rom UPTONtoffieMEUSE with ike hreeHundred & Seventh. W-Kcrr Rainsford ">• v. ofssert Pusseldorf COLOGNE irz. fc\M A N V Z6(X£"/^ty? f5l COBl£AfZ foyo/rCi ftfAN&OKT "fc rreves Sfi4#HM£0 JrflY ye#otH • \ I -r> Toi^ Cbo-teom • 5o//r?S '/V/J/VC oj Epm a) e Boccorot St. Die <0 / Thonn Set fort Co/ma i A/v/M )ST*/?5JSOVfiG I mfretbury Z> #,/ ^ /7 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/fromuptontomeuseOOrainrich THE RAVIN MARION, LOOKING NORTH ACROSS THE BATTLEFIELD OF THE REGIMENT'S THREE ATTACKS; ITS DEPTH MAY BE NOTED FROM THE PATH VAGUELY SEEN ALONG ITS BOTTOM. FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE I WITH THE THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH INFANTRY A BRIEF HISTORY OF ITS LIFE AND OF THE PART IT PLAYED IN THE GREAT WAR BY W. KERR RAINSFORD CAPTAIN THBEE HUNDBED AND SEVENTH INFANTBT D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 192Q ■m? so1 tW Copyright, 1920, bt D. APPLETON AND COMPANY miNTBD IN TH« UNITED STATES OT AMERICA TO THE MEMORY OP ITS DEAD AND AS A TRIBUTE TO ITS LIVING. TO THEHt CHEERFUL ENDURANCE UNDER EXHAUSTING PRIVATION, AND TO THEHt COURAGE IN THE FACE OF DANGER THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 441009 FOREWORD The history of the 307th Infantry is the his- tory of faithful service and devotion to duty of an organization which formed part of the 77th Division during the Great War. The name of the regiment is linked forever with the names of Merval, Revillon, and La Petite Montagne in the Oise-Aisne Offensive; it fought in the center of the Argonne Forest, took the town of Grand Pre and advanced triumphantly to the Meuse in the course of the final operations which broke the enemy op- position. The example set by this organiza- tion is such as to inspire patriotism and de- votion to duty whether in military life or in civil pursuits. Headquarters 77th Division Hotel Biltmore New York City ROBERT ALEXANDER Major General. U. S. A. Commanding 77th Division INTRODUCTION Histories are too often builded upon the fal- lible memory of man, wherein the records of events are liable to be tinted with that exu- berance which so often surrounds the fisher- man's catch. In order that the splendid serv- ice which was rendered by the 307th Infantry, 77th Division of the National Army, in the great World War, might be perpetuated while the events were still fresh in memory, while official documents and pictures were available, and reconnaissance of battlefields could be made, this work was started in January, 1919, when the regiment was still in France and be- fore the work could be influenced by that too easy divergence from facts which the narrator so soon weaves into his story in absolute cre- dence. After very careful consideration of the nec- essary qualities and personality for a historian whose work could be accepted without ques- ix INTRODUCTION tion, I selected Capt. W. K. Rainsford, then commanding Company L, 307th Infantry, for the task. All official documents in the 307th Infantry and the 77th Division were made available to him, and leave was granted him for a reconnaissance of the terrain over which the regiment had fought. Captain Rainsford was graduated from Harvard in 1904 and from the ficole des Beaux Arts, Paris, in 1911. During 1915-16 he served with the American Ambulance sec- tion attached to the French Army, and in this capacity participated with the French during the big German attack on Verdun in June, 1916. He attended the first Plattsburg Offi- cers' Training Camp in 1917 and was commis- sioned a captain of infantry therefrom. In September, 1917, he was assigned to the 77th Division and placed in command of Company M, 307th Infantry. As commander of this company he went to France with his regiment and after training with the British Army took part in the defense of the Baccarat sector and the Oise-Aisne offensive, until wounded in front of Chateau Diable in August, 1918. INTRODUCTION Returning from hospital in September he was placed in command of Company L, 307th Infantry, and was for the second time severely wounded in October, while leading his com- pany in the first attempt to reach Major Charles W. Whittlesey's command, composed of parts of the 308th and 307th Infantry, which had been cut off and surrounded by the Germans in the Argonne Forest. In De- cember Captain Rainsford was again returned from hospital to duty with his regiment. This work is therefore commended to its readers as an official product from the pen, not of an onlooker but of a participant who en- dured every privation and hardship with the regiment ; one who had watched the Great War from its beginning with the eye of a profes- sional soldier, and who had served therein with the greatest valor and self-sacrifice from 1915 until the end. Little can I express the great admiration, respect and affection I feel for every man of this splendid regiment, which I never com- manded in battle but watched in every action, first while Chief of Staff of the 77th Division 3D INTRODUCTION of the National Army to which it belonged, and then as commander of its companion regi- ment in the 154th Infantry Brigade, the 308th Infantry, during the last month of intense fighting in the Argonne. The entire Division was drawn from what the military critics of the time assumed was the poorest fighting material in the United States, that greatest of all melting pots of hu- manity — New York City. Men unused to the sturdy activity of outdoor life; men who had had little chance for that physical development which enables them to endure great privation, fatigue and suffering; men who had no knowl- edge of woodcraft and the use of firearms, and in consequence were lacking in the principles of self-preservation and the confidence which comes from such knowledge. Yet these men, inducted into the service when their nation was in peril, after a brief period of training were thrown against the most perfectly trained and disciplined army the world has ever known. They fought their way to victory and never once gave ground to the enemy. Always en- during with perfect cheerfulness and courage xii INTRODUCTION every hardship and privation, responding at all times to their leaders, they accepted with equal tenacity of purpose and disregard of self the necessity for a frontal attack on the ene- my's machine-gun nests or long sleepless nights and days, drenched to the skin and foodless, shivering with the cold, with no protection from the elements or the enemy's terrible weap- ons of destruction. A complaint was never heard, failure to obey was a thing unknown. Men who had lived in the glare of electric lights and had never known darkness foughttheirway night and day through fifteen miles of the most impenetrable mass of dense forest and under- brush, wire entanglements and trenches, that mind can conceive, in the Foret d'Argonne. No division suffered greater hardships, had greater losses during the time it was in line, nor was better disciplined and trained than this cosmopolitan division of New York City — the 77th, New York's Own. If our nation is properly to protect its great wealth and future trade development, and more than all its homes and the lives of its peo- ple, no more forceful argument for the univer- xiii INTRODUCTION sal training of our young men can be presented than the history of this regiment and division. A brief period of intensive training made splendid officers from raw material, and nine months of similar training in service developed the army which whipped the Hun. But let us not drift into the fallacy that there will always be buffer states between us and the enemy to protect us while this training is in progress. The deeds of this regiment exem- plify what our splendid manhood can and will do for their country; what splendid patriotism comes from the crucible of American citizen- ship. Let us profit by past experience and in times of peace prepare for any eventuality, not by attempting to create a huge and expensive regular establishment but by training our young men in the use of arms, with that health- ful, vigorous training which makes better men of them morally and physically, so that we will at all times be ready to safeguard our country against the encroachments and avarice of an enemy. When arbitration fails and we must throw down the gauntlet for the preservation of right, let us not send them forth incom- xiv INTRODUCTION pletely trained and equipped, thus inviting an unnecessary waste of life, through a miscon- ceived economy or that more charitable though equally fallacious belief of the pacifist, that wars are of the past. Preparedness is war's antitoxin. Had we been prepared in 1914 the Lamtania would never have been sunk. J. R. R. Hannay, Colonel U. S. Armt (Fobmeblt Commanding 307th Infantry) XV PREFACE The following brief history was written for the most part during the latter months of the Regiment's stay in France, and was pieced together, in so far as the events recorded had not come under the writer's direct observation, from a number of sources. Such documents as the Regiment still held in its possession were carefully studied, but these were very insuffi- cient and often inconclusive. They consisted largely of orders, which might afterward have been countermanded, or else simply never have been carried out as contemplated. They consisted also of reports which had been called for on specific subjects or actions; but these also would often have been written without adequate time for their preparation, and under stress of more pressing matters by officers greatly overtaxed. The battalion war diaries in General Headquarters at Chaumont were also studied. But there again the line or two devoted to the day's activity of a battalion was too meager a contribution to be greatly help- ful; and when action had been serious and con- xvii PREFACE tinuous it was often represented simply by a gap in the records. The barest skeleton of the story could thus be built and the filling in of it was found to be best accomplished by continuously inter- viewing those who had taken part in its vari- ous phases. In this connection the reader may be struck by a slight but unintentional over- emphasis of the battalion to which the writer belonged, and with the life-history of which he was more intimately familiar. There may also be an under-emphasis of any headquarters higher than that of battalion, which, rather than regiment, is the combat-unit of the mod- ern army. But the effort has been consistent and very painstaking for truth of both fact and color; and the story herewith presented is primarily a true story. On that point the writer wishes to be emphatic. The reader will find herein little of the color- ful melodrama with which the public's taste has so largely been vitiated in the stories of war. As a case in point he will find no men- tion of bayonet-fighting. It is difficult to turn to a single magazine-illustration of fighting in the Argonne Forest wherein at least one of the American soldiers is not seen driving his bay- onet through the body of a German machine- gunner, while the latter raises inadequately xviii PREFACE protesting hands to the sky — and quite prob- ably every American in the picture will be so engaged. Yet, at the risk of deeply shocking his public, the writer gives it as his careful opinion that probably no German machine- gun crew was ever bayoneted by Americans in the Forest of Argonne. Although his regi- ment, perhaps more than any other, bore the bitter brunt of fighting down the whole bloody length of that forest, he yet thinks it im- probable that any soldier of the regiment, either there or elsewhere, ever used his bayonet at all. It may have occurred, but if so it was a rarity. Nor does this imply any slightest lack on the part of the troops engaged — cer- tainly not any lack of intelligence. The bayonet became obsolete with the passing of trench warfare. Place a group of men, armed with machine-guns, magazine-rifles, and auto- matic pistols, free-footed in the woods, and try hurdling the barbed-wire toward them with a spear in your hand. You will infallibly be mourned by your relatives — if they loved you — and the machine-gun will still be in action. In innumerable conversations with officers from almost all the American combat-divisions whom he met in hospitals, the writer has never heard an authentic and first-hand account of bayonet-fighting. It is altogether unworthy xix PREFACE of true courage and self-sacrifice that the story of it should be falsified to suit a supposedly popular taste. The story herewith presented is then pri- marily true. In so far as it deals with the 307th Infantry alone it is known to be true; and in so far as it touches upon other organiza- tions it is believed to be so — but not as the result of any special investigation. Since writing the chapter on the crossing of the Aire, for example, the writer has learned of some dispute between the 153rd Brigade and the 82nd Division as to the taking of St. Juvin. On this, or on similar subjects not directly germane to his narrative, he has made no great effort to investigate, and has not thought it worth while to qualify his reference to the taking of St. Juvin by the 153rd Brigade. The references made to other organizations are merely intended to give the story of the 307th its proper setting, and to suggest the relation of its movements to the scheme of larger events, rather than to define the movements of those organizations. The sketches and photographs used to illus- trate the text were made by the author, — the first when, as an ambulance driver with the French in 1916, he traversed in part the same region, and the latter when he revisited the xx PREFACE battle-fields of the Vesle and Aisne in March, 1919 — six months after they had been fought over. He greatly regrets that the subjects presented should not be of more obvious and general interest, and he made every effort, though unsuccessfully, to secure some that were. Yet to himself the photographs are of deep interest, as were those few days of March on which they were taken. The return, as of a spirit escaped from purgatory, to that drear half-forgotten country — the battered villages, with their pitiable inhabitants creeping back to ruined homes ; the broken woodlands with their trampled wreckage of equipment, still un- gathered, rotting slowly into the ground; the flooded marshes, where the river, choked with debris, backed and spread into stagnant pools ; the bleak, scarred uplands, seen through a mist of rain and driving snow, where black flocks of rooks winged back and forth, or perched in hordes along the tangled wire; and from the hills, where the French engineers were setting off unexploded shells, the same heavy orchestra as of yore. It is a land accursed whose re- generation will be long in coming. The two poems have both previously ap- peared in the Outlook. The first was written on February 21st, 1918, while spending a night xxi PREFACE alone as Officer of the Day in the 71st Regi- ment Armory in New York, where the 307th Infantry had left its arms under guard for the parade of Washington's Birthday. The offi- cers of the Regiment had recently adopted for it the old Gaelic motto of the Irish Inniskillen Dragoons, "Faugh-a-Ballagh" ("Clear the Way"), and had agreed to carry blackthorn sticks as a regimental emblem. It was said that the Regiment would be known as the Blackthorn Regiment, although actually the name never clung very close. These verses were afterward read to Congress by the mem- ber from Michigan, and reprinted in the Con- gressional Record. The second was written in hospital, late during the fateful month of October, 1918, when it was becoming evident to those behind the lines that the final act of the great drama was about to be played. Finally the writer thinks it well to say that, though largely written in France, this book was at the time of the mustering out of the Regiment on May 9, 1919, still in very frag- mentary form, so that it was not read by any superior officer. Should there appear in its pages any passages seeming by implication to be critical, such criticism is that solely of the writer and of the brother officers with whom he has conferred, and does not in any way bear xxii PREFACE the indorsement of the greatly respected colo- nel or the general who have so generously pref- aced it, but who have never had the oppor- tunity to see its contents. Criticism is far from the purpose of this present volume, but in deal- ing very frankly with the facts, as seen on the Line, it may occasionally seem to be implied. The writer was informed by the Regimental Adjutant, shortly before demobilization, that he had received notice of the Regiment being chosen from among the others of the Division for perpetuation in the Army of the United States. This, to become fact, would be con- ditional upon the proposed enlargement of the Regular Army to five hundred thousand, un- der which circumstances one regiment is to be selected from each of various divisions for perpetuation. The 77th Division, already dis- tinguished as the first division of the Draft to be sent overseas, has been officially credited, in the report of Gen. Peyton C. March, Chief of Staff, with the greatest aggregate depth of territory gained from the enemy of any Ameri- can Division in France — 77.5 kilometers, or 9.14 per cent, of the entire advance of the American forces — there being twenty-seven divisions listed in all, and the 2nd Division coming next with 60 kilometers. The 307th Infantry has been selected per- xxiii PREFACE manently to represent the Division, than which no greater recognition of its service could well be accorded it. This, then, is the story of the Regiment, the purpose of which is truthfully to portray some aspects of an epoch very mem- orable in the life of the nation. W. X. Rainsfobd Captain 807th Infantry xxiv FAUGH-A-BALLAGH There's a Blackthorn Regiment belongs to Uncle Sam, And it's heading out for trouble any day. Be it France, or Greece, or Italy, it doesn't give a damn, Only start it on its road and Clear the Way! Clear the Way before us when our marching orders come! Can't you hear the fifes a-screaming and the throb- bing of the drum, And the roar of marching feet Down the crowded city street, Past the avenues of faces? It's the long good-bye for some. It's the price we gladly pay To the Resurrection Day. Let us pay it as we play it — Faugh-a-Ballagh ! Clear the Way! We've a debt that's due to England. We've a price to pay for France. We've a score with God Almighty we would pay. We have talked and we have dallied while the others staked our chance. It is time we drew our cards — so Clear the Way! XXV FAUGH-A-BALLAGH There's a length of battered trenches where the trees are torn and dead, With the reek of rotting horses in the air; Where through blinding fog the shells come wailing blind overhead, And it's waiting for us now — over there. j Where the yellow mud is splattered from the craters in the snow, Where the dice of death are loaded — let us play. We have pledged our word to Freedom, — and it's there that we would go, In the strength that Freedom gives us — Clear the Way! Clear the way to No Man's Land, with bugles shrill and high; Clear it to the lid of Hell, with flags against the sky. Oh, clear the way to Kingdom Come, and give us glad good-bye. We've a blow to strike for Freedom — Clear the Way! W. K. R. 21bt February, 1018 Abiiobt 71bt N.G.N.Y. xxvi CONTENTS MM Preface . . . . " •'.... vii Foreword bt General Alexander ix Introduction by Colonel Hannat xvii Poem xrv CHAPTER I. Camp Upton 1 II. With the British S3 III. Lorraine 41 IV. The Chateau du Diable 66 V. Across the Veslb 07 VI. Merval 118 VII. Sheets and Bandages 135 VIII. The Forest op Argonne < 153 IX. The Dep6t de Machines 174 X. The Surrounded Battalion 195 XI. Grand Pr£ 225 XII. The Adavnce to the Meuse ....... 242 XIII. The Home Trail 272 Poem 282 Appendix 285 XXV11 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE The Ravin Marion, looking North from its Eastern Horn Frontispiece The entrance blocked by the fallen chimes 44 Baccarat — the wake of early invasion 64 Baccarat — a Pompeian effect of statues amid the ruins . . 64 The Chateau du Diable : (to be seen above the " C " in " Chau ") 82 Concrete Signal-House on the Railroad transformed into a German Pill-Box, seen from its rear 04 The Chateau du Diable, looking across a side branch of the Vesle 04 Side Street in Lismes — water backing up from the choked river into the town 104 The River Front at Fismes, looking across the Vesle from Fismette 104 Church at Merval overlooking the enemy lines to the North and used as American observation post 112 Battalion Headquarters at Merval — a forty foot cave in the chalk 112 The Sunken Road — Merval, showing a litter of American equip- ment at the roadside — the debris of three attacks . . . 134 Milestones on the Road to Victory 154 On the edge of that desert region about Verdun 164 Sun-scorched and dust-covered debris 226 Old battlefields and ruins 272 XXIX With the THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH INFANTRY CHAPTER I CAMP UPTON The 307th Infantry, 154th Brigade, 77th Division, National Army, came into confused being at Camp Upton, Long Island, with the first increment of the draft from New York, in September, 1917. Its officers were of a high average of intelligence and natural ability, but their experience in war was for the most part limited to that gained at Plattsburg from the I.D.R., the F.S.R., and the imperishable Ser- geant Hill; its enlisted personnel, for it was ordered that the drafted men should be so des- ignated, was very largely from the East Side of the city, and contained every nationality that America has welcomed to her shores, but almost none who, on any pretext, had handled a rifle; its camp site was a recently cleared area of dust or mud, according to the weather, 1 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE gridironed by dirt roads, occupied in part by I wo- story wooden shacks but more largely by piles of lumber, and surrounded by, first, a zone of uprooted pine-stumps, then a space of charred pine-stumps in place, and finally by an endless sea of scrub-pine and autumn- tinted oak stretching down to the distant Sound. On Headquarters Hill alone a scat- tering growth of pines, which had escaped the ax, lent a remote suggestion of natural beauty to the scene. In dry weather walls of dust swept from end to end of the encampment, and in wet weather lakes inconveniently ap- peared. But the work of construction con- tinued simultaneously with that of mobiliza- tion, and both achieved final, if imperfect, com- pletion. The Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel were of the regular army at lower rank, a very few of the lieutenants had held non-commissioned rank in the regular service, and to each com- pany was sent from the regular army one or two men as sergeants. Of these last a few did excellent service as drill sergeants; but on the whole the experiment was not successful, and 2 CAMP UPTON the greater number were returned to the regi- ments whence they came. The company officers had expected to en- counter difficulties in their appointed tasks, and they did so, but not as they had anticipated. The draft arrived in groups of from thirty to sixty or more, usually following behind a box-standard bearing the number of the Local Board, and in charge of a temporary leader, who submitted a list of their names and an armful of their appropriate papers. While the receiving officer, on the steps of his bar- racks, was ascertaining the innumerable dis- crepancies between the two, the draft stood about eyeing him with expectant curiosity, with friendly amusement, with critical displeasure, or with apathy, according to their nationality or mood — with any and every emotion save military respect. Then came the calling of the roll and further discrepancies. Certain men would answer with alacrity to each of three names called, or stand silent while their own was called as many times. As a typical in- stance, a man in "M" Company had answered "Here" at every formation for nearly a week 3 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE before he was discovered to have been left at home on account of illness, and never to have reported at the camp. Another ghost was laid by the following dialogue: "Morra, T." "Here." "Morra, R." (From the same individual) "Here." "Does your first name begin with a T. or an R.?" "Yes, sir." "Is your first name Rocco?" "Yes, sir." "What is your first name?" "Tony." And all in perfectly good faith. They were at this stage known as "casuals," and after feeding them, one of the earliest duties was to interview each personally and ascertain his civilian occupation, probable ca- pacity in it, and preference as to branch of service, although his statement as to the latter seemed but seldom to affect his ultimate fate. Then came the fitting of uniforms. One set of all possible sizes was available for try- 4 CAMP UPTON ing on to each battalion, though not often to any of its companies ; the consolidated requisi- tions were made out and submitted, and were filled, of necessity, piecemeal in the course of days or weeks; by which time the casuals had largely been sent to other organizations, and others, coming as casuals from elsewhere, had taken their place. These brought with them memoranda of their required sizes, or had lost them, as the case might be. It was the usual experience that the sizes noted were not the sizes required, that the sizes received were very possibly not the sizes requisitioned, and that the articles had probably been marked with the wrong sizes in the first instance. The men took the fit of their uniform seriously, as a soldier should, and a company commander's time was about equally distributed between those whose breeches offended their better judgment, those whose broken arches prevent- ed their marching, those who (through inter- preters) were unnaturalized Russians and did not belong in the draft at all, and, commonest ailment, those whose perishing family required their immediate presence at home. 5 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE The evil, probably unavoidable in any army, of detailing officers away from their com- panies to special duty, had already made itself felt, and at this time a very typical company of the regiment had three hundred and eighty- five recruits to feed, clothe, discipline, control, and train, a six-inch litter of papers on the table of the otherwise unfurnished orderly- room, each calling for immediate compliance or report, and three officers present for duty. General Sherman only half expressed himself. The organization of the rifle companies was made difficult by the very constant transfer of men to specialist groups, to other branches of the service, or to other training camps. If a recruit was quick and intelligent he was prob- ably found to be also an electrician, and was transferred to the signal platoon, or a chauf- feur, and went to the motor transport, or else he looked promising as a machine-gunner, ac- countant, or one-pound cannoneer, and also disappeared. Camp Gordon, strangely in need of men, offered a certain safety-valve, and the man whose face seemed irreconcilable with a steel helmet, whose name on the roll- 6 CAMP UPTON call consisted only of consonants, or who had cast his rice pudding in the mess-sergeant's face often completed his training there — on the pretext that all is fair in war. The training of the companies was made difficult by the lateness of the season and the lack of any adequate drill-ground or gymna- sium. As the mud became more universal and deeper the few macadamized roads, notably Fifth Avenue, became attractive for the drill- ing of squads and for close order march; but the consequent interference with traffic led to this being strictly prohibited. Troops were forbidden to move at any time in greater frontage than column of twos upon the hard roads, or to cross them except by infiltration; this, with the unauthorized taking of loose building-material — defined to include any piece of lumber greater than two inches square or two feet in length — for the purpose of in- terior improvements or firewood, formed a constant Sword of Damocles over the head of any company commander whose three hundred and eighty recruits were at any time out of his sight. 7 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE Another increment of the draft was received in December and again in February, each fol- lowed by its period of wholesale transfers; so that, even as late as the latter month, a strang- er in civilian clothes who appeared unan- nounced in the orderly-room, with his hat on his head, to offer the company commander a red apple, might still be a member of his com- mand. But by this time the good material was coming to the fore. Corporals and ser- geants had been found who could take hold of their men, drill them, and enforce regulations; and there never was any apparent unwilling- ness on the part of the enlisted men to serve, nor conscious wish to defy authority. It was wonderful how willingly they seemed to prepare for a war of which so many could not know the meaning. Three thousand miles across the sea, what could it mean to the late worker in the East-side sweat-shop that Messine Ridge was retaken by the Germans? And yet they were ready to prepare to take their place upon that distant line. There were a few conscientious objectors, of whom at least some were evidently sincere, letter-perfect in 8 CAMP UPTON their Bible texts and unwilling to shed the blood of others; there were a very few who, with or without the sanction of Biblical prece- dent, were frankly unwilling to shed their own ; there were also some of German parent- age who were excusably unwilling to face their relatives with a rifle. These were the rare exceptions, yet in passing let the methods be noted by which it was directed that they should be dealt with — for these methods were the same as those which saved the lives of numbers of enemy agents in the land, at the cost of the lives of innumerable citizens. A conscientious objector of another regiment had definitely and finally refused to put on his uniform when so ordered by his company, battalion, and regimental commanders, with the somewhat startling result that officers were notified that "they would be held responsible not to place themselves in the position of issuing a direct order to their men." With other types of men the position might well have become im- possible; but it was not so. And oh, the pathos of those poor Italians, and Slavs, and Jews — Americans all — who came to their company 9 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE commanders with the letters from their sick wives, uncared for, and often about to be ejected from their pitiful homes, letters un- complaining and only asking when the hus- band could return for a little while; and the men, on their part, only asking what provi- sion could be made for their women-folk while they were away, seldom asking for the ex- emption which they should have had by right, but of which they had been defrauded by some Local Board, more concerned over the safety of its native sons than over the rights of its foreign-born residents. They were lovable men, probably because nearly all men become lovable when the relations between them are right, and are long continued. The nearness of New York, however, while a convenience to the individual, was a de- cidedly adverse factor to discipline and con- trol; and the men, except those from up-State, never quite cut loose from the city nor gave themselves unreservedly to the military life. The difficulty of A.W.O.L. (absence with- out leave) was pronounced throughout the en- tire period at Camp Upton, and that of 10 CAMP UPTON drunkenness, while not acute, was always to be reckoned with. There was very little training with special arms at this time. The rifle range was used as often as the weather permitted, and, though this was not begun until winter had set in, the men showed decided aptitude for the work. Bayonet drill was frequent, although compli- cated by two or three different schools of tech- nique, to which selected lieutenants or N. C. O.'s (non-commissioned officers) were sent for instruction, and which usually concluded their course with a warning that, in view of a more recent method having been ordered since the opening of the course, the methods of instruc- tion just taught should not be practiced with the troops. The throwing of dummy grenades was practiced as taught by a French lieuten- ant, but live hand-grenades or rifle-grenades were never available. The instruction with automatic rifles did not go beyond that of the mechanism of the Lewis Gun and chau- chat for two N. C. O.'s and a lieutenant from each company, with a single day's firing on the range. The guns were never available for the 11 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE training of squads in the companies. The open- order formations of the English and French, as gleaned from pamphlets, were grafted onto the American regulations more or less accord- ing to the theory or understanding of the in- dividual company commander, and the troops were drilled in them in the snowy stump-fields. The late increments of recruits, while dis- tracting and disorganizing, had at least the ad- vantage of giving the older men a pride in their seniority and more confidence in their authority. The number of officers had been increased, both from the later Plattsburg camp and from Camp Mills, to an average of nearly ten per company ; amusement halls had been constructed; little pine and cedar trees had been planted about a number of the bar- racks; the train journey to and from the city had been reduced from six or eight hours to an average of two — and the cars were occa- sionally heated — and by midwinter life was moving upon ordered ways. It was a rather severe winter, but, except for the lack of facil- ities for indoor exercise and training, brought no real hardships ; the barracks were fairly well 12 CAMP UPTON heated, for, in spite of the coal famine in the civilian world, coal was never lacking at camp, and, in the light of after experience, the quan- tity and quality of the food-ration was extraor- dinary. One special feature of the training provoked a real, if transitory, thrill; this was the gas- chamber. The men had been told about gas, about the gas that burned out your lungs, the gas that blistered off your skin, the gas that blinded your eyes, that made you vomit, and that made you sneeze ; they had been told what to do about each; they had been warned and lectured to by English and French experts with experience, and by American experts without it ; they had been practiced to a seven- second adjustment of gas-masks; they had been marched in gas-masks, and had played games in them. And then on the outer con- fines of camp appeared the gas-chamber ; and, after a final inspection of masks for pin-pricks, and after a sort of final benediction, one pla- toon at a time — while the others sat upon the neighboring slopes singing a funeral march — one platoon at a time, they filed into, and were 13 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE sealed within, the gas-ehamber. There was no slightest actual danger, and yet it was inter- esting. Even so early came a slight forewarn- ing of that coming readjustment of values, when the too-often drunken ne'er-do-well and the recognized public nuisance should come to their own. Even so early one glimpsed ahead to the man who would push forward laughing into the unknown; or to him who, when his company drew back from its latest Golgotha, might be found with a scarlet brassard about his arm, doing police-duty at a cross-road, and uneager to tell how he got there. To one who spent Christmas at the Camp — and by far the greater number were able to go home — that day forms one of its pleasant- est memories. There were a scattered few, disconsolate in the empty barracks, wishing they too were at home, or looking apathetic- ally out on the fine rain that gathered in icicles along the eaves. And then volunteers were called for to bring in pine branches and trail- ing vines to decorate the mess-halls. They all volunteered. Probably no one can quite re- sist the cheering influence of gathering and 14 CAMP UPTON decorating with Christmas greens ; and the rain didn't matter, for it never does except to the homeless ; and the Red Cross sent to every one in camp a package prettily tied with ribbons, enclosing things to eat or smoke, and things to play with or use, and a card of Christmas greeting from some girl, unknown and there- fore lovely; and the small numbers led to a new intimacy, and the loneliness of the bar- racks turned to a cozy seclusion; and Christ- mas found its way again into the heart. On a snowy twenty- second of February the Division paraded through New York before one of the largest crowds the city had ever gathered, and was greeted with very consider- able enthusiasm. Camp Upton was proud of what it had produced, only regretting that it had to court-martial so many of its members immediately thereafter for lack of a proper sense of when the festivities were over. This event being passed, the mind of the camp be- gan seriously to concentrate on the coming de- parture for overseas, and it is not too much to say that, until after that departure, the regi- ment never really found itself. In probably 15 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE every company one or two N. C. O.'s had shown that absolute reliance could be placed upon them as leaders of their men ; for a much larger number it was confidently hoped that under war-time conditions their power to com- mand would develop; but the great mass of men still constituted an ununified, unknown, and very insufficiently trained quantity, who had never yet learned to take themselves se- riously as soldiers, though giving no evidence of unwillingness to serve. A resifting of offi- cers now took place to eliminate the supernu- meraries, and further effort was made, though with very partial success, to get rid of the men known to be physically or mentally incompe- tent. The question of equipment assumed a lead- ing role. There were lectures and bulletins to officers on the subject of their appropriate and necessary equipment — a selection of articles seeming, in the light of after experience, rath- er extraordinary. Equipment C for the troops was eventually defined, and the Gordian tangle of property responsibility, brought about by the wholesale and simultaneous equipment and 16 CAMP UPTON transfer of masses of men without any author- ized or recognized forms for receipt, which had hung broodingly in the background for months, was finally severed, as Gordian tangles only can be. Some notes from a diary, kept at this time by the author, will perhaps best picture the beginning of April. "April 4th. — Equipment C blocks the hori- zon, together with the number of packing cases to be allowed, and where they are to come from. Some of the companies have over thirty. We haven't; but the First Sergeant promises to produce an average of two or three per night. Our fifteen square-headed shovels have dwin- dled to twelve, though we have four or five round-headed ones, apparently of no use for digging trenches. All efforts to exchange them through regular channels having failed, the First Sergeant is sending out men in couples this evening, with one shovel per couple, to quarrel in the vicinity of distant coalbins, and try to change the shape of their heads. ( Later. ) We have fifteen square-headed shovels. "April 5th. — We are to be recruited to full strength and packed to-day. Have received 165 new men off and on in the past month ; 240 now on the Morning Report ; the packing cases 17 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE are being held open till we know how many we take and whom. At 10 A. M. got in seven recruits, and at 10 P. M. eleven more — making us over strength. The mechanics worked till midnight last night packing up, and till noon unpacking. The A.W.O.L.'s, absent sick, and venereals transferred out about 10:30 P. M. Formed the company after supper and stacked arms and packs in company street, forming again on stacks at 11 P. M. and again at 3 A. M. Policing continuous and apparently hopeless. Every time I walked round the bar- racks I found a new pile of decaying quilts and underclothes stacked on the ash-stand. Nash has had burning and burying details go- ing continuously. When the last fire had been extinguished and the last shovel returned — at 3 A. M. formation — I found the store-room of the Annex half -filled with straw and civilian clothes. One rather hectic detail is resorting and packing and marking the barrack bags of those transferred out for those transferred in. The boxes left at 11 :45 P. M. to catch a twelve o'clock train. Night very cold — a few of the men drunk, but all apparently here. "April 6th. — Marched out under arms and packs at 4 :15 A. M. All squads reported full, all material shipped or turned in and credited, 18 CAMP UPTON and all paper work complete — rather incred- ible. Night turning warmer with a dying moon in the east — a silent march through a silent, deserted camp, bringing unexpected re- grets of farewell. " ( Later. ) A cloudless morning. (Got into Long Island City about 7 A. M. and ferried around Battery Park to the White Star docks. Scattered cheering from the other ferries we passed and from a small crowd gathered along the Battery. Our ship — the Justicia — looks huge, and the officers' quarters as princely as those of the men look crowded and poor. "April 7th. — Got under way about 7:30 A. M. I was too busy below to wave a farewell to the city but there was no send-off. The men are arranged with the utmost confusion — squads, platoons, companies, and even regiments — for we carry one battalion of the 308th — all rather hopelessly mingled and so assigned to places. My fourth platoon is in four different parts of the ship, with the Friday night recruits mostly in first-class cabins, while the balance of the company is herded in hammocks, that almost overlap, four decks below. Some, having no assignments to quarters or mess, are sleeping on tables and begging food, my mess-sergeant among them. No company officers were al- 19 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE lowed on board until after the men were placed by the shipping authorities, and the men were loaded simultaneously by three gangways. Re- arrangement has to be surreptitious as it is forbidden by the ship's officer. Port-holes are painted black, fixed shut, and covered on the inside with zinc shields — which means we can have lights. No one on deck after 8 P.M. "April 8th. — We got the men's quarters po- liced and scrubbed; and with the hammocks stowed they do look livable. Then we stood for some hours on boat drill. We are told that there is ample accommodation for all in case of accident, but I believe that the swimmers holding to the edge of the rafts are included among those accommodated. That would be poor at this season of the year, and there cer- tainly are not enough boats. Life preservers are never to be left out of reach — a sort of fore- warning of gas-masks. "We sighted Nova Scotia about 5 P.M. and passed the outer lighthouse of Halifax at sun- set, anchoring far up in the inner harbor. "April 9th. — A thin skim of glare ice over all the harbor, reflecting in sunshine the screaming flocks of gulls; hoar-frost along the 20 CAMP UPTON rails, and snow over the black, spruce-clad shores. The ocean and city are completely hidden by infolding hills. Boats were lowered at boat-drill and rowed about through the thin ice. The Lapland came in behind us, and a transport of Australians is anchored ahead. We weighed anchor about 5 P.M. and pulled out in long succession through the narrow channel — eight transports in column. Women and children gathered in groups along the shore holding out the Stars and Stripes to us ; it seemed, too, to fly from the window of every cottage; the crews of the British ships and U. S. men-of-war lined their rails to cheer us as we passed, their bands playing with their whole souls. It was everything we had wanted and missed at New York, and one felt the tingling grip of brotherhood in the great world struggle on which we were launched. 'God Save the King,' 'The Star-Spangled Ban- ner,' 'The Marseillaise,' and 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' — high resolve and dear re- gret, the warm throb of blood and the grip of cold steel; it was war and the long good-by at last. God grant that we do our part. The spires and roofs of Halifax lifted flat and purple against the yellow twilight under an arch of rosy cloud ; then the ruins of the lower 21 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE city swept and crumpled like a village in France ; on our port the wreck of the Belgian Relief Ship, half-submerged, the sunset-gilded spruce woods and sandy islands, the quaint old white lighthouse, and the open sea." CHAPTER II WITH THE BRITISH The convoy sailed for the^ most (part in double line under escort of the cruiser St. Louis. Little occurred beyond the usual ru- mors of a sortie by the German fleet — most of whom were supposed to have gotten through — or some sudden semaphoring from ship to ship and activity on the part of the St. Louis, later explained by the presence of a whale. On the evening of the seventeenth an escort of seven British destroyers appeared, ducking and dodging through the spume like a school of porpoises, and at dusk of the nineteenth the Justicia was docked at Liverpool. The troops were disembarked between ten and eleven P.M., and, looking their last on the great ship which loomed above, incredibly vast in the smoky moonlight, were placed directly upon train for Dover. The journey was bitterly cold, and impressions of England were only 23 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE cheered by the sight of an unusually pretty girl serving coffee during a halt at Rugby about three A.M., and by a clear sunrise over a coun- try white with hoar-frost and cherry-blossoms. Arriving at Dover about eight A.M. the troops were marched under packs to what appeared to be the summit of the highest hill in the neighborhood for breakfast, and then imme- diately back to the steamer. Nobody liked England ; but the Channel presented a picture of her grip of the seas — wreathed in the smoke of innumerable destroyers, above which hov- ered aeroplanes and dirigibles on watch, and somewhere the distant firing of guns. Reaching Calais in the early afternoon of April 20, the battalions were marched to dif- ferent Rest Camps and billeted, rather crowd- edly, in tents sunk a few feet under ground for protection from aerobombs. The baptism of fire, though very mild, was immediate. Shortly before midnight the siren wailed out its alarm over camp; then came the discharge of guns, the soaring scream of projectiles, the occasional soft "thut" of a bullet falling into the sand, and the shock of explosives beyond 24 WITH THE BRITISH the canal in the city. From somewhere over- head amid the weaving and crossing search- lights, and the sparkling flash of shrapnel, could be heard the recurrent whirr of German motors — later so familiar a sound — but only the city of Calais paid whatever price was to pay. Two days were spent in fitting and drawing gas-masks, steel helmets, and ammunition, and exchanging rifles for the British arm; and at noon of the twenty-third, leaving a few sick behind, the troops were marched to the station at Calais and carried by train some twenty kilometers to Audriq. From this point the battalions were marched to their different training areas — the First at Zouafque, the Second at Nordasque, the Third at Louches, and Regimental Headquarters at Tournehem. The marches were not long, varying from ten to fourteen kilometers, but, as had been an- ticipated, the packs proved too heavy for all except the strong men. They carried at this time two blankets, shelter-half with pole and pins, -overcoat, slicker, extra boots and under- clothes, two days' rations, rifle, bayonet, can- 25 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE teen, and 150 rounds of ammunition, forming a pack which came down to the knees of the smaller men. It was a punishing march, ac- centuated in the case of the Third Battalion by the guide losing the way, and the beauties of spring in the French lanes were apparent to few accept those on horseback. In these areas the battalions stayed for three weeks, making their first acquaintance with French villages and billets, with their distant picturesque charm and their nearby atmos- phere of all-pervading manure heaps. Lieu- tenants and N. C. O.'s from every company were sent to specialist schools, principally for the Lewis Gun; the captains were sent on three- or four-day visits to the British front line south of Arras — a dreary stretch of half- dug trenches in the mud, rambling through shattered hamlets and golden fields of dande- lions, where the sniper fired across six or eight hundred yards of rusted wire — mostly Ger- man — and life was made equally unhappy by the enemy's minenwerfers and one's own six- inch "hows." The writer was assigned to a part of the 26 WITH THE BRITISH line held by the First Royal Berkshires and then taken over by the K. R. R.; and he was privileged to accompany a captain of the lat- ter on his initial inspection of the front. It was a night of gusty rain and of utter dark- ness, but the British captain, a veteran of the South African War, treated it as though it were a pleasant afternoon, and No Man's Land as though it were his own front garden. He took up a pick helve, which he carried in lieu of a walking stick, and the two started forth. There was little difficulty in scaling the front parapet — one merely stepped out of it — but soon afterwards one's impressions became con- fused. They crossed belts of wire as though it had been an obstacle race; they skirted in- visible shell craters almost on the run; they leaped chasm-like trenches on faith that there was a farther side; occasionally they stopped to listen, but for the most part they simply traveled, and at a speed seeming quite beyond reason. After perhaps an hour and a half there were voices ; and, just as the writer was preparing to sell his life dearly, they dove through a blanket into the covered shelter from 27 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE which they had first started, and the English captain began at once issuing minute instruc- tions for the wiring of empty gaps in the line, for the improvement of certain lengths of trench, and for the relocation of some of his Lewis guns. This was a time of anxious waiting for all in France. Two great .German blows had already been delivered that spring, and from the force of their impact the British army had reeled back defeated and all but crushed. The face of the war, brightening greatly during the last two years, had in a month become horribly changed. The future seemed more than doubt- ful; it seemed desperate. France had little left to bring to a losing war, and England, un- conquerable England, awaited the next blow with a grimness akin to despair, and her mind already prepared for a peace which should bring no victory. This at least was the spirit encountered among the British troops, of whom a captain, wearing the ribbons of the •M. C. and D. S. O., with whom the present writer had become intimate, said to him one day, as though encouragingly: "Now that you 28 WITH THE BRITISH Americans have come over I feel sure, sure, that you'll find we'll stick it out. Otherwise, I think we would have patched up some sort of a peace this spring, but now I'm sure that we'll carry on some way." And the National Army had never dreamed it. Their only thought had been that they might not be in time to share the victory with their Allies. But now they learned to listen to the dull orchestra of the guns at night, and to try to guess at their message. Rumor, un- official but persistent, had said that when next the Germans struck all troops, trained or un- trained, were to be flung in their path — for all would likely be needed. Captain Illingworth, an English officer of the 16th Sherwood Foresters, with his staff of specialist N. C. O.'s, was assigned temporarily to the regiment to assist in the instruction of the troops; and he rendered in this a very real service, though, as always heretofore, the lack of adequate training ground was keenly felt, and the French in this region were far from generous in making such available. Yet thir- ty-yard rifle-ranges with reduced targets were 29 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE improvised, where the men learned the use of their new weapons ; and the Lewis Gun teams, four to each platoon, picked from the best ma- terial, took hold of their work with genuine enthusiasm, evincing the first real esprit de corps to be developed. On May fourteenth, after three weeks of almost daily rain, the battalions marched again to Audriq, where they took train to Mondi- court, some 25 kilometers southwest of Arras. Here they were to be brigaded for training, and it was thought also for combat, with dif- ferent battalions of Manchester and East Lan- cashire troops, of the Forty-second British Division. The First battalion at Couin, the Second at Henu, and the Third with Regi- mental Headquarters at Pas, were all within a radius of three kilometers. It was an im- pressive arrival, the short march from Mondi- court, before dawn on the fifteenth, through the sleeping, starlit village, with the nearer sound of the guns along the front, the climbing white caterpillar-lights, and, somewhere in the darkness ahead, a British band playing the troops magnificently in. They know how to 30 WITH THE BRITISH use their music, the British, and it seemed strange that the regiment should leave Amer- ica in the silence of the plague-stricken, to be escorted into the forward area with a brass band. The three weeks here spent were probably the pleasantest in the army experience of any, either theretofore or thereafter. The country was beautiful, the weather immaculate, the training systematic and efficient. Save for the infrequent passage or seemingly unaimed ar- rival of a shell in the wheatflelds, or the more frequent and important shortage in rations, there was little to mar the tranquillity of the summer days. The troops were quartered in large conical or small shelter-tents, as the case might be, along the edge of the splendid beech- woods, and, if only they could have learned to like the British ration, British shoes, and Brit- ish Tommy, might have been perfectly happy. But the first was too short, the second too flat, and the trouble with the last rather difficult to determine. Unfortunately the American sol- dier, probably harking back to the injurious history books of school-days, decided to hate 31 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE him ; yet the feeling does not seem to have been reciprocal, and nothing could have exceeded the hospitality, courtesy, and welcoming, painstaking kindliness of the British officers. There were dinners given, principally by the East Lancashires, frequent and astonishingly elaborate banquets, with delicious food and ex- cellent wines, with music and song and story; and the British officers came riding in on their splendid, well-groomed horses, with sparkling equipment; and the American officers joined them upon less striking steeds, with patched saddles borrowed from some muleteer, and strips of rusty leather knotted into the length of reins ; and they gathered together under the leafy beech- wood, carefree, or forgetful of care, while behind the sound of the singing, and the laughter, and the music, there hung, like a cur- tain across the distance, the steady thunder of the guns. Their stories never were of the war, nor did their songs refer to it. Now I, friend, drink to thee, friend, As my friend drank to me, And as my friend charged me, friend, So I, friend, charge thee. 32 WITH THE BRITISH That thou, friend, drink to thy friend, As my friend drank to me, And the more we drink together The merrier we'll be. (Chorus, all together) And the more we drink together The merrier we'll be. Brave, gallant gentlemen, their division was heavily hit before the end of summer, and often one wonders how many are still left of that gay gathering. The British Tommies gave open-air vaude- ville performances in costume every week, at which all American troops were always made welcome; and when one day an American Company established a new record of rifle-fire on the bullet and bayonet course, the British Sergeant-Major in charge of the course spread the news with an enthusiasm and pride far be- yond what he would have felt for a similar achievement by his own men. The writer cap- tained a battalion rifle-team to victory against the team of a British battalion. The opposing scores were very close, the Americans winning by a narrow margin because two of their op- 33 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE ponents had done very poorly. They were heartily congratulated on their victory and no whisper of protest was heard. Not till after- ward, and quite by accident, did the writer discover that when, at the request of the Brit- ish Major, he had given the signal for the British team to commence firing — and the match was solely one of rapid fire — these two members of the team had been waiting for a preliminary order to load their magazines. Rather than interrupt an American officer, un- familiar with their technique, or insist upon an even break, they had started on a competi- tion in rapid fire with empty magazines, and cheerfully accepted the resultant defeat; and though every member of their team knew it, none had mentioned it. At an American inter-company Sunday baseball game, Major-General Sully-Flood, a splendid type of British officer and gentle- man, appeared as a very interested spectator, and at the conclusion of the game expressed a wish to take a turn at the bat. The American pitcher, a lean, loose- jointed Yankee, gave him a swift but straight ball, and the General 34 WITH THE BRITISH knocked out something like a home-run. K was almost as good as an Allied victory. On June sixth, and most regrettably just as these British units were about to return to the line in expectation of taking with them the battalions of the 307th, with whom they had more than equally divided their limited train- ing grounds, all British equipment was ordered turned in, including rifles and the now beloved Lewis Guns, and the regiment marched west. The suddenness of this change at the moment of coming action was mortifying in the ex- treme, for it seemed almost like desertion in the face of the enemy. There might well have been a little jeering from the British, but there was none. Instead, to their honor be it said, a British band, hurriedly assembled, played them out upon their way; and with generous courtesy Major-General Sully-Flood stood at a cross-roads to salute and shake hands with the officers as they passed, and to wish them the best of luck. Their true sporting spirit taught the British how they themselves would have felt under like circumstances; with in- stinctive generosity they attributed a like view- 85 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE point to their friends, and one loved them for it. A four-day march was made to the entrain- ing points at Longpre and Saint Remy, the First Battalion halting at Gezaincourt, Berna- ville, and Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher, the Second at Longueville, Vacquerie, and Famechon, and the Third at Candas, Berneuil, and Ailly-le- Haut-Clocher. The first day's march only was severe, some twenty-four kilometers, at the end of which rifles and ammunition were issued from trucks. The men's packs had been reduced by one blanket, and it had been pos- sible to get rid of the worst of the flat-footed to special duty, so the march was not unpleas- ant, and speculation was rife as to whither it was leading. The wide valley of the Somme, with its intricate maze of canals and lagoons glittering in sunshine through the foliage of innumerable lines of poplars, was a picture to cherish. The journey by train led west and south, skirting Paris, then southeast to the Moselle, where the regiment was detrained at Chatel and Thaon on the night of June eleventh. 36 WITH THE BRITISH Save for the cold of the nights and the inevit- able discomfort of cattle-cars, it was a mem- orable journey. The civilian population of every town flocked to windows and gardens to wave and cheer to "les Americains" ; at every halt the loveliest in the land seemed to have been gathered to give out coffee and flowers along the station platforms; and at one mo- mentary stop outside a tunnel a particularly sweet-looking French girl was found, by chance or otherwise, picking flowers beside the track. Having been kissed by one soldier, she continued generously along the length of the train, showing little or no favoritism, and, as the train moved on through the tunnel, her figure, in black silhouette against the dimin- ishing arch of sunshine, kissing her hand again and again into the darkness, left a picture such as is good for fighting men to carry with them. Detraining toward midnight, the battalions moved, the First to Longchamps and Gire- court, the Second to Bult, the Third to Ser- coeur and Dompierre, and Regimental Head- quarters to Padoux. To show the contrast in hospitality of the people in this region to that 87 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE accorded the troops in the north, a letter writ- ten at this time is worth quoting in part : "Being mounted, I rode ahead through the darkness two or three miles to Vaxoncourt, where my company and another were to spend the rest of the night, for it seemed unlikely that any arrangements had been made for bil- leting the men. The village, on a little rocky hill surrounded by streams, was sound asleep, and I rode through its silent streets looking in vain for any light. Then, knocking with my whip at a shutter, I was told by a surprised and sleepy voice where the mayor lived, and pounded also at his shutter. The mayor slept well, but finally thrust out a nightcapped head to ask what was the matter. I told him that five hundred American troops were coming to billet in his village, but he said it was not pos- sible that such a thing should happen, for it was after one o'clock. I explained that never- theless I had only distanced them by the gait of my horse, and wanted him to help me ar- range billets for them. He retired muttering, more dazedly than in ill-humor, and soon ap- peared in ulster and wooden sabots with a lan- tern. We went through the village, waking every one with the good news that the Ameri- 38 WITH THE BRITISH cans were coming, till we had something like a full town-meeting gathered with lanterns in the public square. They treated it rather like a fete, every one lending a hand, pulling out wagons from the barns, setting ladders to the lofts, making up beds for the officers, and standing with lanterns at their doorways to welcome their allotment ; so that when the col- umn arrived, about half an hour behind me, they were marched straight to billets without a pause. I got a splendid room overlooking the meadows and orchards at the edge of town, where, in the morning, a beaming old woman brought me in a great bowl of hot milk and coffee, fresh bread, and a precious little dish of sugar — staunchly refusing to be paid for it. We left at noon the same day, all the inhabit- ants who were not working in the fields coming to wave us good-by and offer flowers. "At Dompierre, where we arrived that after- noon, the feeling seemed to be just the same, though, on account of an epidemic of mumps in the village, we had the men pitch shelter- halves in the flat meadows along the stream. I spent the next morning riding about looking for drill-grounds, as we expected to be here a week, and then called on the mayor. I told him that in order to beat the Boche the men 39 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE had to be drilled and trained, and that the only- available ground seemed to be the recently har- vested hay-meadows along the bottom of the valley, though this would rather interfere with their growing a second crop. He said they were community meadows, and if I thought them necessary for drilling the troops that was probably a better use to put them to than growing hay; after all, we were at war, and the village did not want to be paid for them. We had him and the cure and the town gref- fier to dinner a few nights later, and it was delightful to see them, with a glass of cham- pagne in one hand and a slice of white Amer- ican bread, which they insisted was gateau, in the other, beaming at us as they tried to beat time and join in our songs." CHAPTER III LORRAINE On June seventeenth, the First Battalion moved to the ruined hamlet of Mesnil, the high- water mark of German invasion in September, 1914, and thence, the next evening, to Vacque- ville, a dirty and inhospitable little village close behind the rather ill-defined Line of Re- sistance. On the twentieth, Battalion Head- quarters moved up to St. Maurice, with com- panies D and A on the front and support of the right sector at Neuviller, and companies C and B on the left in Grand Bois, relieving the forward elements of the Forty- second Di- vision on the line during the night of the twen- ty-first. The Third Battalion moved on the eighteenth to the meadows outside Rambervil- lers, and the next evening through the town, against the turbulent counter-current of the Forty-second's Alabamans, a splendid-looking 41 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE lot of men, who appeared only by chance to be wearing uniforms. With darkness came rain, at first a few large drops and then a roaring cloudburst. The evening had started fair and the raincoats were stowed inside the packs, where they alone re- mained dry. Somewhere in the drenching darkness ahead was a convoy of motor ambu- lances, traveling at the unexhausting rate of two miles an hour, and halting every fifteen or twenty minutes for repairs. Then the rain ceased and moonlight flooded the dark spruce- wood, lighting mysterious vistas in its wet and misty depths. Through the gaunt ruins and moon-blanched streets of Mesnil the black col- umn wound its way, looking beneath its gleam- ing steel like some invading host of old, but feeling less romantic than tired and wet. To- ward midnight it reached Deneuvre on the hill- top overlooking Baccarat and billeted amid its crooked alleys in barns already crowded with troops who were supposed to have left. The day following the troops moved aeross the Meurthe to the Haxo Barracks of Bacca- rat for another week of training, including the 42 LORRAINE first firing with the new rifles and recently is- sued chauchat guns, and the first general use of rifle and live hand-grenades. The initial nervousness of most in handling the latter, and their evident desire to get rid of them, once the detonator had been fired, in almost any direction, was ample proof of the value of this opportunity — without which, however, the First Battalion had entered the line. On the twenty-second, the Second Battalion took sta- tion on the Line of Resistance at Vacqueville, where Regimental Headquarters had also been located, and with the Supply Company at Creviller the regiment had established itself in its new sector. The battalion at Haxo Barracks was for rest and training; that at Vacqueville and Les Carrieres for a perfunctory manning of the Line of Resistance with half-companies, while the rest could practice their chauchats and live grenades in the nearby quarry; and the for- ward Battalion held two companies on the out- post line and two on the Line of Support, which was in fact a line of resistance, that in front of Vacqueville not yet having been dug. 43 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE The region about and behind the front was of vast woodlands alternating with open and dusty meadows. In places the woods had been blown to pieces with artillery fire, and in places the meadows were pitted with craters of sun- cracked clay. One particular stretch of open marsh, near some abandoned artillery emplace- ments on the Line of Resistance, had been churned up into something like the surface of a sponge, and still, on misty nights, reeked with the sickish acid smell of gas. The white dusty roads were lined with dilapidated fes- toons of burlap, or screens of wilted and dust- covered rushes — to shelter from observation such traffic as must pass. Little half -ruined vil- lages of roofless walls and tumbled masonry, like empty sea shells upon some desolate coast, lined the high-water mark of early invasion — and in the center of each rose the skeleton of some beautiful old church, its tower pierced with shell-holes and its entrance blocked by the fallen chimes. The line was throughout jointly held with the French and under their command, one pla- toon of French being usually interlarded with 44 THE ENTRANCE BLOCKED BY THE HI.I.IA CHIMES LORRAINE two of Americans. The intention was for the practical instruction of inexperienced troops in trench-life and patrolling, the sector being notoriously a quiet one — in fact the oppos- ing lines were substantially as determined in the first winter of the war. But while the French, especially the company officers, did their very best to produce cooperation, the sys- tem was not regarded as successful by most on the American side. Extremely few of the of- ficers and practically none of the enlisted men could speak each other's language, making whispered consultations in No Man's Land somewhat unfruitful of result; the orders for the defence of the sector were written in French and did not obtain translation until Major Jay, of the Second Battalion, so trans- lated them during his tenure of the front ; and the habit of the French outposts of firing on principle, broadcast through the night, got on the unseasoned American nerves, without men- tioning the resultant danger to friendly pa- trols who were trying to win home. At dawn of June twenty-fourth the regi- ment and the brigade first came to hand-grips 45 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE with the German, with results largely in favor of the latter. Neuviller, a tiny ruined village on an isolated hill, that must once have been a very pleasant little spot, and is still, though more grimly, picturesque, with its loopholed cobblestone barricades, stood out as a danger- 46 LORRAINE ous salient from the French lines. The road to it from St. Maurice was still intact, but counted as No Man's Land; and its garrison of two American platoons and one French had only a single communicating trench, some three hundred yards long, connecting it across the marsh, for retreat or reenforcement, with their supporting troops at the Moulin des Toes and Buisson, though at this time the support com- pany was also forward in the Bois de la Voivre. The defences of the village were an extensive and intricate system of largely abandoned trenches, whose fleld-of-flre, in so far as it had ever existed, was in great measure obscured by overgrowing bushes. There were also dug- outs, which have no proper place on an out- post line, and all indications pointed to its hav- ing been originally laid out for a purpose quite different from that for which it was now being used. Its present garrison was too weak for effective defense and too large for speedy with- drawal; the general orders of the Americans were clear about holding any part of the line entrusted to them; the policy of the French, though not then well understood, appeared to 47 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE be to withdraw when attacked and counter- attack. The Americans further had not yet had time to become accustomed either to their ground or to their weapons, the Machine Gun Company, which had two guns in the western outskirts of the village, and one near the Mou- lin des Toes, having also been very recently re- armed with Hotchkiss guns in place of the Vickers, and very insufficiently armed with automatic pistols — only three to the squad of eight having been issued. In reference to the time required for preparing Americans to meet the German armies in the field it is worth not- ing that though many of these men had trained for nine months as soldiers, yet, due to this ex- change of arms, they first entered the line with weapons with which less than fifty per cent of their teams were familiar. This on the 307th front was the setting for the brief drama; with the 308th on the right at Badonviller the re- sults obtained indicated much the same condi- tions. About three A. M. of the twenty-fourth, a single shell came wailing in from over the Saillant du Feys and exploded near the church; 48 LORRAINE two more followed, and then the storm burst. It extended over the ( Grand Bois des Haies on the left, through St. Maurice and the Bois de la Voivre, heavily mixed with gas, back across the Bois des Champs and over Badonviller on the right, with a storm-center and a box-bar- rage over Neuviller. The men ducked to the nearest shelter and waited; they waited too long, and they had done better not to have ducked. The rocket signal for counter-bar- rage brought a total of forty-two shells only from allied artillery. After nearly an hour of intense fire, the shelling ceased on the town, though still continuing around and behind it; there was hoarse shouting in the darkness, and then the Germans attacked. They attacked with rifles, hand-grenades, light machine-guns strapped to the back, heavy machine-guns from low-flying aeroplanes, aeroplane-bombs, and with flame-throwers; and they came in from the northwest and up the swamp from the southeast. A confused fight took place in the gray of dawn through the dense smoke of the echoing ruins. The French had for the most part withdrawn at the first opportunity; the 49 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE Americans, broken into scattered groups amidst the maze of trenches, wire hurdles, and barricades, fought the best of their way back to the St. Maurice road ; a number were caught in the dugouts and shelters, and bombed or burned to death; the head of the communica- tion trench was held by a German light ma- chine-gun firing down it to prevent reenf orce- ment. A stand was made at the western stone barricade to cover the scattered retreat, and the black tar-like stains over its front, with a few charred rifle-barrels from which the stocks had been burned away, bore evidence to the nature of the attack upon it. The report of a machine-gun lieutenant to the captain of that company gives a few interesting details: "The guns were in emplacements in the ex- treme west end of the village, flanking its north front, and about one hundred yards apart, the rear gun with no infantry support and the for- ward gun with two chauchat rifles nearby. At 2:45 A. M. all were asleep in a dugout near the rear gun except one American and one French sentinel at each gun. "While returning to C. R. Neuviller (i. e.> 50 LORRAINE Buisson) by trench, and when in rear of Mou- lin des Toes I was sniped at twice, one shot hitting the top of the parapet in front of me. I had just arrived at the C. R. when at 3:05 A. M. the barrage started. I aroused my pla- toon sergeant and we went to M. G. A-20 (en- filading the east front of the village). This gun was in action despite the fact that several gas-shells were landing close to its emplace- ment. We then tried to get over to Neuviller, but were stopped by a Boche auto-rifle, which was firing from the village along the trench. It was strapped to the back of one Boche who lay prone while it was fired by another. Their contact planes were especially active right above us, and I counted six at one time. We were forced then to he in the trench and wait. At about 5:45 A. M. three sharp blasts of a whistle were heard from the village, which must have been their signal for withdrawal. The barrage had ceased and we now entered the village. Here I found considerable confusion and a number of wounded, to whom we gave what assistance was possible, and arranged for men to assist them to the C. R. I then visited the gun positions. At the rear gun I found two men still on duty, although the emplace- ment was so badly knocked to pieces by shells 51 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE that it was useless. At the forward gun I found five Americans and three Frenchmen. Two Americans and two French were missing — the former, I learned, when the barrage opened, had remained in the dugout, which was gradually filling up with soldiers seeking refuge there. When the barrage lifted these two came out of the dugout and met Boches armed with hand grenades. They fought their way through them, one with his pistol, and the other, being unarmed, with his fists. An auto- rifle opened on them from a position near the barricade about 75 yards up the street and he who was unarmed got out of the village by the rear road ; the other lay down in the gutter and opened fire with his pistol. He had emp- tied one magazine when a Boche with an auto- rifle came out of the alley-way to his right, and, swinging around on his stomach, he emptied *;he next magazine at him, and he believes he got him. Having no more ammunition he then left the village. Meanwhile the BochesTiad thrown two grenades into the doorway of the dugout and then began with liquid fire. A corporal slammed the door, and they held it shut till the liquid fire had burned through it, when three men rushed out past the Boches and into the street to the forward gun position, 52 LORRAINE which succeeded in firing about a hundred rounds while the Boches were withdrawing." "A" Company, in support, had sent up a runner who succeeded in penetrating the bar- rage and, though wounded, returned with some account of what was going on in the vil- lage. At daylight the company, with some French troops, counter-attacked, but found the battle ground deserted, the Germans having, however, taken time to rifle and destroy the stores of the "D" Company kitchen and to re- move their own casualties. One German, a sergeant, shot dead in the central square, and another, transfixed by a French bayonet in the outer wire, were all that remained. "D" Com- pany reckoned seven killed, twenty-five wounded, and three missing; "C" Company, one killed, and two wounded from artillery fire; while "B" Company, working through the ensuing day about the shell holes of St. Maurice, had seventy men gassed. The left company of the 308th had, except for those gassed, still heavier losses. Of the number of enemy engaged in the coup-de-main no fair 53 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE estimate can be formed, though information from American prisoners, taken at this time and returned after the armistice, fairly indi- cates that a special force was brought from elsewhere for the attack, departing by train from Cirey the next day, and that their losses, incurred for the most part by machine-gun fire during their withdrawal, were quite unex- pectedly heavy. One man of "D" Company, whose discretion had never been questioned, spent the entire period of enemy occupation beneath the company rolling kitchen, main- taining a strategic silence while the kitchen stores were being looted, and even while the kitchen itself was being blown up with gren- ades. He emerged to greet the counter-at- tacking troops of "A" Company, and seemed to claim a certain distinction at not having been driven from his post by the whole of the Hin- denberg Circus, which he had faced ( ?) single- handed. On the night of July twenty-eighth, the Second Battalion took over the line, the Third Battalion moving to Vacqueville, Xermamont and Les Carrieres, and the First Battalion to 54 *'«• A- Is %i «? % 0. V Jf • > . I BACCARAT— THE WAKE OF EARLY [NVASION LORRAINE Haxo Barracks at Baccarat. Oil July eighth the Third Battalion took the front. During this time there had been little or no activity beyond nightly patrols into the vast desert of No Man's Land, where enemy patrols were seldom encountered, and never at close range, and where the principal danger faced was from the somewhat nervous fire of both French and American outposts. Patrols occasionally pen- etrated the enemy lines, in search of prisoners, at the Saillant du Feys and the Arc de Mon- treux, but without encountering resistance. They were usually ordered so to penetrate and reported having done so — in good faith but often with doubtful accuracy, for in that laby- rinth of old wire, crumbling trenches, un- mapped trails and willow thickets it was dif- ficult in the darkness to be sure of position. By this time the garrison at Neuviller had been reduced by half, with orders to fall back on Buisson as soon as seriously attacked; the re- mainder of the right forward company carried the outpost line from the Moulin des Toes southeast along the edge of the Bois de la Voivre, and formed a first line of support, as 55 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE yet unmarked by works, across the swamp meadows of the Blette to the Faiencerie. The Line 1 bis of support, actually of resistance, ran along the north and eastern edge of the Bois des Champs to its extremity at the rail- road, with Company Headquarters at Le Creux Chene, forming a switch line with that of the forward company. The left forward company stretched across the Bois des Haies toward Ancerviller, with a joint-post near the Mare and its support company north of St. Maurice. On July fifteenth came word that the long- expected German blow had fallen on the Marne, bringing something of relief to the troops of Lorraine, and on the sixteenth the French were withdrawn from the sector. An incident of this withdrawal, as given in a let- ter at the time, is worth recording: "The withdrawal of the French, involving a considerable extension of our front to right and left with a reassignment of limits, had been ordered for 9 P. M. that evening, but up till noon we had received no orders as to that re- assignment. When the orders had come, and 56 LORRAINE I had studied them for a while, the French captain, of whom I had grown quite fond, a curious-looking individual with brilliantly bald head, very long nose, and, in spite of their reg- ulations, crimson breeches, came over to ask if everything was clear. I admitted some dif- ficulties since the orders had overestimated the strength of my company, but told him that we would make out. He considered for a while with his finger beside his nose and then made this extraordinary speech: 'The orders to me,' he said, 'are to have withdrawn my whole command by nine this evening, but I have not yet issued any to my men, as I wanted first to be sure that you would be all right. Unless you assure me that you are, I will give no or- ders to-night. I am not of the regular service; I have done enough to establish my reputa- tion; and I don't much care what my colonel thinks of me ; but I will be d d if I will go off and leave you in a hole. With another French officer I would probably not feel so, and would tell him that his difficulties were not of my making and he must do his best with them ; but I can't do that to an American. So say the word and I stay.' "I am sure that the proper procedure would have been to kiss him on either cheek, but I 57 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE couldn't risk the technique. Of course I did not say the word, and that evening, after I had taught him an English drinking song, which he greatly admired but seemed incapable of mastering, he marched away through the woods, still humming it wrong. I missed him greatly and the pleasant meals we had had to- gether in the little rustic summer-house with the rose bushes, at the edge of the vast oak wood and the open meadows of the Blette; and I missed, too, the long midnight talks in our sheet-iron hut in the greenwood, when he had taught me all that his long experience could tell of the war. "That night I withdrew the whole garrison of Neuviller, save one outpost in the west end of town, establishing a new platoon headquar- ters at St. Agathe. We crept out in silent pro- cession over the starlit meadows, picking our way across the wake of the old box -barrage, which showed like a line of trenches in the darkness. It was important that the enemy should not know that the village would be left empty at night. I walked at the head of the column with a sergeant clasping to his breast the huge strombos horn used for alarms of a wave-gas attack, and, having jumped the brook, asked him if he could make it. 'Easily, 58 LORRAINE sir,' he answered, as he fell flat on his chest across it, and 'Boo-oo-om' went the great horn, echoing out across the silent meadows, while, over the wide battalion, startled soldiers snatched on their gas-masks and prepared for death. When at last we had choked it off we could only sit where we were and laugh till we were tired." In the succeeding days there seemed a marked increase of enemy activity. Reports were constant of Germans seen at dark along the Blette; winking flash-lights were some- times seen at night in the Bois des Champs behind the lines; and both by day and night there came spasmodic auto-rifle fire from No Man's Land upon the outpost line. Yet con- clusions were never reached by the nightly pa- trols, and though one patrol under the cap- tain of "A" Company penetrated as far to the east as the Tranchee Philemon, the only pris- oners captured were three who surrendered themselves at the church in Neuviller after living there, between unsuccessful efforts at surrender, for nearly a day and a night. An earlier German patrol in the village, meeting 59 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE one from men unfamiliar with the outpost po- sitions, had by tact and a judicious use of Eng- lish obtained the password for the night and gratefully withdrawn; but to this day the sub- ject cannot be safely mentioned to the Bat- talion Scout Officer whose patrol it was. It having been determined that on July twenty-first the Americans should launch a blow, at 2 P. M. of that day, the First Bat- talion again holding the line, Captain Bar- rett of "B" Company led out some fifty men through the thick woods on the left front to the Barricade du Carrefour. A way had been cut through the very heavy wire in front, but there was no artillery preparation, and the raid was conducted in broad daylight — presuppos- ing a thinly held enemy line and surprise. Whether or not the enemy had obtained ad- vance information, or merely had accomplished very quickly their preparations after warning from scouts, it is impossible to determine. The American force had advanced several hundred yards, and, after cutting through the heavy wire before the Barricade du Carrefour, had passed along it to the right, when, in the si- 60 LORRAINE lence, came the clear notes of a German bugle. Like the clarion blare of trumpets, when the curtain rose on an old-world pageant, that brief tragedy opened. A line of German in- fantry rose up in a trench in front; enfilading machine-guns opened up on either flank, and across the wire auto-rifles fired from the trees in rear. To the undying credit of Captain Bar- rett be it said that he ordered and led a charge. His one lieutenant, with a third of the men, was sent to cut through the wire to the rear, while the remainder of the force, against hope- less odds, tried to clear the front. Poor, brave, beloved Captain Barrett, with his little silk Confederate flag folded in his breast pocket, to fly from the first enemy trench captured — never was the flag of the Lost Cause more gal- lantly borne, nor to more utter disaster. Of that charging line not one man came back, the captain reeling from a wound and staggering on to death, and of those taken prisoner only one was unwounded. But the others, the lieu- tenant and sixteen men, came through, and two were unhurt. The score of the First Bat- talion was mounting. 61 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE Captain Barrett, it was said by prisoners, was buried with full military honors at Mon- treux, toward which place another raid was now being prepared by the regiment. A pro- visional company was formed from the Third Battalion, then at Haxo Barracks, a picked platoon being sent with one lieutenant from each company for rehearsal at Vacqueville. Save for their inexperience this was probably as fine a body of troops as was ever turned over to a captain for any enterprise — and they were keen, fearfully keen. The ground se- lected by brigade for the attack lay adjacent to that "B" had traversed, where the wire was very heavy and in places over five feet high. Perhaps this was the reason that the order for attack was cancelled, but in any case after three days at Vacqueville the men were re- turned to their companies. The First Battalion had done a second and prolonged turn of duty on the line ; the Head- quarters Company, with its Stokes mortars and one-pound cannon, and the Machine Gun Company, had never left the line at all, when, on the night of the twenty-ninth, began the 62 LORRAINE relief of the regiment by the 146th Infantry, 37th Division, the latter taking over first the support positions. The Second Battalion took over the front from the First Battalion on the thirtieth and were themselves relieved by the 146th on the night of August third. "B" Com- pany had been temporarily relieved by "E" for three days after its costly attack, and had re- cruited from the rest of the regiment. The battalions marched out, the Third on the night of August second, 23 kilometers to Giriviller, the Second on the night of the third to Bad- menil, and the First on the night of the fourth to Serainville. They were exhausting nights of endless hills, and on one, almost at its most exhausting stage, when sore feet had become an agony and the burden of heavy packs in- tolerable, when hope no longer suggested that each hill might be the last, nor that there was any last hill to hope for, when sullen or curs- ing men began to throw themselves down by the roadside — there came out of the darkness a voice. It was a cheerful voice, albeit some- what drunken, and its drunken cheerfulness was as persistent as only such can be. Its 63 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE owner had in court-martial for persistent drunkenness already forfeited his entire pay for many months both past and future, and yet he remained cheerful. "You can't beat Company ," he an- nounced to the darkness. "We've got the of- ficers and we've got the men. So what more d'you want? What you all groanin' about? Don't like soldiering? Well, you're gettin' paid fer it, ain't yer?" Then, with immense pride: "But I'm not gettin' paid fer it. I'm doin' this fer nothin', I am — just fer nothin'. Ev'ry month when I come to the pay-table Captain calls me a 'optimist,' and that's all I get paid. Yes, sir, doin' all this fer nothin', but you don't hear me complainin', do yer? We've got the officers and we've got — all right, sir, I won't say another word; only you can't beat Company , can you, sir? We've got the officers and we've got the men, so what more do you want?" The Government was confiscating all his pay, but he was worth three men's pay to the Government. From these stations the battalions moved again to Remenoville and Clezentaine, and in 64 m K i J* s * - IflW": V • I « LORRAINE these areas remained till August seventh. Then came a pleasant daylight march through the sunny forest of Charmes to a bivouac among the beeches of its southwestern edge; and* on the eighth the regiment entrained at Charmes for the Marne. The night of the ninth was spent in and about La Ferte Gaucher, at St. Simeon, and Jouy-sur-Marne, and at noon of the tenth the troops were loaded on motor busses for the north. It was an interesting though exhausting twelve-hour ride through the wake of recent battles — the half-ruined villages, the huddled rifle-pits, the shell craters, graves, and the trampled wheat-fields where the charging feet had passed. Chateau-Thier- ry was already filling with civilians, patient old men and women returning to their gutted and windowless homes, amidst the still persistent odor of decay. CHAPTER IV THE CHATEAU DU DIABLE The regiment arrived toward midnight at Fere-en-Tardenois, groping its way on foot through the block of traffic in the ruined town to the wooded hill above, and sleeping broad- cast through the bushes where the German dead had not yet all been gathered. At dawn of the twelfth, the Third Battalion marched out to take position on the as yet undefined Blue Line, or second line of resistance, along the front of the Bois de Voizelle. The great French and American counter-attack, launched on July eighteenth along the Marne, had slowed down to a check along the Vesle, and, though a bloody way was yet to fight toward the Aisne, something approaching definite and organized lines were being established. "I" Company on the right took position along the northeast and eastern edge of the woods, over- looking Les Cruaux ; "M" on the left stretched 66 THE CHATEAU DU DIABLE along the northern edge and over the open through Dole to Les Batis Ferme, beyond which was the 153rd Brigade. Battalion Head- quarters with "K" and "L" lay in the Bois de la Pisotte. "M" Company arrived first on its chosen ground as tired and hungry as usual, and with an equally customary lack of prospect of any cooked meal for the remainder of the day. But there was found a battery of artillery from another division with headquarters in these woods, whose officer, with the utmost hos- pitality, provided a hot meal for the entire company ; and an organization that could, with- out the slightest warning, necessity, or appar- ent difficulty, off-handedly feed two hundred extra and hungry men suggested a condition of ration supply incredible to the minds of the 307th Infantry. Save for an unwelcome fieldful of noncom- batant, but increasingly unneutral, horses, and the fickle policy of their adherent millions of flies, this situation was, for the two forward companies, at least, very delightful. The Bois de la Pisotte had been too extensively lived in 67 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE and died in by both Germans and horses, and was rather completely spoiled ; but the Bois de Voizelle confined its relics for the most part to cooking utensils, feather quilts, and steel helmets, with the latter of which it was almost paved, that being apparently the article which the German always first discards when hurried. The organization of the ground for defence formed a most interesting task, untrammeled by suggestions or interference from above, and undertaken in the spirit of creative art — some- what leisurely, first because it was known that the ground would never have to be defended, and second because, when the engineers found time to give it their attention, they were cer- tain to alter all dispositions. This they eventu- ally did, and, to the staunch opinion of all com- pany officers, greatly for the worse ; but, in the meantime, enfilading positions were dug in echelon, covered approaches arranged, inter- locking belts of fire sighted, and interesting chauchat positions constructed in the trees to cover bits of dead ground. The company com- mander on the left, having convinced himself that the post of danger lay in the deserted 68 THE CHATEAU DU DIABLE hamlet of Dole, selected its prettiest and most rose-covered cottage for his home, furnishing it from the wide antiquity shop provided in the surrounding orchards. The weather was immaculate, and had been so almost continuously for three months past; and at evening one would sit at the edge of the woods, looking out over the broad valley, picking out with glasses the new artillery po- sitions established on the farther heights, and watching the similar efforts of the German shells, searching over the grassy slopes or bursting with clouds of white smoke or pink tile-dust in the hillside village of Chery Char- treuve or the farms. Occasionally a weird form of projectile would burst with a mass of black smoke high in the air, to be followed the next instant by a leaping fountain of flames from the ground beneath, and sometimes one that gave vent to two, three, or even four sep- arate explosions on the ground. Toward sun- down the hostile aeroplanes would come over, in twos or threes, for an attack on the observa- tion balloons, very often successful, and would turn back from their flaming victim scarcely 69 FROM UPTON TO THE MEUSE bothering to rise out of range above the drum- ming machine-guns; nor did they ever seem to pay the penalty for their bravado. At night- fall dim columns of artillery and transport would wind down the hill, with the gleam of helmets moving ghostlike through a fog of moonlit dust ; the whirr of enemy motors would grow in the darkness overhead, the swish and shock of falling bombs with extravagant pine- apple forms of fire springing from the earth; or from the misty valley-bottom, where the heavy artillery was thundering, would come the red flare of explosions, hoarse shoutings and the blowing of claxton gas-alarms. It was a wonderful pageant of war, spread daily be- fore one's eyes, to be watched with all the ap- parent safety of the theater-goer. Once, at noon, two American planes were seen circling directly overhead, and, a thou- sand feet above them, three Germans against the blue. A faint splutter of shots was heard, but the distance was far too great for effective fire, and the danger of the Americans did not seem imminent when they were seen suddenly to crash together and the wing of one to shear 70 THE CHATEAU DU DIABLE off at the shoulder. Down it dropped, dropped, dropped, slowly, swiftly, and then with ap- palling speed, gathering impetus with every fathom, nose first, in one plummeting chute, the sunshine gleaming on its painted sides and the whirr of its motor growing to a deafening roar, sliding like a lost soul through thousands of feet of air, a glistening, living thing headed for utter destruction ; and it struck, in a pile of crumpled debris, at the edge of the wood. The other, reeling from the blow, came down in a staggering spiral, almost under control, fouled in the top of some cottonwoods below the hill, and turned end-over on to the ground. Each had carried only a single man, and Lieuten- ants Smythe and Wallace were buried side by side in the Bois de Voizelle. The pleasant time of sunshine and ease and almost disinterested observation was soon over, the pleasanter in retrospect for it never oc- curred again. The Division had relieved both the 4th American and the 62nd French Divi- sions on the line, the 305th Infantry taking over at first the entire divisional front. Four days later the 308th had taken over from it 71 ■WAP- Yi/lers- J.* TeCit* •1918- decile of kilometres /Jp'% a te\ e«*> *pp«3(ie>