Part 14

Fred Holmes, corporal in the Yorkshire Light Infantry, was awarded France’s chief military decoration, the _Médaille Militaire_, for gallantry during the fight on the Aisne. The official account of the exploit is quite brief: Holmes saw a platoon of French struggling against heavy odds, whereupon he dashed over the river for a machine gun, carried it to the platoon, and turned it on the enemy, with such effect that the German pressure was immediately relieved. However, when Corporal Holmes’ name is mentioned men usually think of the thrilling record at Le Cateau which brought him the V.C.

The Yorkshire Light Infantry were in the very thickest of the fighting at Mons. At the little colliery town at Warmb they received a severe shaking from the enemy, but gave as good as they got. It was after the engagement at this place that the brave fellows, footsore and tired, but still cheerful, tramped many weary miles to the famous battlefield of Le Cateau.

It is not necessary to describe the stand made there, but only to mention a few facts, as recorded by G. A. Leask in his _Heroes of the Great War_, without knowledge of which Holmes’s feat would be unintelligible.

Orders were given to entrench, and the men set to work with zest, glad of the change from the continuous retreating. The task accomplished, the regiment lay down in the trenches, while the booming of the German guns grew ever louder.

At dawn of August 26 there was suddenly a fierce bombardment from the enemy’s artillery. According to Holmes, “We could feel the breath from their guns. It was awful.” The Yorks stuck to their trenches, firing incessantly. They had been told that French troops would reinforce them, but as the day dragged on no French appeared. The British artillery kept up a hot fire from behind Holmes’s trench, which suffered the proverbial discomfort of the unlucky victim between two fires.

Late in the afternoon the Yorks received orders to retire; to have remained longer would have meant annihilation. The troops retired in small sections, Holmes remaining with five men to the last to cover the retreat of the others.

Holmes was actually the last man to leave the trench. No sooner had he climbed over the parapet than he met the full brunt of the enemy’s fire, which by this time had become fiercer than ever. He had seen many of his comrades drop to earth, but his heart was undaunted. Suddenly, when he had proceeded a few yards from the trench, he felt his boot clutched and heard his name called.

“For God’s sake, save me, Fred!” said a feeble voice.

TAKES UP HIS FRIEND

Holmes paused. There at his feet, unable to move, was one of his chums, his knees shattered by shrapnel. Holmes had only a brief moment for reflection. To delay meant certain death. The problem was how best to help the poor fellow. To take him back into the trench was the quickest way out of the difficulty, and the easiest. Had he done this, the Germans would soon have discovered the wounded man, and in all probability would have put an end to him. Holmes quickly dismissed this plan and decided upon the nobler and more dangerous course. He determined to make a dash with the wounded man, trusting to Providence to reach his lines in safety.

He took the poor fellow in his stalwart arms, no light task, as his chum weighed twelve stone. Exerting his full strength, Holmes slung the man across his back. His only thought now was how to escape the bullets. All around him were the British dead and dying, heroes who had done their bit in the great battle.

A slight drizzling rain was falling; it made the ground slippery, so that when Holmes resumed his dangerous journey he had the utmost difficulty in avoiding treading on the men who were at his feet. With infinite care he succeeded in reaching more open ground.

After proceeding about one hundred yards he paused to take breath, for the burden on his back was a heavy load. At this stage his companion began to complain that Holmes’s equipment hurt him. Holmes laid the man down and removed the equipment. Knowing that he might have to make a long journey before he could reach assistance, he decided at the same time to drop his pack and rifle.

The next few hundred yards were the most difficult, for a hailstorm of bullets and shells raged around. Holmes could hear them whistling as he staggered painfully along. Had he not been possessed of a splendid constitution he must have given in, but he was determined at all costs not to give in. So he continued on and went doggedly forward, with clenched teeth and grim countenance.

On the way he came upon a wounded officer seated on the ground, his head between his hands. The officer looked up as he heard Holmes approach, and when he saw what the hero was doing suggested to him to leave the man with him and look after himself. This Holmes could not bring himself to do. Yard by yard he plodded steadily along. The poor fellow he was carrying began to lose heart. Holmes, although in terrible mental anguish himself, had to cheer him all the weary and dangerous way.

Slowly but surely he made progress. Half a mile, then a mile was passed. Holmes took another rest. Then on again, until he came to a church flying the Red Cross. The Germans were shelling this, so he picked up his chum once more and proceeded to another village, where at length he was able to deposit his charge in the careful keeping of the British Red Cross.

In all, Holmes carried his chum three miles, and every inch of the way was attended by danger from the enemy’s fire. It was certainly one of the most unselfish of the many courageous deeds which it is the purpose of this book to record.

In order to rejoin his battalion Holmes had now to make another dangerous journey across a fire-swept zone. His road lay past a hill, at the bottom of which was a British 18-pounder quick-firing gun. The horses were quietly grazing; the gunners and drivers lay around dead. Nearby was a trumpeter, a lad of seventeen, who was wounded. This lad shouted that the Germans were coming. Holmes looked round and saw that the enemy were surrounding the gun. Now, the true soldier has ever had a fondness for guns, and will die rather than let one fall into the enemy’s hands. It was in this spirit that Holmes now performed his second act of heroism.

Placing the trumpeter on one of the horses, he hitched the team to the gun, then thwacked them with a bayonet he had picked up, and swung into the saddle. The Germans were all around; some actually grasped at the reins. Holmes shouted to the horses, and they rushed madly forward. One after another he bayoneted the nearest Germans, while bullets whistled by his ears. The horse Holmes rode had its right ear shot off. For eight miles the ride went on until the rear of a British column was reached and all danger passed. The poor trumpeter had fallen off in the furious rush.

NOT DEAD BUT FIGHTING

Jim Gardener Quit the Trolley to Do His Bit and Did It Thoroughly

“When we went to war,” said James C. Gardener, “I figured it out this way: ‘I’m single and healthy and lots of other fellows are going over, and doggone me if I don’t go along and do my bit.’”

So he went down to the Marines’ recruiting office, in Baltimore, and enlisted. He was sent to Philadelphia and on June 6, 1917, he was one of 250 men put aboard the _Hancock_ which went to New York for orders and on June 13 sailed for France.

Gardener had been a motorman on the Baltimore trolley, and when some months after he went to France the War Department, which did not then publish addresses, reported “J. C. Gardener killed in action” the _Trolley Topics_ wrote an obituary of the motorman esteemed of his fellows; but as there was some uncertainty whether the J. C. Gardener killed was really the Baltimore boy, the obituary was withheld for more definite information. “Jimmie,” however, was mourned by his pals until there began to trickle through from one source and another rumors and reports that confirmed the doubt that the J. C. Gardener killed was really their “Jimmie.”

Then one day, the war over, there walked into a group of trolley-men at the Baltimore car barns a strapping fellow, six feet three, weighing 195, wearing a khaki uniform with three gold service chevrons and three gold wound stripes, a division citation cord for bravery on his left shoulder and the Croix de Guerre with palm on his breast, and the boys were doggone certain that Jimmie Gardener, motorman, was very much alive and able to give an account of himself. The _Trolley Topics_ lost no time in possessing itself of that account, and to that semi-monthly organ of the United Railways and Electric Company we are indebted for some of the details of the fighting experience of this trolley hero whom the great Foch kissed on either cheek.

The _Hancock_, says Gardener was his twice by torpedoes on the way over, which “messed up both ends without crippling her very much.” He first saw action in a position “down below” St. Mihiel. He is quoted:

“It was about 4 a.m. of March 31st that they opened up with artillery. Right ahead of us was a graveyard. The shells first fell on the far side of the graveyard. Then they fell in the graveyard and tore up graves and generally ruined it. Then the shells began to crawl closer to us.

“There were four of us on guard and we reported the coming of the Germans to the officers, and the men were routed out of the dugouts. One little fellow named Roach—we called him the boy scout—was so excited that he put his trousers on backward and got his shoes on the wrong feet.

“He started with a box of ammunition for a gun and ran into another fellow with another box. The collision knocked him down and he rolled clear down a hill to the very place the gun crew was waiting for the ammunition.

“Some of us had been joking and I remember a fellow named Clark who said he wondered which of us would live to take the story back home. A buddy of mine named Hanky said, ‘You fellows write your notes to your mothers and sweethearts and I’ll take ’em back to them.’ Poor Hanky was killed in that fight.

“The fight lasted two hours. The point where I was had thirteen men to defend it. We had two Stokes guns.

“There were five hundred men in the party that attacked this point, or, to be exact, 498, according to the officers. We cleaned up the whole business. Seven of our thirteen men were killed.”

THAT LITTLE FELLOW ROACH

Gardener’s next serious engagement was in the Belleau Wood battle.

“We moved up to the woods gradually. We met Algerian troops belonging to the French Army. These Algerians claimed that they had been kept at the front too long. They were never taken to rest-camps or had any relief. Many of them committed suicide. They said they were tired of fighting. We met some that were running wild, shooting in all directions, and had to take shelter to keep from being hit by stray shots.

“We met many French moving back, too. They said that the Germans were very numerous in the woods.

“That little fellow, Roach, crawled out in a field, dug into a haystack and climbed to the top. From there he could see that Germans were hiding behind bushes farther on.

“He came back and said he was going to raid ’em. The officers said he didn’t have any right to do this without orders. ‘Well,’ said Roach, ‘this ain’t a regular battle, you know. This is just a little private party of my own.’ He said he wanted a dozen men to volunteer to go with him, and the dozen volunteered at once. I never saw a time when volunteers were called for among the marines that any one wanted to stay back. Everybody wanted to go.

“Well, Roach got his men as quick as he could count ’em. ‘Come on, fellows,’ he said: ‘I’m going to have them Germans for supper.’

“We cleaned up fifty of ’em.

“‘Did Roach or any of his dozen men get the _Croix de Guerre_ for that?’ we asked.

“‘Oh, no,’ answered ‘Jimmie,’ ‘as I said, that wasn’t a regular affair. It was only Roach’s own party and there wasn’t nothing official about it.’ It was funny to see our bunch. Roach was a little fellow about five feet seven, and he chose as the second in command of his party a lanky artilleryman who was six feet eleven. The rest of us were just ordinary size, like me.’ (‘Jimmie’ Gardener is six feet three in his stocking feet and weighs 195 pounds!)

“That artilleryman had just drifted into our bunch somehow. They had put him out of the artillery because he had flat feet, and told him to go home. He said he didn’t want to go home. He wanted to fight, and he was going to stay with us whether he belonged with us or not, and he did.

“In a day or two we were put in trucks and hurried forward. We knew now that the Germans were pressing hard in their attempt to reach Paris. The French were falling back. We were run in those trucks directly between the retreating Frenchmen and the advancing Germans, and we got mixed up with the enemy so quickly that we simply tumbled out of the trucks oftentimes to engage in hand-to-hand fighting with the Huns.

“We went right at ’em, and this thing kept up for four days. We had nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing to smoke—and everybody longed for a smoke, even fellows who never smoked before they entered the service—and we had no sleep in all those four days and nights.

“A great deal of the time we were in close fighting. There was where the Germans failed. They were all right when they were twenty-five or thirty yards away and could use their rifles, but when it came to the bayonet they turned and fled.

“Sometimes we fought so close that it was impossible to use the bayonet. We had to knock ’em down with our fists first.

“Everybody said the odds were against us in this fighting. While we had some reserves there were only two regiments of us fighting and we were against three German divisions, including the Prussian Guards. But in four days we advanced one and a half miles.

“We suffered terrible losses. When we reached the town of Lucy, where we halted to be reorganized, there were only 150 men left in my company of 335 men.”

THE MAJOR SAID IT

“There was another company whose commander was killed and a major took charge. In the middle of the fighting he had lost so many men that a French officer advised him to retreat. ‘Retreat hell!’ he cried: ‘I’m going on as long as I and one man are left.’ It came near coming true, for when he reached Lucy he had just three men left with him out of an entire company.

“We saw some horrible things in Lucy, At one house we found an old French woman, She said she was with her three daughters—16, 18, and 20 years old—when the Germans came, and they had remained there without any protection from the Huns who took charge of the house. We asked where her daughters were and she said they were upstairs and she guessed they were asleep.

“Several of us went to learn the fate of the girls and we found all three stretched out with their throats cut from ear to ear, and their bodies horribly slashed. The Germans had deliberately butchered them when they were forced out of the town.

“When we told the old lady of the fate of her daughters she was stricken with heart trouble and died in a few minutes, but before she died she asked that we bury her with the three girls in the little grove near her home. We did it although we were under fire the whole time, and eight of our men were killed while burying those French women.

“The next day we pushed on and got through the woods. That was the hottest fighting of all. The Germans used more artillery, and when the day was over the number of men in my company had again been reduced to about 150. Some companies had only a dozen or fifteen men left.

“One of the fellows killed that day was a fellow from South Baltimore who used to be a chum of mine before we went to war. His name was Halle. He said to me that morning: ‘Jim, I feel I’m going to get knocked off to-day. Never tell my people that I was killed. Just tell them that I am somewhere in France.’ He was killed and I haven’t told his people and never will, but they found it out through the War Department.

“We next went to the Marne. There we fought in the river. It was tough luck for a fellow to be wounded there, for as he sank down he was drowned. It was often close fighting, bayonet to bayonet in midstream, and must have been a pretty sight for people to look at if there’d been any spectators there, but it wasn’t very pretty for those in the fight.

“After the Marne battle our company’s ranks had to be filled again. Once more we had been reduced to about 150.

“Next we went to Château-Thierry and fought there for nine days, which was followed by a three-day hike to Soissons, which we reached on July 18, 1918. The next day we went over the top at 3 a.m.

“Ten minutes later I went down with a wound that crippled my ankle. I was gassed, too, and suffered shock. When I came to my senses in a hospital I had two other wounds that I didn’t know anything about. They told me that as the ambulance was carrying me to the rear it was struck by a shell which killed some of the other wounded men and presented me with a couple more wounds for good measure.

“Outside of having been in a bunch of hospitals in France and America that’s about all I know about the war,” concluded “Jimmie” Gardener.

“You haven’t told why you got the Croix de Guerre and the palm branch,” we suggested.

“Oh,” said “Jimmie.” “I was awarded the Croix with the six other fellows for cleaning up that bunch of 498 Germans in the quiet sector I told you about. The affair they gave me the palm for was rescuing a lieutenant who was wounded in the Belleau Wood fighting.

“I don’t know who the lieutenant was, but he was a newspaper man who had entered the fighting forces and he was out in advance of the line when he was wounded. Several of us volunteered to go out and bring him in, but we did not know exactly where he was. It was during the night and very dark. Along about four o’clock, as I was crawling along, I fell plumb into a shell-hole, and there he was with his leg shot off.”

“SORT OF SWIMMING-LIKE”

“I put my coat around him and bandaged his leg up as well as I could. Then he got his arms around my neck and I held on to him with one hand and dragged myself, sort of swimming-like, along the ground with the other.

“I had only an hour and a half before daybreak when the Germans would be able to see us, and in that time I managed to make about twenty yards to another shell-hole. We lay in that all day. The lieutenant suffered a great deal. I gave him what water I had in my canteen.

“When night came on we started again and before morning had made the rest of the distance—about sixty yards—to our trenches. The lieutenant got well. They say he is a great writer of books and things. He belongs in New York State somewhere.”

“Were you kissed when the Croix was presented to you?” we asked.

“Yes, General Foch pinned the badge on our coats and then kissed us on both cheeks. We were all smiling when the kissing was going on.”

WHEN THE LIGHT FAILED

One Soldier Tells What It Is Like to Have Eyes Shot Out

You may not think this a story of heroism; but if it does not fall into that class we do not know where to place it. There is no attacking a plane in mid-air and sending it crashing to earth; no leaping into trench and gathering a score or so of prisoners with the tilt of a bayonet; no running to stand on a parapet and hurl hand grenades against a rain of bullets; nothing to set your blood into a gallop to grip you and make you take off your hat to the man about whom Private Jesse A. Whaley, Co. K, 310th Inf., A. E. F., is writing. And this is what Whaley wrote as it appeared in the New York _Sunday Times_:

“It is dark, the ground is damp and cold. There are men stirring about cleaning their rifles and there is a queer look on their faces. One private is sitting huddled in the trench; he is cold, he is hungry with that gnawing feeling in his stomach which comes from lack of food for many hours. He moves restlessly, thousands of things pass through his mind; home, loved ones. Suddenly a whistle sounds at our right and there is a rushing of men. There is but a second’s wait; it is the signal for the fight. It is now midnight, the men move to and fro, they disappear. When we come upon them again they are all lined up waiting for the barrage to start just outside of the wood. Does it seem possible that these men are the same who just a few minutes ago were sitting in the trench back in the wood? The barrage starts and the scene is lit with the strangest light our eyes ever saw. There is a roar in our cars, and suddenly all is dark with a blackness the eye cannot pierce. A flare breaks in the sky, lighting the strange scene which lies before us. To our right lies a valley in which are many more men. We see flashes of rifles, and now and again a flare shoots up, disclosing a clump of bushes which means almost certain death to those who approach it.”

A DASH STRAIGHT AHEAD

“The line moves steadily forward and a man from the back of the line rushes forward and breaks through with his rifle at the charge. It is the private who sat huddled in the trench. He makes a dash for the bushes, followed by other men. Men drop all along the line, but the clump of bushes is reached, and the men who made it are hidden from our view. Between us and the bushes men are lying where they fell, never to be walking mortals again.

“Suddenly the roar grows louder, and we can hardly hear each other shout, although we are standing side by side. The ground trembles and great holes are dug up by the flying shells. We hear the whine of the deadly fragments and the whiz of machine-gun bullets as they pass us on all sides. It seems death to move, but we go forward so we can see what is happening on the other side of the bushes. As we go we stumble over the bodies of men lying where they fell, some partly blown to pieces. At last we come upon the men again, and the lines are very thin. The private we have been following is still untouched, but something has happened to his rifle and he is down on one knee working fast and furiously until he has fixed it and loaded it. Just as he fixes it we notice another man less than a hundred feet away, and by the light of a flare we see that his uniform is not like that of our private. He is a German, and holds in his hands something that looks strangely like a small soup can with a stick attached to it. It is a deadly hand grenade. Before the American can dodge he throws it, the American starts forward to make another dash, and then the grenade explodes with a roar which shakes the earth, and the American falls, hit in the head. Slowly he rises to his feet in a dazed way and reaches for his rifle. He gropes for it without seeming to realize that it has been blown far out of his reach. He stands up straight and wipes his face, which is running with blood; he pushes his hair back, then takes a step to the left and falls over the body of a dead comrade, killed perhaps by the same grenade and at the same instant.