USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume II > Part 35
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Meanwhile a heavy cannonading came to their ears from somewhere off shore, but they did not dream that Cervera's fleet had run out of the Santiago Harbor and had been completely destroyed. While those at home were cele- brating this event, the 2d was digging trenches in the broiling sun or the tropi- cal rain. From July 4 to July 10, it was dig, dig, dig with knife, tinned meat cans, bayonets and fingers, trenches that as soon as they were com- pleted were occupied by some other set of troops. On July 14 Santiago sur- rendered with its 20,000 soldiers. There were no more dangers from shot
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and shell, no more days of hard labor. Fraternizing with the soldiers of the enemy and with the Cubans was the order of the day, not realizing that they were fraternizing with the "Yellow Jack" and other diseases. Then, with the excitement of warfare gone, depression took hold of the 2d. Discipline relaxed, the men grew careless, many became ill, malaria being one of the principal diseases. The Red Cross ship "Texas" arrived and gave hospital supplies and relief to the stricken soldiers. But it was too late; irreparable damage had been done.
On August 10, orders were given to move the regiment aboard transports at Santiago. By the thirteenth of the month, it was on its way to Montauk Point, Long Island, where the disembarkment occurred on August 19. When the 2d set out for Cuba from Tampa it numbered more than 900 strong. When it was put ashore at Montauk, it was but 300 weak. The boys were not detained for long at this port for they were in such ill condition that it was thought wise to send them home, where they might be assured the best of treatment among friends and relatives. A furlough was issued to the whole regiment. On November 3, it was mustered out of service. Only six months had elapsed since the 2d had entered the National service. In that time two-thirds of the regiment had been on the casualty list, mainly from disease, and more than one out of every ten had made the final sacrifice for his country.
Worcester men lost their lives with the 2d Regiment :
Worcester Light Infantry : Fred Baldwin Taft, James Woodbury Wheeler, Silas I. Mayo, Arthur Dawson Stewart, Harold Benning Wentworth, Robert Henry Dowse, William David Roberts, Joseph Clarence King, Arthur C. King, Royal H. Pitts. (The last-named was Adjutant-General of the Legion of Spanish War Veterans.)
Worcester City Guards: Joseph Henry Beaudoin, Lewis M. Fay, George Leon Forest, Edward Robert Riedl.
Wellington Rifles: Charles E. Buck, who was the first to die in Cuba ; Aloysius Lincoln Farmer, Earle Eugene Clark, John Michael Moran, Fabian Hakanson, John J. Moore, Alston Dwight Kimball, John James McLaugh- lin, William Capen Green, Marvin Fisher Ames, Thomas Francis Keevan, George Warren Hodgkins, Harvey Randall, Charles Maxwell Haye, Silas Undergrave.
The 9th Regiment won fame in the Civil War as the Fighting Ninth on thirty battlefields in the South. Reporting at Camp Dewey, South Framing- ham, May II, 1898, it was mustered into the United States service, and on the end of the month entrained for Camp Russell A. Alger, Dunn Loring, Vir- ginia. On June 26, it embarked at Newport News on the transport Harvard, landing at Siboney, Cuba, July 1, 1898. On the night of the landing, the 9th was sent on a forced march to the aid of Shafter before El Caney, and drove
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on through the tropical night from ten o'clock until four-thirty the next morning. Meanwhile, even the light equipment, the rolled blanket, and the haversacks with three days' emergency rations had been, for the most part, left behind. On July 2 and 3, the regiment was under fire, being stationed on the left flank with orders to hold, no matter what happened. Like other Massachusetts troops, they had only the obsolete Springfield rifle, "which went off with the roar of a cannon, made a smoke like a forest fire, and was effective only when you could see the whites of the enemy's eyes." When the Spaniard lacked a mark, he waited until a Springfield rifle was discharged, and fired upon the position disclosed. The trench was the only salvation, and trench digging was the night and day occupation for ten days. It was the rainy season of the year, but the regiment was without shelter, and for two weeks slept in their trenches, or in the severest of the storms kept upon their feet. Their shelter tents and other equipment had been left aboard the Harvard when the regiment landed through the surf at Siboney, and were not unloaded until after the vessel had made another complete round trip North.
Santiago was surrendered on July 17, and the next day, the worn-out 9th went into camp on the lower slopes of San Juan Hill, next door to a swamp. On August 23, it moved into Santiago to be sent home. The move was made at least a month too late. When the regiment came to embark, yellow and typhoid fevers, dysentery and malaria, had all but wrecked it. Two hundred of its men were in the hospital, and three hundred should have been had there been any hospital in which to house them. Ninety per cent. of the officers were at some time ill, and only one out of five in the ranks escaped disease. The 9th had its own private graveyard within sight and hearing of the camp. Deaths were so numerous that it was ordered that no more military salutes over the grave of a departing soldier should be fired, because of its depressing effect upon the ill. Major Grady died on July 30; Major O'Connor, on August 6; Colonel Bogan, who had been in command when the regiment left Framingham, was invalided home and died on August 9; Lieutenant-Colonel Donovan, who had succeeded him, was ordered home to save his life. The remnants of as physically strong a regiment as ever left Massachusetts were returned in three detachments from Cuba during the last week of August. As the disheartened troops made their way to their vessels, twenty got only as far as the waterfront and collapsed, being taken back to the hospital and death. On one transport, the Allegheny, fifteen died on the way north to Montauk Point. On arrival, 175 from this same ship were placed under hos- pital treatment, while forty were so cared for from the other transports. Everything possible was done for the returning men, the Massachusetts Vol- unteer Aid Association bringing bountiful supplies. Red tape was cut, and a
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furlough of sixty days was given the regiment that its members might be taken to their homes or the hospitals of Boston and elsewhere in the State, to save as many as might still pull through.
Out of the 943 men who had left Framingham in May, but 342 were able to return only four months later. The pity of it was that not one man had suffered greatly from the days of battle; not one of the dead they had left behind had been killed by the Spaniard. The "Fighting Ninth" had gone to war at the behest of its country, but its greatest battles had been against pre- ventable diseases, and its principal losses incurred because an unready people had failed in sending them what was theirs by right.
On November 26, 1898, the 9th was mustered out, after six months' serv- ice. The members bore with them the thanks of the general who had com- manded during the Cuban campaign; the approval of the President of the United States; the appreciation of the Governor of the Commonwealth; and the gratitude of the people of the State. But one wonders what the men thought about it all. The deaths in the Emmet Guards as the result of service were as follows :
George Washington Brosman, Henry Sullivan (the first to die), John D. Sweeney, Edward F. Sullivan, Charles F. McMann, Michael J. Healey, Joseph M. Coffee, John F. Horan, John F. Keegan, James F. McTiernan, John J. Craven, John E. Casey, Walter Allen, Peter H. Bennett, David J. Kennedy, William H. Murphy, Thomas J. Ahern.
CHAPTER LII
World War
A half century after the last war fought on American soil, a greater con- flict was being waged in Europe. But few Americans stopped long enough, in the prosperous times that it had helped to create in this country, to con- sider whether the United States might be drawn into the Armageddon. It has been estimated that a generation, or about twenty years, is all the time needed to forget a war and its lessons. To most citizens, in 1914, the Civil War was a minor conflict in which their fathers or grandfathers fought. The Spanish-American War was something that even its survivors did not con- sider seriously, and seldom recalled that its death roll was compiled by embalmed beef and preventable disease and not by gunfire. That quickly ended strife between two unready nations was nearly the allotted twenty years distant, the period required for forgetfulness. It is now two decades since the World War started and, although we are suffering from the after- math of that great conflict, there is evidence that a generation has arisen which has vague ideas of the great war, of what occurred, of what it was all about, and what the United States accomplished under difficult conditions. Even to many who lived through those soul-searching months, the conflict has become ancient history.
General history must always be the background of local annals, and, lest they have been forgotten, a summary of national conditions and events may here precede the account of war activities of Worcester County, Massachu- setts. In August, 1914, a war broke out which soon involved all of Europe and ultimately most of the world. For over two years the United States tried to maintain neutrality. It was a difficult task, for many of the old ques- tions which had come up in the Napoleonic wars-contraband, right of search, blockade, continuous voyage or ultimate destination-came up once more for solution. The Allies committed many acts vexatious to our commerce, but the Teutons destroyed American lives. Following the sinking of the Lusi-
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tania (1915), by which one hundred and twelve lives were lost, Germany, under considerable pressure, promised to be more careful in observing our rights, but on January 31, 1917, President Wilson received a German note, announcing that from February I, all sea traffic within certain zones, about Great Britain, France and Italy, "without further notice, will be prevented by all weapons." This meant that the German submarines proposed to sink any- thing they saw within these areas, whether neutral or belligerent. President Wilson promptly broke off relations with Germany, but determined to remain neutral until that country should commit an "overt act," which he hoped might not take place. On March 16-17 three American-owned and American manned ships, the Vigilancia, City of Memphis, and Illinois, were sunk by German submarines. Wilson called Congress together in a special session April 2 and "urged it to accept the state of war which the action of Germany had thrust upon the United States." The response of Congress was prompt, although not unanimous ; and on April 6 the President issued a proclamation of war. Senator Lodge in a great speech advocated the declaration of war and every Massachusetts Congressman gave his heartiest support. It may even be pointed out that industrial Massachusetts and Worcester, al- though they were profiting largely by the European conflict had voted against the pacifist platform upon which President Wilson was reelected in the pre- vious November.
The United States was unprepared for conflict, and it was upon this fact and other known conditions that Germany based its expectations of bringing the submarine war to a successful conclusion before America could give effective aid to the Allies. It was not believed possible for this country, in less than a year, to raise, train, equip, and transport to Europe an army large enough to affect seriously the fortunes of war. Upon the entry of the United States into the war, there began a contest the like of which had never been seen-nothing less than a race by America to send reinforcements to the fail- ing Allies before the German submarine eliminated England from the war, and the Teuton armies overran Europe as victors. America had not only to prepare for war, but to wage it while making preparations.
Our country made ready on the theory "that modern warfare demands all the efforts of all the people, both military and civilian; and that the judgment of experts was to be followed as far as possible, thus avoiding the worst mis- takes of the Civil War and the War with Spain." The army act of May 18, 1917, was based on these principles. It provided for a regular army of 237,000 ; the taking into Federal service of the State Militia units, and the drafting of an army of 1,000,000. In June, 10,000,000 men between the ages of twenty-one to thirty registered. By a lottery system 1,374,000 names were drawn, and the men thus indicated were examined for fitness for military
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service, and by September the first, contingents were entering the camps, sixteen in number, being built to receive them; a like number of cantonments were in the course of erection for the "National Army." In response to an appeal from the Allies for at least a small contingent to strengthen the morale of their own soldiers, General John J. Pershing sailed May 28, 1917, and in June a division of the regular army embarked, the first of the American Expeditionary Forces, the "A. E. F." General Pershing cabled on July 6 that plans must be made to send at least 1,000,000 men across before May, 1918. To create a force of a million soldiers, and to send them three thousand miles over a submarine infested sea in ten months seemed an impossible task. How well this was accomplished, the whole world knows; in all, two million men were sent abroad within fifteen months. The first American troops reached France on June 25. The first American shots from European trenches were fired on October 27, and the first trench fighting by Americans occurred a week later. By December, 1917, a quarter of a million American troops had been landed in France; and in January, 1918, the War Depart- ment let it be known that soldiers from the United States were occupying front-line trenches "in a certain sector."
The navy was in a better position to be of immediate use. Rear-Admiral W. S. Sims was already in England, and within a few days after our declara- tion of war, made plans for naval participation in the efforts being made to overcome the submarine danger. Six destroyers arrived at Queenstown, Ireland, on May 4, under Commander Taussig. The story is told that when the flotilla arrived, the commander was asked: "When will you be ready to go to sea ?" "We are ready now, sir," was the prompt reply, "that is, as soon as we finish refueling." Before the end of the war, 5,000 officers and 70,000 enlisted men were serving in our navy abroad. The total personnel of the navy expanded during the war from 4,800 officers and 102,000 men to 20,600 officers and 330,000 men. A great fleet was also accumulated. By the first anniversary of our entrance into the war, the United States had put into com- mission 1,275 vessels of all sorts ; and before the end the number of vessels had risen to 2,003, and the personnel to 497,000. A bridge was maintained between the United States and Europe over which passed in almost complete safety 2,000,000 soldiers, about half of whom were transported in English ships, but guarded by American cruisers and destroyers. An immense num- ber of cargoes of supplies were carried for the most part in American bot- toms, which made up a huge fleet, and involved the use of 5,000 officers and 20,000 enlisted men.
The civilians' share in the preparations for war was a tremendously important one and involved an unprecedented number of the citizens. As said Secretary Baker: "This isn't a one man's war, or several men's war, or
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an army's war, but it is a war of all the people of the United States." Every one was involved; even the children had to bear their burdens. Enormous amounts of food had to be raised; unimagined amounts of supplies of all sorts had to be manufactured ; and all had to be accumulated, distributed, and the bulk of it sent across three thousand miles of water. Pershing contem- plated having one hundred divisions in France by 1919; and this would require auxiliaries of possibly 8,000,000 men in America to sustain and sup- ply this great combat force. That the war ended earlier than was expected did not change the fact that until it did end, all plans had been made and were being carried out on the basis of an army and navy, at home and abroad, of between four and five million men.
Various organizations were instituted for the furtherance of the enlarged program. The Council of National Defense had been created on August 29, 1916. Soon after the entrance into war, much of the work of the council was given over to six other war agencies. The first was the War Industries Board, formed on July 8, 1917, whose task it was to bring together the industries of the United States so that the materials for the war might be produced in sufficient quantities. The United States Shipping Board was established in September, 1916, to construct, lease or buy vessels, and to operate them. Before the end, the board had taken over complete control of the overseas shipping. The Emergency Fleet Corporation was formed to find and operate ships. As early as December 1, 1917, it was supervising the construction of 1,118 vessels ; it trained officers and sailors, enlarged port facilities, and requisitioned ships. The diminishing food supplies of the world demanded the closest of attention that they should not fail. Herbert C. Hoover, later President of the United States, was made chief of the Food Administration. This body established the Grain Corporation, the Fuel Administration and other organizations in the furtherance of its work. On October 12, 1917, the War Trade Board was set up to control exports, imports and trading with the enemy. Then there was the Railroad War Board for the purpose of supplying the greatest amount of transportation possible. When it failed of its purpose, on December 26, 1917, the President took possession of the railroad systems of the country, and appointed Wil- liam G. McAdoo as Director-General. There were also the National War Labor Board, the National Labor Policies Board, and many others. America's capacity for organization was tried and tested, and did not fail even in the face of unprecedented difficulties.
The story of the financial side of the war has never been fully told. The direct money cost from April, 1917, to April, 1919, was estimated by the War Department at $21,850,000,000, an average of over a million dollars an hour, and an amount sufficient to have carried on the Revolutionary War for
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a thousand years. In addition, loans were extended to the Allies at the rate of nearly "half a million dollars an hour." These huge amounts were raised in part by increased taxes-the income tax, for example, or the levies made on the profits of corporations, or amusement and luxury taxes, and higher postal rates. The sale of War Savings Stamps helped some, but these served to encourage thrift more than they aided the government. Most of the vast sums expended were raised by loans-five Liberty Loans being the principal source. The first of these called for two billions of dollars; the fourth for six billions. There were four and a half million subscribers to the first loan ; for the fourth, 21,000,000 people subscribed.
The high lights of actual warfare abroad still remain bright in the memo- ries of many, and a description of the main battles fought require no repeti- tion. Aside from a few units of the Ist Division, the 26th, or Yankee Divi- sion, made up of New England National Guardsmen, were the first sent over- seas in early September, 1917. It went to the line of combat on February 5, 1918, in the sector of Chemin des Dames. The Germans made their last thrust on the Champagne front on July 15, 1918. The American Army was almost ready, and parts of it were used in the counter attack near Soissons, which was the turning point of the war. Henceforth the Germans were to be slowly driven from their positions; and more and more were American divisions to fight in the front lines. The St. Mihiel Salient had been held by the enemy since 1914. The first united effort of the American Expeditionary Forces was the complete reduction of this salient in little more than twenty- four hours. By the afternoon of September 13 the ground had been taken; 16,000 prisoners had been captured with 443 guns and valuable military stores. Four hundred and thirty thousand Americans had been engaged. "An American Army was an accomplished fact, and the enemy had felt its power."
Then came the drive against the Germans in the Meuse-Argonne Sector. This, like St. Mihiel, had been in the hands of the enemy since the early days of the war. It was fortified elaborately for a depth of thirteen miles, and supposedly was impregnable. By September 26 the Meuse-Argonne offensive was begun. The American Expeditionary Forces had now about I,200,000 soldiers available for the drive ; 2,700 guns, 189 tanks, and 821 air- planes were ready for support. "The ensuing action lasted almost continu- ously from September 26 to November II, and was less a battle than a tre- mendous war concentrated into seven weeks of furious combat." The forces engaged and the ammunition used by the Americans in these seven weeks were more than the total used by the Union forces in the entire Civil War. Early in November the German front had been broken throughout all its length. By the seventh the enemy in front of the Americans had been driven
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back thirty miles and faced disaster. On November II the Armistice was announced by Foch and the Germans had signed an agreement which com- pletely wiped their nation from the map as a military or naval power for the time being. Later came the Peace of Versailles. "Upon the signing of the Armistice," said Secretary Baker, "it will be necessary to throw into reverse the machinery which was at that time working at a maximum capacity in pushing troops to France."
The World War in its immensity dwarfs into seeming insignificance the efforts of a State, a county, or a person. Yet the carrying on of the tre- mendous conflict was ultimately the work of individuals and small units. However small the part, it was necessary to the whole. Insofar as the United States was concerned, its great task was to get ready, a thing that consumed the most of the Nation's time. The time element entered into everything that America did. In all the war records of America the element of haste -- with waste often-is prominent. Massachusetts and its industrial centers, such as Worcester, Fitchburg, Leominister and Gardner, presented the same picture of hurry and scurry as the rest of the country, but with this excep- tion-they began sooner and did their job quicker. Had Massachusetts stood alone, the Commonwealth could have placed troops in Europe in fewer weeks than it took months. As it eventuated, the Yankee Division with hundreds of Worcester soldiers was "the first to meet Prussian Guard ; first to meet the Hun in any fighting of moment." When the Wilson administration at last declared war, Massachusetts had already a war organization, the Committee on Public Safety which had functioned for two months, the first of its kind in the United States and the pattern for similar committees established later all over the country. As in the Civil and Spanish wars, the State was in the van in the organization of its military and civilian forces and resources.
The cities of Worcester County had difficulties to face right from the start, and even before our entrance into the war. Nearly one-third of its urban peoples were of foreign birth or of the first generation from foreign- born parents. Ties of blood and language were not forgotten, and the attempt at neutrality, fostered by President Wilson, proved too idealistic. But the peace was kept although there was a small, but constant, stream of its resi- dents moving into the ranks of Canadian and European armies. Fortunately the Teutonic elements failed to foment the revolution in America that was expected by the mother countries. That Leon Chester Thresher, of Hard- wick, Worcester County, lost his life on the torpedoed ship Falada, and that George L. Butler, and Ellen Waarenanen, both of Worcester, Ida Exley, of Barre, and Dr. S. F. Edgerly, of Fitchburg, were among the hundred Ameri- cans destroyed with the Lusitania helped to consolidate opinion and protest, and it was the inspiration behind the forming of the Worcester Military
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Training School, which in the winter of 1915 and 1916, trained a large num- ber of State Guard officers.
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