Part 13

But even when recruits came the work of the Ambulance Corps was such that the need of men was increased, and Dick continued to drive his ambulance, postponing a little further his expected return home. There was terribly fierce fighting in the Vosges in that period, it will be remembered, and the demands upon the ambulance driver were almost incessant, the peril of it constant, gathering up the wounded from the battle front and hurrying them to a place of safety. For five months he had made those hazardous trips from battle front to safety station, unhesitatingly, devoted, inspired by the consciousness that he was engaged in saving, not in destroying life, his work not for France alone but for humanity.

Lovering Hill, the chief of the section, says of him: “I have never known any one who always showed so much _dévouement_ in his work. He was the steadiest of all, and the most reliable. He never slacked up in times when work was dull, when day in and day out was the same grinding monotony; and in times of activity after many hours without rest or sleep, he was always cheerful and stuck to the work with a tenacity which was astounding. His frankness and straightforwardness, his cheerfulness and good nature, his kindness—for he was always the first to help his comrades—made him beloved by all of us, and by most of the French with whom he came in touch, who admired the wholehearted way in which he worked. In the technical matter of the upkeep of his car he was my special delight, for both his car and his equipment were always in perfect order.”

The incidents of the days preceding the death of Hall have been indicated briefly in a tribute written soon after the fatality. There had been something of a respite from fighting, but on December 21 “the mountains spoke” and all the cars rolled upwards toward the post of Hartmanns-Weilerkopf—taken and retaken a score of times, a bare, brown, blunt shell-ploughed top where before the forest stood—up, elbowing and tacking their way through battalions of men and beasts. From one mountain slope to another roared all the lungs of war. For five days and five nights, scraps of days—the shortest of the year—nights interminable—the air was shredded with shrieking shells—intermittent lulls for slaughtering after the bombardment—then again the roar of the counter-attack.

THE TRAVELED ROAD

“All this time, as in all the past months, Richard Nelville Hall calmly drove his car up the winding shell-swept artery of the mountain of war—past crazed mules, broken-down artillery carts, swearing drivers, stricken horses, wounded stragglers still able to hobble; past long convoys of Boche prisoners, silently descending in twos guarded by a handful of men; past all the personnel of war, great and small (for there is but one road on which to travel, one road for the enemy’s shell); past abris, bomb-proof, to arrive at the _Poste de Secours_; where silent men moved mysteriously under the great trees, where the cars were loaded with an ever ready supply of still more quiet figures (though some made sounds), mere bundles in blankets. Hall saw to it that these quiet bundles were carefully and rapidly installed, then rolled down into the valley where little towns bear stolidly their daily burden of shells thrown wantonly from somewhere in Bocheland over the mountain to somewhere in France—the bleeding bodies in the car, a mere corpuscle in the full crimson stream, the ever-rolling tide from the trenches to the hospital, of the blood of life and the blood of death. Once there, his wounded unloaded, Dick Hall filled his gasoline tank and calmly rolled again on his way. Two of his comrades had been wounded the day before, but Dick Hall never faltered. He slept when and where he could, in his car, at the _poste_, on the floor of our temporary kitchen at Moosch—dry blankets or wet blankets of mud, blankets of blood—contagion was pedantry, microbes a myth.”

It was over this shell-swept, torturous road that Dick Hall was driving his car on its final errand of mercy when, in the first hours of the Christmas morning, death made friends with him. Some three hours later he was found by Matter, one of his comrades, the first to pass along the mountain road. It was between 3 and 4 o’clock of the morning. Matter and Jennings, who came a little later, bore the body back in Matter’s car to Moosch, where his brother, Louis Hall, learned what had happened. Death had been instantaneous. A fragment of shell had penetrated his brain. Though he had other injuries (the car was utterly demolished), we have the testimony of Abbé Klein, the chaplain, that “even in death his face preserved the expression of smiling radiance, that frank and kindly nature that his comrades had learned to love in the months he had been with them.”

“There in the small hours of Christmas morning where mountain fought mountain—on that hard bitter pass under the pines of the Vosgian sweep, there fell a very modest and valiant gentleman,” says the memorial from his comrades of Section Three, adding:

“Dick Hall, we knew you, worked with you, played with you, ate with you, slept with you, we took pleasure in your company, in your modesty, in your gentle manner, in your devotion and in your youth—we still pass that spot, and we salute. Our breath comes quicker, and our eyes grow dimmer, we grip the wheel a little tighter—we pass better and stronger.”

THE LIVING DEAD

The funeral services were held in the little Protestant Chapel five miles down the valley while the guns roared in a fierce battle raging for the possession of Hartmanns-Weilerkopf. At the conclusion of the ceremony Hall’s citation was read and the _Croix de Guerre_ was pinned to a fold of the tri-color that wrapped his coffin. At the head of the grave was placed a wooden cross with the simple but all sufficient inscription, “Richard Hall, an American who died for France, December 25, 1915.” The Alsatian women heaped flowers on the grave, and after kept it decorated and cared for. When the United States formally entered the war there was a further ceremony, when a French General laid a palm on the grave in the presence of Louis Hall and the American Corps.

But Richard Hall was one of those fortunate servants whose service and humanity did not end with death. Very soon after he was killed, as a tribute to his memory a new ambulance car was sent to France to be driven by Louis Hall. It was the gift of a lady. Another followed, the gift of a New York gentleman, and a third ambulance was sent by Dr. and Mrs. Louis P. Hall, who also kept a memorial bed in the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly until the end of the war. In addition to that they established a Loan Fund of $2,000 in the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor was Dick’s birthplace, his father a professor in the University) and $500 was given to Dartmouth. In the same spirit of carrying on Dick’s work his parents’ efforts resulted in the sending of $18,000 to the “Fatherless Children of France” and ten thousand garments to the children of the Frontier.

An editorial in the Philadelphia _Press_ had this to say of Richard Hall:

“Much more glorious is the death of this man than is that of the fighting soldier. His was a devotion, not to country and fireside and altar, but to an abstract conception of duty. There can be a selfishness, of a refined kind, to be sure, in even the greatest bravery shown by the soldier who is fighting for the preservation of his native land. Thoughts of his near and dear ones in that land inspire his actions and nerve his body and will for them. To the alien nurse, physician, hospital attendant there is no such inspiration. For them the inspiration must come from the depth of their humanity, and cannot be tinged with the slightest touch of self. German or Hun, Briton or Serb or Frenchman are all the same in their eyes if they are suffering from wounds or disease. Americans have a right to be proud of a fellow countryman like Richard Hall.”

WHERE DENOMINATIONS END

A Christian Priest Who Was a Hero too Found They Vanished at the Front

Though we did not see much about them in the dispatches, those soldiers of the Most High, the army chaplains who went to the front, were often as heroic and self-sacrificing in attending to their duties as were the doughboys themselves. Among the many was Father John J. Brady of New York, the young Catholic chaplain of the 5th Regiment, U. S. Marines, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for things he did in the Château-Thierry region in the deadly period of June, 1918. Some of the zealous folk who wish to put a ban on tobacco in all of its forms will hardly understand the quality of heroism that prompted Father Brady to risk his life on several occasions to carry cigarettes to men of the fighting line who could not otherwise have had the “soldier’s solace” after the perils and fatigues of long hours of trench service. Nevertheless, that generous and courageous act was among the valiant things for which his country officially honored him. In the big fight that turned back the Germans, this free-souled chaplain made two complete tours of the front line under severe fire, ministering in unusually trying circumstances to the wounded and dying men of his regiment. Right well the men of that regiment loved him—not because he was their chaplain but because he was the chaplain who understood. A wonderful thing is understanding. We recall that the wise Solomon rated it above all things else.

The _Stars and Stripes_ in an article about Chaplain Brady has the key to the man in the opening paragraph, which quotes him as saying:

“’Tis all one great church, the front line is. In all Christendom, in all the rest of the world you will not find so much unselfishness, so much Christian charity, so much loving kindness, as you find at the front. There, if anywhere, the men are brothers. We feel it. Denominations or sects are pretty much forgotten. Faith, war makes strange bunkies, and ’tis me and my pal, the Presbyterian minister, have been shelled out of the same quarters together.”

The article continues:

“Father Brady ought to know, for he penetrated the farthermost American position and has crawled beyond the front lines to hear confessions of Marines in the outpost. He was decorated for extraordinary heroism at the battle of Château-Thierry where his unfailing ministrations were a big factor in conserving the morale of the men.

“The true spirit of the Marines is Father Brady’s. He laughs at obstacles and perils, and his indomitable will carries him through the most difficult tasks. Often he has accomplished the seemingly impossible and he is honored by Protestant and Jew as he is by those of his own faith. Regardless of creed, the Devil Dogs of the 5th Regiment are proud of their chaplain.”

HIS LEATHERNECKS

“There was to be an attack the next morning in the gray hours before the sun was up, when Father Brady reached the wooded country between Soissons and Château-Thierry where his Leathernecks crouched under the Hun bombardments. He crawled and stumbled along the lines to hear confessions from his warriors. Hard-bitten old-timers who had not seen the interior of a church in years bared their souls and went light-hearted into the hell that followed the opening barrage.

“Reaching the final outpost, the young priest spied a shallow trench from which a sentry peeped. In spite of warnings he slipped out among the shadows and wormed his way forward and rolled into the ditch. He heard the confession as he and the outpost lay side by side looking up at the stars, and as he crept back to cover he knew that he had never granted absolution in stranger places. He has said mass for the faithful with his altar cloth on the shattered stump of a tree during the last lull before the attack.

“Friend and foe alike received the sacrament from the young Catholic priest. His enmity for the Germans ceased when he went among the young wounded Bavarians left on the field and gave them the last consolation of the church. Often he bent over young Germans, scarcely able to speak as they groped for their rosaries, and left them facing death more bravely.

“One of his most dangerous tasks was the burial of the dead, which must be done at night, and frequently under shell fire. It is work that must be done in the open, for digging is almost impossible where the woods fill the soil with interlacing roots. It was on such a mission that personal tragedy touched him. Making his way to the crest of a hill, where he had been told a man lay dead, he found the face of one of his closest friends turned up to the moonlight.

“In spite of the horrors he has witnessed and the sorrows he has shared, those who have met Father Brady recently say he is unchanged. Many men would have shrunk from his work, much of which was done alone with no comrade to speak a steadying word. Yet his spirit is still buoyant and his mind is unoppressed.”

A BIT OF A MISTAKE

“Many of his stories deal with the changes in spirit and practice that have followed the sharing of hardships. All the Marines were ‘his boys.’

“‘What a pother they’d have made in the old days of peace back home if they had caught me at a mistake I made the other night,’ he said. ‘In the confusion just before the attack I heard the confession of one old sinner of a sergeant. He got half-way through before I discovered that he was not a Catholic.’

“‘Why, you’re no Catholic!’ I told him.

“‘No, Padre, I’m a Presbyterian,’ said he, ‘but they say confession is good for the soul. Believe me, mine feels none the worse now.’

“Once Father Brady received $2,000 from America to buy himself an automobile. He spent it on a club for the boys in his regiment. Later they found that the young priest could box and wrestle, and that he was the best referee that could be got for their fights. He built up trust and affection for himself during the weary months at the front.

“He has been day and night with his regiment during the long period when they were in the midst of things. For a month at a time he has snatched what sleep he could wherever he might throw himself down, under hedges, in roadside barns and even in shell holes. But he has always had a word of cheer for the men, and in the most terrible days he has made both living and dying more bearable for the 5th Marines.”

“BUCKEYES” OR “SPEARHEADS”

How the Ohio Doughboys Managed to Pick Up a New Nickname in France

The “Buckeye Division,” the 37th Ohio, got a new nickname for itself at Montfaucon in September, 1917. It was called “Spearheads” because of its ability to start a drive and carry on until its objectives were reached and captured. In a history of the Division Jack Koons (of the Cincinnati _Inquirer_), who was one of the Spearheads, tells in a breezily entertaining manner of the first experience of the boys going “over the top.”

Montfaucon had been held for over three years by the Germans, and was one of the so-called “invulnerables.”

The division historian says:

“Just before dusk on the night of September 25 the men began to enter the trenches. Blankets, overcoats, packs, and all unnecessary equipment were piled in large salvage heaps. Behind the lines, crouched beneath leafy screens of camouflage, was the artillery. At 10.25 o’clock the first gun spoke and all along the line great splotches of red seared the sky and the boom, screech, and crack of the gigantic pieces echoed and reëchoed through the hills. Far across the landscape, rising from the plain and standing out upon the horizon, was Montfaucon. The white walls of the city could be seen distinctly in the daytime. A church steeple, long ago deserted by worshipers, stood, a vacant monument to the ravages of the foe. In the advance against Montfaucon it was necessary to advance approximately twelve kilometers, through two dense woods, a marshy land, up a sharp slope, another plain, and then a sharp ascent into the town. It was later learned that a German Division Headquarters was located in the town.”

AT THE ZERO HOUR

“Patrols advanced into No Man’s Land as the artillery cut away barbed-wire entanglements. The great guns rose into a rumble and death rode through the night on shells—bound toward Germany. At 2.25 o’clock in the morning of September 26 the barrage rose and thundered in volume. Like the roll of a mighty drum the sound could be heard for more than a hundred miles. At 5.05 o’clock the barrage rested on the German front lines—rested there for twenty-five minutes, cutting forests to the ground and demoralizing the enemy who fled into the deepest dugouts. At 5.30 o’clock, the zero hour, the boys from Ohio went over the top. Every county and village in the State was represented in that attack.

“On and on they went. Machine-gun nests, carefully camouflaged with the hellishness shown only by the German, were discovered and destroyed. Here and there in the woodland Hun snipers were busy—but not for long. Men fell by the wayside in agony, refused assistance from comrades, and urged the men to go forward. That was the true Ohio spirit. The spirit that drove the Germans back mile after mile, that resulted in the capture of not only Montfaucon, twenty-four hours later, but Cierges and Ivoiry. These towns had been held by the Germans for four long years and were wrested away and liberated by Ohioans in forty-eight hours. In the prisoner cage were huddled approximately 1,100 prisoners, many officers among them.

“Relief came to the tired, fighting crew on September 30. Back they came a laughing, joking, dirty, sleepy division of fighting men—no longer boys. Behind them, buried in the fields of eastern France, slept those sons of Ohio who had given their lives, their all.”

NOW THE FINAL EPISODES

“At 5.25 o’clock on the morning of October 31 ‘Fritzie’ on watch along the Lys River was rudely awakened from his dreams of German beer and sauerkraut to face a typical go-get-’em barrage. It was a typical American barrage. Five minutes of drumfire. Five minutes of hell, fire, and damnation. Five minutes of terror. Across the Lys River scurried the Ohioans. Paddling in the icy water on logs and planks, the ‘doughboys’ went over, carrying rifles and machine guns. Engineers began to build bridges. For a few minutes the Germans hesitated, but it didn’t take them long to decide. Back they went to previously arranged positions. Here they planned to stop the infantry, but they were mistaken. In twenty minutes the Ohioans had reached their first objective. Three hours later they passed their second objective and dug in for the night. As they dug in the Germans dug out and started for the Escaut River. On the second day members of the 37th Division drove on through Cruyshautem and Huysse to the banks of the Scheldt (Escaut) River. Here, under a veritable rain of shrapnel and machine-gun fire, they established and held the only bridgeheads to be erected over this river during the war.”

THEIR LAST OVER

“In this drive through the fertile fields and populated country which had grown dormant under the four years of iron-hand rule of the Hohenzollern, more than twenty towns were liberated. Hundreds of men, women, and children, laughing, crying, cheering, greeted the men as they advanced and entered towns. The yellow, red, and black flags of Belgium appeared mysteriously from hiding places and swayed in the breeze. Apples and bottles of wine were resurrected and slipped down the throats of the boys in olive drab. Up ahead at Heurne, near Audenarde, the Americans were raising Cain with the Germans, who were falling back along the river.

“On November 4, 1918, the Division was relieved by a French division and hiked thirty kilometers to Thielt, the largest town they had been in since leaving Montgomery, Ala. Here they brushed away the dirt and dust, waxed and grew fat until November 9. On that date the Division advanced again past Deynze to Synghem. With peace rumors flashing through the air, on the morning of November 10, the 37th Division went over the top again, crossing the Escaut River north of their first sector, and drove the Prussian Guards before them. It was here that news of the armistice arrived on the morning of November 11. Orders had been received to suspend hostilities at eleven o’clock. At ten o’clock the men were prepared to follow another barrage.

“Squatting in ‘funk’ holes, the men carelessly rolled cigarettes and waited for the hour to tick around. The announcement was made. ‘Hostilities had ceased.’ Calmly, confidently they clambered to the ground. Across the fields the Germans were moving away. There was no exchange of shots. Another cigarette. The war was over.”

CORPORAL HOLMES’S WAY

And a Right Good Way to Win the V.C. and the Hearts of Men