USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume III > Part 5
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Story of the Yankee Division-When one turns the attention to the military part played by Boston in the World War. one is confronted by
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the fact that the policy of the army authorities tended to prevent any sec- tionalism creeping into the Expeditionary Forces. Whether this policy was due to an endeavor to prevent any one section of the United States from having an undue pride in the military achievements of that district ; or because, as has been stated by the army powers, it was undesirable for any one State to bear too large a part of the inevitable losses of war: or for any of a half dozen reasons which have been given, cannot be known. What is clear, is that New England, in general, and Boston, in particular, were fortunate in having a division which was very much its own. It thus became possible for those left at home to know something definite about those who had gone overseas. Through the reports which came out in the daily papers long before the official reports had been issued, Boston and all New England could trace the progress of her citizen- soldiers, know of its dangers and losses, and rejoice in one as they sorrowed in the other. This grouping of the volunteers of New England into one division may have thrust an overly large burden of casualties upon one section of the country, but it made for a solidarity of interest and patriotism which reacted to the great advantage of the United States as a whole. New England worked together as did few other sections in doing all that was humanly possible to stand behind the boys it had sent abroad. Credit for some of this concentrated energy must be given to the fact that they had definite divisions of the expeditionary forces that were their representatives on the field of action. A far less important thing growing out of the decision of the military authorities to send a New England division to France, is the fact that it is possible by the tell- ing of the story of it, to tell much of the history of the military activities of a single locality, such as Boston, or any other city or State in the northeast corner of the country.
Formed from the National Guard-The Yankee Division, the 26th, was and is the pride of New England, and for very much better reasons than because it was made up of its citizens. It was the first of the Ameri- can Expeditionary Forces to be organized, the first to cross the ocean as a division, and the first to go in on the battle line as a division. The story of the Twenty-sixth is a tale of a non-professional group of soldiers, who volunteered to take up arms for their country, and who were commanded, for the most part, by citizen home-trained officers. As one writer states it :
There can be no doubt that the Division (26th) from the very first showed dis- tinctive character. The great outstanding fact which explains this distinction is, first, the whole division came from a very small, thickly populated section of the United States. All the organizations from which it was built were of New England; prac- tically every man and an overwhelming majority of the line officers were Yankees; every New England State was represented in it; and the Division had headquarters in
Met. Bos .- 50
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Boston and was mobilized, trained and equipped in New England. Secondly, and per- haps of more importance, the Division was a National Guard Division, except for the men who came from the National Army draft at Camp Devens to fill up the places left vacant by the rejections of the guardsmen. The men were volunteers, and for the most part, they were successful business or professional men.
The National Guard, from which it was drawn, had begun to disinte- grate after the period of service and training on the Mexican Border in 1916. Officers had resigned their commissions; enlisted men, when their terms expired, did not reënlist, and new enlistments were few. It was not expected that this country would be drawn into the war, and if it was, rumor had it that National Guard units would be the last to be used. The National Government rather discouraged the Guard movement. So it was that the men who were finally mobilized as the Twenty-sixth were, for the most part, soldiers who had enlisted after January, 1917, when it was made clear that the military policy had changed and that those who enlisted in the National Guard would not only be called into active serv- ice, if war was declared, but would stand a chance of being among the first to go abroad. It was this that gave impetus to the recruiting to full strength of the Guard units, and which so made for the esprit de corps, the high morale, the teachability of the Yankee Division which was made from it. The local pride of some of the units gave added strength, for some of the organizations dated from the Revolution, and many had played a gallant rôle in the previous wars of the Nation. When the "call" was given, New England, in spite of the severe limitations and tests which were enforced, was able to supply within a few weeks the number needed for a picked division, and a division was no longer the few thou- sand of former years, but 32,000 men, or more than an army corps of the Civil War.
The Units of the 26th-The 26th Division, as formed, was made up of the IoIst Infantry from the 5th, 9th and part of the 6th Massachusetts National Guard organizations; the 102d Infantry, composed mostly of Connecticut and Vermont men, with 100 from the 6th Massachusetts; the 103d Maine and New Hampshire troops, to which were added four com- panies of the 8th Massachusetts; the 104th made up of large sections of the 6th and 8th Massachusetts; the whole of the 2d Massachusetts and a few from the 8th. The IOIst Artillery was the Ist Massachusetts Field Artillery, with 200 from the New England Coast Artillery. The 102d Artillery was the 2d of Massachusetts, with more coast artillerymen. The 103d, the heavy artillery regiment, was built up of men from New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut batteries. The machine gun battalions were a new thing and the IOIst was composed of 200 Ver- monters. The 102d had the Massachusetts squadron of cavalry, except
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Troop B, which was taken for the headquarters troop, and about 200 men from the Ist Vermont Infantry. The 103d Machine Gun Battalion was mostly from Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont. The Trench Mortar Battery was from Maine. The 10Ist Engineers was built up from the famous Ist Massachusetts, with Maine and New England Artillery added. The Ist Field Signal Corps became the 10Ist in the divi- sion; and the 6th Massachusetts furnished the train headquarters men and the military police. The IOIst Ammunition Train was made of the Vermont Ist Infantry and the Massachusetts Coast Artillery. The Engi- neer Train, a small unit, was made up of men from the 6th Massachusetts Infantry. The Sanitary Train had the Ist and 2d Ambulance Companies ; the Ist and 2d Field Hospitals; the Ist Connecticut Field Hospital; the Ist Rhode Island Ambulance Company, and the Ist New Hampshire Field Hospital. The IOIst Supply Train was made up of Troop B, of the Rhode Island Cavalry, a large number from the 8th Massachusetts Infantry, and a few from the 6th Massachusetts.
Original Commanding Officers-The original commanding officers of these units were :
Division Headquarters Troop . Captain Oliver Wolcott.
IOIst Machine Gun Battalion.
. Major James L. Howard.
5Ist Infantry Brigade
. Brigadier-General Peter E. Traub.
IOIst Infantry
. Colonel Edward L. Logan.
102d Infantry
Colonel Ernest L. Isbell.
102d Machine Gun Battalion
. Major John Perrin, Jr.
52d Infantry Brigade
. Brigadier-General Charles H. Cole.
103d Infantry
. Colonel Frank H. Hume.
104th Infantry
Colonel William C. Hayes.
103d Machine Gun Battalion
Major W. G. Gatchell.
5Ist Field Artillery Brigade. . Brigadier-General W. Lassiter.
IOIst Field Artillery
Colonel John H. Sherburne.
102d Field Artillery
Lieutenant-Colonel Thorndike D. Howe.
103d Field Artillery
Lieutenant-Colonel Richard K. Hale.
IOIst Trench Mortar Battery
. Captain Roger A. Greene.
IOIst Engineers
Colonel George W. Bunnell.
IOIst Field Signal Battalion ..
Major Harry G. Chase.
Headquarters Trains and Military Police ... Colonel W. E. Sweetser.
IOIst Ammunition Train
. Lieutenant-Colonel William J. Keville.
IOIst Supply Train .
Captain Davis G. Arnold.
IOIst Engineer Train
.First Lieutenant S. R. Waller.
IOIst Sanitary Train Lieutenant-Colonel James L. Bevans.
The division was not concentrated at any one point, and as a matter of fact never came together as a whole unit until it entered the front line in France. Division headquarters, with the Headquarters Troop and IOIst Field Signal Battalion, as well as the IOIst Engineers, were at Bos- ton. Framingham was headquarters of the 5Ist Infantry Brigade, the IOIst Infantry and the 102d Machine Gun Battalion. The 102d Infantry was at New Haven, Connecticut; the 103d Machine Gun Battalion was at Quonset Point, Rhode Island; the 10Ist Machine Gun Battalion at Nian-
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tic, Connecticut, while the whole of the 52d Infantry Brigade was at Westfield, Massachusetts, and the field artillery at Boxford.
General Clarence R. Edwards-The Twenty-sixth was peculiarly fortunate in the character of the men who were appointed by the higher authorities to be its officers. In a division where every man was a volun- teer, and most of them former members of a National Guard organization, the question as to who should be its leaders was of vast importance. It was hardly possible the units taken from so many parts of New England could be welded quickly into an efficient whole, unless an almost super- human discretion was used in the selection of those who must bring this about. The "luck" of the Twenty-sixth was manifest from the start in the appointment of Major-General Clarence R. Edwards to command the division. This tall, white-haired officer and gentleman had the splen- did presence, vigor of initiative, the personality and experience, the all- around capabilities which made him an ideal division leader. Both at the beginning and later on he meant everything to the YD. Idolized by his men, his abrupt relief from command a few weeks before the end of the war, was possibly the greatest loss suffered by the division throughout its notable career. Upon his return home, all New England placed him upon a pedestal from which he has never been allowed to descend.
Emerson Gifford Taylor, in his "New England in France," wrote of the General's appointment as head of the Twenty-sixth :
The assignment of Major-General Edwards to command, insured that the new organ- ization would benefit by the leadership of a Regular officer of long and varied expe- rience, both in administrative, staff, and line branches. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1860, he was graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1883. With his promotion to a captaincy in the Regular service in 1898, large responsibilities and rapid advancement fell to his lot. As Major (Assistant Adjutant-General) and Lieutenant- Colonel of Volunteers (47th Infantry), from 1899 to 1901, he performed duty as Adjutant- General to General Lawton in active field service in the Philippine Islands, whither, in 1905, he accompanied Secretary of War William H. Taft on the occasion of the latter's famous journey. Appointed Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs in 1902, he was promoted to the grade of Brigadier-General in 1906; he was transferred to the line in 1912, and commanded brigades on the Mexican Border (6th Brigade, Second Division) and in Hawaii (Ist Hawaiian Brigade), until sent to the command of Amer- ican troops in the Panama Canal Zone in 1915. From this duty, he was transferred (on April 2, 1917), to the command of the newly created Northeastern Department, with Headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, in April, 1917, and attained the rank of Major- General in August of the same year. Thirty-four years of active and varied service, in all grades, meant that the new division commander was intimately acquainted with army men and methods, had been trained in accordance with army traditions, and shared the honorable ideals of duty with which the Regular establishment has always been credited. Beyond the lot of the vast majority of army officers, however, General Edwards had been fortunate in possessing a wide knowledge of men and events outside the army horizon; the bars which his life and duty, under our system, erect inevitably
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between the average Regular Officer and other classes in the American democracy, sharply limiting his experience and tending unhappily to segregate him from contact with the thought of his generation, were, in the case of General Edwards, early broken down. He enjoyed personal contact with men of many classes; from his varied activ- ities he had become one of the most prominent figures of the army then in the public eye. From the day of his assumption of the duties of Department Commander, in Bos- ton, his immediate hold on the imagination and esteem of the people at large was as marked as was the energy of his administration. His choice, as leader of the New England Division, was felicitous indeed, considering the excellent effect the selection would have on the public from whose sons the Twenty-Sixth was recruited.
Regimental Officers-Brigadier-General Peter E. Traub was a regu- lar in education, in experience and point of view. A graduate of West Point (1886), he had risen to his rank on August 5, 1917. His experience and energy were of great value to the division, particularly during the training period. Brigadier-General Charles H. Cole (52d Infantry Bri- gade) was, in contrast to General Traub, a Massachusetts National Guard man, one who had got his experience in State service. "An enlisted man and officer of the First Corps of Cadets between 1890 and 1910, he was appointed Adjutant-General of the State of Massachusetts in 1914, retir- ing a Brigadier-General in 1916; he served for several years also, as a member of the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice." He knew men, especially the sort of which the division had been formed; and had been invaluable in the National Guard organization. When our country entered the war, he enlisted as a private in the 9th Massachusetts Infantry, but was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general in the State forces. Contrary to the practice of the War Department, he was chosen to the command of the 52d Infantry Brigade overseas. Brigadier-General William Lassiter brought to his command his expert knowledge of artil- lery practice, and was with the division long enough to stamp it with many of his ideas.
The majority of the regimental commanders, nine in all, were for the most part officers of New England Guard units and chosen from all the regimental commanders of this group of states. The men held a more intimate relation to the men under them than usually exists in the Regu- lar Army. They were like old time friends to their troops, guardians of their safety, standing in the place of parents, ofttimes. It was thought that these non-professional and quite unmilitary relations would impair their value as commanders, and severe pressure was brought by the authorities of the Regular Army to prevent their inclusion as officers of the Yankee Division. The record of the YD shows how wrong was such a conclusion.
First Foreign Activities of the YD-The first unit of the division set sail in the night of September 7; the last unit sailed Ocober 4, all
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passing through the submarine-infested waters safely and went into training camps in France. Three months after its arrival, the Yankee Division went into the firing line at Chemin des Dames, February 6, 1918, the first of the American divisions so to be honored. The guns of Battery A, IOIst Field Artillery, on the previous afternoon announced their presence there with the first shot of an American division. The shell case, by the way, was sent back home and placed in the capitol of Massachusetts. It was a so-called "quiet sector," but immediately received its baptism of fire. The enemy wanted to capture a few of "these Americans," hence laid down barrages behind groups of the divi- sion, and under its cover raided the line. Says General Edwards of this time: "The barrage was laid down on these green men, and they did not even lie down. They crouched in their holes, with high explosives rattling on their helmets and killing several, and when the barrage lifted, they jumped up and made a lot of the Germans prisoners."
Lieutenant James W. Brown, later Major, and Sergeant John W. Letzing, were the first of the division to capture one of the enemy, and while he proved to be a mere boy, the incidents of the foray were of so dangerous a character as to win for the two the coveted Croix de Guerre, the first of the YDs to be so fortunate. This was on St. Valentine's Day, and it was but a few days later that the Germans reciprocated by taking prisoners from the 102d Infantry, one of their working parties being surprised and two men captured.
The time spent in the Chemin des Dames sector was, after all, only the upper school in the training period. There were severe losses, and there had been two heavy engagements and numerous raids and counter raids. The "Road of the Ladies" had not proven a very safe place for men to be. It had been intended to keep the YDs there only a month, but the time was extended another two weeks, and the troops did not leave their training sector until March 18, when they were relieved by the French. The troops were sorely in need of rest. They were run down by the long exposure and the unending labor. Not always had food been securable; equipment had been short; underclothes, uniforms, blankets and other necessities insufficient. They had earned a long rest. The Germans bade them farewell by showering them with thousands of gas shells on the last days.
But the Twenty-sixth never had its rest, nor, for that matter, did it ever complete its training. Emergencies arose so frequently and so fast that the division was rushed into one sector and another with very little relief. It was now moved into the Toul district, replacing the First Division. Then the Germans made their rush at the Marne, and in the
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Allied counter-offensive, the YD was rushed to the point of the German salient.
At Toul and Apremont-At Toul, the Germans had been in control. The greater part of the sector was in a marsh with the enemy in posses- sion of the dominating heights. When he wanted a victory, all he had to do was to swoop down and take all who were in certain sections. Gen- eral Edwards refused to leave his troops in one part of the front line. The French commander objected saying the Germans would come over and occupy the trench. Edwards replied: "That's just what we want them to do. If they come over, we'll lick hell out of them." And that is exactly what the Americans did. With wild cheers the Yankees fell upon the Boche with their bayonets, killed a number and took forty prisoners, the first taken in Apremont for six months.
As General Edwards tells it: "The second day they (the Germans) brought up 700 shock troops together with two other battalions, and they said, 'We will show those Americans.' They came down and got in behind our flanks. Our men did the same thing over again. As soon as they had chucked the Boche out of one place they would whack them in another. . And those men fought there for five days around Hill 320 in front of Apremont. They wiped out 700 Germans, made 40 prisoners and buried 200 Boches. The French army commander cited 117 men of the 104th and they got the Croix de Guerre in a very impressive cere- mony when they were withdrawn. They also pinned the Croix de Guerre on the colors of the regiment, and I don't know that this had ever occurred before. It was the first time that troops had ever won in that sector, but from that time we absolutely owned 'No Man's Land.'"
General Sabatier, in command of the French relieving division, paid this tribute: "I have lost a garrison generally whenever the Boche wanted to come over and take it. I didn't know how to stop it. A great American division comes in here and suggests a new method to us who had been fighting here three or four years. The Boche had got our goats. Now the Americans have got their goats. They don't need anybody on the flank of their liaison. They have destroyed the Fifth Landwehr Division. They own 'No Man's Land.' I take off my hat to the Twenty- sixth Division."
Seicheprey-It is not to be supposed that the enemy was content to let matters rest, and its next attack was on a larger scale than the Yankee Division had yet encountered. The attack on Seicheprey on April 20 to 22 was led by "Hindenburg's Traveling Circus," a body of picked shock troops. After a bombardment, 400 of them with 2,500 other Germans came over with an intent of breaking the American line and morale.
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Favored by a fog, they captured Company C of the 102d Infantry before they knew that the enemy had reached their trench. It was 3,000 against 350, and there was no resisting the superior force right then. In the two days fighting that followed, the 26th lost 150 prisoners ; the gassed and wounded were about 600; the German casualties were apparently about 1,200. Late the second night, the YD counter-attacked, retook the lost trenches and buried more dead Germans than the total losses of the division. "The moral effect of Seicheprey on the Allies was very great, in that it showed the Yankees had, in their first serious engagement, been able to stand up, take punishment, and hold ground against especially trained shock troops."
The Chateau-Thierry Sector-In June, the Yankee Division were relieved, and great was the rejoicing over the place in which they were to rest, for it was Pantin, a suburb of Paris. The troops had deserved and needed time to recuperate, and a little pleasure added would not go amiss. The Fourth of July was not far off and the Yankees believed they would march through Paris in the parade of that day. But on their way to Pantin, they were switched back to the front. They were to relieve the famous 5th and 6th regiments of Marines, and the Second Division, which at Bois Belleau had stood off one of the worst of the German drives. The YD came into this Chateau-Thierry sector know- ing that all it had done in the way of war was as child's play to what they were now to face. "They expected the break-through, but it is doubtful if any one realized that this battle was to be the turning point of the war, and that much of the success gained there would be due to the Twenty-sixth Division." They were the only troops between Chateau-Thierry and Paris, and as a result of their defense during the next few days came to be known as the "Saviors of Paris."
As will be remembered, it was at this time that General Foch made the boldest stroke of the war by staging a counter-attack upon the Ger- man right flank north and west of Chateau-Thierry. The YD was the pivot from which this counter-offensive swung. It was also up to the division to make their advance to increase the bulge in the German Army's side as well as to hold their position in the early stages of the battle.
The whole movement is too intricate and rapid in its changes to be summarized. As epitomized by the "Stars and Stripes," that remarkable newspaper published by the A. E. F .: "The division, in its eight days of continuous battle, had advanced a distance of 181/4 kilometers, cap- tured about 250 prisoners, four field pieces, numerous machine guns, one pontoon train and quantities of ammunition. Its losses had been
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about 5,300 officers and men, of whom 600 were killed. The general commanding estimated that the permanent losses, including killed, miss- ing and badly wounded or gassed, were about 2,000, many of the casu- alties being due to the fact that the division, after gaining its first objec- tives, had to wait two days under severe fire for the forces on the left to come up to the line established by 'New England's Own.'" There were literally thousands of citations, both divisional and French, made as the result of the heroism of the members of the 26th during the battle. "French commanders showered General Edwards and his men with com- pliments, and declared that it was the most brilliant piece of work they had ever seen."
St. Mihiel Salient-The division, after Chateau-Thierry, got no rest, but immediately were ordered to Chatillon-sur-Seine, received 6,000 replacements, and went into ten days of intensive training. Again they were thrust into the battle line, this time to aid in the reduction of the St. Mihiel Salient, which had been held by the Germans since the begin- ning of the war. The whole affair was completed with such speed and efficiency as to make the readers of the newspapers back home wonder why it had not been reduced long before. Just two days, September 12-14, 1918, and a heretofore impregnable position, where thousands of lives had been sacrificed during four years of warfare, was in the hands of the Americans with comparatively light losses. Fourteen towns, the entire length of the Grande Tranchée de Calonne, were taken by the Yankee Division, with thousands of prisoners, a half hundred guns, and immense stores of material. General Edwards, in his Order of the Day, issued September 28, had for its last sentences: "I am proud of you. You are a shock division." And this was said, and could be said with truth, of a division that was made up of National Guard troops, lacking, in the beginning experience, and never receiving the training thought necessary by regular army officers, just a division of good, average New Englanders who by sheer grit and determination did the impossible and became known as "Shock Troops."
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