USA > Kansas > Shawnee County > Honor roll : Shawnee County, Kansas > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32
The Germans saw the desperate situation which would confront them if the Americans were not stopped. The Mezieres line of communications was threatened. If it should be cut, the armies in Northern France and Belgium were lost, for they could not be fed, supplied with ammunition or brought out of the country if any part of that four-track railway line fell into our hands.
DIVISION BADLY MIXED UP.
Dawn of September 28 found the 35th Division lying in front of Baulny and Charpentry, approxi-
VICTORY
HONOR ROLL
mately a kilometer back of the road which runs from l'Esperance past Chaudron farm and Serieux farm to Eclisfontaine. It was a badly mixed up division.
The 139th (the old 3rd Kansas and the old 4th Mis- souri) was mostly around Baulny and Charpentry. Its colonel, Ristine, was missing. He was inside the German lines and in dire peril, but the officers of the regiment did not know this. Each battalion assumed that he was with some other battalion. Rieger did not know of Ristine's absence, or he would have taken command of the regiment, which had suffered severely during the preceding day. The regimental adjutant had been killed, the lieutenant who succeeded him had become a casualty, the liaison officer, the signal officer and the three officers who had charge of the Stokes mortars and the one-pounder, all were casualties. As these were virtually all the officers of the headquarters detach- ment, there was no one left to establish a regimental P. C. Rieger's 2nd Battalion had suffered heavily. The 3rd Battalion was commanded by a lieutenant and two of the four companies were without any officers. The 1st Battalion was commanded by a captain, and he had but one officer to a company.
During the night, 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 137th had moved up and mixed with the 139th. There seemed to be no distinct organization in the 139th at that time.
Major O'Connor, after his return from the Fleville incursion, had worked all night organizing the position, but he did not know where his other two battalions were, assuming that he was in command of the 137th. In the early morning, the enemy sent a skirmish line against O'Connor's position, apparently more to feel him out than to force him back. Machine gun and rifle fire swept it back, with a good percentage of loss.
ATTACK ORDERED AT 6:30 A. M.
Another attack was ordered for the morning of September 28. It was to be launched on the two halves of the divisional front at different times, the left or western half, in which were the 137th and the 139th, was to attack first at 6:30 a. m.
Capt. D. H. Wilson, who had taken command of the 3rd Battalion of the 137th when Major Koch was wounded at the Balkans trench on the first day, led his men out in this advance, although he was suffering from a painful wound. The order to ad- vance does not seem to have reached Major O'Connor, but he was advised that the 2nd Battalion would pass through the lines. He received no further information as to whether he was in command of the regiment, or whether Colonel Hamilton had returned to duty. For the 139th, Rieger joined the attack with his force, which was already well ahead.
The attack was made against terrific odds. It was across open fields, with no protection of woods or brush. Montrebeau Wood and the strip of woods to the right of it were seething with machine guns. From Exermont light artillery had direct fire on the advancing troops, and from the hill behind Exermont enemy observers watched the whole field and directed artillery fire.
MOVING UNDER STEADY FLANKING FIRE.
On the left, in the sector of the 28th Division, was the town of Apremont, which the 28th Division should have taken, but had not. Out of it came a deadly flanking fire of artillery and machine guns. Beyond this, artillery in the edge of the Argonne Forest had the 35th in easy range. The Germans had orders to stop this advance, and they disposed their armament to do it, or to make us pay the cost.
Our own artillery was a little livelier than on the 27th, but the enemy had an immense predominance.
The mixed units advanced. It was under the lowering sky of a cold, dark fall day. All the glory was gone out of the war, with the glitter and pageantry of the first day's successes, but they went ahead. They were not the dashing lads who went over the top
two days before, but they were veterans of battle, hardened soldiers who no longer had any delusions about a soldier's life.
WEARY, BUT STILL FULL OF FIGHT.
The records begin to show confusion now. This was Saturday, September 28. There had been two days of very hard and wearying fighting, and three nights in which sleep was impossible, unless superinduced by absolute physical exhaustion. The men were tired physically, but they were not exhausted. They still had in them the stuff to deliver many a blow or to carry over another charge or two.
On the right of the sector the 140th was in the lead, and the 138th lay just behind it. At 3:30 o'clock in the morning Delaplane of the 140th received an order, presumably from the brigade commander, to take his regiment forward with all speed to protect the flank of the troops on his left, who were to advance. These were, of course, the 139th and the 137th regi- ments, which were to attack at 6:30 o'clock, and which lay in advance of the two regiments on the right or eastern side of the sector.
THE 140TH DIGS IN.
Delaplane got his regiment under way at 5:30, an hour before the advance on the left, and had made but little progress up to 8 a. m., when the withering concentration of artillery and machine gun fire stopped him. The regiment dug in.
Behind the 140th, the 138th was formed to support the attack, with orders to follow at one thousand meters. The divisional line of advance was swinging to the westward, which caused each advancing unit to guide more and more to the left.
This brought about a greater concentration of troops on the left and a consequent thinning out of the lines on the right. The opposition was heavier on the left half of the sector, both because of the stronger positions held by the Germans in front of us, and because, owing to the 28th Division being unable to keep up, our left flank was constantly exposed to en- filading fire from across the River Aire, and out of the Argonne Wood.
Concerning the 28th Division, it would seem that this excellent fighting organization was not held up so much by opposition on its front, but, it, in turn, suffered by the division on its left. That was the 77th, which was tangled in the Argonne Forest, where Major Whittlesly was to achieve fame with his lost battalion, and many other daring things were to be done. But the division was not even in signaling distance of the divisions fighting in the open. It is to me one of the mysteries of the war-why was a division from the paved streets of New York City sent to fight in the thick woods of the Argonne Forest?
TANKS GET INTO ACTION AGAIN.
At 9.45 the tanks came up again. With them was what was left of the gallant fleet which had lain before the Cheppy defenses on the first day of the fight, like naval war craft cannonading the forts before a hostile harbor. The enemy fire which met the tanks, and the 140th Regiment which advanced with the tanks, was far more deadly than it had been before. The advance was very slow. The men were occasionally able to use their rifles against outposts of machine gunners, and our automatic riflemen and machine gunners kept constant fire going, but the officers and men felt that they received little assistance from our artillery.
It was the bloodiest hour the 140th Regiment had seen. The regiment advanced, but paid a heavier price than it ever had before. The tanks were not as effective as they had been.
The enemy had supplied his front line with anti- tank guns, those long, armor piercing squirrel rifles. 1.ight artillery pushed forward fired pointblank at
Page 54
VICTORY
HONOR ROLL
the slow moving tanks, and a hit with a high ex- plosive shell would destroy a tank. Artillery usually fires by the map, with a compass for direction, a scale on the gun to give elevation, and a book of tables to compute the necessary elevation for the given range. Against these tanks, the gunner could disregard his scales and compasses. He would sight through the bore of the gun at the clearly visible tank, slam in a shell and the breech and pull the lanyard.
In spite of all resistance the 140th finally crossed the Chaudron Road, and pushed five hundred yards ahead to the crest of the ridge to the north, where they dug in. On the way up they were bro ght to a stop on the ridge above Charpentry, and driven back into the ravine. They re-formed, advanced over the hill again, faced the fire and went ahead.
The regiment's left was just about due north of the Chaudron farm, and east of the Montrebeau Wood.
CAUGHT UNDER HIGH EXPLOSIVE RAIN.
When the 140th fell baek from the slope of the ridge just north of Charpentry, Lieut. Leahy took his second battalion of the 138th down the ravine in which they were lying, and moved forward to the support, thinking the 140th would be unable to advance against the opposition. When the 140th was reformed and moved on, he followed at the ordered distance in their rear, and though the enemy fire was constantly growing more effective because of increase in volume and accuracy, the battalion advanced and took position in the line with the 140th. This advance was made through a gruelling fire, and the casualties were very heavy, especially from high explosive shells which the sharpshooting artillerymen threw among the lines.
In this position they felt the full tide of war. Artillery played on them both by direct and indirect fire, machine guns from three sides poured lead into the woods and enemy airplanes in formation flew above them and bombarded them with air bombs and machine-gunned them from the sky.
At 6 p. m. a cold rain began to fall.
SHORTAGE OF OFFICERS.
When reports of the shortage of offieers in the front line reached divisional headquarters, the forward echelon of which had been moved to Cheppy, all available officers were rounded up and sent forward. Maj. P. C. Kalloch, a young officer of the general staff, had been aeting as divisional intelligence officer. Maj. Bruce MacGruder, who had come up to help if he could, was put in the intelligence job, and Kalloch was instructed to report to Colonel Hamilton. At 8 p. m. he found Colonel Hamilton in the rain and darkness of Montrebeau Wood. The colonel instrueted Kalloch to act as his lieutenant-colonel, and he set about trying to find whatever parts of the regiment were available, with the idea of learning what strength there might be in the tangle of the wood.
Meantime, the 137th and elements of the 139th had been fighting all day long in Montrebeau Wood with the determined snipers and machine gunners the enemy had planted there. Colonel Hamilton of the 137th was about worn out, physically, and Major O'Connor, who had not been able to get in touch with his colonel for two days, disposed what he had of the regiment as well as he could and ordered them to dig in for the night.
PROMISE GUNS THIS TIME.
But at 4:50 a. m. (September 29) he was shown an order which gave him another piece of work to do. It was for an attack by the division at 5:30 a. m. on the 29th.
The order assured the infantry that there would be a satisfactory artillery barrage to precede the ad- vance, the object of which was to take the town of Page 55
Exermont and the crests of the ridge running to the east and west of it.
Colonel Hamilton instructed Major Kalloeh to prepare the first wave and lead it in the attaek. Colonel Hamilton was to lead the second one himself.
Montrebeau Wood was black dark, except for the occasional brief flash of a German shell sent into it. The rain was falling heavily, and the business of eol- lecting and organizing the attacking waves was a hard one. So many of the sleeping men he tried to rouse were dead. By the appointed time, which was forty minutes after the order was received, he had marshaled his line. Their work is a part of the next story.
MAJOR MACDONALD ENTERS THE FIGHT.
Another offieer who went forward that afternoon was a grim old man, as age is reckoned in the army, Maj. Clay C. MacDonald, who had been a national guardsman for twenty-five years. He was divisional mail officer, and it seemed to be the general impression about headquarters that, despite his long experienee, he was a little too old for the front line. At noon that day in Cheppy, a lieutenant had approached Major MacDonald, saluted respectfully and in a brief and soldierly manner told him that his son, Lieutenant MacDonald, had been killed that morning while leading his company in the attack. Major MacDonald did not wince. I noted as I watched him, this self- control. His training did not permit that while under the gaze of so many sympathetic people. His eyes seemed to be looking wistfully to the north, where the guns were pounding on the battle line three miles away. He saluted, turned and entered headquarters, explained the case briefly and demanded of the chief of staff that he be given a command in the front line. He was at once sent forward.
Major MacDonald was working through the rain in Montrebeau Wood at the same time Kalloeh was assembling and organizing seattered elements of the 137th.
PUSHES THROUGH THE WOOD.
Major Rieger, who also had entered Montrebeau Wood on the night of the 27th, had pushed a persistent path through the tangle, fighting carefully, adroitly and effectively, and always going ahead. Before dark he had gained the northern edge of the wood and looked out upon the enemy strongholds ahead. Exer- mont, the line of the ridge to the east and west, and behind the town, the hill known as 240, which looked over all the territory for four kilometers to the south. There were the enemy observation posts from which artillery ranges were correeted, the eannon which had worked such havoc among our troops, and the hill itself held much artillery and very many machine guns.
Rieger had organized and held a line in the north edge of the woods, and in the darkness had gone back into the woods to get more men, if possible, and what he needed worse, some officers to help him handle his line. He ran across Major MacDonald, and took him and what men he had collected, and put MacDonald in command of a part of the line.
COLONEL MITCHELL ARRIVES LATE.
Another arrival was Col. Americus Mitchell. He was one of the regular army officers assigned to the division just before the battle, and was now arriving a little late. Bearing orders dated September 24, he reported at division headquarters in the afternoon of September 28, and was instructed to report to the commander of the 70th Brigade.
It had been the intention to put Colonel Mitchell in command of the 139th Regiment, but because of his failure to arrive in time, Colonel Ristine had continued in command. From divisional headquarters he went forward at 6 p. m. to the 70th Brigade, to find his regiment. The division had been rebrigaded, in order
VICTORY
HONOR ROLL
to give each brigade one-half of the divisional front constantly, instead of all of it on alternate days, as had been the original plan. Colonel Mitchell learned that his regiment was on the other side of the sector, in Colonel Nuttman's brigade. He went ahead with his search. A stiff regular army colonel plodding along over unknown territory through a black night and a heavy rain, looking for his regiment, which he has never seen and whose location he does not know, is a situation which had many attractive possibilities.
He finally found two companies, and was told that the rest of the regiment was in line on the left near Baulny. Mitchell went to Baulny, reported to Colonel Nuttman, told him he had found parts of A and C companies of his regiment and asked where the rest of the regiment was. Nuttman said the troops were badly mixed. He himself had been out to the front that afternoon, he said, and had found 250 men of the 139th and had posted them as outposts in front of the 137th Regiment.
Mitchell also learned that Ristine, commanding the 139th, had not been seen for twenty-four hours and was supposed to be dead, that the officer casualties in the regiment were very heavy, but no one at brigade headquarters seemed to know anything about the headquarters of the regiment.
WOUNDED AWAITING ATTENTION IN RAIN.
Mitchell fared forth again, and proceeded toward the front. It was very dark and raining hard, and the runners who were guiding him were not always sure of the way. He found two dressing stations, with many wounded men in and about them, waiting in the rain their turns with the doctors or waiting for some way to be taken to the rear. Finally he reached the front line of the 137th and was taken to Colonel Hamilton. The commander of the 137th was sure that there was none of the 139th in front of him, where Colonel Nuttman thought he had posted them.
Considering the rain and darkness, Colonel Mit- chell was convinced that there was little chance of finding his command in the night, so he returned to Baulny. The scout officer of the 139th and a few scouts he had found accompanied him.
He was awakened at 3 a. m. by an order from the commander of the 69th Brigade to attack at 5:30 a. m. He went to Colonel Nuttman and explained that he could not obey the order because he could not find his regiment. Colonel Nuttman told him to take what he had and form a reserve for the 137th. Mitchell instructed Capt. W. C. Williamson to form what troops he could get for this purpose.
CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE LINE.
Colonel Hawkins, the efficient and conscientious chief of staff, felt that he could do more good at the front than at headquarters. The lines were so dis- organized, and liaison was so poor, that the functions of headquarters seemed to him of much less importance. It was a matter of fighting now. So he asked corps headquarters to send somebody to sit in for him, while he went forward and took the place of an incapacitated field officer. Division headquarters did not know what officers were out and what were in, it so seldom heard from any of them. All reports said that the 137th was badly tangled, and some reports had it that Colonel Hamilton was wounded, or gassed, or exhausted.
Colonel Jens Bugge came from corps headquarters to act as chief of staff and Hawkins went forward. He found that Colonel Hamilton had brought some sort or reorganization out of the remains of his regiment, that he had a line in the forward edge of Montrebeau Wood, and that he was confident he could hold it. Hawkins started back to rejoin the brigade commander, Colonel Nuttman, but got lost in the darkness and failed to find him again that night.
The division had been rebrigaded, as has been told, and Colonel Walker now had command of the
right half of the divisional front, with the 138th and the 140th. Colonel Nuttman, with the 137th and the 139th, commanded the left half.
DEPRESSION AT HEADQUARTERS.
The feeling at division headquarters was that the field was not going well. The iron resistance of the re- enforced enemy, fighting on ground he knew well, and ground which he must hold at all cost, seemed firm enough to halt the division, as the battle was viewed from headquarters. The morale of a division is nearly always higher in the front lines than back at headquarters. The spirit of fighting pervades the front, the actual conflict is to the blood of the men, and their sergeants and lieutenants are convinced that they can whip the boche, and the feeling finds its way to the men and upholds them.
To headquarters come most depressing reports from men drifting back, the slightly wounded, the slightly gassed and the physically exhausted. Each one who happens to pass through headquarters is eagerly questioned, and the returning man is very prone to believe that his personal experience and emotions are those of his whole company or regiment. He believes that the ills he has suffered, mental and physical, are common to the whole command.
WOUNDED LAY IN COLD RAIN.
The men were hungry and very tired. The cold rain which kept up all night soaked them, of course, as there was no cover, but it was hardest on the wounded. The doctors worked without ceasing, and the stretcher bearers toiled until they dropped in their tracks, but many wounded men laid all night in the rain. I saw that night a stretcher bearer who put wires looped around his wrists and fastened around the stretcher handles, to help his tired hands. Both wrists were bleeding.
The third day's fighting had brought to the 35th Division a profit of about two kilometers (about one and one-third miles) gained. The cost had become heavier for each forward step and only the welfare of the whole field justified the expense. The line ran straight westward from the right limit of the sector to the Montrebeau Wood, went through the front of the wood, and coming out of it, dipped sharply to the south, where it turned to present a front to the enemy across the River Aire in the sector of the 28th Div- ision, which was being held to a much slower rate of advance than the 35th.
The 35th had gained in the day nearly, but not quite, as much ground as it had on the second day. The first day's advance had been more than both the second and third days' advances, but the first day had had magnificent artillery support.
During the day of the 28th, the artillery was still trying to get into position to give more assistance to the infantry, and to counteract, as far as it could, the tremendous effectiveness of the German artillery.
At 8 a. m. General Berry had ordered the 128th Field Artillery to move its 2nd Battalion into position at Very, and the 1st Battalion to Charpentry. The 2nd Battalion was in position soon after 11 in the morn- ing, and the 1st was firing from its new place at 4 p. m. In all the day of the 28th the artillery brigade fired only thirty-two hundred shells.
RELIEF FOR THE 35TH.
When the division established itself on the line prepared by the engineers, and organized for defense, it had been stopped temporarily by the opposition, and its condition was very similar to that of every other division on the American front.
The first phase of the battle was over. The defense system against which the division had thrown itself was called the Kriemhilde-Stellung line, and the Germans had been able to join up along this line,
Page 56
VICTORY
HONOR ROLL F
which is a part, one layer, it might be called, of the Hindenburg line.
In the area of the 35th Division, we knew only of the situation and condition in our own sector and on our own front. Back in corps and army headquarters it was possible to consider the front as a whole, with the condition of each of the nine divisions having its proper weight in the decision of the high command.
FACED NEW, RESTED DIVISIONS.
Reports from the vital fronts, including the 35th's, showed that prisoners recently captured proved that new, rested divisions of Germans were being put in against the Americans.
General Pershing had the option of sending his forces again to the attack, or of holding the ground already gained while he prepared for another general advance. This preparation would include getting up artillery, the replacing of those divisions which had suffered most with his supports, and rehabilitating the others, with replacements, hot food, equipment and clothing.
THREE OTHER DIVISIONS RELIEVED.
The general decided that it would be unwise to send his tired divisions against the new German di- visions, and adopted the latter course.
When the 35th lay on the engineers' line, three of the original divisions had been taken out of the line. First was the 80th, which had been pulled back far reorganizing and reforming, and then was sent in again. September 30 the 37th, which was the second division on our right, was relieved by the 32nd, and on the same date the 79th, which was the third divi- sion on our right, was relieved by the 3rd Division.
While the situation was developing in headquarters of the army staff, the 35th, among others, must hold the line. Our artillery was up and in position. The engineers' line was manned, but nowhere quite as strongly as it might have been, and there was great comfort in the fact that scattered all along were our machine gun battalions and companies, whose courage, wakefulness and strength never seemed to fail.
The "line of resistance" was organized on the line l'Esperance-Chaudron Farm-Hill 231. Outposts were placed and a second line of resistance was es- tablished a short distance behind the first, beginning on the ridge north of Baulny. The majority of the troops had sifted back of the line, and lay in fox holes, dugouts, ditches, trenches and hollows over all the territory almost back to Cheppy. They were anywhere that they could sleep and get a little rest. Officers were very few, and noncoms commanding platoons and companies held their outfits together as well as they could and waited for orders.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.