys who suddenly remembered that there was such a thing in the world as a pretty American girl — and were somewhat awed and saddened at the remembrance. An aero- plane came whirring overhead while Elsie Janis sang "Oh, You Dirty Germans!" It came so low that you could see the black maltese cross on the lower planes. But nobody minded. CHAPTER VI AND SPEAKING OF ELSIE JANIS Was that the only bit of diversion that came to the Rainbow Division? Was there anything at all outside of fighting and the anticipation of more fighting to keep up its morale ? Perhaps this is as fitting a place as any other to tell about that. There is very little to tell. Most of the diversion the Rainbow got it sup- plied itself. Moving, as it did, from battle to battle and from one part of the front to another, it gave professional entertainers little chance to catch up with it. It manufactured its own amusements, whetting its sense of humor on the French scenery and the country people. The Rainbow Division lived twenty years over there in less than a score of months; it caught its fun where it found it. It had to. So, as it rolled through France in box-cars or 96 And Speaking of Elsie Janis 97 trucks it got as many laughs out of a pair of wooden shoes or an old gentleman riding on an ox-cart as you at home were getting out of the most popular comedians. In the old Baccarat sector it had had more time for the sort of diversion the Y. M. C. A. brought later to the American troops in France. But at that period the Y. M. C. A.'s system of entertainments had not reached the wholly effi- cient stage. The American Expeditionary Force was new then, and so were its auxiliaries. But the Y. M. C. A. had brought out base- balls and bats and gloves and on those quiet days in May the American baseball season had opened officially in Lorraine, France, where first-base was likely to be a surviving splinter of a ruined barn and home plate a filled-in shell hole. And there were many sets of boxing gloves. They used to stage bouts in the streets of the front line villages in the Baccarat sector. The Iowans would fight the Alabamians and the New Yorkers would fight the Ohioans, and inter- State championship disputes were fought out day after day. Sometimes these ring-battles 98 The Story of the Rainbow Division drew big crowds. One of the biggest crowds gathered one day toward the end of May in the little town of Pexonne where a Franco-Ameri- can bout was to take place. The "Franco" was a French soldier. The American was Corporal "Kid" Gorden of the Maryland Trench-Mortar Battery. They had roped off a ring in the middle of the town square of Pexonne. More than three hun- dred men were gathered there — French and American soldiers. It was a warm, clear day — not a cloud in the sky, and the low hum of planes echoed over the land like the pleasant summer noise of bees. Gorden was getting the best of the French- man. The latter had come up groggily for the fifth round and the Americans in the crowd were shouting, "Put him out, Kid! One haymaker'll finish him! Land on his beak!" The American boy tucked his left ear behind his shoulder, rushed in and was uncoiling a terrific right swing when a strange noise shut out the sound of cheer- ing — a loud, roaring buzz directly overhead. Somebody shouted "Look out!" The crowd And Speaking of Elsie Janis 99 looked up, and there was a German plane, swoop- ing low, making straight for the ringside. Instinctively the group broke, scurrying for cover. Gorden's haymaker stopped in mid-air ; a dozen arms were around the groggy French boxer dragging him away. And then with a splintering crash a bomb hit the village "!Epi- cerie" and tore it to pieces. That was the last street boxing-match the Rainbow Division held in the Baccarat sector. The German aviator had seen the animated black spot below him, just behind the Allied lines, and, coming lower he had made it out to be a group of men — an excellent target. And the little French grocery store which he had hit with his bomb was on the edge of the square less than a hundred yards from the boxing ring. So orders forbidding the grouping of many men in one spot were more strictly enforced and the boxing matches stopped. Thereafter, when the men wanted to box they had to take to the forests in the rear and they could not get there unless they happened to be enjoying a relief from the trench vigil. But the ball games con- 100 The Story of the Rainbow Division tinued, with the doors and windows of the vil- lages serving as bleachers and grandstands and the pitchers working with one eye on the skies and the other on the batters. And everybody with his gas-mask at the "alert." There had been band concerts, too, in the Baccarat days. At sunset they held retreat and the regimental bands had played Sousa marches and winding up with "The Star Spangled Ban- ner," while the doughboys in long ranks stood at "present arms," and every American within the sound of the band stopped dead in his tracks and stood in reverent silence, thinking of his home and his country. And in a few minutes, if the wind was right, there would come faintly from the north the sound of brass horns playing "The Watch on the Bhine" — a German band at the evening cere- mony. Thus lived the Bainbow in France, thriving '(unlike "Jack" of the proverb) on nearly all work and hardly any play; and never growing too dull to cut a German throat. Such groups of traveling minstrels as came to other divisions And Speaking of Elsie Janis 101 and made merry seldom if ever came to the Rain- bow. Its chances to play ended when it left the Baccarat sector and those chances never returned until the war was over. CHAPTER VII WITH THE FIRST AMERICAN ARMY IN THE STROLL THROUGH ST. MIHIEL There were gaps in the ranks of the Rainbow now — big gaps. Behind it along Europe's bat- tle line from Lorraine to the River Vesle, stretched a long trail, marked here by wooden crosses, marked there by muddy mounds. It had been in France nine months and it was an Amer- ican division of veterans. They took it out of the reeking country be- tween the Ourcq and the Vesle on August 12, and marched it back to the La-Ferte-sous- Jouarre area. There it rested a couple of days. There were chateaus in La-Ferte-sous-Jouarre, and broad roads shaded with mighty trees; the weather was warm and the air sweet and spark- ling like old wine. And if you had luck you got a hot bath and a haircut ; and if you were an of- 102 The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 103 ficer with an automobile you could steal into Paris and grab off a couple of fancy meals and see the places where the bright lights used to be. But La-Ferte-sous-Jouarre with Paris in touring distance was too good to last. On August 17 the division was loaded into cars marked "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8," and rolled off to the Bourmont area. It was booked for a period of "intensive training." Bourmont was on the road between Langres and ISTeufchateau where the people were friendly and the food pretty plentiful. You could buy ex- tras for the mess, like creamy old camembert and — well, principally, creamy old camembert — at moderate prices. It was a beautiful country, too — hilly and green, and for dignity of proportions, prodigality of distribution and richness of scent its manure heaps were the finest the Rainbow Division had seen. Here, beyond the sound of guns for the first time since February, the Rainbow reveled in the nearest thing to a rest that it had during the whole of its career in France. All it had to do was study every branch of open warfare, with 104 The Story of the Rainbow Division special emphasis on the attacking of machine- gun nests by advancing infantry accompanied by machine-guns and light artillery. On the Ourcq it had rehearsed this thing for six days with more or less assistance toward the achievement of proficiency by the flower of the German Army. But here it got a polish, an expertness that proved valuable later on. The division stayed in Bourmont until Au- gust 30. Immediately after the Battle of the Ourcq, while it was still in reserve, important changes had taken place in staff and in the line. Colonel Douglas Mac Arthur, the Chief of Staff, had been made a Brigadier General and put in command of the 84th Infantry Brigade comprising the Alabama and Iowa infantry regi- ments and the Georgia Machine-gun Battalion. Lieutenant Colonel William N. Hughes had been promoted from the position of G3 or Divisional Chief of Operations to Chief of Staff. Major Grayson M. P. Murphy became G3. Captain Robert J. Gill, commander of the Trench-mortar Battery from Maryland was promoted to the grade of Major and became Gl, or Assistant The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 105 Chief of Staff, succeeding Colonel J. W. Beach- am. Major Stanley M. Rumbough, Adjutant of the 84th Brigade and Captain Walter G. Wolf, assistant to G3, changed places. Replacements, those freshly arrived, untried soldiers at whose advent the veteran survivors of hard battles look askance, and without whom no division could continue its career as a division, came to the Rainbow in great numbers. The gaps in the ranks were filled. Lost and battle- scarred equipment was replaced by new, up-to- date fighting material. The Rainbow Division, in a sort of new Camp Mills, having found its fighting spirit in the field, now was being made over — getting its second wind, so to speak. For great things were in the air. Other divi- sions besides the Rainbow were coming into this Bourmont area — most of them veterans also — for intensive training, replacements and new equipment. It was the gathering of the First American Army. The helter-skelter group of American divisions likely to be thrown into the line anywhere, was a thing of the past. On the soil of France a real army had been born to the 106 The Story of the Rainbow Division United States. The Rainbow Division was a part of it. Greater still this army was about to start, on its own initiative and responsibility, without help or counsel from the armies of the other allies, an offensive against the German line. The Rain- bow Division was to be in it. It was a strange thing, but it is actually a fact, that the French civilians told the American sol- diers about this offensive before they heard it from their own commanders. They even pro- fessed to know accurately where the thrust was to be made. They said it would be made at St. Mihiel; and they were right. The First American Army was going to try to repeat in the old Lorraine salient what had just happened in the Soissons-Rheims salient. That ugly nose of the German army had been mashed flat, and now the same thing was to be done to this one. It is not entirely correct to say that this First American Army, commanded by General John J. Pershing, was to begin work with no help or counsel whatever from the other allies. Aside The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 107 from the constant presence at headquarters of divisions, brigades, regiments and even battal- ions, of officers of the French Mission, and aside from the fact that most of the basic knowledge upon which it was expanding had been derived from the French and British, there was a little of both help and counsel now. The counsel came from Marshal Foch. He told General Pershing that unless the attack on St. Mihiel was made during the first week in September it could not be made at all on account of the heavy fall of rain in that section of France, which started at the beginning of the second week in the month. So the attack was set for Sep- tember 7. But as the time drew near not everything was ready. It was a gigantic business, this first at- tack, and the First American Army was func- tioning for the first time. For the first time its staff — the thinking machine that plans moves and battles down to the last detail — was working "on its own." The American fighting soldiers had proven themselves; there was little doubt about what they would do, but until now the soldiers 108 The Story of the Rainbow Division who had done their thinking for them had been French. So St. Mihiel was not to be a test of the plain everyday fighting ability of the Amer- icans but of their generalship — their staff work. And it was a tremendous test. Fear that it would have disastrous results had moved Mar- shal Foch to discourage General Pershing in the undertaking before he uttered his counsel about the weather. Transportation difficulties arose. The move- ment of nearly six hundred thousand men to the region around Toul tied up the means of moving up enough ammunition and supplies for the big drive. The First American Army could not afford to make its initial effort with a shortage of ammunition or supplies. Complete success in the outcome was absolutely necessary. And so as it developed that September 7 would find the army unready to attack, the push was postponed to September 12, rain or no rain. As a weather prophet Marshal Foch made good. But as a judge of the American Army's disposition to recognize obstacles he failed. The Rainbow Division had started forward on The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 109 August 30. Moving always at night and rest- ing during the day in inconspicuous places (for the attack was to be a surprise) it marched about one hundred and twenty kilometers to the Foret de la Reine. There it went into camp in shel- ter tents. It became a division of mud-dwell- ers, lying quietly in the sticky black muck all day and wallowing about in it through the night, for by daylight no movement of men or transporta- tion was permitted. Rain fell steadily and the roads became hor- rors. Through the downpour and the absolute blackness the Texans of the 117th Supply Train and the Kansas men of the 117th Ammunition Train struggled forward inches at a time with the deep mud sucking their trucks back and the pitch-dark roads seeming to fall away beneath them. Nearly always about twenty-five per cent of all the Rainbow's transportation was stalled impotently in the mud and wrecking crews were at work day and night. It began to look as though Marshal Foch had known some- thing when he said it couldn't be done. But the long boys from the Texas and Kansas prairies 110 The Story of the Rainbow Division didn't know it couldn't be done, so they went ahead and did it. The Boche thought it couldn't be done; they didn't dream it was being done. It is likely that after the reverses in the Marne salient the Ger- man high command decided to withdraw from the St. Mihiel salient and take up a position, along the Hindenburg line under the guns of Metz. But they were in no hurry about it ; here were the fall rains, and who ever heard of fight- ing after the fall rains had started? Certainly not Marshal Foch. And while they thought these things the First American Army landed on them with both muddy feet. The bombardment started at one o'clock on the morning of September 12. It was not the greatest preliminary bombardment of the war; compared to the deafening roars of the Cham- pagne battle it sounded weak. But it did the work. There were some French Corps and Army artillery with the American batteries, and together in four hours they tore great holes in the trench, wire and machine-gun defenses the Gei- The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 111 mans had perfected in the salient during four years. At five o'clock, in a pouring rain and through a thick mist the infantry started. The Rainbow Division, as part of the Fourth Corps under Major-General Joseph T. Dickman, jumped off along the southern boundary of the salient east of Mont Sec; its sector extended from Beaumont northeast to Flirey, and included Seicheprey, where the Germans had sprung a surprise attack on the 26th Division earlier in the year, inflicting heavy losses and capturing nearly two hundred prisoners. The Rainbow was the center division of the Fourth Corps, with the 89th on its right and the First on its left. On the right of the 89th was the First Corps under Major-General Hunter Liggett, comprising the 2nd, 5th, 90th and 82nd Divisions in that order from left to right. On the western boundary of the salient the Fifth Corps under Major-General George H. Cameron, jumped off. It included the 4th and 26th American Divisions and a French division. At the point of the salient were more French 112 The Story of the Rainbow Division troops who were simply to hold fast and mop up as the Americans, pressing in from the sides, closed the jaws of the pincers and squeezed the Boche either in or out. In the same smooth-working battle formation with which it plowed through the Germans in every battle — Ohio, New York, Alabama, Iowa, from left to right facing the enemy — the four infantry regiments of the Rainbow Division started through the St. Mihiel salient. In front of every platoon were the California and South Carolina engineers with wire-cutters and benga- lore torpedoes, to cut or blow out any wire en- tanglements that remained in the path of the in- fantry. For completeness of equipment in attacking material the First American Army went at the job of reducing the St. Mihiel salient in as per- fect condition, probably, as any force of soldiers that ever went over the top. There were tanks, French and American; there was railroad heavy artillery, trench mortars, and gas and flame- throwers. For the first time and the last in its brief but busy life, the Rainbow Division saw The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 113 the Allies in complete mastery of the air. The French Independent Air Force and some Brit- ish bombing squadrons had been put under Gen- eral Pershing's command, and these, with our own aviators, drove the Boche airmen out of the sky. The drive moved ahead like clockwork. The old Seicheprey battlefield was taken by the Ohio infantry regiment without any trouble. On the right the Iowa doughboys encountered some re- sistance, in the woods northwest of Flirey. There were moments of stiff fighting for the heights in the vicinity of St. Bassant, but to the men who had beaten the German machine-gunners on the Ourcq, the defenders of the St. Mihiel salient were easy victims. The Germans were taken almost completely by surprise. What resistance they put up was half-hearted. Their wire-fields were old and rusty. Their answering artillery bombardment, during the actual pushing operation at least, was a joke. The path of the Rainbow through the salient was probably the most difficult in the whole First 114 The Story of the Rainbow Division Army. A road zig-zagged up through its sector with six villages on it, and villages, offering pro- tection to machine-gunners, are notably hard to take. But after St. Bassant, Essey fell and then Pannes, and there the Rainbow dug itself into muddy foxholes and held on for the night. Before them lay the villages of Beney and St. Benoit. It was at Essey that the Rainbow men saw the French civilians they had liberated, — the first French civilians to be freed from German mili- tary domination by an Allied victory. For though during the four years the battle line had surged back and forth over many French vil- lages the inhabitants of those places had long be- fore fled southward as refugees and their homes were in ruins. Here within the St. Mihiel sal- ient were villages that had become German prizes in the war's first year, that had escaped all but desultory shell-fire from the French, where the people had lived until now under German mas- ters. Nowhere else had the German line been bent to release such hostage towns from German rule. The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 115 There were few wild demonstrations — little hailing of the deliverers with flowers and flags. In the dismal rain and mud the dejected old vil- lagers silently watched the Americans coming through ; they were broken-spirited old people — few cheers left in them. Forced submission to brutality for four long years had numbed them so that they were unresponsive to one of the most tlirillingly significant happenings in history. In Pannes there were big German military storehouses with queer stores in them. The Rainbow men, hunting around for souvenirs, came forth from these places, rainsoaked and dis- reputable-looking soldiers, carrying brand-new, shiny patent-leather boots and wearing high silk hats atop their old tin helmets. The place was full of patent-leather boots, silk hats and um- brellas. It was in Pannes, too, that they got a billiard table and a phonograph, both unharmed despite the Allied bombardment. Next day the attack was resumed and the line pushed through Beney and St. Benoit to a point just south of Haumont. The Rainbow Division had advanced nineteen kilometers, a longer dis- 116 The Story of the Rainbow Division tance than any other division in the First Amer- ican Army, and had shared in the reduction of the entire St. Mihiel salient, liberating two hun- dred and forty square kilometers of French ter- ritory and capturing sixteen thousand prisoners and four hundred and forty-three pieces of artil- lery. But what was more important to the tired, war- weary world, the First American Army, acting independently, had demonstrated its ability to carry on a major offensive not only with success but with a smoothness and a smashing directness that no one would have believed possible at that stage of its development. The Germans had been swept from the salient as quickly and as neatly as though a broom had swished them out. Only in the matter of moving up the supplies and ammunition and in keeping the artillery close up behind the advancing infantry did the machinery of the offensive function poorly. Had the German power of counter-attack not been so demoralized by the suddenness and unexpect- edness of the blow there might have been disas- ter in this fact. The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 117 The roads across No-Man's-Land had been entirely destroyed, and the condition of the ground and the weather made repairs difficult. Colonel Kelly's engineers labored incessantly to get the Rainbow's roads into shape, but traffic poured in on them from all directions, and at the village of Flirey there was unbelievable conges- tion. In four directions from the cross-roads in the center of Flirey were masses of from two to four lanes of traffic for distances of from three to five miles. Nothing could move in any direc- tion. Staff automobiles were there from three different divisions ; heavy artillery, tractors, sup- ply and ration-wagons, motorcycles and tanks — all locked in the most hopeless tangle. At some points this part of the American Army was at a complete standstill for twenty-four hours. Several well-placed shells in this mass from the German guns would have wrought terrible havoc. But all the German guns that hadn't been captured were being desperately dragged off to the Hindenburg line by an army that hadn't time to realize what had hit it. Intelli- gence found on captured prisoners showed that 118 The Story of the Rainbow Division the Germans did not expect the attack during the rain, and that they considered it a rather mean thing to do — an advantage that would not have been taken by the French and British. They had been caught in the act of withdrawing their artillery from their old positions to the line of La Chaussee, where it would have inflicted considerable damage to the advancing Ameri- cans. Back on the Hindenburg line, however, and under the guns of Metz they regathered their scattered wits and proceeded to shell the new line and the rear areas heavily. Day and night they rained shrapnel and high explosive on the First American Army, not concentrating their fire on any particular points, but covering everything. For several days after the drive the St. Mihiel sector was the most active in the matter of artil- lery duelling on the whole western front. Brigadier-General Douglas MacArthur, com- manding the 84th Brigade of the Rainbow Divi- sion, realized this activity in time, perhaps, to save his life. He had established his headquarters in a chateau at St. Benoit, almost in the front The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 119 lines. It was under full observation from the German positions. For a time it escaped the shelling because the Germans never dreamed that a brigade commander was living there, almost in the front line trenches. One day, though, several shells fell pretty close to it and General MacArthur decided to move out. And the day after he moved the Germans, having noted the activity around the place, shelled it fiercely and reduced it to a blazing, smoking heap of ruins. General Menoher, the Rainbow Division Com- mander, was also forced to alter plans for estab- lishing division headquarters in the St. Mihiel sector, but for a different reason. Looking at the map he had decided upon the village of Maizerais, about a half kilometer from Essey. It looked like a pretty good town on the map. But when he arrived at the spot, expecting to see a village with at least a few decent habitations in it, he found nothing. Maizerais was not only a ruin; it was an almost extinct ruin. Over the crumbled foundations of shell-shattered houses grass had grown; a casual observer would have 120 The Story of the Rainbow Division marked it merely as an extraordinary rough- surfaced field. As a destroyed French town Maizerais held the record, so far as the Rainbow was concerned, throughout the whole war. So General Menoher established his headquarters in Essey. About two miles from Essey was the Forest of the Lovely Willow. There the Germans, feeling secure in the un- challenged possession of the land for four years, had built themselves a suburban village like unto the places tired city dwellers journey to on Sun- days in contemplation of a "back-to-the-land" movement. They had turned the Forest of the Lovely Willow into a pretty little bungalow park. General Menoher, abandoning Essey, took it over later for Rainbow Division Headquarters, and he and his whole staff and detachments from Lieutenant Colonel Ruby Garrett's Missouri Signal Corps — about three hundred men in all — lived and flourished there for several days, con- vinced, before they left, that the better part of "Kultur," as the Germans practiced it, was the art of being comfortable. The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 121 Pretty rustic walks with hand railings curled through and around its cluster of cosy houses; there was one of those amusement park rifle ranges with a moving target ; the Offizier-Kasino was snugly upholstered in red, with bright elec- tric lamps, tasteful wall-paper, a butler's pantry and electric push-buttons for summoning the drinks or the chicken-salad. The rest-house for soldiers was a pretty little chalet with picture post-cards plastered on the walls, showing the German Army being joyously greeted in Brussels, and London crumbling into the Thames under Zeppelin bombardments. And v there were rows and rows of houses for officers' billets, rows of squad cottages like hunt- ing-lodges in the Adirondacks; a bowling alley, an electric power-house, a hospital, a central kitchen. It was a tiny model city, and to live there after the mud and the foxholes was some- what like a vacation for the Kainbow's head- quarters. Not a mine or a booby-trap had been planted in the whole place, so rapidly had the Germans left it. They had not even taken time to remove 122 The Story of the Rainbow Division signs from the villages and the bungalow city, calling upon all soldiers who wanted to settle on the "conquered" land to file squatters' claims with their officers ! And now, with the new line of the First Ameri- can Army all consolidated and perfected, the men of the Rainbow Division, now holding not only their own sector, but that of the First Division on the left as well, wanted to go on to Metz. They felt sure they could take it. They growled and fumed constantly about it. But they did nothing except hold on to the new line under the constant fire of German artillery, until the night of September 22, four days before the opening of the first Meuse-Argonne offenisve on Septem- ber 26. As soon as the St. Mihiel salient had been reduced, artillery and reserve divisions had started on their way westward for this, the su- preme effort by the American armies. Absolute secrecy was essential. So in order to prey upon the Germans' nerves, to keep them in doubt as to the next attacking point, and to obtain infor- mation of their plans, several raids were planned The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 123 and executed. Some of them had not been very successful. It was on the night of September 22 that the Rainbow Division's turn came. Haumont, to the northwest of St. Benoit, and Marimbois Farm, to the northwest, were selected as the objectives. There were to be two raiding parties to strike simultaneously, one at Marim- bois Farm, to the northwest of St. Benoit, and one at Haumont, to the northeast. They were to be "go-and-come" raids, like the one in the Bois des Chiens, back at Baccarat, in May. Detachments of picked men were made up, one from M Company of the 167th (Alabama) Infantry, under Capt. Maurice Howe, and the other from K Company of the 168th (Iowa) In- fantry. Batteries of the Illinois (149th) Field Artillery regiment were to support the Ala- bamians and lowans. And to make a long story short they rushed over, while the artillery poured enfilading fire into the farm and the village; killed more than fifty Germans while most of them retired, fear- ing a general attack, and brought back twenty- five fine, healthy prisoners and two machine- 124 The Story of the Rainbow Division guns. It was the best night's work around the old St. Mihiel salient since the night the salient had disappeared. At about this time there were a few changes among unit commanders. Colonel Mitchell, by the way, had led the New Yorkers of the 165th in the St. Mihiel drive, Colonel Frank McCoy having been made a Brigadier-General and left the division. And now Colonel Kelly, leader of the Rainbow Engineers, was made engineer of an Army Corps, and Colonel J. M. Johnson succeeded him, while Lieutenant- Colonel Tinley succeeded Colonel Bennet as commander of the 168th from Iowa. And so the Rainbow Division stood, just in front of the Hindenburg line, now looking back on their part in the big American victory, now looking longingly toward Metz, while from the north and west there came to it the low rumble of many guns, chanting for the armies of Ger- many their death song. CHAPTER VIII THROUGH THE ARGONNE TO SEDAN Trucks at four a. m. and good-by to St. Mihiei! The Rainbow — a shock division now, to be held back like a ring-champion's best punch, till time for the knockout — was rushed over to Benoit Vaux in the autumn-tinted country be- hind Verdun. That was October 1. Three days later to Rei- court and on October 6 to the Bois de Mont- faucon, a pitiably wrecked forest, gouged and chewed for four years by the guns of the world's armies seeking to conquer and to defend Verdun. And now Verdun lay behind the Rainbow Division, while every day the roar of the battle beyond came down to its dead streets and its brave citadel fainter and fainter. And before the Rainbow Division lay the line of the First American Army righting the final battle for the 125 126 The Story of the Rainbow Division world against the armies of Germany; and the armies of Germany struggling with the last des- perate strength of trapped and beaten beasts. The Rainbow crouched in its black mudholes waiting for orders to strike. Again it becomes necessary (as the storm nec- essarily precedes the advent of the bright-hued bow in the sky) to paint in a gray, neutral-tinted background. When we left the Rainbow Division in the last chapter the breezes from the west were bearing toward St. Mihiel the rumble of many guns. It was the start of the Argonne-Meuse drive of September 26 — the beginning of the end. The echoes of the last American barrage in the St. Mihiel salient had scarcely died away when corps and army artillery and some divisions in reserve were starting westward for this, prob- ably the greatest single operation of the war. Their trip had ended back of the line that stretched from the Meuse River to the western edge of the Argonne Forest. On the other side of this line was the heart of "New Germany," built by the German army upon the ruins of Through the Argonne to Sedan 127 France and Belgium. During four years the German war-making plants had accumulated there; there were his two great military railway lines, the northernmost running through Liege and Namur, the southernmost running through Longuyon, Montmedy and Sedan. These lines, the upper one starting at Cologne and curving slightly southwest and the lower starting at Coblentz and curving first south and then north- west, met and crossed east of Cambrai. Through them all the armies of Germany in France and Belgium were fed, clothed, armed, supplied with ammunition and reinforced with men. With them under control the German armies were wonderfully mobile; divisions could be shifted from one part of the line to another far away with great speed. Out of control— with the lines of the Allies so close that they were under bombardment by artillery, they would be useless. Captured at any point they would work the complete defeat of Germany. The German High Command knew all this as well as it knew everything else about its own chances for defeat or victory — which was very 128 The Story of the Rainbow Division well, indeed. It was prepared to defend these lines to its last resources in strategical cunning and in men and arms. With Metz as a pivot the Germans were pre- pared to swing back slowly toward the east, with- drawing no more rapidly than was necessary to keep their railroads and stores under control, and, pulling their house in behind them, so to speak, retire eventually to their own borders and fight forever. They had only, while so with- drawing, to protect such of their railroad centers as Sedan, Montmedy, or Longuyon and they would get away in good order. The objective of the American offensive which began September 26 was Sedan, more than twenty-five miles away from lines that had re- mained virtually stationary since the fall of 1914. It began discouragingly enough. Endless hills and heavy woods were in its path. Of nine American divisions that jumped off out of the old French trenches on September 26 and started through the barbed- wire growths and pitfalls and machine-gun nests of four years' preparation, several came out in three days badly shot up. Through the Argonne to Sedan 12$ Many of them had had no previous experience whatever in the line, some had never been under shell-fire. In the first two days they pushed ahead seven kilometers, but they couldn't keep it up. Some of these divisions had been brought di- rectly from the training areas and plunged straightway into the attack on September 26. They had never been under shell-fire before. They had never heard the sound of a German gun or the whine of a German shell. There stretched up ahead of them on the left the great forest of Argonne, turned by Boche military ingenuity into an almost impenetrable, impregnable jungle of wire, mine-traps and machine-guns. Hill lay behind hill like a suc- cession of bumps in a roller-coaster and more deep forests were spread over them. Of roads there were virtually none. Tanks could not op- erate. And ten kilometers from the line the Germans were trying to hold with these advan- tages was the famous Kremhilde Line! And so, finally, the "veteran" American divi- sions had come up to relieve the "youngsters." 130 The Story of the Rainbow Division The 32nd had gone in and battered at Romagne and Cunel without success. The First Division went over to the left, captured Hill 212 in dash- ing style, and found itself up against the Krem- hilde Stellung. l Thus the Argonne-Meuse offensive stood on October 13, more than two weeks after its launch- ing. It had slowed up ; it had almost stopped. The Rainbow Division, having waited for a week in this hell-hole of a Bois de Montfaucon, with the 32nd's efforts just ahead of it bringing the German barrages on its impotent head and the filth of an old battlefield soaking into its clothes and disposition, now got the word. It took over the brilliant but tired First Division's line north of Fleville and Exermont and got to work. It was in the great Argonne drive at last. 7pr Tpr ^r *fr yf? t^t The enemy's stubborn defense of Hill 288 and the Cote de Chatillon had held up the advance of the whole army. The Rainbow's part in the ac- tual hard fighting in the Meuse-Argonne opera- tion lasted only two days, for in that time it Through the Argoime to Sedan 131 broke through the defense of these hills and cap- tured both of them. The capture of the Cote de Chatillon was called, at the time it occurred, "one of the most brilliant operations of the whole war." It may have been called that because the effect of it was so immediately productive of disaster to the Ger- mans, and because their backward movement at once doubled its speed, and because everybody was so happy about it. For when Cote de Cha- tillon fell before the attack of the Rainbow Divi- sion, the deadlock on the Kremhilde Stellung ended. But the fighting there was not as des- perate and deadly as on the Ourcq in July. The 168th from Iowa and the 167th from Ala- bama started the attack on the two hills on the morning of October 14. The lowans' position in the line brought Hill 288 and the Cote de Cha- tillon directly in their path. One may almost guess from the briefness of the battle that there was little about it of the working out of a complicated tactical plan — that, on the contrary, it was the recklessness of the assault and the performance of individual deeds 132 The Story of the Rainbow Division of courage and daring that won the fight for tha Rainbow. And that actually was the case, ex- cept that there was a tactical plan to the extent that the dashing assault was decided upon ( after every other sort of tactical plan had been con- sidered) as the best plan of all. You may best know how the hills fell by know- ing what the men did who took them from the Germans. For instance, with D Company of the 168th, under a lieutenant named Spalding, righting from the Bois de Romagne to the southeast of the Cote de Chatillon, and with hot machine-gun fire sweeping down from a trench on the right of the hill, another lieutenant named Ely went over with about half a platoon and cleaned out the whole trench, capturing twenty Germans. Tuilleries Farm was in the way of any ad- vance to Hill 288 — a vicious nest of machine- guns. Lieutenant Breslin of A Company went up there with a patrol, captured the guns and the Germans and brought them all back. They had to get 288 before they could get Chatillon, and the taking of 288 made Chatillon Through the Argonne to Sedan 133 harder to capture because all the Germans who possibly could ran across from one hill to the other as soon as the Rainbows came upon them. Companies A, B and C of the 168th had reached la Mussarde Farm at the brow of the hill, ad- vancing in combat groups with everything in fine shape, and then the Germans had opened up with all they had — machine-guns, Austrian 88's, and minenwerfers. The Rainbow men made one dash for the hedgerow around the farm, and the Ger- mans scattered like rabbits and galloped down the hill and across the open to the foot of the Cote de Chatillon. A messenger on his way up to the line with a message for Captain William R. Witherall, then commanding the First Battalion, was knocked flat by a German bullet that hit a pair of German field-glasses hanging around his neck over his chest. The message told Witherall to go ahead and take the Cote de Chatillon. The barrage started at ten a. m., and at ten- thirty Wither all's men started out of the Bois de Romagne toward the Cote. The first men to come out were killed in their tracks. Watching 134 The Story of the Rainbow Division carefully the woods across the clearing at the foot of the hill, the captain noticed that no fire at all seemed to be coming from one little patch of it — that, in fact, the Germans seemed to have turned their backs upon it. So he started a platoon of C Company across with Lieutenant Miller. From farther off to the right they came out toward this patch of woods at a dead run — twenty men — and not a German machine-gun opened up. With Miller's platoon now behind what seemed to be the Germans' main point of resistance around the foot of the Cote de Chatillon, things began to move more smoothly. Witherall saw a little group of machine-gunners training their piece upon some H Company men who were coming into Tuileries Farm. He leveled his pistol and brought down two of them, and the rest ducked for cover. Crossing the clearing himself and getting over safely, the battalion commander, rounding the back of a big dugout in the woods, came upon Corporal Pruett of C Company, dancing like a madman on the top of the dugout, waving a Ger- Through the Argonne to Sedan 135 man "potato-masher" grenade and yelling, "I've got 'em. I've got 'em!" He had 'em, right enough. Sixty-four Ger- man soldiers and four officers were cowering in that dugout, in mortal terror lest Pruett should throw the grenade. They begged Witherall to call him off, which he did, and they all went back as Pruett's prisoners. They made this former Iowa school-teacher a sergeant on the spot, and later he got a commission and the Distinguished Service Cross. Meanwhile B Company was still in the Ko- magne woods under direct fire from the machine- guns that C Company had escaped. Sergeant Clark was sent with four men to round up the Boche who were holding up B Company. These five lowans silenced one machine-gun with rifle fire, and killed the entire crew of another. Whereupon B Company came out of the Ko- magne woods, and lounged across the clearing to the Cote de Chatillon, with their guns slung over their shoulders as though they were taking a leisurely hike on a peaceful country road. With the men scattered through the woods 136 The Story of the Rainbow Division and around the German dugouts hunting for prisoners, word came up that the Germans were getting together for a counter-attack. By that time the Alabamians of the 167th had come up on the left, B and C companies of the 168th were reformed, and the Germans were beaten back. The Alabamians had had a tough fight in an- other part of the Bois de Romagne. They were facing the left slope of the Ccte de Chatillon, with their third battalion, under Major Morris, in the front and the other two battalions in sup- port. Before they took their side of the Ccte, however, joining up with the lowans, all three battalions were in the fight — the First under Major Jeorg, and the Second under Captain Flowers. Private Neibors of Idaho, an M Company man of the 167th, in this fight won the Congres- sional Medal of Honor for one of the most as- tounding exploits of the war. Neibors was wounded and left behind when his platoon rolled back before the ferocity of the German resist- ance, so that the Germans captured him. And that night, before they could get him out of the Through the Argonne to Sedan 137! zone of the fighting and back to a prison camp, he overpowered his guard and got his pistol, then rounded up nine more Germans and marched them all back into the Rainbow's lines. During the German counter-attack Sergeant Atkinson won himself a Distinguished Service Cross. He was a member of the regimental Headquarters Company, serving in the Stokes Mortar platoon. Being out ahead of his platoon and seeing the Germans starting forward, Ser- geant Atkinson had to think and act quickly. Ordinarily a Stokes Mortar is fired from a firm base built solidly into the ground. But Atkin- son had no time to build a base for his gun, so he held it between his knees and fired the big mortar bombs point-blank into the enemy. Atkinson's work did probably more than any other one thing to break up the German counter-attack on the Cote de Chatillon. The strong-points on the Kremhilde Stellung were now in the hands of the American Army. The back of the German resistance in the Ar- gonne had been broken at last. The great Ar- gonne drive could move on now. It did move 138 The Story of the Rainbow Division on, starting November 1, with the greatest artil- lery bombardment in history, excepting neither the bombardments in the Champagne in July or in the Argonne on September 26. The Rainbow infantry was relieved by the Second Division on October 31, but the Rainbow artillery stayed to help with the bombardment next morning. This included General Gatley's whole 67th Artillery Brigade from Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Maryland, besides the 150th machine-gun battalion from Wisconsin, the 151st from Georgia, and the 149th from Pennsylvania. These machine-gunners and artillerymen plowed holes in the withering German defenses that the Germans never were and never would have been able to patch up. Having dealt the staggering blow assigned to it, the infantry of the Rainbow was shifted over to the left and given a running start toward the city that had been the goal of the American Army since September 26 — Sedan! They say an important telephone message flew quietly around to the First, the 77th and the Through the Argonne to Sedan 139 Rainbow Divisions on November 1. The mes- sage was "Sedan regardless of boundaries !" This meant that each of these three divisions was to try to get to Sedan as rapidly as it could, paying no attention to the limits of its sector, squeezing over into another division's sectors if it could move more quickly by that method ; but, above all, to get there. They were to take for themselves the "right of way," like fire-fighting companies tearing up a busy street to a big blaze. The Germans were now retreating rapidly all along the line. The Rainbow Division, struggling northward through the terribly wrecked country, found it- self up against almost impassable barriers. In desperation Division Headquarters called for the Rainbow's "Fighting Engineers," the South Carolinians and the Calif ornians who had fought as infantry on the Ourcq, were ready to fight as infantry against the Cote de Chatillon, and were now hiking as infantry toward Sedan. In the situation that now confronted the Rainbow the engineers were wasting their time as infantry. At midnight on November 4, having gotten as 140 The Story of the Rainbow Division far as Authe, Division Headquarters learned that the causeway across the Bar Valley, north of Brieulles, had been demolished by the Germans in their retreat. No traffic — not even men on foot — could get across it. The causeway had been about one thousand feet long, crossing a marshy creek, and had consisted of a "fill" fifteen feet high. In this artificial road the Germans had blown mine craters every seventy-five feet; in some cases the holes went far below the surface of the original creek bottom. The "Fighting Engineers" discarded their in- fantry equipment and reassembled their engi- neering tools. It took them almost all morning to get their stuff ready, for they had been fight- ing as infantry so long they had almost lost track of the implements of their own profession. With Colonel J. M. Johnson and Lieutenant- Colonel W. F. R. Johnson commanding the regi- ment, the engineers worked day and night across the Bar Valley. The First Battalion — all South Carolinians — under Major A. V. Hooks, built the main pass across the marsh. Major Hooks had a heavy cold and a high fever when his men Through the Argonne to Sedan 141 began the work, but he stayed by them and com- pleted the job at ten o'clock on the night of November 6. At that hour the big trucks began coming across, pulled from the other side by gangs of soldiers with long ropes. On ahead of the Bar Valley bridges had been demolished at Petite Armoises and Sy, and two bridges in the forest to the south of Sy had been blown up. On these they put to work the Second Battalion from California, under Major E. B. Hayden. Half of his men worked with salvaged German engineering tools. Some of the engineers got one day's rations in three days. All of them worked under gas and high-explosive bombardments from the artillery covering the German retreat. And they went on, filling up holes in the roads, throwing bridges across ravines and streams, until, in Harricourt, while the Germans were still in the other end of the town, they pushed their repairs and lines of communication up to the Meuse Biver. They made reconnaissances of the Meuse, looking for possible sites for bridges, two hundred yards in advance of the infantry outposts. 142 The Story of the Rainbow Division And what, all this time, of the First and 77th Divisions, to whom had come as well as to the Rainbow, the order, "Sedan regardless of boun- daries" ? As they had started off on November 1, the 42nd had had the extreme left, the 77th had been in the center and the First had been on the right. But as they began nearing the River Meuse, the First had begun to push over to the left. The Meuse flowed northwest, and merely to reach the river bank due north of the point from which it had started, would find the First Division still several kilometers away from Sedan with no way to reach it except to follow the bank of the stream in a northwesterly direction. This the First had started to do. Of course, it ran into the 77th. The New Yorkers were very tired. The start of the "race for Sedan" had found the First comparatively fresh, for the Rainbow had relieved it back at Exermont in the middle of October, but it had found the 77th in the midst of the same battle it had been fighting for many days. So it was little trouble for the First to speed up a bit, cut di- Through the Argonne to Sedan 143 rectly across the path of the weary 77th, and head northwest along the river toward Sedan. Now, the path of the 42nd, rough as it was, led directly to Sedan. It was on the night of November 6 that a patrol of the First Division, scouting out ahead to feel the division's way through a country that might be still enemy-infested, took its last "prisoner of war." A lieutenant had command of the patrol. They had crawled up under the cover of a stone wall near Beaumeil Farm, about thirty kilometers from Sedan. The outposts of the 165th Infantry — the old 69th New York — were at that moment in Wadlaincourt, a suburb of Sedan on the heights overlooking the city across the river, but the patrol leader did not know that. All he saw in the gathering dusk was an im- portant looking officer walking around, attired in what looked like a gray cape and a visored cap with a soft crown, not unlike those the Crown Prince wore in his pictures. Stealthily the lieutenant led out his patrol and eagerly they leaped upon the important looking 144< The Siory of the Rainbow Division officer and made him a prisoner. And they got him back to a brigade headquarters of the First Division, before Brigadier-General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the S^th Brigade of the Rainbow Division, could convince them that it was himself and not an officer of the German Army. And no American division ever really reached Sedan. The Rainbow's patrols were the first into Wadlaincourt, and then, on Xovember 7, all the Americans were withdrawn from that point and the French were the first to enter the city. With the Rainbow out of the line in the region of Buzancy, eleven o'clock of the morning of November 11 arrived, and the war was over. PART TWO CHAPTER IX} ON TO GERMANY "Germany, hey!" growled the Rainbow doughboy, giving his ragged breeches a hitch. "How many kilomets is that? 33 And that was all he cared about it. That is to say, that was all he let anybody else know he cared about it. It was just the Rain- bow doughboy's way. Outwardly nothing im- pressed him any more, not even the tremendous fact that the old Rainbow was actually going to march to the country of the ancient enemy, as part of the American Army of Occupation. The division moved from Buzancy to Brande- ville, getting into that half-ruined town the day after the Germans got out of it. There it waited until November 20, being newly equipped with clothes, shoes and puttees, and getting its trans- portation into shape. There, too, its old com- 147 148 The Story of the Rainbow Division manding general, Charles T. Menoher, left it, and General C. A. F. Flagler took command. General Menoher had led the Rainbow through all its battles. Divisions that were not going into Germany were stripped of motor trucks, touring cars, motor-cycles and side-cars to speed the Rainbow on the high roads to the Rhine. The crippled, battered things that had toiled behind the ad- vance on every front, that had broken their backs and ruptured their engines to bring up food and ammunition, were sent limping back to that happy hunting ground of all worn-out army equipment — the salvage dump. The German army had planned to march into Paris wearing brand-new spiked helmets. The Rainbow would march into Germany, all in holiday duds. It had a terrible time for a while, though, with its new pants. Some muddled quartermaster had sent the division a lot of clothes built for an army of fat men, and the stuff had to be sent back, while the division waited. But on the morning of November 20 it started. Bugles had awakened it before daybreak. All On to Germany 149 trucks had to be loaded and ready to start by eight o'clock. Actually they were ready at seven „ o'clock. Brandeville, Stenay, Dun-sur-Meuse, all slowly were emptied of soldiers as the army from America streamed toward the north and east — herds of giant trucks, queues of plodding sol- diers, endless files of mingled men, horses and field-guns — the artillery; and the touring cars of staff officers weaving through traffic tangles in the villages and jumping out upon the high- roads at top speed. Nothing of the dreariness of war was in the land, unless you took a second look in at the doors of the deserted staff offices in Brandeville, and mused afterward over what you had seen. In front of the smoldering ashes of the log fires the returned exiles of Brandeville had been standing, surveying the old homes and preparing to start life again; wondering, probably, where the tables and chairs were coming from, what to have for lunch and where in the world to get it. For Brandeville had come back home. They had been standing around like that all 150 The Story of the Rainbow Division morning while the men were clearing out the telephones and office equipment and packing up the trucks — standing in the corners out of the way of the rush and bustle, watching and waiting. It was peace weather, too, with a cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine that warmed you through and made beautiful sharp etchings of the roads ahead and the valleys below and the autumn- tinted woods on the hills. Right at the start the trip to the Rhine was assuming the nature of a vacational jaunt through a New England countryside, let us say — in the "Feel" of the thing, if you get the mean- ing. Same scenery, same sort of roads that you had been seeing during months of trips around the rear areas of rural France. But this was the other side of a world that had been divided for four years — divided as though by a great wall so that neither side could look over and see what the other side was doing. Here, suddenly, was the other side, disclosed to view mile by mile. Exhilaration grew out of this situation. The foot-soldiers felt it. On their backs were the same heavy packs they had carried on night On to Germany 151 marches through rain and mud toward a morn- ing that would bring a battle — when no prospect stretched before them but more night marches and more battles, more rain and more mud. But this was bright sunny daylight, and there lay ahead good billets, sound slee$, leisurely going — and the River Rhine. So they were a fine-looking bunch as they swarmed through the valleys and over the hills — ; fresh-faced, clear-eyed, with a pep instead of a slog to their gait. At noon they reached Montmedy, the halting place for the day. On the outskirts of the town was the big Ger- man railhead for which the Allied "heavies" had been feeling for weeks. Broad stretches of track were interlaced there with trains of empty freight cars standing on the rails. Through the open door of one was a glimpse of a big printing press and on the outside of the car some doughboy had printed with a piece of chalk "Office of the Daily Cabbage." Across the road in a fenced-in area full of low frame buildings where supplies for a great army had been distributed, smoke tendrils 152 The Story of the Rainbow Division still rose lazily from two great charred heaps of cabbage. "Darned glad they burned it up," said Private Birckhead, orderly to Major Bob Gill, the Assist- ant Chief of Staff. "If they hadn't we'd be havin' cabbage for mess from now till we got to Germany." Major Gill stopped his car and from the fenced-in area a supply captain came running. "Great stuff!" the captain shouted through the window. "We needed a lot of horseshoes and the Boche left two cartloads of 'em here. We've got Lord knows how many gallons of kerosene and a couple of barrels of cup-grease — just what we needed ; a whole heap of stuff." "Great stuff!" echoed Major Gill. So they moved on into Montmedy, where the fighting German had lived and moved and had his way with the citizenry of one of his enemies since 1914. They rode into "Kronprinz Strasse." This German street name was painted on the housewall and the old French name had been obliterated. French and American flags flew from the On to Germany 153 upper windows of nearly every house on Kron- prinz Strasse. Across the top of one house two big signs stood, "Vive la France!" and "Hurrah for America!" The few people on the streets stopped in their tracks to gaze at the big olive- drab car with "U. S." painted on the side. They gazed stolidly and curiously without the wild emotion popularly imagined back home, seem- ingly anxious to await friendly overtures rather than take the initiative of a wild welcome. This same calm stolidity persisted throughout the city all day, in every Montmedy native, until they en- gaged in personal conversations. And then the attitude was like a simple, fervent, "Thank Heaven, it's over!" Not much gabbling and running about and joyful shouting. Whatever of that sort of thing the people of delivered Montmedy felt like doing they did within them- selves. Some middle-aged and aged gentlemen, un- comfortably dignified looking in high silk hats, long black frock coats and low collars with little bow ties of white linen, were coming out of the houses and walking up Kronprinz Strasse toward 154 The Story of the Rainbow Division the center of the city. Little girls and boys, bear- ing themselves as though they had on their best clothes, straggled in the same direction. Women came forth, fussily adjusting their puff -sleeved jackets. Everybody's shoes, well worn and wrinkled, were painfully polished. A sense de- veloped in the air that a municipal ceremony of some sort was impending. There, in fact, was the reason for the apparent stolidity in the greeting to the Americans. It wasn't stolidity at all. It was a bit of embarrass- ment, like the embarrassment of a young actress making her debut. Montmedy was making her debut to-day. She had been dead for four years, and to-day she was being born again. Up around the Maire — the City Hall of Montmedy — a crowd stood, stirring with suppressed excitement whenever an automobile or a truck sped around the corner. A Gendarme was there, keeping open a broad lane leading up to the door of the Maire, and his bright blue uniform, his crisp mustache, the swell of his chest and his lofty strut and wave of the hand were pleasant symbols of a long-lost power regained. On to Germany 155 Montmedy was waiting to welcome the Presi- dent of France and Mme. Poincare. The Rainbow Division straightway forgot any little disappointment at its failure to create a furore and proceeded to become citizens of Mont- medy. When the Chief of France and his wife arrived, his redeemed children and their Ameri- can redeemers would be there, side by side, to greet him. The doughboys, who got their billet- ing arrangements straightened out quickly, hustled down to the Maire and joined the crowd. Two military policemen from the Virginia organ- ization in the Rainbow Division took some of the gendarme's precious responsibility away from him and kept American motor traffic moving through the crowd and up the hill. The silk- hatted City Council raked up an American major-general, General Henry P. Allen, the commander of the 90th Division, from Texas and Oklahoma, which was coming to Montmedy with the Rainbow, and stood him in their midst on the Maire steps under the big sign, "Rathaus," which the Germans had painted over the door. President Poincare and Mme. Poincare ar- 156 The Story of the Rainbow Division rived at one o'clock with a triumphant sweep of automobiles bearing a retinue of French gen- erals and colonels. A host of flags shot over the heads of the crowd, and the roar of "Vive la France" was repeated many times. It was an unhappy moment for the three little girls and three little boys who had been waiting for hours in the corridor of the Maire with bunches of flowers for the President and his wife. The little girls had been standing on one side of the hall and the little boys on the other, whispering and giggling to each other and jump- ing up and down to keep warm, for their mothers had refused to hide under coats and hats the glories of tri-colored hair-ribbons, white dresses and sashes, and combinations of blue blouses, red knickerbockers and white stockings. "Stand right there," they had been told, "and when the President and Mme. Poincare come through the hall, step forward politely and present the flowers." So, though a breeze swept through the hall, they had not moved except to jump up and down. And now the President and his wife were down On to Germany 157 jthere on the steps and the crowd was piling around them and the little girls and boys were tiny atoms in the mass, with not even a glimpse of the faces of the chief and his wife. The little girls led the way in the desperate rush of the flower-bearers of Montmedy. They whispered excitedly a few moments, then plunged, flowers and all, into the crowd of chief citizens who were presenting a wall of animated black backs to them. The little boys followed. Squirming and wriggling, forgetful of the flowers which were badly mauled in the struggle — forgetful of everything but that they must get down there and greet the President of France on behalf of the children of Montmedy — thejr pushed through and reached the foot of the steps — three little girls and three little boys, with their carefully brushed hair all frowzy and their rib- bons and best clothes all awry. Mme. Poincare* saw them first and she aban- doned the town's chief citizens immediately. Stooping down at the imminent risk of having her hat and veil torn loose by the crowd, she hugged the little girls and kissed them, then she 158 The Story of the Rainbow Division hugged and kissed the little boys. She gave the coat of the President of France a gentle tug, and he, too, bade the Mayor and Council desist for a moment while he pinched the little girls' cheeks and patted the little boys' heads, bowing low over the flowers and turning them over to a general, who turned them over to a colonel, who gave them to the President's chauffeur, who put them in the automobile. Luncheon was waiting on a long table in a big hall upstairs — more food than the folks of Mont- medy had seen in one place since the Germans came. The President of France had brought it in his private train that was carrying him and Mme. Poincare from city to city in reclaimed Prance. Not only was he taking with him the food for banquets of thanksgiving in the re- deemed towns and cities, but he was taking his own cook, his own chef and his own waitresses. The last the Rainbow Division saw of the President of France and his wife, they were trail- ing upstairs at the head of the procession of happy Councilmen, with the generals and col- onels and the American General, going to lunch. On to Germany 159 Whereupon the Rainbow Division spread out through the city, for next day it would be moving on into Belgium, and there was no time to lose seeing the sights and gathering souvenirs. Every store was full of them, crowding up to the little counters behind which whole families — from grandparents to grandchildren — had mob- ilized to handle the sudden rush of trade. Long, lanky boys from Kansas and Indiana bought ruthlessly of stocks of feminine-looking frip- peries. Stores that had little supplies of picture postcards, paper and envelopes were cleaned out in a half hour. For the first time since the A. E. F. became an A. E. F., German money began passing back and forth in transactions between American sol- diers and the citizens of Europe. The shop- keepers of Montmedy had a lot of German money — not a lot, either, but more than they had of any other money. So the doughboys got back handfuls of marks and pfennigs in change and went on their way rejoicing. More souvenirs! Uptown was the "Deutsches Theatre An Der Westfront." A new show was going on inside — 160 The Story of the Rainbow Division a good show now. The old one had been playing there for four years and it was a rotten perform- ance. The world had stood it as long as it could, then it had "egged" the actors and the whole stock company was beating it somewhere off through Belgium. But this new one was a peach. The sounds that came through the wide open windows on the second floor made folks on the street stop in their tracks and shuffle their feet. Above the ragtime lilt of a piano came the roar of an American sol- dier chorus, "Take Me to Dat Darktown Strut- ters' Ball!" Four soldiers, leaning comfortably over the withered flower boxes on the balcony rails, sang the song out into the street. A red-haired boy from Alabama was up there at a big grand piano, swaying himself and his fingers up and down the keys, and the chorus was crowded around him five rows deep. He was a wizard, the red-haired boy. He sent thrills up and down your back and made you stand around and shake your shoulders when you knew you ought to be examining this German theater and marveling at it. On to Germany 161 This must have been a sort of club room for the German soldiery, where they assembled be- tween the acts and sat around drinking beer and singing, while somebody played the piano. The beer tables were still there, though some of them were overturned and smashed, and the floors were littered with debris. Every window in the place was smashed — not from bombing or shell- ing by the Allies, for the windows of houses in the town were still intact. Just before they left OVlontmedy the Boche must have fired through the windows from the street, for there were bul- let holes through the plaster in the back walls and splintered glass lay all over the floor inside. Downstairs was the theater. It was a per- fectly arranged little place, with seats for about six hundred, a good-sized stage, a gallery with a place where they probably worked a spotlight, and signs all over the walls "Rauchen Verboten!" The walls were paneled and tinted, the wooden strips a dark mahogany color and the panels a pale sort of orange. From the high ceiling hung clusters of crystal lights, shaded with orange silk. All this decorative artistry revealing a chapter 162! The Story of the Rainbow Division in the life of the German Army, now retiring to its own borders in shame, meant nothing to the Americans upstairs. For them there were more thrills in standing around the red-haired Ala- bamian, who could make a German piano speak English. The Maryland trench-mortar battery officers had a dinner that night. Their billet-hostess had joyfully assented to a proposal that included the turning over of her dining-room and her table service for the evening, the cooking of the dinner and the usual cleaning up processes. All the officers were to furnish was the food, which, in Montmedy, was the main thing, the other details merely trailing along as pleasant accompani- ments, but not necessities. And so they dined in not a little state in deliv- ered Montmedy, on the second floor of the big house on the left and down the hill about two blocks, above the "Deutsches Theatre an Der Westfront." On clear, still nights a few months ago the billet-hostess and her husband and daughters could probably have heard the sweet chorus of "Hi-lee, Hi-lo" from the stage down On to Germany 163 there, and caught the faint perfume of limburger as the skinny Dutchman hit the fat Dutchman in the stomach with a hoard. It was a great dinner. There was tender steak, fresh from the quartermaster, and fried potatoes, fresh from the commissary, and baked beans, fresh from the cans. And there were coffee and white bread and jam made of whole strawberries. With the dishes cleared away and everybody fixed with fresh cigarettes, the billet-hostess tiptoed into the dining-room with a scared smile and fairly flew at the opposite wall with out- stretched arms, as though she wanted to get there before somebody tagged her and made her "it." Now this was an ordinary-looking wall. It had a pale sort of paper on it and a few very tasteful etchings, but you could have stared at it for hours and never have seen anything about it worth running at as one would run at the last hot fish-cake on the free lunch counter. All of which establishes the fact that when Shakespeare said "the walls have ears" he was only partly right. This wall had something else. 164 The Story of the Rainbow Division The lady, who was very thin and small, with a worried countenance on which were several moles trimmed with long, curling hairs, passed her right hand over a spot in this wall, which opened be- fore the officers' eyes. From the opening she took a bottle, blew some dust from it, and closed the wall so that it again looked like any other wall. Whereupon she turned around and ten- derly planted the bottle on the table and stepped back a pace, twisting her hands in her apron and murmuring. It was a square, fat bottle, and it bore an old label, "Curacao, Triple-sec." She explained that it had been hidden in the wall for four years, away from the German officers who had lived in her house. This was the time to bring it out, she thought, when "les Americains," for whom noth- ing was too good, were her guests. They told her to invite in her husband and her daughter, and for the rest of the evening they sat, all three, on the edge of the divan — the old gentleman with one fat cigar between his fingers and four sticking out of the breast pocket of his coat — gifts from the officers — and the lady On to Germany 165 and her daughter sipping the curacao they had hidden for four years, stroking the moles on their chins and listening with rapture to the most awe- inspiring attempts to draw harmonies out of "Picture To-night a Field of Snowy White" and "Down by the Old Mill Stream" that had ever been heard. And when a member of the party stood up and recited the first four lines of "The Night Before Christmas," supplying what he had forgotten with extemporized gibberish and wild gestures, they apparently thought their house was being honored with the presence of a great American actor and probably secretly stored the scene away in their memories to thrill future generations of Montmedy. Next morning, through more bright autumn sunshine, trains of motor trucks crossed the bor- der into Belgium, full of young men who waved their winter caps, and roared "Knock the Rhine," which, spelled N-a-c-h and pronounced with a gargle, was a perfectly good German expression of triumph. CHAPTER X BELGIUM LAUGHS AGAIN Belgium came out of her cellars, bringing her ancient wines and her precious bits of brass and tapestry, when the American Army came through on the highroads to the Rhine. As prop- erly as she could, Belgium made merry. She had almost forgotten how — she had entirely for- gotten how — to make merry, as Americans know the term. But she got what merriment she could out of talking about her four and a half years of slav- ery to the men of the Rainbow Division. She could talk about those years now, because they were gone and the slavery was over. And the wine that was too good for the Germans, and the hospitality that the Germans demanded with threatening bayonets (and thought they were getting) came up from the caves that the Amer- 166 Belgium Laughs Again 167 icans might make merry and teach Belgium 'to laugh again. That is what the Rainbow Division did in the beautiful old citv of Arlon — it retaught Belgium how to laugh. First, though, let me tell of the city of Virton, Belgium, close to the border between France and Belgium, which was the first city in Belgium the Rainbow Division saw on its march to the Rhine. In Virton it came upon the last of the German Army in Belgium — four hundred wounded Ger- man soldiers in the hospital there, with the hos- pital's full complement of German medical offi- cers and German nurses. They were the first Germans to live under the flags of the Allies. From the tower of the big hospital were flying, on the day the Rainbow Division was in and around Virton, the flags of France, Great Britain, Belgium and America. In the streets the men of the Rainbow met German medical officers. The situation seemed to produce a queer, sudden mixture of emotion in both Americans and Germans, and the Ger- mans seemed to be surer of themselves than the 168 The Story of the Rainbow Division Americans. Probably the Germans were more certain of their defeat than the Americans were that they believed they were defeated. At any rate, the Germans bowed and the Americans simply stared. Heaven knows the men of the Rainbow Divi- sion had seen enough Germans. They knew what German soldiers looked like, dead and alive — or, rather, first alive and then dead. Their ideas of what to do when they saw a German soldier, who was neither wounded nor a prisoner, included most of the things the world puts under the heading of "Decisive Action," but it certainly did not include polite bows. Until Virton they had seen German soldiers only on battlefields — most of the battlefields of the four years of the war. They had never seen them shopping in the streets of a quiet city, carrying bundles in their arms. So that it was a queer thing to watch the prog- ress of the young German soldier walking from shop to shop in Virton, and finally striking off up the broad, tree-aisled street to the hospital — a homey, comfortable street like a shady avenue Belgium Laughs Again 169 in an American college town. He wore a neat- fitting uniform of field-gray and a gray cap like our fatigue cap, with a black patent-leather visor. He was young and slim, with a fresh pink face and very erect. Group after group of our American dough- boys he passed — strolling along on their way to the regular afternoon "parley" with French shop-keepers — tall, lean boys from the West and South; short, stout, snappy little fellows from the East; Americans from all over the United States, talking about home, old fights, the com- ing arrival in Germany, how much money they had, what the cooks were "coming across with," how they had bawled out the Sergeant that morn- ing and would do it again if he got gay, and what they were going to buy. And whatever they were talking about, they stopped it when they saw the young German soldier with the bundles. His head was up and his eyes ahead like a man on parade, but as he passed the American groups he turned his eyes toward them, inclined his head 170 The Story of the Rainbow Division slightly with a murmur that was unintelligible, and passed on. Now, apparently, those groups of Americans thought no more of returning that bow than they would have thought of returning the bow of one of the camels in a circus parade. "For Pete's sake, did you see that bird bow his head?" "Yeah — whad d'ye know about that? Mus' think he knows us !" "He prob'ly knows ole Slim here. Prob'ly tended bar back home in some rathskeller where old Slim used t' hang out." "Yeah, and he can take me back to that ole rathskeller toot-sweet if he wants to. Jus' so he don't put no knockout drops in my beer, that's all." "Won't be any beer when you get back there, Slim. All be drinkin' prune juice or somethin'." "Tell yuh what I bet about these Goimans," said a little black-eyed soldier with curly black hair and a high curved nose. "Bet yuh they've been told to try to get in good with the American Belgium Laughs Again 171 Army so people won't believe these stories about killin' babies an' boinin' choiches." "Well, they gotta do somethin' more'n bow to get in good with me. Cap'n says don't frat-nize with 'em, and y' ain't goin' to see me frat-nizin'." "I wouldn't trust ole Slim if one of 'em says 'Slim, come on in an' have a stein o' Pils'ner beer/ " "Well, now, mebbe," Slim began — and then they were out of earshot and heading toward a postcard shop that had a window full of pictures of Virton. If the orders in the retreating German Army bade those left behind to "try to get in good" with the American Army, they were certainly useless orders, so far as the Rainbow Division was con- cerned. In Virton an American second lieuten- ant put a German medical lieutenant out of his billet. The German had lived there nearly four years — as long as the hospital had been in opera- tion. He had German pictures on the walls — scenes of the "Fatherland," groups of soldiers, girls, and so on — and he had made a homelike place of the room, with an electric light at the 172 The Story of the Rainbow Division head of the bed and a reading lamp on the table and all his books and records in orderly cabinets around the walls. But the town major having in charge the list- ing and distribution of the billets did not take into account the fact that any part of the German Army was still in Virton. So far as he was con- cerned the German Army had gone away from there and was still going. So this billet in the home of a French woman came to be listed among the billets available for officers of the Rainbow Division. They say the German was scribbling away at his table, telling the folks he'd be home soon, or something, when an American soldier, the lieu- tenant's orderly, came bumping through the door, bending under a bedding roll as big as a piano, and dumped it down on the floor with an awful thud. Behind him came the young Ameri- can officer with a musette bag over his shoulder and a suitcase. Behind the American officer came the lady of the house. The German rose, dropping his inky pen on the paper — plainly astounded. Belgium Laughs Again 173 "I think this is my billet," said the American coolly, picking a corner occupied by the Ger- man's spare boots to deposit his bag and suitcase, and removing the boots in the process. "Yes?" said the German. He spoke English well. He hesitated a second. "I have lived here for four years," he ventured. "Yes?" said the American. Then to his orderly, "Any water in that pitcher, Harry? If there isn't, ask the Madam to get some, will you? I want to wash up." Without another word the German left, and came back with his own orderly, and they both proceeded to move out the German's house fur- nishings, while the American sloshed his face and head and neck in the cold water, brushed his teeth and hair, and distributed his razor and toilet articles around on the wash stand. Not a word of conversation passed between the American and the German until, as the latter was leaving with the last of his stuff, the American looked up from a manicuring operation, and said, "Sorry, old scout !" The German closed the door softly, with never a reply. Wads of francs from the parts of France the 174 The Story of the Rainbow Division Germans had not reached piled into the little money boxes of the Belgian storekeepers, who searched their poor stocks of goods again and again to find things that the Americans wanted. The money of their own country was returning to them and the marks and pfennigs they had accumulated during the German occupation went into the pockets of our doughboys. - They were poor enough stocks of goods, Heaven knows, what with the ravages of the Boche in the last hours before he left. But as though they were business folk who had just com- pleted a big deal, American soldiers and Virton citizens sat down to dinner together that night in many a Virton kitchen or dining-room, and savory broiled steak and hot French fried pota- toes right from the company's cook, lay in lordly state on hot platters before them, and Madam poured the coffee and sat down in the midst of the young Americans, not understanding a word of the jokes they roared at, or the stories they listened to so eagerly. But they were happy — Madam and Monsieur, and the blushing Made- moiselles — in contemplation of the serene-faced, Belgium Laughs Again 175 clear-eyed boys from America, and of their hon- est laughter and sincere interest in Madam and Monsieur, and the blushing Mademoiselles, and of their shameless appetites for food. From Brandeville through Montmedy and Virton and beyond, Northern France and South- ern Belgium had seemed strangely well-pre- served for having been war countries for four years. Even near Montmedy, supply depot on the Germans' main army railroad line between Longuyon and Sedan, which had been within range of our great naval guns during the last weeks of the war, the earth was but little torn with shell-fire and the villages scarcely at all. Over this country the hastily-formed armies of France had fallen back during the fall of 1914, offering little resistance to the steady, thoroughly planned advance of the German force, and the villages and fields here lay just as they were when the horses of the Uhlans had pranced into them and they were claimed for Germany. Before noon, though, rolling onward through Belgium, the Rainbow Division came upon the war's first ruins — the wreckage wrought when 176 The Story of the Rainbow Division black despair was first settling over Europe, by- guns so big that the people blanched with terror at the very mention of them. They were ordinary ruins, just like those the Rainbow had left in France. People walked among them trundling wheel-barrows or pulling little carts, and most of them were women — old women. There were a few children who stood and stared at the slow column of horses, wagons, motors, guns and men. They did not wave their hands or clap them. What these tiny Belgium children knew about soldiers didn't call for wav- ings or clappings of hands. Here and there an older girl, standing by a tangled pile of rocks that had been her home, waved one hand steadily as though she had that day set that hand aside for waving purposes and no other. The older girls understood the slow moving column of olive- drab. Shortly afternoon the Rainbow Division reached the city of Arlon. Crowning a broad hill, unobscured from view for a mile along the broad, shady road, Arlon lay shining in the sun like descriptions of old Jeru- Belgium Laughs Again 177 salem — "with tow'rs of gold and diadems of snow." Old Rainbow veterans, starved through long months of fighting among wrecks of towns, for the sight of a big city, rounded the curve of the road and saw it. "Wot th' ," they said, and waxed speechless. All day the Rainbow rolled into Arlon, and Division Headquarters was established in the center of the city in the great government build- ings on the Place, where in some of the rooms the silk-covered furniture, tapestried walls and rich, thick carpets were unhurt, and in others were worn and slashed and heaped up with dirty, worn-out German gas masks and abandoned ammunition cases. It was beautiful, the interior of this great building — with the beauty of an empty conch-shell. Hand-carved cases that had held precious bronzes were opened and empty, the faces of richly carved old "Grandfather clocks" were empty, the walls bare of pictures, the heavy tables bare of covering. American automobiles standing in the Place were wonderful museums of new things for the children, who clambered into them and bounced 178 The Story of the Rainbow Division up and down on the cushioned seats, wiggled the clutches and brakes and begged to be taken for rides. The humblest looking doughboy, who probably hadn't drawn a new pair of shoes and leggings yet, and who had lost a couple of but- tons from his overcoat during the morning mrrch, was eyed, as he walked past the shops, like a million dollar movie star, and wealthy old Arlon- ites struggled to think of enough English to ask him to dinner, ending the struggle by dragging him off. There was a host of dinner parties in Arlon that night, furnished forth, as these parties in redeemed France and Belgium always are, with some things brought by the soldiers in their own hands and some things brought from the dark cellars by the citizenry. For a dinner party in Arlon, or anywhere else in Belgium, was a diffi- cult problem for a Belgian to handle alone. All the butter, eggs, sugar and meat that the retreat- ing German army could lay its hands on, it had taken away when it left Belgium. Sometimes the Germans had asked the price, and sometimes they hadn't, though nearly always they had laid Belgium Laughs Again 179! down a few marks, so that the transaction would be only semi-robbery. But the Belgians supplied the wines from their hiding places in the cellars, and from the same hiding places they brought up their best old silver table services and their snowy linens, and their bronze statuary. Lights went up, and old clock faces of brass, cut out and hidden from the brass- hungry Germans, went back into the clocks, and there was band music and a glory of colored rockets in the Place at night, and parading and shouting through the streets. CHAPTER XI SO THIS IS GERMANY On December 4, after a two-day trip from Mersch, Luxembourg, Headquarters of the Rainbow Division reached Welschbillig, a muddy little German village of about four hundred peo- ple. The Red Cross man who got up there first so urged his "Tin Henry" that it navigated open fields, ditches and steep embankments, passing several miles of field artillery, infantry, machine- gun battalions, engineer, ammunition and supply trains, staff limousines, and other miscellaneous vehicular and foot traffic, which was either stuck in the mud, pulling up to let something pass in the opposite direction or halting from sheer fatigue. The "Tin Henry," running on a thimbleful of gas, rattling in every rib, asthmatic, rheumatic, full of grip and pneumonia, caught up to the 180 So This is Germany 181 tail of the column in Echternach, passed through the completely blocked streets by climbing on the sidewalks, crossed the bridge over the Moselle behind a mule-drawn machine-gun cart from the Wisconsin battalion, and brought bitterness into the hearts of foot soldiers and limousine staff officers alike by disappearing over hill after hill and around curve after curve, so that it was in this one-night stand by four p. m., or in time to get a billet in the home of one of the best fam- ilies of Welschbillig. A cream separator buzzed away downstairs, and somebody was working overtime down in the barn, running an electri- cally operated threshing machine. Jingoism had gained wide influence through- out the Rainbow Division during its ten-day halt on the borderland between Luxembourg and Germany. There were great expectations of sniping by the German population. Since it was virtually useless to hope for Christmas at home, the Rainbow Division hoped for a guerrilla war- fare in Germany. The more imaginative among them conjured up pictures of themselves sneak- ing from doorway to doorway in Berlin, exchang- 182 The. Story of the Rainbow Division ing shots with members of the Reichstag con- cealed in second-floor bedrooms, or of a greeting from across the border with a fusillade from the farmers' shotguns. But the only fusillade that greeted them came from the official United States Army moving picture cameras set up on the German side of the Echternach Bridge. And from there all the way up to Welschbillig soldiers who hoped for any more excitement than that arising from trying to move three-ton trucks up slippery hills were disappointed. But in the disappointment there was as much to talk about and to argue about around the field kitchen and billets as there would have been if a Sniper had opened up from each tree along the road. The Welschbilligians, instead of being guerrilla fighters, were trying to be regular folks. Instead of potting the men of the Rainbow Divi- sion with shotguns, they bombed them with cups of hot barley coffee, gobs of honey, and armfuls of firewood. It was the first experience of the men of the 42nd Division as occupants of the homes of the So This is Germany 183 nation it had been fighting every day for a whole year. They were not quite sure what to do. There were General Headquarters orders against "fraternizing" with German villagers. "Offi- cially" the country was hostile. The business of the American Army here was to stick to the heels of the retreating German Army. Theoretically, it was a pursuit. For every purpose, except the purpose of killing, the war was still on and the armies were still in the field. But you couldn't fight old women who came hobbling into your offices at the head of parades of a dozen kids, all loaded down with firewood. And you couldn't turn an unfraternal back on old men who came in bringing chairs for the office force to sit on. It put the Rainbow Divi- sion in something of a dilemma. There was a decided dilemma that evenmg around the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of Transportation and Supply. Lieut. Marcus L. Poteet was running the office, while Major Gill's temporary successor, Major Ber- tram, was attending to some work in his Intelli- gence Department. 184 The Story of the Rainbow Division Every two or three minutes there came shuf- fling into this office an old woman — bent almost double — chuckling toothlessly, and wringing her hands, and mumbling in German. She went al- ways first to the stove and looked into the grate — an easy operation for her, for she had never to stoop over; stooping was her constant attitude. Then, with plentiful gestures of her stiff old hands, she'd poke a fresh stick of wood into the fire. Then she'd turn around and make a brief address, rapidly bobbing her head, which was wrapped in a black shawl. Lieutenant Poteet and Private Cooney and Sergeant-Ma j or Walter Davis were a little leery during her first two or three visits. When she ambled out after feeding the stove the first time they braced themselves for a few seconds and held their breaths in case the stick of wood might have been a disguised bomb. But nothing hap- pened either that time or the next, or the next, so when she turned around from the stove after the fourth time, and made her little speech, Lieu- tenant Poteet unbent and responded with a hearty "Yah, yah, yahl" So This is Germany 185 In two minutes she was back with a pot of coffee which she planted on the stove. Her daughter followed, bearing a deep bowl full of fried potatoes. Her son, a discharged German soldier with little piggy eyes and a friendly smile under his Kaiser mustache, brought up the rear with both fists full of knives and forks and a red tablecloth under his arm. "For Pete's sake, they're fraternizin'," said Sergeant-Major Davis, "What're y' goin' to do?" "I'm goin' to eat," said Private Cooney. So everybody sat up to the table, while the thin, rather cross-eyed daughter went back to the kitchen to bring up the plates and cups. The coffee was poor stuff, being made out of charred barley, so they put into each cup a spoon- ful of the self-made coffee which the Army car- ries around. But the potatoes were fine, and when they had cleaned out the bowl, the old lady came stooping in with another bowlful, and the daughter brought in a dish of honey, and the ex-soldier got on his knees and poked around the fire, and six muddy, greasy children came in with 186 The Story of the Rainbow Division more wood, did squads-left-into-line, dumped it on the floor, squawked "Abhtung" and goose- stepped out in single file. It was a full half- hour before the adults of the family stopped standing around, grinning and muttering and watching them eat. When they finally cleaned up the dishes, rolled up the tablecloth and left, Lieutenant Poteet took a deep pull on a fresh cigar and announced : "The next man that says 'Yah' to that old woman gets court-martialed. One more 'Yah' and she'll be in here giving everybody a shave, a haircut and a bath, and that'll be fraternizing." In muddy streets and plaster walls and smells and general dreariness on a wet, misty day, this village in Germany was not unlike villages of the same population in France. The Rainbow was going through the Rhine provinces, which, judging from one day's journey, consisted of vast expanses of forest, field and mountain, with widely scattered villages. The open country of France rolled gently and the broad, smooth roads opened long vistas, and you shot along on a straightaway for miles and So This is Germany 187, miles. But from Echternach to Welschbillig there had been a succession of hill climbings and coastings, with hairpin curves every few hundred feet. Towering mountains rose before you, and a view of a winding road was lost in forest a short distance ahead. But with a series of twists and turns and a constant pull up grade after grade, you found yourself on the very top of the forest and the ribbon of road you had just left below looked like a cowpath. More mountains on all sides hemmed in your range of vision. There was a majestic grandeur about it all with its vast, deep silence, and it would have been more thrilling if one hadn't had to contemplate it all with real doubt that one was going to make the next hill, and the next, and others beyond. Thousands upon thousands of American doughboys — walking with their packs on their backs, piloting three-ton trucks almost as wide as the roads themselves, driving raw-boned mules and horses already tired to death with life and the hauling of heaving wagons and cannon — all had to make those hills to reach the Rhine. Most of the men of the 42nd had finished the 188 The Story of the Rainbow Division first stage of the march and were settled that night in the kitchens and attics here around around Welschbillig. They knew the rule against "fraternizing," but all the rules in the world couldn't keep an American soldier from making himself at home, even though a picture of a man his own regiment killed in the Cham- pagne a few weeks ago hung over his head as he tilts his chair against the dining-room wall. That thing happened in Welschbillig. The dead German soldier's mother was pottering around the fire, where the Yank's mud-soaked shoes were drying, and the little sisters and brothers — nearly a dozen, all told — were lurking at more or less of a distance, looking at his socks and his clothes and his face, and urging each other to go up and feel of his belt and pistol that hung over a chair. If fraternizing consisted of taking what came your way and making the best of it, then the Rainbow Division in Germany was composed of the greatest thirty-third degree fraternizers in the world. They fraternized that night, too, down where So This is Germany 189 the officers of the Missouri Signal Battalion were quartered — in the village schoolhouse, where the schoolmaster lived — but it was fraternizing of a different sort. The schoolmaster spoke a little English, and Col. Ruby Garret and the other Signal officers wanted to know how the people of Germany felt about the war, now that it was all over. The schoolmaster was convinced that the Kaiser was all right ; he had had a bunch of un- fortunate rough-necks for friends, that was all. If he had had his way the war never would have started. But all Germany was glad it was over, he said. Unlike the farm villages of France, Welsch- billig's muddy street corners had electric lights, and there were electric lights in some of the rough plaster houses, and instead of great open chim- neys there were shiny enameled stoves. And there were modern mechanical things like the cream separator, and the threshing machine — entirely unknown in rural France, apparently — which were still buzzing merrily away, though it was ten o'clock. Bits of the old "Kultur," un- doubtedly. CHAPTER XII DIE WACHT AM RHEIN Up at seven o'clock, on the road through a thick fog, and into Speicher by noon, twenty-five kilometers from Welschbillig. The third day of the Bainbow Division's march to the Bhine across German soil was almost over and to-morrow it would move on to Birresborn. The long brown columns were filtering deeper into Germany. As the Belgians did when the Germans came through in August, 1914, the German villagers went to bed now with the rum- ble of the American column in their ears and awoke in the morning still hearing it, and moved about through the day still seeing it, and dropped off again to sleep without seeing or hearing the end. They knew now what had really happened on the fighting front while the General Staff of the 190 "Die Wacht Am Rhein" 19X German Army had fed them on fairy tales of victory and requisitioned their poultry and butter for Berlin. This village, where they stayed overnight like an immense troupe of barnstormers, was bigger than Welschbillig. It had a fair little hotel with one bathtub that was full of spare bed clothing when they arrived. The bed clothing had since been stored elsewhere, for Col. Ruby Garrett managed to close a deal for a bath in the tub. The beautifully enameled hot-water attachment on the tub was out of order so they heated the water on the kitchen stove downstairs, and a broad-backed German girl brought it up in five trips, carrying two buckets each trip — five buckets of hot water and five buckets of cold. She also cleaned out the tub and pulled down the shades in the window and switched on the light and brought in a rug for the floor and showed signs of wanting to assist at the scrubbing fes- tivities. So far there seemed to be nothing the Germans would not do to make the American Army of Occupation feel at home. The wife of the proprietor of the hotel (he, 192 The Story of the Bainbow Division by the way, fought against the British at Cam- brai and was gassed) even smoked a cigarette. She was clearing off the table after a lunch for six officers, and a sportive major thrust his cigarette case toward her and nodded brightly. With her free hand she very gingerly took one and started to stick it in the pocket of her apron. "No, no !" insisted the major, and struck a match. So she put the cigarette between her lips and went out toward the kitchen puffing it, with her arms full of dishes. A minute or so later the ex-Boche soldier walked past the kitchen door on some errand and he was smoking his wife's cigarette. They probably got the idea that it was the custom for American women to smoke and that they must do it, too, or the American soldiers would lose their tempers and shoot up the town. When a red-cheeked waitress came in to brush away the crumbs and the major tried the same stunt on her and she stood there flustered and uncertain, Mrs. Proprietor spoke quickly and quietly to her and she took the cigarette. After "Die Wacht Am Rhein" 193 one puff she fled from the dining-room, cough- ing and gasping, and she didn't come back. An old man whose son and daughter-in-law run a little souvenir and postcard shop here used to live in Baltimore, he said. He had worked in a steamStter's shop and his most vivid recollec- tion of the city, after having been back in Ger- many for twenty-six years, was of the smells that came up from the waterfront. One of the Bal- timoreans he remembered best was Friederich, who, he declared, built the City Hall. "An' dere was Schultz — he voss a Choiman!" he'd say, trying to remember old names. "An' Deiterich — he voss a Choiman. An' Gus Schaefer — he voss a Choiman. Dey voss all Choimans." One gathered that the Baltimore of twenty-six years ago was probably a suburb of Berlin, but the old man said he had known a lot of other men there who weren't Germans, but he couldn't re- member their names. He tried to sell the offi- cers some pipes with deep porcelain bowls deco- rated with landscapes, with curved stems three feet long and decorated with tassels and things, 194 The Story of the Rainbow Division which they would have bought if they had had trucks or something to carry them. L He also whispered with a great show of se- crecy that nobody in Germany liked the Kaiser — that he had always been a "voitless bum" (those were his exact words — "a voitless bum"), and that the "people in Berlin" were responsible for everything the Germans had done during the war. "Dese poor peoples oudt here didn't have nud- ding to do wid it," he said. "Dey shouldn't pay der bills, should dey?" They told him it looked very much as though the "poor peeples oudt here" would have to chip in a little because everybody else seemed to be trying to crawl from under, like himself. He looked very much hurt. That evening down at the Gasthaus Geisler, a bunch of our doughboys permitted themselves to be hypnotized by a curly-haired German boy of nineteen, who was performing miracles on the piano in the room adjoining the bar. One of the Louisiana Headquarters Troop men had been reeling off some ragtime with a rather painful "Die Wacht Am Rhein" 195 two-fingered bass that was always consistent but not always harmonious, when the boy came in and stood peering at the crowd through a pair of thick spectacles. In the moment or two of si- lence that followed his entry, he said in perfect English: "Would you like me to play a lit- tle?" "Sure, go ahead!" the soldiers chorused, and the Headquarters Troop man got up from the piano. The German boy sat down, rubbed his stiff curls, adjusted his spectacles, struck a few ring- ing chords and launched into "The Star Span- gled Banner." He played for more than an hour without look- ing at a note of music. "This is by Schumann," he'd announce, and then, "Here's a Beethoven sonata," then "This is an American song, isn't it?" and he'd play something from light opera. Some of the other things he played were also from light operas that were first produced in America but the German boy did not recognize them all as bits of American music. It was evi- dent that they had been picked up bodily from 196 The Story of the Rainbow Division Germany or Austria and imported to American orchestra pits. Just before the end, Mike, the Italian attache of the Casual Officers' mess; Steve, the waiter; the top -sergeant of the Headquarters Troop, two military policemen with sidearms on and a sprinkling of miscellaneous soldiery from the United States of America were frozen in vari- ous attitudes around the back room of this lit- tle German cafe, leaning on the table, half -lying in chairs, hunched on the floor in corners, while the oil lamp swinging from the ceiling burned up unnoticed with a black smoke and the curly- haired German musical prodigy played "The Barcarolle." Rippling brooks in New England — the old canoe floating up the Potomac toward a red Sunday sunset — moonlight on the upper deck! With a swift change of mood the boy struck up "Die Wacht Am Rhein," and the shaven- headed old lad who had been tending bar came waltzing in, waving his long pipe and roaring the song. The doughboys looked at him and grinned "Die Wacht Am Rhein" 197 a pitying sort of grin, but Mike, the Italian at- tache, glowered. "Steve," he whispered to the waiter for the Casual Officers' mess, "Steve, you crown him for me, will you? I ain't got the heart." CHAPTER XIII 'the conquering of the highroad" Next morning, on its way to Birresborn, the Rainbow Division began a heart-breaking battle with the roads of Germany. Like the German Government and the German Army, they had broken — gone to pieces. Collapsing under the steady rain and the hacking hoofs and wheels of the invading American column, they were trying to halt the Rainbow in its march upon the Rhine. It is as though they believed the last struggle was up to them. Our soldiers had been smelling it in the dis- tance, this battle. In the mountain climbs, the hairpin curves, the slippery slopes that began on the German side of the border there were prophe- cies of it. But they didn't expect it to be as tough as it proved to be. Staff officers were climbing out of the leather 198 "The Conquering of the Highroad" 199 cushions into the mud this particular morning, to push. The main road between Speicher and Birresborn that stacked up on the maps with the main roads of France, were mudholes. They looked like the "before" photographs in adver- tisements of paving material. The edges were miles of sticky strawberry jam, with no limit to its depth. The two deep ruts down the middle made by the wagons of the retreating German Army were snares and delusions. Worried truck drivers and harassed staff chauffeurs picked these ruts instinctively, as a locomotive picks the rails; within two hundred yards their only conceivable salvation had tripped them. The ruts were too deep ; sometimes the wheels of lighter cars were clear of the bottoms ; the heav- ier cars were mortised-and-tenoned in the road- bed. And the roads squirmed and curved and climbed, and at least one edge of most of them was also the edge of a precipitous descent through wild forests and rocks. Under the best conditions it was not the easi- est thing in the world to pick up an American 200 The Story of the Rainbow Division Army Division and move it, holding it together during the moving and keeping it fit for the ex- ercise of its profession at every moment. Still less easy was it to move an American Army di- vision every morning and set it down to rest every night, repeating that process day after day and night after night and covering twenty-five kilo- meters or so every day. The strength of the Rainbow Division march- ing into Germany was, roughly, twenty-three thousand men, about the population of the city of Cumberland, Md. Nearly four thousand gal- lons of gasoline were required to keep its motor transportation moving for one day. Its truck- carrying capacity was close to one thousand tons. It had between two hundred and seventy-five and three hundred giant trucks. Its smaller auto- mobiles numbered about forty. The dope seemed to be that the Rainbow would reach the Rhine by December 17. The division had started into Germany on December 2. Looking ahead, the Rainbow's Quartermas- ter, Lieutenant- Colonel George F. Graham, of Texas, must have figured that he would have to "The Conquering of the Highroad" 201 use sixty thousand gallons of gasoline on the trip at the lowest estimate. To carry sixty thousand gallons of gasoline for fifteen days would be as impracticable and unwise as to carry food suf- ficient for that length of time and in such enor- mous quantities. Simple principles of conserva- tion dictated adherence to a "base-of -supplies" system. So that when the 42nd Division pulled up for the night and announced to the German villag- ers, "We'll stop here; come across with the keys to the city," it did not mean that the day's travel was over. Several hundred tons of trucks had still to go back to the railroads and bring up the food and gasoline for another day — the food and gasoline and equipment to replace the wear and tear of the day's grind. Imagine moving Cumberland, Md., like that every day, or Chillicothe, Ohio, or Stamford, Conn., or Pensacola, Fla. The Rainbow Division, veterans of the whole American Expeditionary Force in point of length of continuous service in the fighting line, was accustomed enough to moving. It had done 202 The Story of the Rainbow Division more moving from one part of the line to another than any other American division, with a fight at both ends of the move more often than not. Mov- ing was nothing — mere detail in the day's work. And so far as moving through G ermany was con- cerned, why, that would be a vacation. No shellholes to get the traffic across, no ripped-up roads, no night marching, no fighting. Great! Certainly would like to be going home, the 42nd Division would, but this was the next best thing — seeing Germany, soldiering de luxe. Why, this was a pretty fair reward for a year of the most terrible work human men can be called upon to do. To be sure, some birds were being sent back home, but they were replacement divi- sions mostly. Never had seen a fight, some of them hadn't. Let 'em go ! This Germany trip was the thing! That v/as the spirit back in Brandeville, France, when the 42nd was waiting for its new equipment to come up — its new trucks, more trucks than it had ever had before, and its new clothes and its new passenger automobiles. That was also the spirit through Belgium and "The Conquering of the Highroad 1 ' 203 Luxembourg, where the days dawned clear and warm, and where the work of "occupation" was about as arduous as strolling through the old cherry orchard. Yet, on this move to Birresborn an officer said, "When they pick an Army of Occupation after the next war, count me out!" And a supply officer said, "I'd rather supply three regiments in the front line of an attack than try to keep stuff moving up behind one regi- ment along roads like these." And there was expressed in various ways the sentiment that fighting a war is preferable to oc- cupying the conquered enemy's country, when the country is the inhuman sort of country that this German country is. Forever, in the minds of the Rainbow Division men (I can't speak for men in other parts of the Army of Occupation) , Germany will stand as the symbol of the utmost in rotten roads, just as France will stand as the symbol of the best. And this discovery of how demoralized roads can become, is apt to bring about a revolution in our American road plans, 204 The Story of the Rainbow Division when these victims of Germany's broken-backed roads get settled at home. A detachment of two hundred men worked from truck to truck that day along the roads be- tween Kyllburg and St. Thomas, pulling them out of the mire and the ditches. It took the com- bined strength of every one of these two hundred men to move these trucks, for they were loaded with tons of supplies. Sometimes the releasing of one truck opened the way for a whole train of others that were not heavily loaded. Some- times the crew of two hundred truck-pullers had to tow each truck several hundred yards to the beginning of a stretch of firm road, then go back for the others, one at a time. Elsewhere on the roads, no gang of men being available, two or three trucks that had managed to keep out of trouble would be pushing and pulling a loaded truck that had gotten into trouble. One would be pushing and two pulling; the engines would roar, the wheels would spin, and the motor-mon- sters would leap and tug, panting and growling like great trapped animals ; and finally, clamping "The Conquering of the Highroad" 205 their teeth on something solid at last, slowly, painfully drag their loins up — up — and out. "All right — let's go!" and the men who "fight the trucks" would be off down the road, slipping and sliding drunkenly, fighting forward every inch of the way, maybe for two hundred yards without a halt. *^* In the selection of divisions to form the Army of Occupation the element of reward for extraor- dinary services in the war did figure, and the men knew it. That is why they were so cheer- ful as they toiled up the red-muck hills, snaking trucks out of ditches, urging tired horses to an- other long pull, walking with feet that weighed many times more than ordinary feet, for the shoes of the infantry gathered the German mud and grew in size and tonnage like the snowball roll- ing down the hill. And that, in fact, is why they groused about it when they settled down for an evening or two in a new German village a little nearer the river Rhine; for no soldier's vacation was complete unless he could sit around of an evening with some of his buddies and swap growls and kicks. 206 The Story of the Rainbow Division They had wide-eyed, open-mouthed galleries now in the kitchens of Germany. Birresborn, a town about as big as Speicher, was a two-night stand, and every man who could possibly do it had hunted himself up a billet in some German house. By four o'clock the first afternoon the casual officers' mess was established in the vil- lage Gasthaus, a phonograph was going and a group of officers had discovered that there was exactly one-half of a keg of beer left in the vil- lage, and had chipped in and bought it — "just so we'd have some on hand," one of them said. By five o'clock they were sitting around a table beginning the evening's grouse, with two amazed German women watching them from behind the bar, and a sepia-toned picture of Wilhelm II looking down at them from the wall. That night at supper the captain-photographer in the Signal Battalion surveyed the officers of the 42nd Division, seated up and down two long tables shoveling in food and dealing out conver- sation, while the Kaiser, as he looked in the grand old days before the ground rose up and hit him, haughtily contemplated the scene; and "The Conquering of the Highroad" 207 he opined, this captain photographer did, that this certainly would make a fine flashlight for the Rainbow Division's pictorial record. But he never took it. He told me instead how every negative of the division's march through France and Belgium had been ruined in Luxem- burg when a bunch of little Luxemburg children, wondering whether the nice leather case wasn't full of that precious thing, chocolate, had opened it, pulled out the plates and exposed every one to the light. But coming into Germany he had gotten some good stuff. Spinning along in his Ford truck he sat on the front seat and the sergeant hung his legs over the tailgate, and between them both they licked the German scenery-platter clean. That morning they caught a group of Germans working on two dead horses. They had just skinned the horses and the photographer had "shot" the whole scene — one German rolling up the skins and putting them in a wheelbarrow; two others cutting steaks and piling them into another wheelbarrow, and the rest looking on hungrily. 208 The Story of the Rainbow Division Leather would come from the skins probably and the steaks would trot their last heat from the frying pan to several German dining-room tables. Knowing how hard up Germany is for leather everybody was surprised to hear in Birresborn the story about Major Bertram's boots. Major Bertram was intelligence officer of the 42nd, but as the work of an intelligence officer in an Army of Occupation consists principally of repeating every day "There are no new iden- tifications in the army," and "There are no new enemy movements to report," Major Bertram had been handling Major Bob Gill's job while the latter was in the hospital. Major Gill's job was the job of moving the division — some job. At noon Major Bertram had started for Bir- resborn. Just before he left Speicher the Major remarked : "Let's run back to Welschbillig first. My orderly left my best Cordovan boots back there. I've been saving them for the big entry into Coblenz." His companions in the big limousine remarked that it was too bad the orderly had forgotten ''The Conquering of the Highroad" 209 about them, and they certainly hoped he'd find them, but secretly they didn't think he would, and he probably didn't think so either. A leather-hungry German had probably pounced upon them, and, by some miraculous application of Kultur, had turned them into two hundred pairs of shoes worth two hundred and fifty marks a pair. Also there was fresh in Lieutenant Poteet's mind the strange little story he had heard that morning from his orderly. It didn't tend to make him feel hopeful for the major's boots. I will tell that story presently. As for Major Bertram he went straight to his Welschbillig billet, was in the house about three minutes, and came out grinning all over and tri- umphantly carrying the boots. "The old fellow had locked them in his safe so that nobody would steal them," he laughed. "Pretty lucky, eh?" "Well, there's one honest German," said Lieu- tenant Poteet. Looking at it from that angle, Germany so far as one could figure it, had a batting average 210 The Story of the Rainbow Division in the Honesty League of about .001. If the following strange story had had a different end- ing it might have been .002. And this is the story of Lieutenant Poteet's orderly. The orderly had fixed up the lieutenant's cot in the lieutenant's room and had fixed his own blankets on it, preparatory to sleeping there, while the lieutenant slept in the bed. Then the orderly went down to the Welschbillig school- house to sit around the stove for a while with a bunch of other Kansas men. When he came back, Lieutenant Poteet was in bed, but not asleep. "You should have been here," he told the boy. "The old man who owns this place was up here fraternizin'. He came up about an hour ago and went fumbling around in that wardrobe. He came out with his hands full of cakes shaped like birds and animals and gave me one. "From what I could understand tomorrow is St. Nicholas Day here in Germany — December 6 — and the Weinachtsman is supposed to leave these little cakes for the children. It's like our Christmas. He gave me this cake shaped like a "The Conquering of the Highroad?' 211 rabbit as a St. Nicholas present. I wanted to keep it as a souvenir, but the old man insisted on my eating it right away. It was pretty good." The orderly was properly sorry he hadn't been around when this little bit of Christmas cheer was passing. There would be little enough Christ- mas over here anyway. The Germans had al- ways specialized in St. Nicholas, too. They were the originators of Santa Claus — started him out as a round, fat, white-whiskered, apple- cheeked, delightful old man who was always laughing and giving away presents around the snow-and-holly time. He was wishing he had had one of these cakes — springling, Poteet had said the old German called them — when he went to sleep. In the morning he sat on the edge of his cot to dress and reached for his socks, which he had laid on the table that stood against the wall. Night before the light of the single candle had been dim and flickering and he hadn't noticed the table much. He noticed it now, though. It was full of little plaster images of saints and there was 212 The Story of the Rainbow Division a vase of artificial roses on it and a vase of some dried grasses and a picture of a little girl. By the picture lay something that made the or- derly start and rub his eyes. It was a "spring- ling" — a St. Nicholas Day cake — a Christmas present. The old man had put it there for him ! Well, that was pretty white for an old Boche. The cake was shaped on the rough, general lines of a rooster. The orderly bit a piece out of it. It was pretty good. He decided to keep the rest and take it home. That would be a great souvenir to take home — a real German St. Nicholas cake, left by old Santa Claus himself in his own country, which had just been licked by the Rainbow Division, et al. So he put it in his pocket, dressed hurriedly, dashed down- stairs to breakfast in the old German's kitchen, where he and some other orderlies had arranged for mess in Welschbillig, and went about the work of getting himself and his lieutenant ready to move on to Speicher. It was about nine o'clock in the morning and he was halfway there, riding on a baggage truck, when a startling thought occurred to him. He "The Conquering of the Highroad" 213 had felt the cake in his pocket and his mind had gone back over the train of events that led to its being there. He recalled the little table, and everything about it stood out sharply in his mem- ory. In memory it had a strange look that he hadn't noticed in the hurry of the morning. There was something sacred about it. Those plaster images — one of them was of the Saviour, he remembered now, and there had been a cruci- fix, too, and they had all been arranged in some order. And that picture; the cake had been lying right in front of it. It was a picture of a little girl dressed all in white, with a wreath around her hair. Her first communion dress, probably. She must have been the old man's little girl. Just there, apparently, this startling thought hit him between the eyes. Why, that table was a family altar, of course ! That cake hadn't been put there for him, the old man hadn't even known he was going to stay in the room. He had put the cake there for his little girl. The little girl had died. They probably put the same cake there every year on St. Nicholas' Eve. 214 The Story of the Rainbow Division Now, this Kansas boy was like every other soldier in the American Army of Occupation. He had been in the hardest fights in the war. He hadn't been an orderly very long, he had been a fighting, hard-boiled, rough-neck doughboy who knew the German as an enemy, for he had seen the German trying to kill him and actually kill- ing some of his buddies. Like every other American soldier, he had approached the Ger- man border with some hauteur and contempt, ready at the flicker of an eyelash to slug to his knees the first German who tried to get gay. And, like every other American, he had been patting the dirty little German kids' heads and smiling at the old women, and not being too coldly distant toward the village girls, and being more paternal than contemptuous toward the men, ever since he had gotten into Germany. So he didn't let this new St. Nicholas Day de- velopment worry him long, but hopped off the truck, caught one going back to Welschbillig, sneaked into the old house and up the stairs, and with his overseas cap in his hand, placed the "springling" back on the table in front of the "The Conquering of the Highroad" 215 picture of the little girl who was undoubtedly dead — the "springling" with the piece he had bit- ten out of it. Then he went out to catch another truck for Speicher, feeling deeply at peace with everything and everybody. The poor old man's Christmas offering to his little daughter would not go astray now. These Germans might be enemies, but the war was over now, and the Ger- mans would listen to American doctrine more earnestly if they had a high opinion of the hon- esty of American soldiers. Well, he'd done his part. He happened to catch the truck on which the boy who had cooked for their mess down in the German kitchen, was going to Speicher. It was a nice little mess — a congenial bunch of enlisted men with one of them acting as cook and draw- ing all the rations, and with nobody butting in. "What d'ye think?" said the cook, taking one of the orderly's cigarettes. "Y'know that old rat-eyed bird back there where we ate? Well y'know we had three whole cans of bacon last night. This old bird stole the other two. Sure as you're born! Got in the truck after they 216 The Story of the Eainbow Division loaded everything in, and when I looked around just a few minutes ago, there was only one left. An' the ole woman was cookin' bacon on the stove this mornin', too. For two cents, I'd go back there and crown him with a .45 but what's the use. You couldn't prove it on him, but he stole it, all right." The Kansas boy was silent for a long while, and it wasn't until the cook had forgotten all about it that he said, "Why didn't you tell me that sooner, cookie? I'd like to go back an' crown him myself." " 'S too late now," said the cook. "Yes," said the Kansas boy, " 's too late." CHAPTER XIV THE BOCHE UNMASKED Around the kitchen stoves of the formerly Imperial Germany the greatest of indoor sports for the Rainbow Division these days was "cuss- ing" the Kaiser. "Well, what d'ye think o' the Kaiser now?" the doughboys would drawl, by way of starting the conversation, as they hitched up the kitchen chairs of an evening and offered the cigarettes to Mein Herr and Meine Frau and all the little "Hairs" and "frows" who were numerous even as the sands of the sea, and that is no joke. One could think long and deeply for some way to tell briefly what a great number of little children there were in Germany, but it would be all a waste of time, because just as soon as one decided upon a nice, high-sounding set of words, along would come new, incredible droves of children, 217 218 The Story of the Rainbow Division and the nice words would not be fit to describe the size of the seventh grade's attendance on the morning of circus day. Mein Herr, listening keenly to the doughboy, because he wanted to be friendly, would catch the word "Kaiser." The rest of the sentence wouldn't mean anything to him at all, but that word "Kaiser" would be enough of a cue. There was the place for the entering wedge. There was the chance to drive home the big idea — the biggest idea that that part of Germany seemed to have just then. "Ach!" snarled Mein Herr. "Ach! Kaiser Kaput! Finish Kaiser! Kaput!" "Well, well!" said the doughboy, somewhat surprised and somewhat pleased, too, for this at- titude of the owner of his billet upon the subject of the Kaiser, sort of put a common understand- ing between him and the old man. "Why, maybe he'll come across with some eggs for lunch or dinner tonight, and maybe the old woman will trot out some honey !" So they proceeded with words — stilted mono- syllabic words of mingled English and German, The Boche Unmasked 219, with now and then, on the part of the doughboy, a little of the hard- won French that was too good to go entirely to waste — to vie with each other at drawing and quartering the Kaiser. The hatred of the American soldier for the things the Kaiser represents — or represented — needs no introduction, but this hatred on the part of the German people in the country through which the American army was passing probably does need an introduction. It was then so new that the German people had not had time yet to take down the pictures of the Kaiser and Hin- denburg and LudendorfF and Bismarck and the Crown Prince, which hung over their heads on the kitchen and dining-room walls even as they hailed curses and "kaputs." They still deco- rated their walls with likenesses of the heroes they professed to hate. On this, the second day of Rainbow Division Headquarters' stay in Birresborn, I discovered in my room a picture of the head of the house- hold. Unless you looked at it very closely you could not tell that the picture represented the man you had seen downstairs. It had been taken 220 The Story of the Rainbow Division in Trier four years ago, when the old gentleman, attired in his best, with a black bow tie and about three inches of white cuff showing at his wrists, looked like the president of the city council or the superintendent of the Sunday School. But Sunday morning, when he was getting ready to go to church with his wife and daugh- ters, he looked like an old down-and-outer. His threadbare, wrinkled coat, of no particular shade, was buttoned high around his throat to cover the lack of white collar. There were fringes around his wrists instead of cuffs, and his face was old and seamed, and covered with a stubble of beard. He was only four years older; he had not taken to drink (in fact, as the village brewer, he had begun producing mineral water instead of beer when times grew hard), and he was still a re- spected figure in the community. But he had changed entirely in appearance, and he had changed in ideals and disposition. He hated everything. He hated the Kaiser and drew his finger suggestively across his throat whenever anybody mentioned the word "Kaiser." He hated the "Berlin crowd" ; he hated Hinden- The Boche Unmasked 221 burg and LudendorfF and the Crown Prince. He hated Von Tirpitz. And he hated also the Socialists and citizens who were handling the Government of Germany in the Kaiser's absence, and just to round out the schedule, he professed a snippish attitude toward the United States and President Wilson. Gold, gold, gold, started the war, he would growl, rubbing his thumbs and ringers together. All the gang in Berlin wanted was more gold, so they started the war — or rather Russia started it. He leaned against the door- jamb, looking into his dining-room, where six Division Headquar- ters sergeants sat around the table smoking after mess. The sergeant in charge of couriers who was translating what the old man said, wanted to know whether the United States had come into the war for gold. The German exploded a forcible "Yah!" and uttered the names of "Rockefeller" and "Mor- gan." "He says," translated the courier-sergeant, "that Morgan and Rockefeller got the United 222 The Story of the Rainbow Division States into the war." The sergeants laughed long and loud. "Ask him if Morgan and Rockefeller sent the submarines out to sink American ships and drown American citizens," asked Sergeant "Slim" Wilson. The courier-sergeant asked him. The face of the head of the house assumed a tigerish grin as he answered. "He says the submarines would have won the war if they let Von Tirpitz alone," declared the interpreter. Apparently he hadn't fully understood the question, but, unwittingly, he was making him- self clear on everything. He v/as giving these American soldiers a picture of the middle-class citizenry of Germany as it looked with the war over and lost. This representative middle-class German hated the old German Government for starting the war because it hadn't won the war. He hated the United States because the United States had defeated Germany. He hated Von Tirpitz because he had started the submarine war and hadn't finished it. The Boche Unmasked 223 We wondered, from all this, why he hated the new government which was repudiating all the things for which the old war-losing government had stood. "He says," the courier-sergeant translated, "that the new government wants to take his chil- dren out of school and put them to work, and he says he ain't going to stand for it." We had gathered that he was talking about something that infuriated him for his expression was ferocious and as he talked he struck an open palm with a clenched fist. The old government had sapped him of his substance to make war. The new government wanted to sacrifice the future of his children to the present reconstruction needs of the nation. He and his family were middle-class folk, and the end of the war had caught them between an upper and a nether millstone, because his only concern under whatever government he lived, had been for the selfish welfare of himself and his family. If imperialism and victorious war- fare could bring him and them more comforts, well and good. But imperialism had failed him 224 The Story of the Rainbow Division and now its substitutes were failing him, so damn them — all of them, and everything that was mak- ing him a cheap pawn. The village brewer was working himself into something of a rage under the questioning of the six sergeants and their patronizing smiles at his answers, so they stopped suddenly. "He'll begin throwing plates around in a minute," Ser- geant-Major Walter Davis said. He seemed to regret his outburst because later in the evening he came upstairs and opened two bottles of his own Birresborn mineral water and sat down and told us that usually during that sea- son the snow was about four feet deep, and that the beer crop in Germany had been a failure for the past two years. It appeared now, though, that the general dis- position of the German was changing every- where, at least everywhere the Rainbow Divi- sion was staying. At first he had sneaked around and regarded Americans from the cor- ners of his eyes. Then he had stood still and looked at them frankly and openly, and respect- The Boche Unmasked 225 fully touched his hat when they glanced in his direction. Now that he was reassured — certain that the American Army intended to do none of the things he had been taught to believe Americans did to those they conquered — he was showing that his humility was a mask, and the "old Boche" in him was reappearing. The Germans had been given the inch and they were trying to get away with the mile. It seems that the German people were figuring that the simple-hearted Americans didn't real- ize that they were actually conquerors and en- titled to run things to suit themselves. In obedi- ence to regulations, the American troops (they figured) would probably try to requisition wood and forage and some other things they needed, but had not word arrived from down the road that the Americans weren't particular about those things and that one needn't fear the con- sequences of turning them down? Sure it had! So in the village of Schlied twenty discharged German soldiers got together on the day the 117th ammunition train from Kansas pulled in 226 The Story of the Rainbow Division and decided to put something over. They sent a spokesman to Major Frank, the C. O., to in- form him that his soldiers could not requisition wood and forage from the citizens of Schlied. The spokesman was very polite about it, and he was very sorry, but the Americans had no right to this forage and wood, and they, the citizens of Schlied, Germany — ex-soldiers of the all-highest — didn't propose to give it to them. In a few well-chosen words — polite, but to the point — Major Frank told the spokesman to get to hell out of his office. He ordered the Burgomaster of Schlied to ap- pear before him instantly. The Burgomaster appeared and Major Frank hitched his chair up to a table, picked out a spot of its top that looked as though it would stand heavy pounding and launched into a rollicking old chantey with bass- drum accompaniment. "Your village has insulted the American Army. It has sent a discharged soldier of the German Army to tell me that it can't have things or do things. "First of all, neither you nor any other Ger- The Boche Unmasked 227 man in this whole acreage of limburger can tell me what American troops can have or can't have. "Second, no civilians can come in here and talk to me at all. And if I want to say anything to this gang here I'll say it through yon, and I'll send for you when I want you. "Third, no more conferences of prominent cit- izens here. If I hear of more than ten people in Schlied gathering together in one place, I'll send armed guards to scatter 'em. "And lastly: I don't expect to ask your peo- ple to furnish my men any meat or bread, or any food at all. The American Army is able to feed itself. But if I do want meat or bread or eggs or butter, you'll furnish it, do you understand? And whenever I want hay, hay I'll have ! When- ever I want wood, wood I'll have! You'll get it and bring it where I tell you to, and you'll get a receipt for it, and that'll be the end of it until I want some more! Now, get out of here!" And extravagant rumor-hounds do say that somebody started a movement in Schlied to make the Ammunition Train Major the first Presi- dent of Germany. CHAPTER XV CASTLES ON THE RHINE On the banks of the Rhine the Rainbow Divi- sion halted on the fifteenth of December. There, at its goal, it stood as it had stood so many months before on the "Valley Forge Hike" through the snow from Vaucouleurs to Rolampont — with its bare feet sticking out of its shoes. For the Rainbow had walked all the way, from the front line in France to the heart of Germany. The food it needed had managed to follow it. Its wagons and trucks, though the mud had clutched desperately at the wheels, had managed to keep up. But the shoes it wore when the march ended were the same shoes it had worn when the march began. French railroads had not been able to handle food for the American Army of Occupation and shoes as well. So all the brave finery with which the Rainbow 228 Castles on the Rhine 229 had started out from Brandeville back in No- vember was gone now. Redeemed France and Belgium had seen some of it and had been prop- erly impressed. But Germany, whose own sol- diers were to have marched into Paris glittering with new brass and silver and patent-leather, saw in the newly arrived American Army of Occu- pation (at least in the Rainbow part of it), a band of men who were almost ragamuffins. The ragamuffins brought up the tail end of the divisional column. Commanded by officers who had dropped out along the way to pick up the men whose marching shoes had broken down un- der them, they made a sort of auxiliary regiment. And almost immediately they went from raga- muffinism to a state of baronial opulence. They took up a new life in castles on the Rhine. The infantry regiments and machine-gun out- fits were in towns on the very bank of the river. The artillerymen were in towns from ten to twenty kilometers west of the river. Division Headquarters was in Ahrweiler, about twenty kilometers from the stream. Coblenz was about thirty kilometers to the south; Cologne, where 230 The Story of the Rainbow Division the British were, about the same distance to the north. Lordly mountains with ancient legends fairly- oozing out of the vapors that curled around their crests, covered the earth. Ruined castles that seemed as old as the hills themselves etched ragged-edged blotches against the sky-line. Nearer at hand were modern chateaus — rich- looking summer homes surrounded by profes- sionally tended gardens. On the inlaid wood and marble floors of these the men of the Hain- bow dumped their duffle-bags, packs and blan- ket-rolls and made themselves at home. Chaplain Duffy of the old 69th New York took over a suite in one of these mansions and established himself in quarters like those of an oil magnate. Major Winn, commander of the Georgia Machine-gun Battalion, went bunking in the home of an Italian count who had married some years ago a wealthy American woman with a home and property in Germany. Sergeant Hank Gowdy, erstwhile idol of baseball fandom, established himself in a summer palace of glass. In the town of Neuenahr the Minnesota Field Castles on the Rhine 231 Artillery took up the existence of a regiment of plethorically rich invalids, occupying every hotel in the place and commandeering the famous sul- phur baths to which wealthy folk with gout and plain rheumatism had journeyed for years and years. And there, along the River Rhine, the Rain- bow Division stayed for nearly four months. It floated up and down the stream on excursion boats, while "bally-hoo men" in Y. M. C. A. uni- forms with Baedeker's Guides in their hands pointed out this place as the spot where the Lorelei had inaugurated the first Roche cam- paign of frightfulness, and that place as the hang-out of the Bishop of Bingen, and this as the Fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, and so on. And the doughboys drank it all in and shivered in the biting winter winds that swept down the river, and growled, "Is this what we won the war for?" and wondered, "When do we eat?" For that is the way of the doughboy. There (as I said before), along the River Rhine, we will end the story of the Rainbow Di- vision, leaving it snimng critically at the glories 232 The Story of the Rainbow Division of the German scenery and "grousing" about everything in the world, with nothing but good- natured ill-temper over everything in the uni- verse except the vision of home. For the vision of home was always a glorious thing to the Rainbow Division — as glorious a thing as the vision to the nation that sent them of the Rainbow's career on the fields of France. And though home becomes more than a vision to the Rainbow, the Rainbow will never be more than a vision to home. It paraded our streets and the home-folk saw it marching, but they never saw it fighting and never can. Of that there is nothing left for the home-folk but poor, halting stories — like those recounted here. THE END APPENDIX I FOSTER OF RAINBOW DIVISION OFFICERS AT CAMP MILLS, IN OCTOBER, 1917 PERSONNEL OF RAINBOW DIVISION STAFF Major General William A. Mann .. Division Commander. Captain John B. Coulter Aide-de-Camp. Colonel Douglas MacArthur Chief of Staff. Major Samuel R. Gleaves Asst. to C. of S. Major William N. Hughes, Jr. Asst. to C. of S. Major Francis W. Ralston Division Adjutant. Major Marion S. Battle Asst. Div. Adjutant. Lieut. Col. John L. DeWitt Division Quartermaster. Lieut. Col. George F. Baltzell Division Inspector. Lieut. Col. Blanton Winship Judge Advocate. Lieut. Col. J. W. Grissinger Division Surgeon. Major James W. Frew Asst. to Div. Surgeon. Major David S. Fairchild Asst. to Div. Surgeon. Major James K. Crain Division Ordnance Officer. Lieut. Col. Hanson B. Black Division Signal Officer. Colonel William C. Brown Cavalry, Attached. Captain Oscar W. Underwood .... Cavalry, Attached. Major George F. Graham Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. Major Allen Potts Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. Captain Marshall F. Sharp Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. Captain George W. McLean Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 2nd Lieut. James S. Harvey Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 2nd Lieut. Fred. O. Klackering Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 2nd Lieut. John P. Clark Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. Captain Edw. DuBois Asst. to Div. Surgeon. Captain Thomas A. Burchman Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 1st Lieut. M. P. Lane Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 233 234 The Story of the Rainbow Division 1st Lieut. William F. Satchell Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 1st Lieut. R. MeK. McDowell Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 1st Lieut. G. C. Van Sickle Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 1st Lieut. D. J. Downey Div. Statistical Section. 2nd Lieut. G. B. Norton Div. Statistical Section. 2nd Lieut. Don C. Sims Div. Statistical Section. 1st Lieut. W. S. Murray Interpreter. 2nd Lieut. F. R. Wulsin Interpreter. HEADQUARTERS TROOP (1st Separate Troop, Louisiana Cavalry) Captain Louis J. Taylor Commanding Officer. 149th machine gust battalion" (Cos. I, K, L and M, Ijth Pennsylvania Infantry) Major Quintin O. Reitzell Commanding Officer. BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 83rd IN- FANTRY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 12, 1917 Brigadier General Michael J. Lenihan. . Brigade Commander. Major Wylie T. Conway Brigade Adjutant. 1st Lieut. Howard Grose 1st Lieut. Leon W. Miesse 2nd Lieut. Roy H. Boberg 165th infantry (69th New York Infantry) Colonel Charles Hine Regimental Commander. Lieut. Col. Latham R. Reed Major Timothy J. Moynahan C. O. 1st Battalion. Major William B. Stacom C. O. 2nd Battalion. Major William J. Donovan C. O. 3rd Battalion. 1st Lieut. Francis P. Duffy Chaplain. Maj or George J. Lawrence Regimental Surgeon. Appendix I 235 166th infantry (4th Ohio Infantry) Colonel Benson W. Hough Regimental Commander. Lieut. Col. George Florence Captain Charles C. Gusman Regimental Adjutant. Major Roll G. Allen C. O. 1st Battalion. Major Frank D. Henderson C. O. 2nd Battalion. Major Louis D. Houser C. O. 3rd Battalion. 1st Lieut. J. J. Halliday Chaplain. Captain Fred K. Kislig Regimental Surgeon. 150th machine gun battalion (Cos. A, B, Cj 2nd Wisconsin Infantry) Major William B. Hall Commanding Officer. BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 84th IN- FANTRY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 12, 1917 Brigadier General Robert A. Brown . . Brigade Commander. Major S. M. Rumbough Brigade Adjutant. 2nd Lieut. Geo. B. Mourning Aide-de-Camp. 2nd Lieut. David W. Oyler Aide-de-Camp. 167th infantry (4th Alabama Infantry) Colonel William P. Screws Regimental Commander. Lieut. Col. Walter E. Bare Major Hartley A. Moon C. O. 1st Battalion. Major Dallas B. Smith C. O. 2nd Battalion. Major John W. Carroll C. O. 3rd Battalion. Captain Robert Joerg Regimental Adjutant. Major John W. Watts Regimental Surgeon. 236 The Story of the Rainbow Division 168th infantry (3rd Iowa Infantry) Colonel Ernest R. Bennett Regimental Commander. Lieut. Col. Matthew A. Tinley Major Guy S. Brewer C. O. 1st Battalion. Major Claude M. Stanley C. O. 2nd Battalion. Major Emery C. Worthington C. O. 3rd Battalion. Captain Paul I. VanOrder Regimental Adjutant. Winfred E. Robb Chaplain. Major Wilbur S. Conkling Regimental Surgeon. 151st machine gun battalion (Cos. B, C and F, 2nd Georgia Infantry) Major Cooper D. Winn Commanding Officer. BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 67th FIELD ARTILLERY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 12, 1917 Brigadier Gen. Charles P. Summerall . . Brigade Commander. Captain Max E. Payne Attached. Captain H. R. Denton Attached. Captain James F. Burns Attached. 1st Lieut. James A. Holt Attached. 1st Lieut. Stephen M. Foster Attached. 2nd Lieut. L. P. Jerrard Attached. 2nd Lieut. Rayman K. Aitken Attached. 2nd Lieut. A. B. Butler Attached. 2nd Lieut. De Lano Andrews Attached. 149th field artillery (1st Illinois Field Artillery) Colonel Henry J. Reilly Regimental Commander. Lieut. Colonel Ashbel V. Smith Major Noble B. Judah, Jr C. O. 1st Battalion. Maj or Curtis G. Redden C. O. 2nd Battalion. Appendix I 237 Captain Jacob McG. Dickinson Captain Hugh R. Montgomery Captain Irving Odell Major Joseph E. Dowan Regimental Surgeon. 150th field artillery, HEAW (1st Indiana Field Artillery) Colonel Robert H. Tyndall Regimental Commander. Lieut. Colonel Thomas S. Wilson Major Guy A. Wainwright C. O. 1st Battalion. Major Solon J. Carter C. O. 2nd Battalion. Major Marlin A. Prather C. O. 3rd Battalion. Captain Daniel I. Glossbrenner Regimental Adjutant. Major Frank C. Robinson Regimental Surgeon. 151ST FIELD ARTILLERY (1st Minnesota Field Artillery) Colonel George E. Leach Regimental Commander. Lieut. Colonel William H. Donahue Major John F. McDonald C. O. 1st Battalion. Major Charles A. Green C. O. 2nd Battalion. Captain Lewis C. Coleman Captain Erwin H. Sherman 1st Lieut. William J. Harrington Chaplain. 117th trench mortar battery (Cos. S and 4, Maryland Coast Artillery Corps) Captain Robert J. Gill Commanding Officer. 117th engineer regiment (1st Bn., 1st Sep. Bn. S. C. Engineers) (2nd Bn., 1st Sep. Bn. Calif. Engineers) Colonel William Kelly Regimental Commander. Lieut. Colonel Harold S. Hetrick Major J. M. Johnson C. O. 1st Battalion. 238 The Story of the Rainbow Division Major Jay A. Given C. O. 2nd Battalion. Captain Elihu Church Regimental Adjutant. Lieut. Colonel Harold S. Hetrick Captain Albert Pike 117th engineer train (North Carolina) Captain Richard D. Clowe Commanding Officer. 117th ammunition train (Kansas) Lieut. Col. Frank L. Travis Train Commander. Captain William K. Herndon Adjutant. Major George J. Frank C. O. Horsed Section. Major Albert H. Herman C. O. Motor Section. 117th supply train (Texas) Major Albert E. Devine Train Commander. 1st Lieut. William E. Talbot Adjutant. 117th field battalion signal corps Major Ruby D. Garrett Battalion Commander. 1st Lieut. Glenn O. Brown Adjutant. 117th train headquarters and military polich (Virginia Coast Artillery Corps) Major R. E. Shannon Commanding Officer. 117th sanitary train Captain Dunning S. Wilson .....Director of Ambulances- Appendix I 239 165th ambulance company (1st Ambulance Company, New Jersey) Captain Peter P. Rafferty Commanding Officer. 166th ambulance company (1st Ambulance Company, Tennessee) Captain Percy A. Perkins Commanding Officer. 167th ambulance company (1st Ambulance Company, Oklahoma) Captain Hector G. Lareau Commanding Officer. 168th ambulance company (1st Ambulance Company, Michigan) Captain Robert J. Baskerville Commanding Officer. FIELD HOSPITAL SECTION 165th field hospital (1st Field Hospital, Dist. of Columbia) Major Herbert J. Bryson Commanding Officer. 166th field hospital (1st Field Hospital, Nebraska) Major John F. Spealman Commanding Officer. 167th field hospital (1st Field Hospital, Oregon) Major James P. Graham Commanding Officer. 240 The Story of the Rainbow Division 168th field hospital (1st Field Hospital, Colorado) Major Edward W. Lazell Commanding Officer. APPENDIX II ROSTER OF RAINBOW DIVISION OFFICERS NOVEMBER 11, 1918 PERSONNEL OF RAINBOW DIVISION STAFF Major General Charles T. Menoher. . . Division Commander 1st Lieut. F. W. Wulsin Aide de Camp Colonel William N. Hughes, Jr. ... Chief of Staff Major Robert J. Gill A. C. of S., G-l 1st Lieut. Marcus L. Poteet Asst. to A. C. of S., G-l Lieut. Col. Noble B. Judah A. C. of S., G-2 Major E. H. Bertram Asst. to A. C. of S., G-2 Captain John A. Greene Asst. to A. C. of S., G-2 Lieut. Col. Grayson H. P. Murphy... A. C. of S., G-3 Captain Roy S. Gault Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3 1st Lieut. S. Z. Orgle Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3 1st Lieut. Thurlow Brewer Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3 1st Lieut. P. E. Sunstrom Asst. to A. C. of 3., G-3 Lieut. Col. Stanley M. Rumbough.... Division Adjutant Major James E. Thomas Act. Division Adjutant Captain Dennis J. Downey Statistical Officer 1st Lieut. William Bradford Asst. to Statistical Officer 1st Lieut. Walter J. Curley Asst. to Statistical Officer Major Albert D. Fetterman Division Inspector Lieut. Col. Hugh W. Ogden Judge Advocate Lieut. Col. George F. Graham Division Quartermaster Major Marshall F. Sharp Asst. to Quartermaster Captain C. A. Cordingly Asst. to Quartermaster Appendix II 241 Captain R. M. Overstreet Asst. to Quartermaster Captain Paul W. Fechtman Asst. to Quartermaster Captain Edward McMurry Asst. to Quartermaster 1st Lieut. John P. Clark Asst. to Quartermaster 1st Lieut. Fred. O. Klakring Asst. to Quartermaster 1st Lieut. George Brown Asst. to Quartermaster 2nd Lieut. Henry R. Black Asst. to Quartermaster Lieut. Col. David S. Fairchild Division Surgeon Captain A. J. Campbell Asst. to Division Surgeon Major Angus Mclvor Asst. to Division Surgeon Ma j or Aquila Mitchell Division Veterinarian Captain R. A. Mead Remount Officer Captain Lewis A. Platts Division Dental Surgeon 1st Lieut. Wallace S. Murry Interpreter 2nd Lieut. N. B. Adams Interpreter - Major John A. Wheeler Division Ord. Officer Lieut. Col. Ruby D. Garrett Division Signal Officer Captain Charles H. Gorrill Division Gas Officer Captain E. A. Wilcox .Asst. Division Gas Officer 1st Lieut. Chester M. Neff Asst. Division Gas Officer Emory C. Worthington Asst. Provost Marshal Major Davis G. Arnold Zone Major Captain Morton P. Lane Asst. to Zone Major Captain James E. Berry Asst. to Zone Major Captain William Talbot Motor Transportation Officer 2nd Lieut. F. A. Danforth Topographical Officer HEADQUARTERS TROOP Captain Lee R. Caldwell Commanding 1st Lieut. Roy S. Miller 149th machine gun battalion Major James H. Palmer Commanding 1st Lieut. Joseph R. Cravath Adj utant 242 The Story of the Rainbow Division 83rd INFANTRY BRIGADE 150th machine gttn battalion Captain Lothar G. Graef Commanding Colonel Henry J. Reilly Commanding Major William T. Doyle Adjutant 165th infantry regiment Lieut. Col. Charles A. Dravo Commanding Major A. N. Anderson C. O. 1st Battalion Major Michael Kelly C. O. 2nd Battalion Major Thomas T. Reilly C. O. 3rd Battalion 166th infantry regiment Colonel Benson Hough Commanding Lieut. Col. Bruce R. Campbell Major James A. Samson C. O. 1st Battalion Major George T. Geren C. O. 2nd Battalion Major Robert Haubrich C. O. 3rd Battalion 84th INFANTRY BRIGADE Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur . . . Commanding 1st Lieut. William N. Wright Aide-de-Camp Major Walter B. Wolf Adjutant 151st machine gun battalion Major Cooper D. Winn Commanding 167th infantry regiment Colonel William P. Screws Commanding Lieut. Col. Walter E. Bare Major Robert Joerg C. O. 1st Battalion Major Ravec Norriss C. O. 2nd Battalion Captain George A. Glenn C. O. 3rd Battalion Appendix II 243 168th infantry regiment Colonel Mathew A. Tinley Commanding Lieut. Col. Claude M. Stanley Major Lloyd D. Ross C. O. 1st Battalion Major Oriville B. Yates C. O. 2nd Battalion Major Charles J. Cassey C. O. 3rd Battalion 67th FIELD ARTILLERY BRIGADE Brigadier General George G. Gatley Commanding 1st Lieut. George Milton Aide-de-Camp Captain James A. Holt , Adjutant 149th field artillery regiment Lieut. Col. Curtis G. Redden Commanding Major Thomas S. Hammond C. O. 1st Battalion Major Thomas S. Redden C. O. 2nd Battalion 150th field artillery regiment Colonel Robert H. Tyndall Commanding Major Stanley S. Miller C. O. 1st Battalion Major William Spence C. O. 2nd Battalion Major William Cureton C. O. 3rd Battalion 151st field artillery regiment Colonel George E. Leach Commanding Lieut. Col. John H. McDonald. . . ^ Major E. P. Schugg C. O. 1st Battalion Major Thomas T. Handy C. O. 2nd Battalion 11 7th trench mortar battery 1st Lieut. J. Woodall Greene Commanding 117th engineer regiment Colonel John M. Johnson CommandiD Lieut. Col. Wm. F. Johnson Major Richard T. Smith 244 The Story of the Rainbow Division 117th engineer train 1st Lieut. I. L. Hines Commanding 117th ammunition train Major George J. Frank Commanding 117th supply train Major A. E. Devine Commanding 117th field signal battalion Major Richard T. Smith Commanding 117th train headquarters and military police Colonel L. J. Fleming Commanding 117th sanitary train Major Wilbur S, Conkling : Commanding APPENDIX III MOVEMENTS, MATERIAL CAPTURED. CASUAL- TIES HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 16 December, 1918. From: Commanding General, 42nd Division. To: Commander-in-Chief, American Expeditionary Forces. Subject: Report. In accordance with No. 1176, G-3, G.H.Q., American E. F., the following is submitted: Appendix III 245 A. (1) Headquarters, 42nd Division, arrived in France 1st No- vember, 1917. (2) Successive locations of Division Headquarters since ar- rival in France are as follows: IN FRANCE Location Arrived Left St. Nazaire 1 Nov., 17 6 Nov., 17 Vaucouleurs 8 Nov., 17 12 Dec, 17 Lafauche 12 Dec, 17 26 Dec, 17 Rolampont 26 Dec, 17 17 Feb., 18 Luneville (Lorraine Sector) 17 Feb., 18 31 Mar., 18 Baccarat (Lorraine Sector) 31 Mar., 18 21 June, 18 Chatel-sur-Moselle 21 June, 18 22 June, 18 St. Germain-la-Ville 23 June, 18 29 June, 18 Vadenay Farm (Champagne Sec- tor) 29 June, 18 21 July, 18 La Ferte-sous-Jouarre (Chateau- Thierry) 21 July, 18 24. July, 18 Trugny (Chateau-Thierry Sector) "\ Rear Echelon, La Ferte-sous- I 24 July, 18 28 July, 18 Jouarre I Beuvardes (Chateau-Thierry Sec- ] tor) I 28 July, 18 12 Aug., 19 * Rear Echelon, Trugny J La Ferte-sous-Jouarre (Chateau- Thierry) 12 Aug., 18 17 Aug., 18 Bourmont 17 Aug., 18 30 Aug., 18 Chatenois 30 Aug., 18 5 Sep., 18 Colombey-les-Belles 5 Sep., 18 8 Sep., 18 Toul 8 Sep., 18 9 Sep., 18 •Moved to Beuvardes August 4, 1918. 246 The Story of the Rainbow Division Location Arrived Left iAnsauville (St. Mihiel Sector) . . } ^ „ Rear Echelon, Bruley ..../ 9 Se P" 18 14 > Se P» 18 Essey (St. Mihiel Sector) } • _ Rear Echelon, Ansauville J U Se P"' 18 B5 ^P" 18 Bois de Pannes (St. Mihiel Sector) ) ' Rear Echelon, Bouconville . ) 25 Se P- 18 l 0ct - 18 Benoite-Vaux-Couvent w 1 Oct., 18 4 Oct., 18 Recicourt 4 Oct., 18 6 Oct., 18 Bois de Montfaucon "\ Rear Echelon, Recicourt } 6 0ct » 18 U °*» M Cheppy (Argonne Sector) 11 Oct., 18 19 Oct., 18 Camp Drachen (Argonne Sector) 1 „ Rear Echelon, Recicourt \ } 19 ° Ct " 18 » N ™' 18 Champigneulles (Argonne Sector) ) Rear Echelon, Recicourt J 3 N ° V " 18 4 Nov " 18 Autruche (Argonne Sector) .... 1 Rear Echelon, Recicourt / 4 Nov " 18 6 Noy -' 18 Grandes Armoises (Argonne Sec-) tor) 1 6 Nov., 18 7 Not., 18 Rear Echelon, Recicourt , J Maisoncelle (Argonne Sector) . . . ) Rear Echelon, Redcourt ...!....} 7 N ° V " 18 10 N ° V " 18 Buzancy 10 Nov., 18 14 Nov., 18 Landreville 14 Nov., 18 16 Nov., 18 Brandeville 16 Nov., 18 20 Nov., 19 Montmedy 20 Nov., 18 21 Nov., 18 Appendix III 247 IK BELGIUM Location Arrived VMon 21 Nov., 18 Arlon 22 Nov., 18 IN LUXEMBURG Mersch . . 23 Nov., 18 Consdorf .... 2 Dec, 18 IN GERMANY Welschbillig 3 Dec, 18 Bpeicher 5 Dec, 18 Birresborn 6 Dec, 18 Dreis 8 Dec, 18 Adenau 9 Dec, 18 Ahrweiler 15 Dec, 18 Left 92 Nov., 18 23 Nov., 18 9 Dec, 18 3 Dec, 18 5 Dec, 18 6 Dec, 18 8 Dec, 18 9 Dec, 18 15 Dec, 18 Place Luneville, Lorraine. Baccarat, Lorraine. Fme. de Vadenay, Champagne. Trugny and Beau- vardes, Marne. Ansauville, Essey and Bois de Pannes, Woevre. Cheppy and 00.5- 79.5, N. E. of Apremont, Ar- gonne-Meuse. Autruche, Grandes Armoises and Maisoncelles, Meuse-Ardennes . Sector Dombasle, Luneville, St. Clement, Baccarat (Under 8th French Army and 7th French Army Corps). Baccarat. Souain and Esperance (2d and intermediate positions). Front of 1st U. S. A. C. (Ourcq). Ansauville, in center of 4th U.S. A.C. Then Essey and Pannes. Left of 5th A.C. (South of St. Georges — Lan- dres-et-St. Georges — Cote de Chatillon). Left of 1st A. C. (South of Sedan). Date of Active Entry or Quiet 21 Feb., 18 Quiet SI Mar., 18 Semi-active 5 July, 18 Active 25 July, 18 Active 12 Sept., 18 Active Date of Withdrawal 23 Mar., 13 17 June, 18 21 July, 18 3 Aug., 18 30 Sept., 18 13 Oct., 18 Active 31 Oct., 18 5 Nov., 18 Active 10 Nov., 18 248 The Story of the Rainbow Division c. The 67th Field Artillery Brigade was with the division at all times that the division was in the front line. In addition, the 67th Field Artillery Brigade served the following tours of duty, supporting front line divisions: With the 4th Division from August 3, 1918, to August 11, 1918, during which time the 4th Division advanced from north of the Foret de Nesles to the Vesle River; With the 32nd Division from October 7, 1918, to October 12, 1918, assisting in an attack on the Kriemhilde Stellung; With the 2nd Division from November 1, 1918, to November 2, 1918, delivering preparation and barrage fire for the attack of November 1, 1918, in front of St. Georges-Landres-et-St. Georges. The following American artillery units have also served with the 42nd Division during its periods in the front lines: Chdteau-Thierry operation 51st Field Artillery Brigade, from July 25, 1918, to August 3, 1918. St. Mihiel salient operation: 18th Field Artillery Regiment and 10th Field Artillery Regiment, on September 12-13, 1918. Meuse-Argonne operation: 1st Field Artillery Brigade, from October 13, 1918, to October 31, 1918. D. PRISONERS CAPTURED BY THE RAINBOW DIVISION Officers Baccarat Sector Chateau-Thierry Operation (Ourcq) St. Mihiel Salient Operation 8 Argonne-Meuse Operation, 13-31 October, 1918 6 205 211 Argonne-Meuse Operation, 5-10 Novem- ber, 1918 35 35 Totals 14 1,303 1,317 Men Total 13 13 69 69 981 989 Appendix III 249 E. MATERIAL CAPTURED BY THE RAINBOW DIVISION Heavy Light Trench Machine Art. Art. Mortars Guns Rifles Chateau-Thierry Opera- tion (Ourcq) i..i 15 155 .... St. Mihiel Salient Op- eration 9 13 6 200 .... Argonne-Meuse Opera- tion, 13-31 October, 1918 1 4 90 Argonne-Meuse Opera- tion, 5-10 November, 1918 .i r.. ; 2 25 2,000 Totals : 9! 16 25 470 2,000 F. TOTAL CASUALTIES OF THE RAINBOW DIVISION TO DATE Enlisted Officers Men. Killed 56 1,913 Died from wounds 29 442 Severely wounded 79 2,061 Slightly wounded 124 5,033 Gassed 90 2,563 Missing 279 Prisoners 3 41 Totals 381 12,332 250 The Story of the Rainbow Division G. TOTAL DEPTH OF ADVANCE MADE BY RAINBOW DI- VISION IN EACH OFFENSIVE ACTION Kilometers A dvcmced Ch&teau-Thierry Operation 17 St. Mihiel Salient Operation 19 Argonne-Meuse Operation, 13-31 October, 1918 ... 2 Argonne-Meuse Operation, 5-10 November, 1918 . . , : 19 Total 67 APPENDIX IV CITATIONS and COMMENDATIONS 6th Army Corps Staff, H. Q., June 15, 1918. 1st Bureau, No. 3243-1 GENERAL ORDERS NO. 50 At the moment when the 42nd U. S. Infantry Division is leav- ing the Lorraine front, the Commanding General of the 6th Army Corps desires to do homage to the fine military qualities which it has continuously exhibited, and to the services which it has ren- dered in the Baccarat sector. The offensive ardor, the sense for the utilizations and the or- ganizations of terrain as for the liaison of the arms, the spirit of method, the discipline shown by all its officers and men, the inspirations animating them, prove that at the first call, they can henceforth take a glorious place in the new line of battle. The Commanding General of the 6th Army Corps expresses his deepest gratitude to the 42nd Division for its precious collabora- tion; he particularly thanks the distinguished Commander of this Appendix IV 251 Division, General Menoher, the Officers under his orders and his Staff so brilliantly directed by Colonel MacArthub. It is with a sincere regret that the entire 6th Army Corps sees the 42nd Division depart. But the bonds of affectionate com- radeship which have been formed here will not be broken, for us, in faithful memory, are united the living and the dead of the Rainbow Division, those who are leaving for hard combats and those who, after having nobly sacrificed their lives on the land of the East, now rest there, guarded over piously by France. These sentiments of warm esteem will be still more deeply af- firmed during the impending struggles where the fate of Free Peoples is to be decided. May our units, side by side, contribute valiantly to the triumph of Justice and of Right. General Duport, Commanding the 6th Army Corps. (Signed) Duport. HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 17 July, 1918. Memorandum : The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec- tive commands: 4th Army, 21st Army Corps, H. Q., July 15th, 1918. Staff, 1st Bureau, No. 4343/1 From General Naulin, Commanding 21st Army Corps. To 13th, 43d, 170th Inf. Divs., 42nd U. S. Inf. Div., and Artillery. General Gouraud this evening expressed his high satisfaction with the success attained by the 21st Army Corps during the stern but glorious day of July 15th. 252 The Story of the Rainbow Division Kindly transmit to the units under your command the sincere congratulations of the Commanding General of the Army, and my own personal gratitude for the admirable tenacity of the 21st Army Corps and all the elements attached to it on this oc- casion. The German has clearly broken his sword on our lines. What- ever he may do in the future, he shall not pass. (Signed) S. Naulin. By command of Major General Menoher: Douglas MacArthur, Brigadier General, General Staff, Chief of Staff. Official: Walter E. Powers, Major, N. G., Adjutant General, Division Adjutant. HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 17 July, 1918. Memorandum : The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec- tive commands: 4th Army, Staff, Army H.Q., July 16, 1918. 3rd Bureau, No. 6954/3 SOLDIERS OF THE 4TH ARMY During the day of July 15th, you broke the effort of 15 Ger- man Divisions supported by 10 others. They were expected, according to their orders, to reach the Marne in the evening. You stopped their advance clearly at the point where we desired to engage in and win the battle, Appendix IV 253 You have the right to be proud, heroic infantrymen and ma- chine gunners of the advance posts who signaled the attack and disintegrated it, aviators who flew over it, battalions and bat- teries which broke it, staffs which so minutely prepared the bat- tlefield. It is a hard blow for the enemy. It is a beautiful day for France. I count on you that it may always be the same, every time he dares to attack you, and with all my heart of a soldier, I thank you. Gotjraud. HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 18 July, 1918. Memorandum : The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec- tive commands: 21st Army Corps, 170th Division, July 17, 1918. Staff, 3rd Bureau, No. 1517/3 General Bernhard, commanding par interum the 170th Divi- sion. — To the Commanding General of the 42nd, U. S. Infantry Division. The Commanding General of the 170th Infantry Division de- sires to express to the Commanding General of the 42nd U. S. Infantry Division his keen admiration for the courage and bravery of which the American Battalions of the 83rd Brigade have given proof in the course of the hard fighting of the 15th and 16th of July, 1918, as also for the effectiveness of the artillery fire of the 42nd U. S. Infantry Division. In these two days the troops of the United States, by their tenacity, largely aided their French comrades in breaking the repeated assaults of the 7th Reserve Division, the 1st Infantry 254< The Story of the Rainbow Division Division and the Dismounted Guard Division of the Germans; these latter two divisions are among the best of Germany. According to the orders captured on the German officers made prisoner, their staff wished to take Chalons-sur-Marne on the evening of July 16, but it had reckoned without the valor of the American and French combatants who told them with machine gun, rifle and cannon, that they would not pass. The Commanding General of the 170th Infantry Division is therefore particularly proud to observe that in mingling their blood gloriously on the Battlefield of Champagne, the Ameri- cans and the French of today are continuing the magnificent tra- ditions established a century and a half ago by Washington and LaFayette; it is with this sentiment that he salutes the Noble Flag of the United States in thinking of the final Victory. Bernard. HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 20 July, 1918. Memorandum No. 242. The following order of the 21st Army Corps is published for the information of all concerned. 21st Army Corps, Staff, H. Q., July 19, 1918. 3rd Bureau, No. 2,595/3. GENERAL ORDER At the moment when the 42nd American Division is on the point of leaving the 21st Army Corps, I desire to express my keen satisfaction and my sincere thanks for the services which it has rendered under all conditions. By its valor, ardor and its spirit, it has very particularly dis- tinguished itself on July 15 and 16 in the course of the great battle where the 4th Army broke the German offensive on the Champagne front. I am proud to have had it under my orders during this period; Appendix IV 255 my prayers accompany it in the great struggle engaged in for the liberty of the World. General Naulin, Commanding the 21st Army Corps. Official: The Chief of Staff. (Signed) By command of Major General Menoher: Douglas MacArthur, Brigadier General, General Staff, Chief of Staff. Walter E. Powers, Major, N. G., Adjutant General, Division Adjutant. 6th Army, P. C, 26 July, 1918. Chief of Staff, 3rd Bureau, No. 2,283. NOTE The President of the Republic, in the course of a visit to the 6th Army, expressed his satisfaction over the results obtained, as well as for the qualities of valor and perseverance manifested. The Commanding General of the 6th Army is happy to transmit to the troops of his army the felicitations of the President of the Republic. (Signed) General Degoutte. * * * * # 6th Army, P. C, 26 July, 1918. Chief of Staff, 3rd Bureau, No. 2,284/3 NOTE The Commanding General of the 6th Army brings to the no- tice of all troops of the Army the following resolution voted by the Mayors of the Arrondissement of Meaux on the 20th of July, 1918: 256 The Story of the Rainbow Division The Mayors of the Arrondissement of Meaux, meeting on the 20th of July, 1918, are happy to hail the splendid victory of the 6th Army, which has at the time of the battle of the Marne, saved their communes from the invasion which menaced them. Convey to the valiant troops of the 6th Army the sincere ex- pression of their gratitude and their admiration. The President of the Congress of Mayors, (Signed) G. Rttgel, Mayor of Meaux, Deputy of Seine-et-Marne. The Commanding General of the 6th Army is happy to com- municate these felicitations to the troops of his army. (Signed) General Degoutte. HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 31 July, 1918. Memorandum No. 246. The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec- tive commands. HEADQUARTERS FIRST ARMY CORPS July 28th, 1918. From: Commanding General, 1st Army Corps, Am. E. F. To: Commanding General, 42nd Division, Am. E. F. Subject: Congratulations. 1. The return of the 42nd Division to the 1st Army Corps was a matter of self-congratulation for the Corps commander, not only because of previous relations with the Division, but also because of the crisis which existed at the time of its arrival. 2. The standard of efficient performance of duty which is domi- nated by the Commander-in-Chief, Am. E. F., is a high one, involving as it does on an occasion such as the present complete self-sacrifice on the part of the entire personnel, and a willing- ness to accept cheerfully every demand even to the limit of en- durance of the individual for the sake of the Cause for which we are in France. Appendix IV 257 3. The taking over of the front of the 1st Army Corps under the conditions of relief and advance, together with the attendant difficulty incident to widening the front was in itself no small undertaking, and there is added to this your advance in the face of the enemy to a depth of five or more kilometers, all under cover of darkness, to the objective laid down by higher authority to be attained, which objective you are holding, regardless of the efforts of the enemy to dislodge you. The Corps Commander is pleased to inform you that the 42nd Division has fully measured up to the high standard above referred to, and he reiterates his self-congratulation that you and your organization are again a part of the 1st Army Corps, Am. E. F. (Signed) H. Liggett, Major General, U. S. A. By command of Major General Menoher: Douglas MacArthur, Brigadier General, General Staff, Chief of Staff. Official: Walter E. Powers, Major, N. G., Adjutant General, Division Adjutant. HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 6 August, 1918. Memorandum No. 258. II. The following General Order is furnished Brigade, Regi- mental and Separate Battalion Commanders for publication to their respective organizations: G. A. R., Etat Major, H. Q., August 4th, 1918. 3rd Bureau, No. 4,190. general order The second battle of the Marne ends, like the first in a victory. The Chateau-Thierry pocket exists no more. 258 The Story of the Rainbow Division The Vlth and Xth Armies, also the allied troops fighting at their side, have taken a glorious part in the battle. Their swift and powerful entrance in the battle, on July 18th, had, as a first result, to entirely break up the offensive of the enemy, and compelled him to retreat across the Marne. Since that time, owing to our strong attacks, and chased night and day, without stop, he has been forced to fall back across the Vesle, leaving in our hands 25,000 prisoners, 600 guns, 4,000 ma- chine guns, 500 minenwerfers. We owe these results to the energy and skill of the Chiefs, and to the extraordinary valor of the troops, who, for more than 15 days, had to march and fight without rest. I am sending to the Commanders of the Xth and Vlth Armies, Generals Mangin and Degotjtte, to the Commanders of the Brit- ish and American units, and to all the troops, the token of my admiration for their knowledge, their courage, their heroic tenacity. They may all be proud of the work accomplished. It is great because it has greatly contributed to secure the final victory for us, and to bring it much nearer. (Signed) Fayolije. Official: The Chief of Staff: (Signed) P alette. HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 13 August, 1918. Memorandum No. 261. The following General Order, 6th (French) Army, is published to this Command: 6th Army P. C, 9 August, 1918. GENERAL ORDER Before the great offensive of the 18th of July, the American Troops forming part of the 6th French Army distinguished them- selves in capturing from the enemy the Bois de la Brigade de Marine and the village of Vaux, in stopping his offensive on the Marne and at Fossoy. Appendix IV 259 Since then, they have taken the most glorious part in a second battle of the Marne, rivaling in order and in valiance the French troops. They have in twenty days of incessant combat, liber- ated numerous French villages and realized across a difficult coun- try an advance of forty kilometers which has carried them be- yond the Vesle. Their glorious marches are marked by names which will illus- trate in the future the military history of the United States. Torcy-Belleatt, Plateau d'Etrepilly, Epieds, La Charmel, L'Ourcq, Seringes-et-Nesles, Sergy, La Vesle and Fismes. The new divisions who were under fire for the first time showed themselves worthy of the war-time traditions of the Regular Army. They have had the same ardent desire to fight the Boche, the same discipline by which an order given by the Chief is always executed, whatever be the difficulties to overcome and the sacri- fices to undergo. The magnificent result so obtained are due to the energy and skill of the Chiefs, and to the bravery of the soldiers. I am proud to have commanded such troops. The General Commanding the 6th Army, Degoutte. HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES, FRANCE 13 August, 1918. To the Officers and Men of the 42nd Division: A year has elapsed since the formation of your organization. It is, therefore, fitting to consider what you have accomplished as a combat division and what you should prepare to accom- plish in the future. Your first elements entered the trenches in Lorraine on Feb- ruary 21st; you served on that front for 110 days. You were the first American Division to hold a divisional sector and when you left the sector June 21st, you had served continuously as a division in the trenches for a longer time than any other Ameri- 260 The Story of the Rainbow Division can Division. Although you entered the sector without experi- ence in actual warfare, you so conducted yourselves as to win the respect and affection of the French veterans with whom you served. Under gas bombardment, in raids, in patrols, in the heat of hand to hand combat and in the long dull hours of trench routine so trying to a soldier's spirit, you bore yourselves in a manner worthy of the traditions of our country. You were withdrawn from Lorraine and moved immediately to the Champagne front where during the critical days from July 14th to July 18th, you had the honor of being the only American Division to fight in General Gourattd's Army which so gloriously obeyed his order, "We will stand or die," and by its iron defense crushed the German assault and made possible the offensive of July 18th to the west of Reims. From Champagne you were called to take part in exploiting the success north of the Marne. Fresh from the battle front before Chalons, you were thrown against the picked troops of Germany. For eight consecutive days, you attacked skillfully prepared positions. You captured great stores of arms and munitions, you forced the crossings of the Oxmca. You took Hill 212, Serge, Meurcy Ferme and Seringes by assault. You drove the enemy, including an Imperial Guard Division, before you for a depth of fifteen kilometers. When your infantry was relieved, it was in full pursuit of the retreating Germans, and your artillery continued to progress and support another Ameri- can Division in the advance to the Vesle. For your services in Lorraine, your Division was formerly commended in General Orders by the French Army Corps under which you served. For your services in Champagne, your as- sembled officers received the personal thanks and commendation of General Gourattd himself. For your services on the Ottrcq, your Division was officially complimented in a letter from the Commanding General, 1st Army Corps, of July 28th, 1918. To your success, all ranks and all services have contributed, and I desire to express to every man in the command my ap- preciation of his devoted and courageous effort. Appendix IV 261 However, our position places a burden of responsibility upon us which we must strive to bear steadily forward without fal- tering. To our comrades who have fallen, we owe the sacred obli- gation of maintaining the reputation which they died to estab- lish. The influence of our performance on our allies and on our enemies cannot be overestimated for we were one of the first divisions sent from our country to show the world that Americans can fight. Hard battles and long campaigns lie before us. Only by ceaseless vigilance and tireless preparation can we fit ourselves for them. I urge you, therefore, to approach the future with confidence but above all with firm determination that so far as it is in your power, to spare no effort whether in training or in combat to maintain the record of our division and the honor of our country. Charles T. Menoher, Major General, U. S. A., Commanding. HEADQUARTERS FOURTH ARMY CORPS AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES, FRANCE GENERAL ORDER NO. 5 13 September, 1918. 1. The Fourth Corps has defeated the enemy and driven him back on the whole Corps Front. All objectives were reached be- fore the time prescribed in orders, a large number of prisoners and a considerable amount of booty captured. The rapid advance of the Corps, in conjunction with the action of the other ele- ments of the First Army, rendered the St. Mihiel salient unten- able to the enemy, who has retreated. 2. The greatest obstacles to the advance was thought to be the enemy wire which presented a problem that caused anxiety to all concerned. The Corps Commander desires to express in particu- lar his admiration of the skill shown by the small groups in the advance battalions and their commanders in' crossing the hostile wire, in general to express his appreciation of tfc.i high spirit and 262 The Story of the Rainbow Division daring shown by the troops, and the rapidity and efficiency with which the operation was conducted. By command of Major General Dickman: Stuart Heintzelman, Chief of Staff. Official: Philip L. Schuyler, Major, Infantry, Adjutant. HEADQUARTERS 4th ARMY CORPS 15 September, 1918. general order no. 7 The Corps Commander is pleased to transmit to the command the following telegram received by the Commander-in-Chief: "My dear General. The First American Army under your command on the first day has won a magnificent victory by a maneuver as skillfully prepared as it was valiantly acted. I ex- tend to you as well as to the officers and to the troops under your command my warmest compliments. "Marshal Foch." HEADQUARTERS 4th ARMY CORPS September 17, 1918. GENERAL ORDERS NO. 8 The Corps Commander takes great pride in repeating the fol- lowing telegram received by him from the Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces: "Please accept my sincere congratulations on the successful and important part taken by the officers and men of the IV Corps in the first offensive of the First American Army on September 12th and 13th, 1918. The courageous dash and vigor of our troops has thrilled our countrymen and evoked the enthusiasm of ^<* % / ^ ' * * s ^ "^0* -*"rA^^A* < " *^ \^> ^rA^^A,* X*s Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. i^\V«^/% ° 'K/> <^ «T <^\\\J^/% ° ^°n .< Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide ^J 4> ^> ■*«£> Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proc ^p v Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide ' Treatment Date: yav 2001 $ % %^|fP\* <£? PreservationTechnc S s A s A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRES rO v s s " 111 Thomson Park Drive v i --J' -''J Kf Cranhprrv Tnwnshin. PA ^0* a Slip - *^0* PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park unve Cranberry Township. PA 1 6066 (724)779-2111 CP' v\ b \>\-°, *% A o, o* V - ' v «.* *?*, *%> C ' A O S