Part 8
He was cited for extraordinary heroism in action between the Argonne and the Meuse. With great coolness and bravery under machine-gun and shell fire, he maintained liaison between his battalion and company and assisted in reorganizing his platoon after the platoon commander was wounded.]
“There were Freddy Schroeder and Leo Smith on an ‘island platform’ of the road, with seemingly nothing left to do but to abandon their ambulances and crawl to safety the best they could. They didn’t do anything of the kind. Right out in the open they tugged at every sizable chunk of débris in sight and built a sort of bridge across the forward shell hole and went onward and brought welcome food and water to the marooned detachment. And in their own good time they came back over their ‘bridge’ again, jumped out and built another ‘bridge’ of the same kind over the second shell hole, and about dusk, sailed victoriously to their Red Cross quarters unharmed.
“Finally there was another day that must be told of. It was the day at St. Souplet when two of the stricken residents of the little town crawled back to our lines and told the Mayor of Busigny (which had just been captured from the Huns) that many civilians, dozens of whom were wounded, were hiding in the cellars of St. Souplet. None of them dared show himself. The German patrols were still poking about the town and their machine guns were sweeping the village streets. Shells were dropping and death threatened the hidden ones in the cellars in other ways, especially in the form of gassing, the poisonous gas naturally tending to work downward to the cellars and other subterranean passages where the men, women, and children of St. Souplet lay hidden.
RESCUES A VILLAGE
“Somebody would have to do something about it. Who was always doing something or other about something? Battling Bobo and his Red Cross band!
“To dash into the streets of St. Souplet would not help much because the dash would end in a patter of lead and a bouquet of whiz-bangs that would leave nothing but a shell hole where ambulances an instant before had been. Nevertheless young Captain Bobo and his men ‘had’ to get there. The Captain called together his Red Cross band, which that day numbered only thirty-five huskies, the others being absent on other work or ill. Captain Bobo explained the situation and asked the thirty-five how many of them would care to volunteer to go into St. Souplet with him—to go up to our front line trenches in the broad light of day and beyond, on into the buildings of a town still thoroughly held by the Germans. Pause a moment, reader, and guess how many of the thirty-five Red Crossers volunteered.... Reader, you’re a wonder: you guessed the exact number the very first time!
“And so the thirty-five started forward with Captain Bobo, scooting along in their ambulances parallel to the fighting lines for a little distance and then making a dash across lots to a grove which stood at an advanced spot where, up to that time, no American soldier had set his foot. And while an amazed American Army looked on, the little band made the woods and disappeared among the trees while hell cracked all around them.
“Providence and Steve Bobo were with them. In the heart of the little clump of trees they found an old road which ran through a ravine to the nearest back alleys of St. Souplet. When they had come to a place where the old road climbed out of the ravine preparatory to entering the town, Captain Bobo jumped off the leading ambulance, gave his followers the high sign, and again gathered them about him for final directions. And Bobo and his band left their ambulances in the protecting ravine and began to crawl on their bellies across the last of the fields and into the town.
“They followed by preference the backdoor route when they had wormed across the last field and straightened up to find themselves in St. Souplet. Even so it was necessary at times to make a dash for it across open streets, a dash that must be completed before the astonished German gentry at far ends of the streets could begin to pepper the thoroughfare with the machine gun bullets. Always, however, Battling Bobo and his band beat the bullets to it.
“In the black cellars of the village they rooted around. Old women lay huddled in the underground gloom; one of them, a very old lady, had been shot through both thighs three days before and, quite unattended, lay cowering in her cellar until Captain Bobo dragged her forth and carried her back to where his ambulances lay hidden. There were old men, little children, young girls for whom the horror of their nights of hiding in the Boche infested village had a terror greater even than gas and the shriek of shells. One by one Bobo and his men carried the sufferers into back yards, through the winding alleys, back of protecting buildings, and so to the wooded ravine, where the ambulances were filled with the stricken villagers of St. Souplet and the bundles of scant belongings which they hugged to their trembling bosoms. Then the dash back through the grove and across the sunlit No Man’s Land to final safety—not final for the Red Cross band, for as soon as they had carried their first load of refugees behind the American lines they turned around and did it all over again, and again, and again. For four hours at one stretch they worked like beavers to save the villagers of St. Souplet, then organized a second series of trips and put in eight hours more darting to and from the town or squirming into its alleys and cellars. And Battling Bobo and his band got the villagers finally to safety without the loss of a Red Cross man, despite the fact that the ‘Jerries’ were systematically shelling the village from the first moment the Red Cross rescuers entered it until the last villager had been saved.”
There were forty-seven Red Cross men in Bobo’s band. To this day the Captain is trying to find out why only twenty of them were cited for exceptional heroism.
“EH! MON, ’TWAS GRAND!”
A Braw Hieland Laddie’s Impressions of What Happened When “We Were Over the Top Like a Lot of Dogs Let Loose”
The powerful British thrust along the Somme will take its place in history as one of the striking instances of sheer courage fighting against frightful odds and winning out. In that “push” there were hundreds of thrilling individual adventures, but it is impossible to give each man his due, so splendid was the concerted action. But a representative of the London _Telegraph_ talked in a hospital with a Scotsman wounded at Pozieres, and this excerpt from the published article throws an illuminating gleam over the whole battle front, and one feels that Scotty was but the mouthpiece burring out the spirit of his fellows as they plunged forward:
“Eh, mon, it was hell, but it was grand. We’ve got a move on at last, and are paying the Huns out. For over a week our guns have been letting rip at them. Talk about the German guns in the early days of the war, they are not in it now. I was in the retreat from Mons, so I reckon I’ve seen some of the fighting.
“I got my packet Friday night,” he added, referring to his wounds. “We were pushed up to our front line trenches early Friday morning. Long before daybreak the guns were at it worse than ever. The noise fair drove some fellows daft, but the worst of all was waiting in the trenches for the order to charge. When that came we were over the top like a lot of dogs let loose. The ground was churned up for miles, and the front of the German trenches simply smashed to bits. We got there under cover of smoke, and fairly rolled in. I shall never forget the sight. The Germans were lying heaped up in all directions, and those who were alive showed no fight, but appeared to have gone ‘clean potty.’
“Further on we got into the supports, which had received a terrific smashing about, and it was there we had the scrap. At the last moment it seemed the Germans had rushed a crowd of chaps in, and they had hidden themselves in shell holes and were taking pot-shots at us. We rushed them with the bayonet and bombs, and some of them put up a good fight. I had one fellow in front of me, and felt myself a ‘goner,’ for I tumbled over some wire, when one of our chaps got his bayonet into him. The next second a German ‘outed’ my chum. ‘Never fear, Jock,’ he said, ‘you did the same trick for me once.’ That chap’s left a wife and six bairns away up north,” added the Scot.
Asked how he received his wounds, the Scot became somewhat bashful. “Oh, one of the Huns got in at me,” he replied. Another wounded hero, however, took up the narrative. “He fair tumbled into a hole where there was half a dozen of ’em hiding,” said the second man. “Jock comes of a fighting race, and he gave the Huns a bit for hiding.”
ONE SURVIVED
An Episode of the Gallipoli Campaign Typical of the Fighting
This account of a desperate engagement is brief, but it tells a wondrous story. It appeared in the London _Times_:
The first capture of a Turkish trench and its retention deserve special notice because this brilliant exploit fired the whole of Anzac, after fifteen weeks of monotonous trench fighting, for the great aggressive operations of August and September. The work was known as Northern Turkish Despair Trench, or Tasman Post, and it was stormed under severe fire on July 31, by a composite company of the 11th Battalion (West Australia) of General E. G. Sinclair-MacLagan’s Third Brigade, under Captain R. L. Leane. After two days a heavy counter-attack was launched by a battalion of Turks, who regained a section of the work, but were again driven out. The episode cost Anzac 300 casualties, but showed what could be done. Near the close of the series of attacks which this success began was another charge, the simple truth of which was worth accomplishing, even at the cost. It was the charge of the First and Third Light Horse Brigades, differing from the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava only in that it was made by horsemen who had volunteered to fight on foot, and that it succeeded in one object—that of holding large bodies of Turks who would otherwise have been used against the new British landing at Suvla Bay.
The Eighth and Tenth Regiments of the Third Brigade went out from Walker’s Ridge. It was a charge into death from the first moment, and before the men of the second line leaped from their trenches they shook hands, knowing that they could not survive. They were met by a fusillade that became a continuous roaring tempest of machine gun and rifle fire, and out of the 300 men in the first line only one returned. The Second Regiment of the First Brigade was sent out from Quinn’s Post, charging into so impossible a fire that the first line had to be left to its fate, and the second, third, and fourth lines held in the trenches. The First Regiment of the First Brigade charged up the slopes of Dead Man’s Ridge and found a similar fate. It was all over within ten minutes—in the case of the charge from Quinn’s Post within a few seconds. “The Turkish machine guns drew a line across that place which none could pass,” wrote Captain C. E. W. Bean, official observer with the Australian Division, “and the one man who went out and returned unwounded put his escape down to the fact that he noticed the point on our sandbags on which the machine gun bullets were hitting, and jumped clear over the stream of lead. The guns were sweeping low, and a man who was hit once by them was often hit again half a dozen times as he fell through the stream which caught him. The whole of the first line was either killed or wounded within a few seconds of their leap from our trenches.” But though the charges shattered four regiments of as good fighting men as the Empire possessed, they created an imperishable impression.
Approximately 23,709,000 males in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 45, inclusive, registered under the terms of the Selective Draft Law.
Returns on casualties in the American Expeditionary Force up to November 18, 1917, include deaths from disease as well as battle casualties, slightly as well as severely wounded. Deaths from battle alone would be about 36,000. Compared with the reported British battle deaths of 659,000 for the period of the war, our losses were astonishingly light.
TANK-MAN TALKS
He Found the Little Fellows to His Taste But Didn’t Care for Heavies
The general impression of the war tank is that of a huge juggernaut going, solemn and irresistible, over any sort of obstacle; but there seem to have been tank crews who did not regard the lumbering monsters worshipfully. They pinned their faith and devotion to the lighter and nimbler type of machine that could jaunt along at eight miles an hour and revolve on its own axis. The _Scientific American_ had a special correspondent in France who reports somewhat jerkily the talk of an American tank-man who had a working acquaintance with the small, and to him decidedly preferable, type of fighter. The tank-man is quoted:
“Yes, you read a lot in newspapers about tanks. But no American tanks saw any action in France. There were three battalions of American tank troops that saw action; one with heavy tanks, with the British, and two, with light tanks, operating in the Argonne and the St. Mihiel actions. Some troops, too, if I do say it who shouldn’t! No, you’ll have to get some one else to talk about the heavy tanks; don’t know anything about them and don’t want to. Light tanks for me, every time. Yes, I’ll tell you about them if you are interested.
“We used Renault tanks—light ones. Whiffet tanks some people call them. Weigh about seven tons and have two men for a crew. Fast? Too fast; faster than there’s any use of them to be, really. That was one of our troubles, running away from our infantry. No sense in having tanks that can get out of touch with the men they are supposed to precede and blaze a trail for! Those little Renaults can go eight miles an hour over good ground, and infantry is lucky if it goes two!
“Two men, one of them is the engineer and the other the pilot. Some of the tanks have machine guns and some one-pounders; only one gun to a tank you know—those little fellows aren’t battleships. We started in with 216 tanks. They cost about $10,000 each. Motor not unlike a good automobile motor; four-cylinder, about 40 horsepower. Indeed the tank has a lot of automobile mechanism about it. Those Renaults have four speeds forward and reverse.
GRENADES JUST EGGS
“You spin around in your own length. It’s astonishing how fast those little tanks can turn when they have to. Fast enough to cut a man in two if he’s in the way. Yes, it happened more than once. Some Boches had an idea they could do something to a Renault with a hand grenade and tried it at close quarters. Might just as well have thrown eggs at us, unless some splinters got in the slits. And if they were close enough and we whirled her round they were out of luck sure—broken legs, you know, or mashed ribs.
“No, the Boche anti-tank gun never hurt us to amount to anything. Ever see one? It weighs about 50 pounds and shoots a whale of a bullet, but unless it strikes sharp at right angles it doesn’t go through. Pretty hard steel, you know, that tank armor. What did stop us, when we were stopped, was the 77. Even that took a direct hit. A 77 could go off right beside us and we’d hardly know it. But if it made a direct hit—well, you don’t expect to run a war without any casualties, of course. I recall one case where a 77 made a hit and set off all the ammunition in the tank. The tank was scrap steel and the men—well, we found a hand, and a shoe. Just literally blown to nothing.
“Of course there are places a tank can’t go. You read a lot about how a tank loves mud. Don’t you believe it. A tank can slither around in mud just like an automobile. Of course it can go, but it can’t climb at the same angle on mud as on dry ground and somehow we always did fight in the mud. Mud didn’t stop us of course, but it made it more difficult. On dry ground we can climb 45 degrees, and 51 degrees in reverse.
“You hear a lot about the way a tank can crawl over trenches. But that’s the big heavy tank. The little fellow can’t run over a trench the way it can down and up a shell crater. The Renault is tail heavy, you see. It gets its nose across a trench all right, but if the trench is a little too wide the heavy tail drops back into it. Then you have to get out and dig or get another tank to come and pull you out. That’s why two tanks together are worth four separately. They can jam themselves up and still get along by doing the brother act with chains. Once that I know of a tank got stuck and the second tank couldn’t pull it out. So the officer outside signals another tank and it comes up—all this under fire, mind—and he hooks that on, too, and the two of them pull the helpless one up and over. He got the D. S. C. for it, that officer.
“It’s not nice when you’re stalled, you know. As long as you can move around, the 77 has a hard time getting you. But if you get stuck somewhere it doesn’t take a Boche gunner so very long to get your range. That’s why we were so anxious to have self-starters put on the American tanks, when we thought we were going to have American tanks. If there had been any self-starters on our Renaults we’d probably be shy about twenty casualties. Engine stalls, Boche gets busy, chap inside struggles with a crank, takes time, 77 lands, signal back for a reserve tank to come on into action. No, they didn’t put the self-starters on. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know.
TOO MUCH INGENUITY
“Sure, the American tanks were good tanks. We never used them in action that I know of. Those I saw got to France, or got where they might have been used, after the Armistice. But they were sure American all over—too much American, if you know what I mean. It’s a national failing, I guess, this business of being ingenious. There was so much ingenuity about those tanks there wasn’t always room for the crew. For instance, machine gun belts. When you use them, they are rolled up and in a carrier. Some wise tank builder decided all the ammunition in a machine gun tank ought to be in carriers, rolled up ready for use. When he got through, there wasn’t any room inside for the crew! No sense to it, of course; the same amount of ammunition stores flat, and leaves plenty of room, and it only takes a few seconds to roll up a belt and put it in a carrier.
“Then there was the compass. Some one must have read that British tanks carried compasses. So they did, until the tank crew could throw it away. So our American tanks came over with the handsomest compasses inside you ever saw; regular ship affairs, gimbals and all! Now, of course, that’s all foolishness. In the first place there wasn’t room for the compass and the crew. In the second place, when you start the engine, the compass does a fox trot, and keeps on whirling; it’s no good as a compass. And if it was, there wouldn’t be any sense in it; there’s a map stuck up right under your nose and that’s all you need, not to mention a few officers with flags telling you where to go, if they are not sitting on top going with you.
“Then there was the speedometer. Why any one should imagine a tank crew needed a speedometer I don’t know. But there it was, ready to tell us just how fast we were going. Maybe they thought, down in Washington, we were going to establish a tank speed record or something.
“And the hook—I mustn’t forget the hook. It’s so typically American—a device born of our national tendency to economise time. To put a hook in at the top of the tank meant at least two hours’ work. In 100 tanks that was 200 hours or 24 working days, slowing up production. The idea of the hook was that it would be so convenient when a crane had to lift the tank. Now the average tank gets lifted by a crane just four or six times; on a car at the factory, off the car, on the ship, off the ship, and maybe on and off a car again. So to save the six or twelve minutes it would take a crew to slip a chain around the tanks, they put a hook at the top, because it was efficient!
“Oh, well, I oughtn’t to grouch. We never used the tanks. And no one that I know minds much. Those Renault tanks were little dandies. You have no idea how easily they run. You can crawl over a telegraph pole and hardly feel it, so well worked out has been the spring suspension, the relation of rollers, chariots and treads. And they didn’t go in for any fancy touches, the Renaults. No armor for the guns nor fancy locks on the door to keep some one from crawling up and throwing a grenade inside, nor deflection armor at odd angles which never did anything but stop bullets and make splinters that otherwise would never have endangered any one’s eyes.
SNIFFS AT HUN TANKS
“German tanks? Punk. Too slow, mechanism too exposed, too many slits. Oh, very well made, but poor design. Nor do I think very much of German tank men.
“We had about 44 per cent. casualties, and that covers 22 actions. Ten per cent. of the casualties were deaths. But I don’t recall many men dying without doing something first.
“I recall that there was one tank got stuck in a trench and nothing handy to rescue it. Captured, of course. Well, we captured it back two days later. Every round of ammunition was fired. Every pistol cartridge had been fired. And both men had been wounded long before they were killed; there was plain evidence of it in blood where no blood would be if they had just been snuffed out right at first. They must have put up a beautiful scrap. Americans don’t like to surrender, somehow.”
THE GARIBALDI CODE
“To Be Ready Ever to Fight for the Cause They Think is Right”
Italy at war without a Garibaldi somewhere in the fighting columns is unthinkable. Even before the days of the famous Liberator, Giuseppe himself, there were Garibaldi who had arms and hearts ready to strike for freedom; but since the days when the great patriot and lover of liberty made romance as well as history out of his revolutionary spirit, arms and the defense of freedom are tenets of religion with the Garibaldi. With the exception of the Russian-Japanese War, it is said there has been no conflict of powers or revolutionary struggle without its Garibaldi bearing gun or sword. It goes _sans dire_, then, that the outbreak of war which arrayed western democracy against the encroachments of German autocracy was like a clarion call to the blood of the Garibaldi. They did not wait for Italy to speak—France was calling and that sufficed.