USA > California > Alameda County > History of Alameda County, California. Volume I > Part 40
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Historians will remark the lack of pageantry in the World war. Troops were moved about in this country with great secrecy to prevent hostile attempts against their safety by enemy sympathizers. There was also the feeling on the part of the citizens that Americans had gone into the war as a duty that had to be performed; it was not a conflict of glorious conquest, born of heady nationalism. Consequently when the drafted men left the East Bay, save for the first contingent, there were no great parades as at the time of the Spanish-American war.
Oakland did turn out to speed the first contingent on their way to Camp Lewis. Celebrations were also held in Berkeley, in Alameda, and in other communities. Long before the evening of September 8th, when the first Alameda County boys left, preparations had been made to give them a fitting send-off. After an official farewell tendered by Mayor John L. Davie in the rotunda of the City Hall, the boys were conveyed through the downtown section in a long caravan of more than four hundred automobiles.
In the presence of an assemblage that thronged the rotunda of the City Hall and overflowed onto the steps and into the street, the Mayor
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presented the departing soldiers with a flag, the gift of the City of Oakland. "Old Glory" was received by Henry C. Donovan, from Dis- trict No. 3, the first man to be certificated in the draft from the county. In presenting the flag, which was kept in the City Hall against the re- turn of the men, who would be scattered throughout the army, the mayor pronounced the community's blessing and God-speed in the following words :
"The City of Oakland is today offering the pick and flower of her manhood to preserve the rights for which our fathers in '61 and our forefathers in '76 sacrificed their blood. The City of Oakland is proud to send such a worthy representation of manhood to fight the enemies of peace with decency and righteousness. You are to carry the stand- ards of a country that stands for justice and a country that defends that position without the experience of defeat.
"Go forth, young men of Oakland, with our 'God Speed You Well.' We are proud of you, and you are not too proud to fight. Take with you the spirit of our city and give it to our allies. Our hearts go out to you because with you we are sending the message of America, know- ing that you will take it to the van of the battlefields and come back to us with the crown of victory.
"As you will be scattered in the various units of our army, the City of Oakland presents this flag in your honor and it will be placed in the council chamber of our City Hall, where it will remain in mem- ory of Oakland's first representation in the national army, awaiting your glorious return. When you return with victory the Memorial Hall will be yours where you may display this emblem. God bless you and speed you on your journey."
After the flag had been received by "Hank" Donovan, women rushed up and kissed him, for he represented their own heroes who were among the "national choice of the most fit." Nearly two hundred veterans of former wars were present, including members of Appomat- tox Post No. 50, Lyon Post No. 8, Porter Post No. 169, and Lookout Mountain Post No. 88 of the Grand Army of the Republic, together with their women's corps.
A triumphal progress down Broadway to the Sixteenth Street sta- tion between surging thousands who crowded the sidewalks, cheers, tears, and tender farewells, and Oakland's first contingent was off to join the special train which was bearing other Bay region youths to the great Army of Democracy gathering at American Lake. As silence fell upon lower Broadway, and relatives of the departed men went
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quietly home, Oakland felt probably for the first time, how close to home the war had come.
Similar scenes were enacted on a smaller scale in Berkeley and Alameda. In bidding God-speed to the seventeen youths who made up the first quota from the college town, Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, grey- haired president of the University of California, said: "You are going forth to represent Berkeley. Be worthy of Berkeley. We lay our hands upon you in blessing and make you our representatives. We old fel- lows cannot go, so we have to send you. We are sending men we can trust." A crowd of citizens packed the City Hall to witness the fare- well ceremonies at which Mayor Samuel C. Irving and President Herbert Jones of the Red Cross also spoke. Five men left from Ala- meda; they were given comfort kits by the local Red Cross.
On September 19 Alameda County's second quota left, about 50 per cent below strength, set at 360, because of the failure of the district board to certificate the men in time. Only about 180 men were noti- fied. There was less enthusiasm this time-only about fifty men at- tended the civic farewell at the City Hall; the rest seemed to prefer spending the last hours with their families. The boys left with box lunches and comfort kits supplied by the Oakland Red Cross. Each district group had a squad leader who took charge of the detachment until it reached American Lake.
The third quota from the county left on September 23, the day be- fore despatches arrived telling that American troops were for the first time under German fire in France. By this time the departure of drafted men had become a routine matter for the general public. Local boards still had difficulty in obtaining their full quota because of the press of business in the hands of the San Francisco authorities. There was even some murmuring that the district board was expediting the handling of San Francisco cases so that that community would be sure of a good showing. R. C. Bitterman, clerk and board member of Oak- land Division No. 5, went the length of making a special trip to the city across the Bay for the prompt certification of his men, whom he noti- fied by special delivery letter. The possible disposition on the part of some of the recruits to drink a last libation to their home community was discouraged by Provost Marshal General Crowder, at whose sug- gestion all Oakland saloons closed their doors for three hours previous to the departure of the men.
And so the contingents continued to leave at approximately ten-day intervals. Meanwhile, at American Lake and later at Camp Fremont
30V1
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East Bay boys were losing their rookie look and becoming seasoned soldiers. They were doing what their brothers in khaki were doing throughout the country, digging trenches, constructing barbed-wire entanglements, practicing throwing the deadly hand-grenade, and bay- onetting with simulated ferocity dummy German torsos made of stuffed sacks or other substitutes for the human targets they hoped soon to meet in the haze of smoke and gas "Over There."
By day, drill, "fatigue," or K. P. (the last,work in the kitchen) ; at night, if not too weary, and on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, diversion and letters home at the Y. M. C. A., K. of C., or other recrea- tion center. Life in all the cantonments was virtually the same. At all the camps too, there was the same "Army rumor" that next week, next month-always in the future, the "outfit" would be on its way to France. It was December, 1917, however, before the War Department made its first levy on the Ninety-first Division for several thousand men to serve as replacement troops. This meant that the division must be filled with more drafted men, who in turn must be trained, before the organization could move as a whole to take part in the great adventure on the other side of the Atlantic. And so it was the 19th of June of the following year before the "Wild West Division," approximately 40,000 strong, was on its way across the continent to embark for France. The division was made up of two brigades of infantry and one of field artillery, one regiment of engineers, one field signal battalion, three machine-gun battalions, and the necessary motor and horse trains
for the transport of supplies, ammunition, and sanitary appurtenances. Alameda County men were scattered throughout the entire organiza- tion, but the majority of them were in the 363rd and 364th regiments of Infantry, comprised mostly of men from California. The states which gave their best to the Ninety-first were California, Washing- ton, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, and the Territory of Alaska. The spirit of Montana dominated in the 362nd, while the 361st Regiment was composed largely of Oregon and Wash- ington men.
Ten months of intensive training completed, the Ninety-first left Camp Lewis during the latter part of June for overseas under com- mand of Brigadier General Frederick S. Foltz, in the absence of the division commander, Major General H. A. Greene, who was already in France. The trip by troop train across the continent was typical of the journey made by so many western soldiers. Two meals a day were served on the trains and the monotony of the trip was broken by wel-
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comes here and there at the hands of Red Cross and other war workers. The smile of a pretty girl as she handed him an apple or a sandwich was an event in the day of an Alameda County boy as the train halted for a brief space at some out of the way station in Idaho or Montana. From June 24 to 30 the division poured into Camp Merritt, New Jer- sey, where the men received overseas equipment, from trench helmets to two new pairs of trench shoes. On July 6 entrainment began for the embarkation wharves at Hoboken.
On the morning of the 7th the transports bearing the Western boys steamed down New York harbor accompanied by a formidable escort. The convoy consisted of fifteen vessels, eight sub-chasers, a cruiser, and an aeroplane. Soon the forts were passed and the Statue of Liberty, towering, silent, and austere, faded slowly into the mist.
No trooper relished the trip across the Atlantic, packed sardine- like into vessels never built to carry soldiers. The Dough-boy never lost his sense of humor, however, as is attested by the following apos- trophe, penned by a member of Company H, Three Hundred and Sixty- first Infantry, to the British transport Scotian, which carried that regi- ment :
"Oh thou memorable vessel! Never before had the nostrils of man breasted the likes of thine aromas, nor their stomachs tackled such rare concoctions, nor their bodies sought rest in contortions equal in the least degree to thine. Thy bat's nest was a revelation to the learned, thy canteen a marvel to the banker, and codfish a viand like unto none upon the menu of the most experienced epicure. Thy marmalade, too, drew comment from rich and poor, and thy cooks were of a species new and strange to all aboard.
"Never, ah never, will the thirteen days spent with thee be for- gotten. Ever and anon will the recollections of thee force themselves into the memoirs of the men who watched the briny deep from off thy matchless decks, and many a time and oft in the days to come will thy name find place in the reminiscences of the true and brave.
"Rumor has it that thy bones lie rotting on the floors of the restless deep. Heaven forbid that the repose of so faithful a servant e'er be again disturbed by the hand of the tyrant man. May thy throbbing heart be soothed by the sighing swells of thy liquid mother. May thy spacious compartments take tenants from her billows, and may thy soul be the heritage of thy cousins of the deep, even of thy Godfather the codfish."
Twelve days were consumed in crossing the Atlantic on account
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of the circuitous course pursued to baffle the submarines. Twelve British destroyers met the transports on July 16 and undertook the task of convoying them into Liverpool and Glasgow. The men who landed at British ports went to English "rest camps." These were hardly what the Western boys anticipated. Fortunately the stay at the rest camp was too short to accustom the men to the British ration, chiefly greasy mutton and cheese and bread, for by the end of July the entire division was on French soil.
The trip by rail from Le Havre to the training area assigned the division in the Département of the Haute Marne was replete with new sights, sounds, and-smells. For "la belle France" was not the United States, the boys soon learned. On this trip the troopers encountered for the first time the standard Pullman of the A. E. F .- the now famous box cars stencilled with the legend: "40 Hommes-8 Chevaux." After considerable "killing metres," the A. E. F. term for marching, the various units of the division were billeted in villages throughout the district. The following initial impression of the new quarters, recorded by a member of an organization assigned to the little village of Is en Bassigny, will serve for the entire Ninety-first.
"Up that dirty street with its proud displays of cow manure they limped on their way, marvelling much what held those rude stone houses together, and wondering whether the streets had followed the cow trails, or the cows had finally found the street. The village turned out in force to welcome 'Les Américains' and it is hard to say which found the other more queer. Certain it is that these aborigines, clatter- ing over the cobbles with their enormous wooden shoes, or driving the cows and sheep into the room next to the parlor, or chasing a huge table-eared sow from the kitchen, cut figures as droll as any 'Les Amér- icains' had ever seen."
The entire month of August was passed in this area while the di- vision received its final training. Major General William H. Johnston came to the division as its commander on August 29. Those who re- turned to California will never forget the rigors of this training period in which they were prepared for the great task assigned them in the major American operations of the war. "Hours, and hours, and hours of east and west; (wrote Mirton L. Tibbals and Melvin T. Solve, his- torians of Company H of the Three Hundred and Sixty-first Infantry) weary wrestling with French combat formations ; field problems and hot dreary hunts for imaginary Huns; pistol, rifle, and automatic range work; gas drills; trench digging; patient, hopeful waitings for pay
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days; advance guard, rear guard, and bivouac formations, and endless, hungry hours of long thrust, short thrust, passover, and round me double, marshalled the weeks by, and the sentiments they aroused de- mand a vocabulary far more forcible than the writer ever hopes to possess." On September 7 the division left the training area for "the front."
In order to appreciate the importance of the action in which the Ninety-first was to participate, it will be profitable at this point to recapitulate briefly the history of American arms prior to the reduc- tion of the Saint Mihiel salient, in which the Ninety-first received credit for its first battle, although in this famous victory it was held in reserve. To aid in repelling the great drive along the Western front launched by the Germans in the spring of 1918, the United States had sent over almost 2,000,000 men in response to the appeal of the Allies. The objective of the Germans, fighting along a front that stretched for 400 kilometres across northeastern France, was to separate the French and British armies and to push in the direction of Amiens and the sea. The Allied armies made a valiant resistence during the gradual arrival of American men and supplies. Foch was made generalissimo toward the end of March of all allied forces on the western front. On May 27 the Kaiser's armies began a drive on Paris at Château Thierry. Here it was that American forces first participated in a really great battle. At Belleau Wood, directly on the road of the Germans to Paris, for four desperate days, American marines aided allied forces in bar- ring the progress of the Kaiser's troops. With the repulse of the Ger- mans at Château Thierry the Allies took the offensive and from July 18 on the tide started flowing back toward Berlin and away from Paris.
By the first of August the Germans had been pushed across the Ourcq, with the Americans hard on their heels. By the end of the first week in August the Germans had been driven from the Château- Thierry salient. The Americans now turned their attention to what was intended by General Pershing as the first independent American action on a large scale, the reduction of the Saint Mihiel salient. This salient was a sharp triangle, formed by the German lines, with its apex at Saint Mihiel, which had projected into French territory ever since the first rush of the enemy into France in 1914. The manner in which the Americans ironed out this salient and added 152 square miles of territory to Allied gains on September 12 and 13 is described in his-
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tories of the European war; lack of space forbids its treatment here. But it should be noted that during the two days in which the American pincers quickly closed in upon the Kaiser's troops and obliterated this triangle from the maps, the men of the Ninety-first were in reserve as part of the First American Army.
The stage was now set for the first real action to be seen by Ala- meda County boys in the Ninety-first. Before them lay the dense thickets of the Argonne Forest, in which many of them were to lose their lives as they triumphantly routed the Germans from the trenches which they had defiantly occupied since the beginning of the war. Be- fore them stretched the great German line of defenses against which they were to march under one of the most terrific barrages of lead and steel in military history. On September 25 the last orders were issued and the Ninety-first prepared to go "over the top" with the Fifth Army Corps, under Major General George H. Cameron, U. S. A. By the 25th the men of the Ninety-first had been concentrated in the thick, heavy underbrush of the Forêt de Hesse and the Bois de Cheppy, ready to make a surprise attack upon the Germans. The afternoon of the 25th General Pershing called at the divisional "P. C." (Post of Com- mander ) at Hill 290 and asked Major General Johnston to express his confidence that officers and men of the Ninety-first would do their duty. Along with the Ninety-first on the front lines were the Thirty- seventh, and Forty-second Divisions, each of which had its own sector.
At 11:30 the night of the 25th the bombardment began and grew in intensity throughout the early morning hours. "It is useless to try to describe that bombardment;" wrote the historian of the Ninety-first Division, "those who lay under it during the hours before the 'jump- off' will never forget it. It was so fast, so stunning, and the noise was so overwhelming that no one could grasp the whole. The German trenches were marked in the darkness by a line of leaping fire, punc- tuated now and then by the higher bursts of some particularly heavy shell. The retaliatory fire by German batteries passed over the heads of our leading regiments."
The thrilling narrative of the advance of the infantry men and machine gunners of the Ninety-first must be sought in the divisional history and other accounts of the war. For eight days the division pushed on through the ravines and gullies of the Argonne gradually driving the Germans from their trenches, and contending with all the
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hardships of modern warfare. For four days, for example, the men of the division did not taste warm food. At times knee-deep in mud, lacerated cruelly by barbed-wire entanglements, menaced from below by hidden ground-mines left by the retreating Germans, opposed by stubborn German machine-gun nests which had to be extirpated one by one to stay their murderous hail, assailed from the air above by planes, threatened by deadly gases, the target for an occasional sniper, the men moved forward amidst a constant rain of exploding shells. At night the advance was often made in torrential rain, and when the new position was finally reached, the men would dig in-in mud. Often the troops were so exhausted that they virtually went to sleep standing up. But with the division watchword, "Powder River!" ringing through their heads, they kept on.
Late in the afternoon of the eighth day, October 3rd, orders were received that the Ninety-first less the Fifty-eighth Artillery Brigade was to be relieved by midnight. This was welcome news. On October 5 and 6 the entire division rested as corps reserve. From October 6 to 16, the One Hundred and Eighty-first Brigade, comprising the Three Hundred and Sixty-first and Three Hundred and Sixty-second In- fantry Regiments and the Three Hundred and Forty-seventh Machine Gun Battalion were detached from the division for duty elsewhere. This included a trip back to the line with the First, and later with the Thirty-second Division. During this second participation by the One Hundred and Eighty-first Brigade in the Meuse-Argonne, its officers and men were operating under adverse conditions. They had had but two nights' sleep between the two participations, and many of the men were weakened by diarrhea. Most of the men had not yet received blankets or winter underwear, or any change of clothing. Neverthe- less, there was no faltering or weakening on the part of officers and men. They were later commended by Major General J. N. Greely, Chief of Staff of the First Division in the following words: "This division as a whole fully appreciated the difficulties of the position of your brigade. Fatigued by a week's combat and forced by the neces- sities of the situation to re-enter the battle under the staff and with the artillery support of another division, the willingness and energy with which you executed the missions assigned to you are worthy of the best traditions of the service." During the participation of the Ninety-first Division in the Meuse-Argonne, the following casualties were suffered :
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Killed
Officers
39
Wounded 168
Total 207
Men
980
3748
4728
1019
3916
4935
This does not include casualties in the Fifty-eighth and One Hundred and Fifty-eighth Field Artillery Brigade, nor in the auxiliary arms attached. In the seventeen days' engagement, the division, the strength of which had been a little less than 20,000, lost about one fourth of its men.
Recognition of the services of the Ninety-first were expressed by Major General George H. Cameron, commanding the Fifth Army Corps in the following words :
". .. At a time when the divisions on its flanks were faltering and even falling back, the Ninety-first pushed ahead and steadfastly clung to every yard gained.
"In its initial performance, your division has established itself firmly in the list of the Commander-in-Chief's reliable fighting units. Please extend to your officers and men my appreciation of their splendid behavior and my hearty congratulations on the brilliant record they have made."
When the division had assembled in the Nettancourt area, seven of- ficers and about 4,000 men joined as replacements. On October 15 orders were received directing the entire division to entrain for Bel- gium where it was to be placed at the disposal of King Albert to aid him in driving out the Germans. There it was to serve with Belgian, French, and British troops, operating with the Thirty-seventh Division. On October 26 the Ninety-first was welcomed by the King of the Bel- gians who called on the division commander at the new headquarters at Château-Rumbeke. While the division was in preparation to relieve the One Hundred and Sixty-fourth French Division in the offensive against the Germans, there were occasional Germain air-plane raids over the training area, but no casualties were suffered. On October 30 the drive on the Germans was begun; they were to be driven east of the Scheldt River. On the 31st of October and the following day the Ninety-first attained all of its objectives "with remarkable dash and energy," in the words of the French commander of the Seventh French Corps, Major General Massenet. "In spite of determined resistance of the enemy, in spite of the artillery and machine-gun fire which op- posed them, the troops of the Ninety-first American Division captured
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Spitaals Boschen by a clever flanking movement, reached the Scheldt, and penetrated into the town of Audenarde, from now onwards de- livered from the yoke of the invader."
On the new front for the passage of the Scheldt the Ninety-first behaved with equal credit, taking over its sector on November 10 at 20 o'clock. With the rest of the French Army of Belgium it was to cross the Scheldt and occupy the plateau between that river and the Denre. By night of the 10th the leading elements of the Ninety-first had relieved the Forty-first French and occupied a line in touch with the Germans running through Noorebeck-Ste. Marie. Orders were issued and the division prepared to attack at daybreak November 11. But the time of the end was drawing near. The constant pounding had told on the Germans and they were suing for an armistice. During the night a message was received from the commanding general, Thirtieth French Corps, that the scheduled operations had been postponed until further notice due to the delay in the delivery of ammunition. Finally the word came that presaged the end of the war. Troops were informed that by orders from Marshal Foch hostilities would cease along the front at 11; the line of outposts reached at that hour would be held. All communication with the enemey was forbidden.
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