Part 10 (1/2)

Wortley was an older man and had always been ambitious to join the regular army. He had served an enlistment in the regulars and had been a sergeant. Later at the Leavenworth School he had received his commission. Wortley also had been wounded at Soissons.

Major Youell described to me a personal incident of this battle, which ill.u.s.trates very well the dull leathery mind that everyone gets after a certain amount of bitter fighting and fatigue. As commander of the Second Battalion he had received orders for an attack. He was not sure of his objectives. He got out his very best prismatic compa.s.s, which he valued more than any of his other possessions, as it was virtually impossible to replace it, sighted carefully, determined the direction of the attack, ordered the advance, put the compa.s.s on the ground, and walked off, leaving it there. When he next thought of it the compa.s.s was gone for good.

Another captain we had was thoroughly courageous personally, but he had one very bad fault. He could not keep his men under control. Once after an attack his battalion commander was checking up to see if the objectives were taken and all units in place. He found the objectives were taken all right, but that, in the instance of this one company, the company itself was missing! On the objective was sitting simply the company commander and his headquarters group. The rest of the company had missed its direction advancing through a wood and got lost.

I remember this same company commander in another action. We had been advancing behind tanks, which had all been disabled by direct fire from the Germans. I went forward to where he was lying with a handful of men by one of these tanks. I said to him, ”Captain, where is your company?”

He said, ”I don't know, sir; but the Germans are there.” He knew where the enemy were and was perfectly game to go on and attack them with his eight or nine men.

Colonel Hjalmar Erickson was commander of the Twenty-sixth Infantry during this action. He was a fine troop leader and a powerful man physically. During a battle the higher command naturally want to know what is going on at the front. It is very difficult for the officer at the front to furnish these details; often he is busy, sometimes he knows nothing to tell. Once, during the first Argonne battle, the higher command called upon Erickson. Nothing was happening, but Erickson was equal to the occasion.

”Yes, yes, everything is fine. What has happened? Our heavies have just started firing and it sounds good,” was Erickson's rea.s.suring message.

Meanwhile I had been given a Cla.s.s B rating and detailed as an instructor at the school of the line at Langres. After I had been there a short while I saw an officer from the First Division and told him I was awfully anxious to get back and felt quite up to field work again. A few days after that General Parker called up some of the commanding officers in the college on the telephone. I had one obstacle to overcome. I still had to walk with a cane, and, although this did not really make any difference to me from a physical standpoint, it was a question if I could get the medical department to pa.s.s me as Cla.s.s A. We decided that the best way to do was to take the bull by the horns and go anyhow. I said good-by to the college one night and went with Major Gowenlock, of the division staff, directly back to the division. I was technically A. W. O. L. for a couple of weeks, but they don't court-martial you for A. W. O. L. if you go in the right direction, and my orders came through all right. On reporting to General Frank Parker, who was commanding the division, he a.s.signed me to the command of my own regiment. When my orders finally came to the school directing me to report to C. G., of the First Division, for a.s.signment to duty, I was commanding the regiment in battle.

At about this time three cavalry troopers reported to the Twenty-sixth Infantry. They said they came from towns where they had been on military police duty. They stated that they had heard from a man in a hospital that the First Division was having a lot of fighting and so they had gone A. W. O. L. to join it. They were attached to one of the companies, and a letter was sent through regular channels saying that they were excellent men and we wanted their transfer to a combatant branch of the service. We phrased it this way in order to tease one of our higher command who belonged to the cavalry. A long while later, as I recall, an answer came back directing me to send the men back to their outfit, but they were all either killed or wounded at that time.

After the division was relieved from the Argonne it went into rest billets near the town of Ligny, there to rest and receive replacements before returning into the same battle. Advantage was taken of this brief period of rest to give leave to some of the enlisted personnel and officers. This was the first leave most of them had had since they had been in France. Captain s.h.i.+pley Thomas took the men under his command to their area. He described to me on his return how on the way down all the men would talk about was: ”Do you remember how we got that machine-gun nest? That was where McPherson got his.” ”Do you remember how Lieutenant Baxter and Sergeant Dobbs got those seventy-sevens by outflanking and surprising them?”

By the time they had been at the Y. M. C. A. Leave Area twenty-four hours they had forgotten all this. For seven days they had a fine time and their point of view changed entirely. As the train carried them north through France, when they stopped at a station they would lean out of the windows and inveigle some unsuspecting M. P. close to the train.

They would ask him with much earnestness what it was like at the front, explaining to him meanwhile that they were members of the Arkansas Balloon Corps, and when he got near enough throw soda-water bottles at his head. Later an indignant epistle reached me demanding an explanation and directing ”an investigation to fix the responsibility.” A commanding officer should know a great many things unofficially, and in this case my knowledge was all of an unofficial nature, so I was able with a clear conscience to indorse it back with the suggestion that they investigate some other unit.

Captain J. B. Card, Captain Richards, and some other of the officers were given leave. They started immediately for Nice. While they were traveling down we received orders that we were to go back into the battle, so wires were awaiting them when they got off the train to report back to their units immediately. They made a good connection and spent only three hours at Nice. They reported back smiling and thought it was a good joke on themselves.

General C. P. Summerall had been promoted to the command of a corps and General Frank Parker given command of the division. General Parker was also one of the First Division's own officers. Before getting the division he had in turn commanded the Eighteenth Infantry and the First Brigade. He had a fine theory for soldiering. Summarized briefly, it was that the way to handle troops was to explain to them, in so far as possible, all that was to take place and the importance of the actions of each individual man. He had all his officers out with the men as much as possible. He had them all emphasize to the private the importance of his individual intelligent action. This is a fine creed for a commanding officer, as it helps to give him the confidence of his men. Obedience is absolutely necessary in a soldier, but unintelligent obedience is not nearly as valuable as intelligent obedience given with confidence in the man who issues the order. It is intelligent comprehension of the aims of an order that lends most to its proper execution.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST BATTLE

”The giant grows blind in his fury and spite, One blow on the forehead will finish the fight.”

HOLMES.

Hardly had the new replacements, some 1800 in all, learned to what company they belonged, when our definite orders reached us. The trucks arrived and we rattled off toward the front. We detrucked and bivouacked for a couple of days in a big wood while our supply trains came up. The weather, fortunately, was crisp and cool and bivouacking was really pleasant. What our mission was we did not know, but as we were to be in General Summerall's corps we were sure there would be plenty of fighting to go around.

General Summerall himself came and spoke to each of the infantry regiments. The regiment was formed in a three-sided square and he spoke from the blank side.

Almost immediately our orders arrived to move up. As usual we moved at night. The weather repented of its gentleness and cold heavy rain started. The roads were gone, the nights black, the columns splashed through mud with truck trains, with supplies for the troops ahead of us, crisscrossing and jamming by us. We pa.s.sed the barren zone that had been No Man's Land for four years and was now again France.

Early in the morning in a heavy mist we reached another patch of woods just in rear of where the line was. Here we gained contact with the Second Division that was ahead of us. They attacked the same day and again we received orders to follow them. On this night the maps played us a trick, for a road well marked turned out to be a little wood trail.

All night long we moved down it single file to get forward a bare seven kilometers. A wood trail in the rain is bad enough for the first man that moves over it, but it is almost impa.s.sable for the three thousandth man when his turn comes. We got through, however, and by morning the regiment was in place. The road was clogged with a stream of transports of all kinds--trucks, wagon trains, tanks, and tractors, double banked and stuck. Occasionally, pa.s.sing by them on foot, you would hear some general's aide spluttering in his limousine at the delay and wet.

Through this our supply train was brought forward by Captains Scott and Card and Lieutenant Cook with the uncanny ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible which had stood us in good stead many times.

Indeed, the train beat the infantry and when we arrived, we found them there banked beside the road, with the kitchens smoking, and the food spreading a comforting aroma through the rain-rotted woods. Orders were received to march to Landreville. We gave the men hot chow and put the column in motion as soon as they had finished. The sun came out and dried us off and we felt more cheerful.

Still following in the wake of the victorious Second Division, we pa.s.sed through the desolate, war-battered little town of Landreville.