Part 3

Like thousands in that hellish war, he had made the supreme sacrifice, had unflinchingly laid down his life to save others. He was a true American soldier. I hope they still keep flowers on his grave.

I could see the very mound there on the end as we passed, for already a faint, cold brightness was breaking through the mist. On we marched, up and off the road, through the labyrinth of grave-like trenches, till at last we reached the broad maze of our most advance wire. New paths or openings had just been cut and men of the Battalion Scout Platoon were waiting to guide us through.

* * * * *

It was still impossible to see more than twenty-five or thirty yards through the fog, so with compass in hand I led the column through no-man’s land like a skipper would pilot a ship, among shell holes, through small gulleys, clumps of scrubby brush and patches of dead weeds, and as we neared and entered enemy wire, past ghastly, stinking objects that reminded us most keenly of the attempts our predecessors had made to do what we had to do. I also reflected, when I saw the head drop off of one as a man jarred the wire it hung over, that my own carcass or the carcasses of a king or even a queen, or of some wealthy notable, would look no better if it had been lying or hanging out in the weather for about two months with these horrible objects that had once been fine young American soldiers. (During the time we occupied the sector patrols had brought in and we had buried a number of these bodies.)

There was almost a mile of no-man’s land at the point where we had crossed it, for we traveled on the lowest ground because the mist was denser there. But at last we had come to the acres of wire before the enemy outpost position called Belle Aire Farm, in French “Ferme de Belle Aire.” This was several hundred yards in advance of Bois Frehaut, the main position, which occupied higher and rising ground. Part of the battalion, led by Captain Green of “H” Company, which was to lead on the right, moved around to the east to take their places ready for the attack. The rest cut through the Belle Aire wire, one detachment cutting in on the flank to _bayonet_ machine gunners, for we worked quietly at this stage, and we worked fast, taking advantage of the now rapidly thinning mist. This whole thing had been planned by us to outguess the enemy and in so far as possible to avoid casualties, for dead and wounded men can not take and hold positions such as that.

It was at this point that I saw two of my men knocked over by machine gun fire, the first to fall in this affair, and as we hugged the ground waiting for our flanking party to reward those machine gunners, I could have dictated quite a story, had there been any one to take it down, on the subject of Militarism and War in general. I wondered how many wars there’d be and how long they’d last if the people who profit by them or hope to profit by them had to be up there with us. I was in a nasty mood, as I usually was, when I thought of most any phase of the war except of the glorious men who personally faced the _real_ danger and who did the actual fighting. I doubt whether that story, as I would have dictated it then, would be very popular with people who didn’t honestly and actually suffer in or because of the war, or with those who think they believe in militarism and war.

We were not delayed long. Then with Belle Aire Farm behind us, we rapidly deployed and took up our formation in platoon and half platoon columns facing and about one hundred yards from the wire of the main position. The entire command took cover in shell holes, in depressions, behind mounds or clusters of dead weeds ready to spring forward in force at the proper moment. I had time to make sure that all was in readiness as planned and get back to the center. The mist had lifted and enemy machine gunners near the edge of the wood, especially those with nests in trees, were blazing away recklessly.

Promptly at six fifty-five (all watches had been synchronized) our big guns, miles behind us, almost simultaneously began to bark and boom. Then came the shells, a low moaning roar at first, the sound rising in pitch something like a slowly operated steam siren whistle, then increasing in volume and shrillness till it seemed like a mighty tornado coming right at us. The noise was so great and so sudden that it was almost unbearable. Then they began to explode all along, most of them just in front of us. Words are utterly inadequate to describe this awful cataclysm as it felt and seemed to us.

We had figured that the enemy would drop his barrage first in front of Belle Aire Farm. That’s why we had gotten through that position so hastily and it was fortunate that we advanced as far as we did even at the risk of being too close to our own barrage, for almost immediately the dirt and rocks began to fly behind us--not in front of the Belle Aire wire, but right on the position itself. Some one had been telephoning. We were too close to our own barrage, but I knew it would advance in a few minutes, and the enemy barrage was entirely too close behind us. Talk about being between two fires. A curtain of fire from our own artillery just ahead of us and a wall of the most intense and concentrated fire from batteries guarding Metz falling immediately in our rear, the shells passing each other not far above our heads. A few from each side fell short.

To be killed or rendered unconscious is easy, but to have to live through a situation like that right out in the open is beyond all power to describe. Our chances for survival and success hung in the balance, the suspense was maddening. The enemy barrage would soon be lowered in front of the main wire--right where we were. It might be lowered any second. I decided that if he lowered it we would rush into our own barrage rather than stay where we were, for as many of us as possible must get through that wire.

I kept looking at my watch, ready to give the signal that would be relayed along our line. It was six fifty-eight, then finally six fifty-eight and a half; at last it got to be six fifty-nine. If that enemy barrage lowered then, our casualties would be enormous and our chances for success almost gone. It was bad enough as it was. That was the longest minute I ever spent.

Promptly at seven, as scheduled, our barrage jumped and in a few seconds practically all of our shells were falling beyond the wire. This was our time to get through and quickly, if ever. All along the front our boys went for those entanglements. Talk about wire entanglements. They had recently been repaired and strengthened. Most of the wire was the heavy new German type, with barbs an inch and a half long and less than an inch apart. It required heavy two-handed cutters with handles two and a half feet long to cut it. Small cutters were useless for cutting here. The wide belts were not only criss-crossed back and forth in all directions on stakes and on chevaux-de-frise, but woven in every conceivable way as high as a man’s head back among the trees.

There were pits and trenches with wire thrown in loose and in coils covered with light limbs and leaves for men to fall into. We had no tanks. They set off mines, many of which blew holes sixty to seventy feet in diameter. Grenades and bombs were suspended from limbs and in the brush in such a way that stepping on or touching a certain stick or wire would explode them. Machine guns were placed at varying distances back in the wood, some on little camouflaged platforms in trees, some in trenches and some in cement “pill boxes” located so as to sweep and enfilade every section of the wire.

High ranking officers from the rear as well as low ranking ones who swarmed up to visit the place after the armistice were amazed at the strength of the position, and when they saw it at close range the predominant question was, “How did they ever get through?” And they only saw it from the outside edge, for no one was allowed into the wood. It was saturated with gas for days.

The entire Bois Frehaut, which means Frehaut Woods, was wired every few hundred yards in front of trench systems and enfilading machine guns. There were deep rocky ravines, steep hills, large patches of heavy undergrowth filled with wire, traps, mines and pitfalls of every description, also magnificent dugouts and a most complete system of ’phone and signal lines.

The platoons and half platoons went through in single file, strong men in front taking turns at cutting wire and those behind bending back or securing the loose ends as well as possible with the small cutters. There was from a hundred and fifty to two hundred yards interval between detachments. It was impossible for them to see each other after entering the wood, so that until their objectives were reached each outfit to all intents and purposes was an independent command.

Practically every one had penetrated the first or outer entanglements when the enemy laid his barrage right on us. The first men through were going after the machine guns and snipers that were bothering them most, crawling around behind or flanking them, using hand grenades and bayonets, firing with automatic rifles and taking pot shots at those in trees. Being through the first system of wire we could scatter somewhat and take advantage of shell holes, trenches, even hollows.

But how any one lived under that fire is still a mystery to me. Enemy artillery had gotten word by telephone or airplane, probably both, that we were into the wood, and had decided to end us right there. Stones, dirt, shrapnel, limbs and whole trees filled the air. The noise and concussion alone were enough to kill one. Talk about shell shock. The earth swayed and shook and fairly bounced with the awful impact. Flashes of fire, the metallic crack of high explosives, the awful explosions that dug holes fifteen and twenty feet in diameter, the utter and complete pandemonium and the stench of hell, your friends blown to bits, the pieces dropping near--even striking you. If anything can be more terrifying, more nerve-breaking in this world than a concentrated fire from heavies such as that, I am unable to conceive of it. It’s many times worse than the worst thing one can imagine. It can’t be described because there is nothing you have experienced, unless the thing itself, with which to compare it.

There were many guns defending Metz and this was a concentration of heavy caliber fire--we were the only ones advancing just then. After what seemed a lifetime he lowered it still more to the point where our barrage was dropping ahead of us, then it slowly crept back over us to the Belle Aire wire. Several times it passed over us, rather on us, in this combing process, before we reached our goal. Other batteries were shelling our back areas and still others were shelling us promiscuously.

But the boys kept on, taking advantage of any available cover at times, but resuming, silencing machine guns that still were active, bombing dugouts and bayoneting or shooting all the enemy that had lingered too long. Only by special effort did I secure three live Huns.

By nine thirty-five all platoons assigned to the first line, but two, were represented on the line of our objectives. As prearranged this word reached me through runners. The two outfits had been delayed by machine gun nests, but they soon came up. By ten o’clock liaison was fully established, combat groups had been located and were digging in, machine guns and trench mortars were being placed, and in other ways we were getting ready to withstand counter attacks as well as artillery fire, which, if we held, soon would include more gas. I had sent two platoons of the support company to help protect our right flank, which was the eastern edge of the wood.

So I wrote a message, put it into the small aluminum shell on the leg of a pigeon. The man released him and we watched him rise and circle, then head southward with word for the Commanding General fifteen miles back at Division Headquarters in Marbache that Bois Frehaut was ours--all objectives reached, were holding and would continue to hold.

Then I took my staff and Artillery Liaison officers and my runners and went back to a prearranged locality in the edge of the wood and established my permanent headquarters or P. C. in an open shell hole. A few men set to work with spades and picks to shape it up and give it a little level floor space.

A Bosch airplane appeared over the edge of the wood flying low and saw us. He circled a few times and dropped out some signals. In just four minutes by my watch we heard two big shells, one just behind the other, coming right at us. After a few months’ experience you get so you can tell from the sound just about where a shell is going to hit. One of these struck twenty-five yards beyond us, the other almost the same distance to our left. In less than a minute we heard two more coming the same route. One struck twenty yards short, the other not quite so short, but a little to the right. They had the range. The guns were five and a half or six miles away.

After the sixth shot had just missed I ordered everybody out of the hole. They occupied others a short distance away. The airplane, so low that the men were shooting at it with their rifles, noted this scattering, but he evidently noted, too, that I had remained, so the firing continued. I felt a sort of pride about sticking to my headquarters. The thirty-sixth shell fired at it struck right near the edge and covered me up. Oh, yes, I was given energetic assistance in getting out. We cleaned out the hole and resumed business. Now that the airplane had signaled “a hit” and gone, it was as safe as any other place in that locality.

People said it seemed miraculous that with so many big shells fired at it and hitting on all sides in such a small area, each one had failed to hit directly in that big hole. But I was not conceited enough to think that the Huns were firing shells that curved by magic for my special benefit. I had estimated during the “Death March” just before dawn that I had one chance in three of coming through that operation alive and one in twelve of escaping serious wounds or gassing. I believed in God all right, but I did not think then and do not now believe that He was down there taking an active part in that horrible orgy of suffering and destruction. I felt that if anything other than vain humanity was fighting on or with either side it must be his Satanic Majesty. I was not trying to palm off on God the things that be Caesar’s. However--well, that calls for another lecture. But don’t any of you get an idea that I’m trying to belittle true religion. I think it’s the greatest thing by far in the world or accessible to the world today.

This little digression about something besides the battle, I suppose, is the result of a habit I got into in the front lines of thinking when things were unusually dangerous and there was nothing to do but let it work for the time being, of something pleasant and wholly unassociated with the nasty business in hand.

I remember how Lieutenant Stuart, my Battalion Scout Officer (he was half Indian) when we had finished discussing the details of a patrolling expedition he was going to lead in a few minutes--and it took a lot of nerve to prowl around no-man’s land in the dead of night--would pause, then with a broad smile and chuckling, a little, would tell me some trifling story, usually about something that occurred when he was a small child away back in Arizona. Then, still grinning and chuckling, he’d get up and say: “Well, Major, it’s time to pull out. The boys are waiting. See you as soon as I get back.” I never felt right sure he’d come back.

My Adjutant, too, when we’d be waiting for some terrible thing to happen during the night, expecting an assault, shells dropping promiscuously and perhaps a bombing plane buzzing overhead, used to tell some of the most outlandish stories of his experiences while a regular in Hawaii or the Philippines or some place. I suppose all men exposed to real danger had some way of “kidding” themselves along under most any conditions. If they didn’t have they were in a bad way.

Soon after I was resurrected from the shell hole a runner from the right front company (by the way, he was sighted in Division orders and should have had a medal for the way he got to me) stumbled in exhausted, with a note from Green (who, under machine gun fire, had climbed a tree to get a better view) advising me that the enemy was preparing in force to rush our right flank. Two platoons, one from the support, the other from the Reserve Company, and my two remaining reserve machine guns had barely time to reach the spot to which they were ordered when the assault started. By flanking our would-be flankers as they came over a ridge, they saved the day. Several attacks against our front failed to succeed because of well directed fire.

And still the bombardment continued without a pause. It seemed to me that almost all the big guns that side of Metz were firing on Bois Frehaut and the old no-man’s land just behind it. And I learned afterward that they were, for we were the only ones that had taken and were holding any special territory. They had been expecting a drive on Metz for some time and their artillery especially was well prepared. Shrapnel and high explosive contact shells of all sizes fell on all parts of the area. They knew more about the armistice than we did and his artillery seemed to want to do all the damage it could while the war lasted. Just before dark on the tenth he began throwing over great quantities of gas and continued to mix it in all night long. They seemed determined to run us out or exterminate us.

For twenty-eight long hours we advanced and _held_ under a bombardment that in my opinion had not been surpassed if equalled on a similar area held by American troops during a similar length of time. The enemy had allowed the Allies some time before to get as close to Metz as he intended they should get--that was the outside wire of Bois Frehaut. We were not attacking in great force after hours of artillery preparation with almost innumerable big guns supporting us, though what artillery was in action behind us did excellent work. Neither was the enemy fighting a rear guard action while his main forces beat a hasty retreat.

At ten o’clock the night of the tenth I received a copy of orders indicating that a battalion was to enter the western part of the wood during the night and advance on the enemy through my left front company, “G,” at five o’clock next morning. I smiled in my gas mask, for I had watched the efforts of a certain battalion backed by another battalion, to come up into the woods during the afternoon. They got as far as Ferme de Belle Aire--part of them--and at dark withdrew. Very early the morning of the eleventh the “attacking” battalion got within the outer wire of Bois Frehaut. By five A. M. two officers and a handful of men had worked their way as far as the headquarters of a certain “G” Company platoon. Our barrage started on the dot. The two officers, followed by the handful of men, advanced beyond our front line and looked about. One of the officers was promptly wounded, and--well there was no attack.

During that entire twenty-eight hours Signal Outfits from Division Headquarters were trying to get a telephone line up to my P. C. But the wire was always either shot in two or the men were and I had no ’phone until after the armistice. It was almost impossible for runners to get between me and our old front lines behind us, and still more difficult for my runners to get between me and my own Company and Platoon leaders in the woods. But they did it.

All day, all night and up to eleven o’clock next morning it lasted. By midnight the entire wood fairly reeked with gas. No one dared eat or drink because of it. Despite all our precautions and efforts, we were rapidly being wiped out. I have heard of officers and of men and of units--large ones and small ones, white and also colored, that became panic stricken and useless under fire that was feeble and light both in intensity and duration compared to this, but I am ready at any time to testify that twelve hundred and fifty officers and men (colored) _did_ advance and that the command did hold _without showing the faintest symptoms of panic or retreat_.

All of you who were with the Three Hundred and Sixty-fifth Infantry prior to September twenty-third, 1918, know Colonel Vernon A. Caldwell of West Point and the Regular Army. He organized and commanded the Regiment until he was made a Brigadier General and left us on the date named. To him I attribute much of the credit for our success in taking and holding Bois Frehaut. He had taught us “simple and direct means and methods” and had taught us to “think tactics” in a way that proved of inestimable value under the supreme test. For Colonel Caldwell was one of our professional officers who did not have to pose as a “disciplinarian” to get by.

You might like to know about that action from the standpoint of tactics and how it was that many of us survived without permanent injury. It is very interesting. I wish I might explain it in detail. To me it is more interesting from the standpoint of courage, efficiency and unswerving devotion to duty displayed by both officers and men. It was a fitting climax to an enviable battalion record of front line service, and an accomplishment most creditable to the American Army and to its colored soldiers.

I wish I had time to tell you of the many especially glorious deeds of heroism performed by officers and men. I use the word _glorious_, for to me, even that is a weak word to use in describing the heroic actions of a man utterly and deliberately, premeditatedly indifferent to his personal safety and bent solely on duty plus a desire to help and save others. And to me, too, that is the only thing about war, unless it is the fortitude of those left at home in suspense and unselfishly doing all in their power to help, that comes any way near being _glorious_.

If they’d only kill them outright instead of leaving them to suffer and die in agony perhaps hours (even months) later. To see them suffering and be powerless to help them, and to know that many might be saved if it were possible to stop the slaughter long enough to give them proper medical attention. Many men died in Bois Frehaut or afterward who might have been saved, could they have been promptly and properly attended. What a hell of a game for _Christian_ nations to be playing and getting ready to play again, in the Twentieth Century A. D.

One little scene has bobbed up in my memory--the death of an “E” Company Runner. Late on the afternoon of the tenth I left my P. C. to get a view of a certain position. I had gone but a short distance when I stepped on something that attracted by attention. It was a human hand! Near it was a large spot of blood and a trail as though something had been dragged in the general direction of where our First Aid Dressing Station had been before it was blown up. My course lay a little to the right, but I followed the gruesome marks for about fifty yards and there huddled up in a little gulley laid the “E” Company Runner I had sent out with a message for Captain Sanders about two hours before.