"Our colonel was right up there with us getting into line." said Private Hiram E. Burnett. "One night when the sh.e.l.ls were bursting all around and several men were wounded the colonel went over the top just like any of us."
The Bois des Forges has been a battle ground since the war began, with trenches in front and miles of barbed wire, machine gun nests and concrete pillboxes inside. A frontal attack on such a stronghold apparently meant suicide, but the Illinois men, led by Col. Sanborn and Col. Abel Davis, took it so neatly and quickly that they bagged nearly 1,000 soldiers, fifteen officers, twenty-six guns ranging from 105s down, 126 machine guns, twenty-one flatcars, two rolling kitchens, an ambulance and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
"We were looking for you in front," said a captured German officer. "We did not expect that you would come through the swamp and outflank us. We did not think that any Yankee outfit was so foxy."
"A GREAT SHOW"
"It was a great show when we crossed that river and rushed on through the woods, cleaning up machine gun nests," said Private Gray McKindy of Woodstock, "The machine guns in the woods started throwing bullets as soon as we reached the river. They thought they could stop us from going up the opposite hill, but we did it and got every gun there."
Private Kenneth W. Steiger was one of those who went in on the second night when his captain called for volunteers to make up a patrol.
Steiger became separated from the others in the darkness and ran into a party of three Germans. Quickly covering them with his rifle he brought all three back.
Private Bernard Snyder returned with prisoners before dark on the first day. Making use of his ability to speak German, he induced a dozen Germans to lay down their arms, pick up stretchers and carry American wounded back five kilometers (three miles) to where ambulances were waiting.
A FIGHTING CHAPLAIN
Lieut. Jorgen R. Enger, the chaplain of a Kansas-Missouri outfit, carried the wounded for three days from the Montfaucon woods two miles to the ambulance. Searching in the woods in the darkness one night with sh.e.l.ls bursting and bullets whistling he found a husky sergeant wounded in the foot and growing weaker and weaker from loss of blood. The chaplain shouldered the man and carried him back to a dressing station, saving his life.
"I didn"t think a chaplain would do a thing like that," said the sergeant. "I would rather save you than save a general," replied the chaplain.
When not searching for wounded hidden in the tangle of under-brush the chaplain was busy helping the surgeons at a first aid dressing station.
"I never thought any clergyman would have the opportunities for doing good such as I am haying," he said when I saw him.
Col. Eugene Houghton, Wisconsin, who was a British major until America entered the war, distinguished himself by personally leading a unit of New York men. According to them he escaped death repeatedly as by a miracle.
"DESERT? NO, WANTED TO FIGHT"
Capt. Carl F. Laurer while a.s.sisting in the examination of German prisoners, was surprised when an American prisoner was brought before him. "Where do you belong?" asked the captain. "I am with an aerial squadron in the south of France" replied the prisoner. "I walked fourteen days to get here." "Did you desert?" asked Captain Lauer. "No,"
the man replied, "I want to fight. That is what I came to France for.
When I get home the folks will ask what I did in the war and when I answer "worked" they will say "Why the devil didn"t you fight?"" The boy"s wish was gratified and he was sent forward.
"We have everything good and plenty--rations, ammunition and other things. It looks like a regular Sunday."
TEXAS AND OKLAHOMA TROOPS SHOW GREAT FIGHTING FORM
In this district, the 36th Division, made up of troops from Texas and Oklahoma, veterans and raw recruits together, showed splendid fighting form. They were under terrific sh.e.l.l fire day after day, but they met several murderous attacks firmly, and drove the boches back in brilliant counter attack, chasing them in true Ranger style. All these men showed the same spirit that animated Roosevelt"s renowned Rough Riders in the war with Spain, so many of whom were Texas and Oklahoma men.
Reporting this fight, General Naulin, commanding the Corps of which the 2d and 36th Divisions were parts, said "the 36th Division, a recent formation not yet completely organized, was ordered into line on the night of October 6-7 to relieve, under conditions particularly delicate, the 2d Division, and to dislodge the enemy from the crest north of St.
Etienne and throw him back to the Aisne. Although being under fire for the first time, the young soldiers of Maj. Gen. W. R. Smith, rivaling in combative spirit and tenacity the old and valiant regiment of General LeJeune, accomplished all the tasks set for them." Every American knows full well the bright record of the 2d Division of Infantry, the regulars of which were composed of the 5th and 6th Marines and the 9th and 23rd Infantry. These are the boys who stopped the Germans up in Belleau Wood when the boches were headed for Paris and c.o.c.ksure of getting there, blandly unaware that they were goose-stepping toward an American knock-out.
OUR COLORED TROOPS WIN CREDIT
American negro troops had a considerable share in the last few months of fighting, and acquitted themselves in a highly creditable manner. They were great trench diggers and trench fighters, and their endurance on the march was a marvel to the allied armies. They were very popular with the French people, who were delighted with their good nature and their never-ceasing songs. Regular negro melodies these songs were, nearly all of them of the camp-meeting variety--and sung with that choral beauty which especially distinguishes all of their musical performances. The negro notion of war and indifference to death was instanced in the case where a white officer overheard one of them at the zero hour call out, "Good night ol" world! Good mawin," Mistah Jesus!" as he went over the top.
"The colored boys," said Charles N. Wheeler, a distinguished correspondent with the American armies, "are great fighters, and are no better and no worse than any other group of American soldiers in France, whatever the blood strain. They do take pardonable pride in the fact that "Mistah" Johnson, a colored boy, was the first American soldier in France to be decorated for extraordinary bravery under fire.
THEY CAN FIGHT AND SING
"The color line has about died out in the American army--in France. They play together, sing their songs together--the blacks and the white--and they go over the top together. They come back together, too, the wounded, and there is no thought of the color of a man"s skin. They mix together on the convoy trains going up to the front, and all sing together, sharing each other"s dangers and their joys. It is not an uncommon sight to see a crowd of white doughboys around a piano in some "Y" or Red Cross hut, singing to beat the band, with a colored ja.s.s expert pounding the stuffing out of the piano. The white boys enjoy immensely the wit of the colored comrades, and many a bleak and drab day of privation and suffering is made a bit brighter by the humor that comes spontaneously to the lips of the "bronze boys."
"The children of France love them. I suppose that is because they wear American soldiers" uniforms. I have seen scores of white children holding the hands of colored boys and trudging along on the march with them or romping into their tents and sitting on their knees and just exuding the affection that all the children of France have for anything and everybody from the United States."
CHAPTER V.
THE WAR IN THE AIR
The Hughes report on air craft, submitted in October, 1918, contained a full account of the difficulties, drawbacks and questionable management that had held back the manufacture and shipment of airplanes to Europe.
In September there were on the French-Belgian front between 300 and machines, all of which were in the scout and observation cla.s.ses, with no regulation combat planes of American build; but American airmen had conducted many successful actions against German battle planes, and a good many Americans were operating French and British battle planes in action back of the German lines. The combined American, British, French and Canadian planes had before that time cleared the air of German observation and other machines in front of the allied lines, thereby preventing hostile observation of allied camps and artillery positions and movements of troops preparatory to attack.
The efficiency of this combined air service is credited with having contributed in an important degree, first to r.e.t.a.r.ding the movement of supplies from the enemy rear to the enemy fighting line, and next to disturbance of the enemy in retreat. The Americans especially distinguished themselves by flying at high speed along the last of the enemy trenches and clearing up the German troops therein by continuous streams of machine gun fire. American flyers also made successful raids across the German border, blowing up munitions works, railway centers, and German troops at concentration points. Between early September and late October, 1918, they dropped thousands of tons of high explosives inside of Germany. At the same time, in a.s.sociation with British and Canadian aviators, they put a definite end to German air raids upon the British Isles and interior France. The Canadian air service during the summer and early autumn of 1918 increased at the rate of 300 planes per month, all manufactured in Canada.
LIBERTY MOTORS AND AIR SERVICE
After July, 1918, the output of Liberty motors for the Government caught up with the immediate demand. It increased until in October it reached a rate of about 5,000 a month. The Ford factory at Detroit alone reported at the end of October an established monthly rate of increase of over 1,500.
AMERICAN FLYERS DOWN 473 PLANES IN TWO MONTHS
American flyers made a great record in the closing days of war. In the period from September 12 to 11:00 o"clock on the morning of November 11, American aviators claim they brought down 473 German machines. Of this number, 353 have been confirmed officially. Day bombing groups from the time they began operations dropped a total of 116,818 kilograms of bombs within the German lines.
THE WAR IN THE AIR
Aviation is the most perilous of all services, calling for young bodies, high spirit, quick wit, personal initiative, and unshakable nerve. Thus it has drawn in the best and brightest of America"s sons--brilliant, clear-eyed, steady youths, who take the air and its perils with joyous ardor.
The danger, the romance, the thrill of air fighting, are things that never were known in war until this one called into being vast aerial navies that grappled in the sky and rained upon the earth below "a ghastly dew" of blood.
There are no tales of this war more fascinating than those that have been told by these men. Courage and modesty being inseparable, our aviators avoid print and cannot be interviewed with any satisfaction.
But sometimes they write home to a mother, a sweetheart or a pal, and these letters now and then come to light.
CHANCE OF LIVING NOW
"I cannot describe my feelings, right off the bat," said Eddie Rickenbacker, the ace of American aces, the day following the signing of the armistice. "But I can say I feel ninety-nine per cent better. There is a chance of living now and the gang is glad." Rickenbacker became a captain during the last phase of the war and has twenty-four victories over enemy airmen to his credit. To Rickenbacker, whose home is in Columbus, Ohio, the allied command gave the honor of making the last flight over the German front and firing the last shot from the air on the morning of November 11, 1918.
AIR PLANE"S TAIL SHOT OFF
In reporting this most remarkable occurrence Edward Price Bell, an American correspondent, wrote as follows from the front:
A British observer, flying a powerful machine at 16,000 feet over Ostend, had the machine"s tail shot off by the direct hit of a sh.e.l.l--a very unusual occurrence. The machine turned upside down, out of control, and the pilot was thrown out of his seat. By some inexplicable maneuver he managed to clamber on to the bottom of the fuselage of the machine, astride of which he sat as if he was riding a horse.
Though the machine was out of control, owing to the loss of its tail planes, yet by moving forward and backward he so managed to balance it that it glided fairly steadily downward, although upside down.
He successfully brought it across the German lines, and came safely to within a few hundred feet of the ground. Then he crashed and was injured, but is now recovering in a hospital.