Battery E in France Part 2

There was a long wait while Battery D pulled out. Then guns, caissons, wagons and horses were packed on flat cars in short order. The men were first distributed thirty men to a box-car of the type made famous by the label, "Chevaux 8, Hommes 40," about half the size of an American box-car. In the cars was an intricate contrivance in the shape of benches which took up so much s.p.a.ce that, with their bulky packs in every nook and corner, the men had little s.p.a.ce more than to sit down.

Sleep was impossible, so cold was the first night, except for those who, tired to exhaustion, dozed off, to wake up later feeling half frozen.

Next day the presence of a few empty box-cars at the tail of the train was discovered. By using these, the number of men in a car was reduced one-half. When the benches were taken out, also, the quarters were roomy enough for some comfort. At the occasional stops the men had an opportunity to get out to stretch themselves. Sometimes a couple of French Territorials (men too old or otherwise unfit for service) were on hand with hot black coffee in which there was just enough touch of rum to make one feel its presence. Many, many times subsequently was such a cup of hot coffee cause for great thankfulness. Indeed, it was on that trip, for the cold rations--hard tack, corned beef, canned tomatoes, canned pork and beans, and jam--left one thirsty and cold.

Our train had pulled out of the station at Guer about dusk Sunday evening. Tuesday we seemed headed for Paris, but, after a glimpse of Versailles, we skirted it to the south. Resuming our eastward course, we turned south in Lorraine, reaching Gerberviller about midnight Wednesday, February 20.

CHAPTER III

TRENCH WARFARE IN LORRAINE

Unloading at Gerberviller was far different from the easy job of loading at Guer. The night was black. On account of the proximity of the front, no lights could be used. Not a match's flare, not a cigarette's glow, was allowed, lest it serve as a target for some bombing aeroplane. There was no loading platform, and the carriages and wagons which had been rolled across ramps directly onto the flat cars had to be coaxed and guided down planks steeply inclined from the car's side to the ground.

Handling the horses packed closely in box-cars was a difficult task in utter darkness.

Dawn was just breaking when the battery pulled out. A grey light showed us the ruins of the town of Gerberviller as we pa.s.sed through. The houses stood like spectres, stripped of the life and semblance of home which they had held before the German wave had swept this far in August, 1914, and then, after a few days, had receded, leaving them ruins. Four walls, perhaps not so many, were all that remained of building after building; windows were gone, roofs fallen, and inside were piles of brick and stone, in which, here and there, gra.s.s had found root.

At the village of Moyen the battery stopped long enough to water the horses. At 10:30 we arrived in Vathimenil, where the battery halted till 1 o'clock, and mess was served. In the afternoon in the dust and heat of a sunshiny day such as Lorraine can produce after a cold spring night, the battery hiked through St. Clermont to Luneville, the cannoneers following the carriages on foot.

There we were quartered in an old barrack of French lancers, whose former stables housed our horses. Big, clean rooms, on the third floor, were a.s.signed to Battery E. With bed ticks filled with straw, we made this a comfortable home.

A practice review the following morning and another, the real thing, in the afternoon, before a French general and his staff, formally introduced us to Lorraine. In our free hours during the day and in the evening, we added to this acquaintance by pretty thorough familiarity with the city of Luneville.

Though its nearness to the battle front restricted trade and industry a great deal, yet its shops, restaurants and cafes proved a paradise for the men who remained there at the horse-line, as the battery's song, "When We Were Down in Luneville," attests. Though the streets were absolutely dark, behind the shuttered windows and the darkened doors business was brisk enough. At 8 o'clock, however, all shops were closed, and soldiers must be off the streets by 8:30.

These restrictions were, in fact, precautions against enemy aeroplanes.

Of these we had close enough experience on our third night in the city, when a bomb fell in the fields that lay back of the barracks, shaking the windows by its explosion.

The cannoneers did not stay long in Luneville. February 25 they marched out of the city with their packs on their backs, up near Marainviller.

There were between forty and fifty men altogether, including the four gun crews and the engineers' detail. When we marched along a road screened from the enemy by a mat of boughs stretched by wires between high poles along one side of the way, we knew we were not far from the front. The big thrill came, however, when, turning off the high road, we went forward one squad at a time at intervals of about 200 yards. The chief object was to avoid attracting the notice of some chance enemy aeroplane by the movement of a considerable body of men. To our minds the precaution seemed for the purpose of limiting casualties, in case a sh.e.l.l burst on the road, to the men of only one squad.

But we took our way in peace up the hill in front of us, and carried up supplies and tools that followed on the ration cart. We put all in a big abri--a marvelous piece of work, of long pa.s.sages, s.p.a.cious rooms, wooden floors and stairways, electric lights, and flues for stove chimneys. Then we discovered that this was not for us, but for some brigadier-general and his staff when he directed an operation at the front. So we moved ourselves and baggage to another big abri not far away and not much less comfortable, except that it lacked the wooden floors, the electric lights, and the s.p.a.ciousness of the rooms which the first abri possessed.

The next four days were spent in preparations for building a battery position. The spot chosen was in a hollow, back of a gently rising slope. The woods near by and the tall thickets made good concealment, but the ground was rather marshy in the wet weather we were then having.

Part of the men began to dig, and part wove twigs through chicken wire to stretch over the excavations as camouflage. From 7 a. m. to 5 p. m.

was a long arduous day, particularly since it was begun and ended by a hike of two miles from the dug-out to the position. Rain fell most of the time, soaking through slickers and blouses to one's very skin.

Two of the days the gunners, No. 1 and No. 2 men of each section spent at a French battery near by, to gain experience in actual firing. Little firing was done--only 24 rounds per gun one day and 15 rounds the second, for in this quiet sector there was little ordinarily but reprisal fire--but the men learned quickly the actual working of a battery. To the Frenchmen the quickness and the constant good-humor of the American boys, much younger than the average among them, were matters of comment. "Toujours chantant, toujours riant" (Always singing, always laughing), were the words of the lieutenant who fired the battery. The warm-hearted hospitality of these Frenchmen--resting in this sector from the fearful work, night and day, at Verdun and pardonable, one would say, if somewhat uneven-tempered and unmindful of others in their fatigue from that strain--impressed the Americans in turn. Every comfort that the dug-outs afforded was offered to the visitors, and when the Americans had, in an impromptu quartette, entertained the Frenchmen with harmonized popular songs, the latter summoned a young "chanteur" who sang the latest songs from Paris till his voice was weary.

Orders came to cease work on this position, and none too soon. For when the men were returning from work there for the last time, about 5 p. m., March 2, the woods in the vicinity were deluged with gas sh.e.l.ls.

The following day the gun squads and engineers hiked to the town of Laneuveville-aux-Bois, about two kilometres away. There they had for billet a big room, formerly the police magistrate's office. The town contained only French soldiers billeted there en route to the trenches or return. So close to the lines was it, that sh.e.l.ls fell there frequently.

Back of the town and to the left was the site of Battery E's first gun position. On the far side (from the enemy lines) of a gently sloping hill, covered by tall yellow gra.s.s, was staked out the four gun pits, with abris between. The first work was to construct the camouflage. This was composed of strips of chicken wire, in which long yellow gra.s.s was thinly woven so as to blend with that growing around the position. These strips were supported by wires stretched from tall stakes, forming the ridge, to short stakes, scarcely two feet above the ground, at either side. In shape, the result was something like a greenhouse. The angles were so graduated that no shadow was cast by the sun, and the color blended so well with the surroundings that no human trace was visible on the hillside from a distance.

As fast as the camouflage could be "woven" and put in place to shield them from observance by the enemy planes that whirred overhead in the bright afternoons, the gun pits were dug. Platforms and "circulaires"

were installed as each pit was dug. The guns of the second platoon were brought from Luneville on the evening of March 7, and caissons of ammunitions followed during the night. The rapidity and excellence of the work on the position were partly due to the French officer, Captain Frey, whose battery was near, who gave his advice and counsel, and to the little sergeant, nicknamed "La Soupe" (the words with which he always signified his intention to depart for mess, for he acquired no English), who constantly supervised the work.

At 9:50 a. m., March 8, Battery E fired its first shot at the front, the Third Section piece having the honor. The gun crew was composed of Sergeant Newell, Corporal Monroe, and Privates s.e.xauer, Ekberg, Farrell and Kilner. The crew working on the Fourth Section piece, which registered the same morning, included Sergeant Suter, Corporal Holton, and Privates O'Reilly, O'Brien, Ladd, Colvin and Kulicek.

Until the first platoon's guns came up, the gun crews of that platoon alternated on the pieces with the crews of the second platoon, who could sleep in the billet in town on their nights off. The men on the guns had two watches to keep, one at the guns, and one at the "rocket post" on top the hill, to notify the battery if a red rocket, the signal for a barrage, appeared at points laid out on a chart. At first there were two barrages, Embermenil and Jalindet, the names of two towns in whose direction the different fires lay. If the sentinel on the hill-top shouted either of these names, the sentinel at the position was to fire the guns and awake the crews. The names, unusual and difficult to ears unfamiliar with French, were not easy to remember. From that difficulty developed the "Allabala" barrage which made Mosier famous.

Seeing a rocket rise in the vicinity of Embermenil (whether white or red is a mystery), he started to shout the name, but in his excitement could not p.r.o.nounce the French word, and stuttered forth a succession of syllables like some Arabian Nights' incantation. Whatever it was, "Allabala" or something else, it worked. The guns were fired--until an order from the O. P. called a halt, declaring the alarm false.

The First and Second Section pieces were brought from Luneville on the evening of March 15, and registered the next day. The First Section gun crew was composed of Sergeant Bolte, Corporal Fred Howe and Privates Nickoden, Freeburg, Mosier, Wallace and Hodgins; the Second Section crew of Sergeant McElhone, Corporal Clark, Privates Donald Brigham, Meacham, Nixon and Herrod.

March 17, 1918, was remarkable not because it was Sunday or St.

Patrick's day so much as because on that day Battery E's camouflage burnt. In the course of a 10-round reprisal fire, about 4 p. m., the flame from the muzzle of the Second Section gun set ablaze the gra.s.s woven in the wire netting overhead. In a second the covering was in flames. The dry gra.s.s burnt like tinder. The men beat the blaze with sand bags, but could check it but little in the face of the intense heat and thick smoke. By tearing off several strips of netting, they succeeded in preventing the fire's spreading to the other end of the position. Within a short s.p.a.ce of time the first platoon's camouflage was changed from yellow gra.s.s to black ashes. The work of seven or eight days was undone in as many minutes.

On so clear and bright a day there was grave danger that the position would be betrayed to enemy observation by the flames, or by the black scar they had left, or even by the men's activity in repairing it. A few bursts of shrapnel gave warning of the danger. Immediately as much of the burnt surface as could be was covered with rolls of painted canvas on wire netting, such as the French artillery used. Then all the men were set to gathering gra.s.s in the fields back of the position. Not long after, about fifty men from D and F batteries came over to help, and all the available men were brought out in the chariot du parc from the battery's horse-line at Luneville. So eagerly and rapidly did all of them work that the old netting was restretched and woven full of gra.s.s by midnight.

During the next two days the firing was small, only a few rounds occasionally. The chief work was digging the abris and carrying up beams and concrete blocks from the road for their construction.

On March 20 the battery was engaged in tearing down enemy barbed wire, firing 216 rounds per gun during the day, in preparation for an attack that night. At 7:40 p. m. commenced the actual bombardment. A few minutes before that time 75's began to bark from the woods to our left and in the rear of us. The reports gradually grew in number. At the appointed moment, our guns began to bang away. For the next two hours and forty-five minutes, the noise was deafening. Batteries of whose existence we had not the slightest suspicion were firing near us. Every hillock and clump of trees seemed to blaze with gun flashes. Joined with the constant bark and bang of the 75's near by was the deep thunderous roar of heavier cannon in the distance.

At 10 o'clock the firing began to die away. Half an hour later only a few shots at long intervals could be heard. Fatigued with their strenuous and racking work, the men eagerly attacked the mess just then brought up to them. Nearly all were a little deaf from their guns'

racket. A few, on the gun crews, were totally oblivious to all sound whatsoever, and could comprehend only signs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: B. C. Detail at Observation Post near Ancerviller]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cook Boisacq Hears Thrilling Tales at the O. P.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Horsesh.o.e.rs' Shop at the Merviller Horse-lines]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Aeroplane Scouts Wouldn't See this Pup-Tent]

The first published account of an engagement of the 42d Division was brief and anonymous. In the Paris edition of the "New York Herald" of March 22, 1918, at the end of a column on the first page telling of the decoration of Corporal Alexander Burns and other members of the regiment appeared this paragraph, under date of March 21:

"Members of the American force made a raid last night. Following a long barrage, the boys went over in good shape, but the German trenches were deserted, the long heavy Allied barrage having driven every one out. No American was hurt or killed."

The enemy's reply to us did not come till the next morning. Roused at 4 to stand by the guns, the cannoneers had scarcely occupied their posts when sh.e.l.ls began to drop dangerously near. Captain Robbins ordered everyone into the abris till the sh.e.l.ling ceased. Half an hour later we went out to find that a gas sh.e.l.l had made the officers' abri and vicinity untenable, all our telephone wires were cut, and sh.e.l.l fragments had torn up things here and there. How Nickoden fared, who had been out at the rocket post on the hill-top during it all, we learned when he was relieved shortly after. Hearing not a sound, he was aware that sh.e.l.ls were falling near only when he saw them plow up the ground within a few hundred feet of him. Corporal Buckley was wounded by a sh.e.l.l fragment and Private McCarthy was badly ga.s.sed that morning, in the machine-gun post at the top of the hill.

Private (later Corporal) Mangan was recommended for the D. S. C. by the regimental commander "for volunteering to and aiding the French in keeping open a telephone line running from a forward observation station across the open to the rear. This on March 19 and again on March 20, when the telephone line was repeatedly cut by an intense enemy bombardment of heavy caliber sh.e.l.ls from both guns and trench mortars."

The French cited Mangan for the Croix de Guerre for his conduct on this occasion also.

Orders to move came that day. A few more sh.e.l.ls landed within a few yards of the position in the afternoon, and one end of Laneuveville-aux-Bois received considerable shrapnel. But we pulled out safely that evening, reaching Luneville at midnight.

Two days later the regiment left Luneville on a 120-kilometre hike to the divisional area, in the vicinity of Langres, where the division was to spend some time in manoeuvres. But the orders were countermanded before the regiment had gone more than its first day's hike, on account of the Germans' success in their first big offensive of the spring on the northern front.

So the battery remained for a week at Remenoville, in readiness to return to the front upon the receipt of orders. During those seven days of sunshiny weather, in the bright warmth of early spring, the men basked in ease and comfort. Gun drill for the cannoneers and grooming for the drivers occupied the mornings. The afternoons the men had to themselves, for games of horseshoes, writing letters to make up for lost time at the front, baths in the cold brook, and washing clothes in the village fountain. Eggs and potatoes and milk were abundant in the town--until the battery's consumption depleted the supply--and the men ate as often in some French kitchen as in their battery mess line. Some boys "slipped one over on the army," too, by sleeping between white sheets in soft big beds, renting a room for the munificent sum of one franc a day, instead of rolling up in their blankets in the haymow where they were billeted.

The following Sat.u.r.day, the battery hiked to Fontenoy-la-Joute, on its way back to the front. Easter Sunday, March 31, was spent there, the band playing in front of the "mairie," on the steps of which the chaplain held the church services. Rain fell intermittently in a depressing drizzle. Pulling out in the afternoon, the battery reached the spot they since call "Easter Hill," where some French batteries had their horse-lines. There the battery had its evening mess--stew--and while waiting for orders to move on, the men slept wherever there was shelter and dryness--on sacks full of harness, in caisson boxes, under tarpaulins stretched over the pieces. At 1 a. m. the guns pulled out, arriving in position as day was breaking.

Sergeant Bolte had gone to officers' school at Saumur from Remenoville, and Sergeant Landrus took charge of the First Section in his place. At Fontenoy, Sergeant Newell was sent to the hospital with acute bronchitis; so Sergeant Wright went to the front in charge of the Third Section. Sergeant Newell did not return to the battery, but went from the hospital to Saumur, returning later to the regiment as a second lieutenant in Battery F, after serving a while in the 32d Division.