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A History of Pittsburg and Western Pennsylvania Troops in the War
By John V. Hanlon (Copyright 1919 by The Pittsburg Press)
Chapter XII
(The Pittsburg Press, Sunday, March 23, 1919, pages 102-103)
Names in this chapter: Pollock, Williams, Thompson, Clarke, Brooks,
Wainwright, Cain, Ham, Brown, Helsel, Whitaker, Pennypacker, Muckel, Nunner,
Muir, Pershing
THE ENEMY FINALLY WITHDREW FROM FISMETTE AND ALONG THE
VESLE AND SOUGHT TO MAKE ANOTHER STAND AT THE AISNE. THE PITTSBURG AND WESTERN
PENNSYLVANIA TROOPS FOLLOWED CLOSE ON THE BOCHE’S HEELS AND HARRASSED HIM IN
EVERY POSSIB LE MANNER. THE ARTILLERY, TOO, KEPT POUNDING AWAY AND MANY OF THE
TOWNS WERE REDUCED TO PILES OF DUST. AT THE AISNE THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DIVISION WAS
WITHDRAWN AND SENT TOWARDS THE ARGONNE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE GREAT OFFENSIVE ON
THAT FRONT.
Capt. Robert Pollock
Considering the hellish fury of the fighting which
ensued in Fismes and Fismette, one cannot wonder or be astonished at statements
made by Capt. Robert Pollock of Pittsburg’s own “old Eighteenth”, upon his
return to Pittsburg from France. While still a convalescent at the Parkview
hospital, Capt. Pollock one evening addressed an audience of men in the Grace
Reformed church, Bayard and Dilbridge sts.
Capt. John M. Clark
“If I am shipped to hell,” said Capt Pollock, “I think
I can stand what the devil has for me, after going through what the Germans had
for us in Fismette. They used everything they had on us, from liquid fire down,
and many of my best friends were killed or wounded there.” Capt. Pollock himself
was wounded soon after Fismette was cleaned out and the Americans started for
the Ourcq river in pursuit of the stubbornly resisting Germans.
Here is the story of Fismette, as told by Capt.
Pollock:
It was in this scrap that Capt. Arch Williams was
wounded and Capt. John Clarke of Wilkinsburg, and Capt. Orville R. Thompson of
Pittsburg, killed. We were advancing on Fismette when they fell.
When we got into Fismette the real fighting started.
German Machine gunners occupied every window in every house in town. We had to
clear those houses before we could clean out the town, and our men were dropping
like flies. We had virtually no protection from that awful rain of fire from the
machine guns. The doughboys, though, went forward, and they mopped up. They went
into the first house in one block and you didn’t seem them again till they came
out of the last house on the block. They dug through walls from one house to
another, and every time they left a house the kaiser’s army was minus several
more men.
NO QUARTER ASKED OR GIVEN.
They asked no mercy and they showed none. They dug
through those walls, often with their bare hands, and they tore at those machine
guns like tigers. No wonder the German defense cracked, no wonder it fled before
those American doughboys. Many of our men went down, too, but they got a couple
for every one that went down. There wasn’t a live German left in town when they
got through.
One incident which occurred there is mighty strange. We
found only one inhabitant, aside from German soldiers, in the town. This was a
woman, a woman aged about 50. She said she had stayed in town to protect her
property. She started to tell some awful tales, but we hadn’t time to listed and
send her back to regimental headquarters. Subsequently the property which she
had been watching was destroyed, we destroyed it. That was when the Germans
recaptured the town and we had to shell them out.
OFFICERS ARE WOUNDED
After we drove them out again, however, we went
forward, moving toward our third objective: we had gained our first and second.
The third was the plateau between Vesle and the Aisne, northeast of Fismette. We
were well up on this place when I was hit. Lieut. Daniel W. Brooks of Swissvale
was killed at the same time. He was one of those fine fellows every person
likes. When I fell I didn’t be long. They came along, picked me up and started
me for the hospital and the last I saw of my men when, led by Lieut. Edward Z.
Wainwright, they were moving over the brow of the hill on to their objective.
Among the many strange things about the battles that
the old Eighteenth participated in was that it once faced the Eighteenth
regiment of the German army. This sounded so “fishy” the captain said, that
Capt. Robert Cain of Pittsburg, cut the shoulder straps from a captain of the
regiment, who had been killed and send them to his wife.
Reverting to the thread of our present narrative, the
German guns from their hilltops still poured in a galling fire on the American
positions. Still their snipers and machine gunners hung on in Fismette. To have
attempted to cross the Vesle river under such bombardment would have been
hazardous in the extreme. An attack in force was obviously impossible and it was
at this point in the campaign that the American and allied commanders faced some
of their most serious and perplexing problems. The Yanks were chafing for more
and more action, although their efforts to this point had bordered on the
superhuman. They were like raging tigers when they remembered how many of their
brave comrades had fallen victims of foe bullets and other means of human
destruction.
All the streets of Fismette were filled with fighters.
The combat continued with unabated fierceness and varying fortunes for either
side until Aug. 28, when the Germans came down out of their hills in a raging
tide of savage and brutal destroyers. Bouting into Fismette, they drove the
little force of Americans back to the river, where an amazingly few men managed
to held a bridgehead on the northern bank.
RESISTANCE IN VAIN
This desperate resistance, however, proved in vain, for
the time being, and the town again fell into the hands of the German hordes.
The American gunners then began systematically to level
the town, for the Yankee commanders had been forced to abandon all hopes of
taking it by infantry assault without an unjustifiable loss of brave,
wonderfully brave, men.
Elsewhere along the great battle line great events of
vast importance in a military sense had been taking place while these
developments at Fismette were in progress. In Flanders the British troops,
supported by American brigades fighting shoulder to shoulder with them, had been
driving the Germans eastward, while further south the French were keeping the
Hun on the run and demonstrating to the Berlin warlords in no uncertain fashion
that the boastful and ruthless warriors from the “Fatherland” were by no means
invincible. American forces around Soissons were pounding away at the Germans in
such fashion as to make the Teuton positions as long the Vesle river untenable.
Even the stubborn defenders of these positions soon began to realize that they
could not hold on there much longer without tremendous losses of man power and
guns and ammunition.
Among the brace Americans at Fismette, just at this
time, little was known of the developments in the other sections. They fought on
with bulldog courage, however. Even the junior officers of the Americans were
greatly surprised when word came back Sept. 4 that the patrols north of the
river had met almost no opposition from the enemy in their latest forward
movements toward the Rhine, which still seemed very far away indeed. Next it was
noticed that the foe’s artillery fire had fallen off to a little desultory
shilling, so a general advance was ordered. Roads in the rear at once became
alive with big motor trucks, big guns, wagon trains, columns of men and all the
countless activities of an army on the march. It was a wonderful sight to see
that main force crossing the river. Officers standing on the hills overlooking
the scene declared later that it was one they never could forget. The long
columns debouched from the wooded shelters, deployed into wide, thin lines and
moved off down the slope into the narrow river valley.
TOWNS POUNDED TO DUST
The village and towns of the Vesle valley, pounded
almost to dust by the thousands of shells which had fallen on them during the
two weeks the armies contended for their possession, lay before the advancing
Americans. Down the hill those brave Yanks went, moving just as they had done
times without number in training camps in sham battles and war maneuvers.
Occasionally there was a burst of black smoke and a spouting geyser of earth and
stones to show that this was, after all, real warfare and that the lives of the
advancing men were constantly “on the knees of the gods.”
Even these incidents had been so well simulated in the
mimic warfare of the training days that they seemed to make little impression to
the observers, held spellbound as they were by the dramatic values of the
momentous and history-making drama being unrolled before their eyes. The
greatest ocular evidence that his indeed was real warfare came when now and then
a man or two dropped and either lay still or got up and limped slowly back up
the hill. Many of the officers who watched the whole performance compared to
scenes they had witnessed sometimes safely in motion picture theaters.
Occasional casualties served not at all to slacken or
impede the advance of the defenders of right, truth, democracy and justice. When
the live, moving steadily forward, reached the river, there was little effort to
converge at the hastily constructed bridges but the men who were close enough
walked over them, while the others plunged into the water and either waded or
swan across, according to the depth where they happened to be and the
individual’s ability to swim.
On toward the Aisne river the column moved after
reaching the northern side of the Vesle. Up the long slope the men went as
p\imperturbably as they had come down the other side, although every man of them
knew that when they reached the crest of the rise they would face the deadly
German machine gun fire from the positions on the next ridge to the north.
Never faltering even for an instant, the thin line of
the Yanks went over the crest of the rise and disappeared from the view of the
watchers behind. The German machine gunners resisted desperately retiring only
foot by foot. The Americans, seemingly glad that the fight was on once more,
refused to be checked in their great advance. Prediction had been freely made
that the Germans would make their next stand on a high plateau between the Vesle
and the Aisne. The pressure elsewhere on his libe [sic] made this impossible and
the Huns plunged on northward, while ever after him came the inevitable,
inscrutable, inescapable American doughboy.
COL. HAM WOUNDED
One of the American units which met real opposition at
about this stage of the advance was the One Hundred and Ninth infantry, which
crossed the river from Magneux some distance to the west of Fismette. Col.
Samuel V. Ham, regular army officer commanding the regiment, led the firing line
across the river and in its advance toward Muscourt. During a hot engagement, he
was wounded so severely that he was unable to move, but he declined to be
evacuated. For 10 hours after that he remained on the field, directing the
attack and refusing to leave or receive medical or surgical attention until his
men had seen every care and comfort which could be afforded them under the grim
circumstances of such a battlefield.
For his great showing of bravery and heroic conduct,
Col. Ham was awarded the distinguished service cross. The citation which
accompanied the awarding of the coveted cross declared that “Col. Ham
exemplified the greatest heroism and truest leadership, instilling in his men
confidence in the undertaking.” He was the third commander the regiment had
since going to France. Col. Brown had been transferred and Col. Coulter had been
wounded. All except these first two were regular army men and the regiment had
eight commanders in two months.
Fifteen miles away the towers of the cathedral at Laon
could be seen by the Americans. From the high ground ahead, to which the Yank
heroes advanced with all possible speed, the lowlands to the north spread out
before them. Laon had been since 1914 the pivot of the German line. It was the
bastion on which the tremendous front of the Hun armies turned from north and
south to east and west. The lowlands represented defiled and invaded France in a
very real sense and the sight of the cathedral towers, seen dimly in the misty
distance, thrilled the tired fighters from across the Atlantic, even when much
of their strength and their irrepressible enthusiasm had been spent in the
terrible fighting of the past few days and weeks.
The One Hundred and Ninth infantry covered itself with
glory in the advance across the five miles of hill, valley and plateau between
the Vesle and the Aisne. Co. C of the One Hundred and Ninth suffered heavy
losses and on the Aisne plateau this company displayed amazing morale and the
fighting ability and strength with tenacity of purpose so characteristic of all
the American fighters in the world war for freedom.
After the capture of a small wood below the village of
Villers-en-Prayeres, which was described in an official communiqué as “a small
but brilliant operation,” Co. G of the One Hundred and Ninth infantry ranked
with Co. B and Co. C for their gallant stand and heavy losses south of the
Marne. There were 125 casualties in the company of 260 men.
YANKS SUFFERED HEAVILY
At times during these extremely hazardous operations,
following so soon after the taking of Fismes and Fismette from the Germans, the
Americans were subjected to a heavy artillery fire, especially while crossing
the plateau. During the advance over about the first two miles it was necessary
for the doughboys to go forward in the open across high ground, plainly visible
to the German gunners and constantly swept by their deadly and destructive fire.
There was little cover and, thought it was very difficult later of obtain
accurate reports of the losses, the Yanks [unreadable] are known to have
suffered heavily through this part of their advance toward the homeland of the
Hun.
Private Paul Helsel came out of that period of the
fighting with six bullet holes through his shirt. Two bullets had gone through
his trousers, the bayonet of his rifle had been shot away and a bullet was
embedded in the first-aid pack he carried [unreadable]. It was considered
miraculous not only be himself but by his comrades and his superior officers,
that he escaped without a wound of any kind.
Light and heavy artillery swept the plateau across
which the Americans were advancing. Their losses would undoubtedly have been
much heavier had they advanced in the regular formations. Instead of doing so,
they were filtered into and through the zone, never presenting a satisfactory
artillery target for the foe gunners. On their stand on the Vesle, the Germans
had been enabled to save the bulk of the supply they had accumulated there.
Whatever they were unable to remove they burned, so it would not be of any
material assistance to the advancing Americans. Great fires sent up dense clouds
of smoke, marking in the distance the sports where large ammunition dumps and
other stocks of supplies were being destroyed.
During their progress forward from the Vesle the
American soldiers had presented before their watchful eyes a different vista
from that which they had seen between the Marne and the Vesle, where the way had
been impeded to a great extent in some places by the almost unimaginable
quantities of supplies of every conceivable kind which the Hun had abandoned
when forced to hasty flight, for which he could not possibly have prepared
adequately on such short notice as was allowed by the ever alert fighters for
democracy and freedom. Sept. [unreadable] the pursuit had come to an end and the
Americans and French were on the Aisne river. The enemy again was bristling in
his de[unreadable] across a water barrier.
BLAST HUNS FROM AISNE
The infantry regiments were followed by artillery as
far as the high ground between the rivers. There the artillery took positions
from which they started to blast the Huns away from their hold on the Aisne and
start them backward to their next line of defense, the vicinity of the ancient
and historic Chemo-des-Dames, or Road of Women.
Battery C, One Hundred and Seventh regiment, of
Phoenixville, commanded by Capt. Samuel A. Whitaker of that town, a nephew of
Samuel W. Pennypacker, one-time governor of Pennsylvania, was the first of the
Pennsylvanians big gun units to cross the Vesle at that point.
The night of Sept. 7, the One Hundred and Seventy was
relieved by the Two Hundred and Twenty-first French Artillery regiment, near
Blanzy-des Fismes [sic]. The French used the Americans’ horses. They discovered
they had taken a wrong road in moving up and, just as they turned back, the
Germans who had learned of the hour of the relief, laid down a heavy barrage.
Lieut. John Muckel, of Battery C with a detail of men,
had remained with the French regiment to show them the battery position and
bring back the horses. When the barrage fell, he was thrown 25 feet by the
explosion of a high-explosive shell, and landed plump in the mangled bodies of
two horses. All about him were the moans and cries of the wounded and dying
Frenchmen. He had been so shocked by the shell explosion close to him that he
could only move with difficulty and extreme pain. He was barely conscious, alone
in the dark and lost, for the regiments had gone on and his detachment of
Americans scattered.
SHELLS FOLLOW OFFICER
Lieut. Muckel, realizing he must do something dragged
himself until he came to the outskirts of a village, which he learned later was
Villet. Half dazed he crawled to the wall of a building and pulled himself to
his feet. He was leaning against the wall, trying to collect his scattered
senses, when a shell struck the building and demobilized it.
The lieutenant was half buried in the debris. As he lay
there, fully expecting never again to rejoin his battery, Sergt. Nunner, of the
battery, came along on horseback and heard the officer call. The sergeant wanted
the lieutenant to take his horse and get away. The lieutenant refused, and
ordered the sergeant to go on and save himself. The “noncom” then committed the
militarily unpardonable sin or insubordination, by refusing to obey, and
announcing that he would stay with the office if the latter would not get away
on the horse. At last they affected a compromise whereby the sergeant rode the
horse and the lieutenant helped himself along by holding to the horse’s tail.
Thus they caught up with the battery.
The Twenty-eighth division was relieved at the Aisne
Sept. 8, 9 and ordered back to a rest camp, after about 60 days of unremitting
day and night fighting by the infantry and approximately a month of stirring
action by the artillery.
NAMED “IRON DIVISION”
The men were exhausted but were borne up and sustained
by the knowledge that they had accomplished almost impossible tasks and had
vanquished the most famed regiments of the kaiser’s soldiery. It was after the
completion of this work and their withdrawal from the Aisne that the
Twenty-eighth commenced to be spoken of as the “Iron Division.” Just who was
responsible for this designation has not been definitely established although
the remark: “You are not soldiers! You are men of iron,” has been attributed to
Gen. Pershing.
Anyhow the higher officers soon heard of it and it
rapidly filtered down through the ranks and likewise through the entire American
Expeditionary Force with the result that thereafter our old Pennsylvania guard
unit was always spoken of as the “Iron Division.” And that it was a well earned
title all will agree for it is written upon the [unreadable] of France in
letters of blood and it is blasted so deep into the memory of the Huns that
countless ages will not cause it to fade.
From the time of entering the conflict a the Marne when
the enemy was turned back from the gates of Paris and started on that long
retreat northward from which he was never able to recover until the Vesle river
was reached our Pittsburg and Western Pennsylvania soldiers as well as all those
of the Keystone state suffered terrible. The toll of death and injury was heavy
and in some of the regiments as many as 1,200 replacements were necessary to
bring them up to the required battle strength.
They were praised in general orders by both our own and
allied high commands and they had long since been recognized as “shock troops”
the highest known type of soldiers. Citations brought to the division the
designation of “Red” and the men were accorded the honor of wearing upon their
coats the scarlet keystone. And when you see a scarlet keystone you know that
the wearer has proven upon the field of battle that he is the peer or any
fighting man in the world.
After their days of strenuous work our boys were
thinking of a well-earned rest from the rigors of the firing line for a few
weeks at least but they were disappointed. The emergency which had caused Gen.
Pershing to brigade the Americans with the French and British has [unreadable]
and the first American army was in the forming when the Pennsylvanians turned
back from the Vesle. While the Twenty-eighth had been battling against the Hun
transports and had been rushing many thousands of Americans to France where they
were given preliminary training and it was now proposed to have an entire army
entirely American and responsible to only Gen. Pershing and the supreme
commander Marshal Foch.
PRAISED BY COMMANDER
While the men were grumbling over the change in plans
whereby they were ordered into another sector to become part of this new army
they were cheered somewhat by the fact that their labors had not been unnoticed
by those in high places. In a general order from division headquarters read to
all the regiments the commanding officer Gen. Muir set forth:
“The division commander is authorized to inform all,
from the lowest to the highest, that their efforts are known and appreciated. A
new division by force of circumstances, took its place in the front line in one
of the greatest battles in the greatest war in history.
“The division has acquitted itself in a creditable
manner. It has stormed and taken points that were regarded as proof against
assault. It has taken numerous prisoners from a vaunted guards division of the
enemy.
“It has inflicted on the enemy far more loss than it
has suffered from him. In a single gas application it inflicted more damage than
the enemy inflicted on us by gas since its entry into battle.
“ It is desired that these facts be brought to the
attention of all, in order that the tendency of new troops to allow their minds
to dwell on their own losses to the exclusion of what they have done to the
enemy, may be reduced to the minimum.
“Let’s all be of good heart! We have inflicted more
loss than we have suffered, we are better men individually than our enemies. A
little more grit, a little more effort, a little more determination to keep our
enemies down, and the division will have the right to look on itself as an
organization of veterans.”
So away they went to the southeast and came to a halt
in the vicinity of Reviguy, just south of the Argonne Forest and about a mile
and a half north of the Rhine-Marne canal. Here they found detachments awaiting
them, and once more the sadly depleted ranks were filled.
The division was under orders to put in 10 days at hard
drilling there. This is the military idea of rest for soldiers, and experience
has proved it a pretty good system, although it never will meet the approval of
the man in the ranks. It has the advantage of keeping his mind occupied and
maintaining his discipline and morale.
The best troops will go stale through neglect of drill
in a campaign – and drill and discipline are almost synonymous. As undisciplined
troops are worse than useless in battle, the necessity of occasional periods of
drill, distasteful through they may be to the soldier, is obvious.
“A day in a rest camp is about as bad as a day in
battle,” is not an uncommon expression from the men, although, as is always the
case with soldiers, they appreciate a change of any kind.
Thus rest camp and its drills were not destined to
become monotonous, however, for instead of 10 days they had only one day. Orders
came from “G.H.Q.” which is soldier parlance for general headquarters, for the
division to proceed almost directly north into the Argonne. This meant more hard
hiking and more rough traveling for horses and motor trucks until the units
again were “bedded down” temporarily, with division headquarters at Les Islettes,
20 miles due north from Reviguy, and eight miles south of what was then, and had
been for many months, the front line.
FACING MORE HARD WORK
The doughboys knew that something big was impending.
They had come to believe that “Pershing wouldn’t have the Twenty-eighth division
around unless he were going to pull off something big.” They felt more at home
than they had since leaving America.
All about them they saw nothing by American soldiers,
and thousands on thousands of them. The country seemed teeming with them. Every
branch of the service was in American hands, the first time the Pennsylvanians
had seen such an organization of their very own – the first time anybody ever
did, in fact.
Infantry, artillery, engineers, the supply services,
tanks, the air service, medical service, the high command and the staff, all
were American. It was a proud day for the doughboys when showers of leaflets
dropped from a squadron of airplanes flying over one day and they read on the
printed pages a pledge from American airmen to co-operated with the American
fighting men on the ground to the limit of their ability and asked similar
co-operation from the foot soldiers.
FLYERS PLEDGE SUPPORT
“Your signals enables us to take the news of your
location to the rear,” read the communication, “to report if the attack is
successful to call for help if needed, to enable the artillery to put their
shells over your head into the enemy. If you are out of ammunition and tell us,
we will report and have it sent up. If you are surrounded we will deliver the
ammunition by airplane.
“We do not hike through the mud with you, but there are
discomforts in our work as bad as mud, but we won’t let rain storms, Archies
(anti-aircraft guns) nor boche planes prevent our getting there with the goods.
Use us to the limit. After reading this, hand it to your buddies and remember to
show your signals.” It was signed: “Your Aviators.”
“You bet we will, all of that,” was the heartfelt
comment of the soldiers. Such was the splendid spirit of co-operation built up
by Gen. Pershing among the branches of the service.
To this great American army was assigned the tremendous
task of striking at the enemy’s vitals, striking where it was know he would
defend himself most passionately. The Germans defensive lines converged toward a
point in the east like the ribs of a fan, drawing close to protect the
Mezieres-Longuyon railroad shuttle, which was the vital artery of Germany in
occupied territory.
If the Americans could force a break through in the
Argonne, the whole [unreadable] German machine in France would collapse. Whether
they broke through or not, the smallest possible result of an advance there
would be the narrowing of a bottle neck of the German transport lines into
Germany and a slow strangling of the invading forces.
Of this first phase of the Argonne-Meuse offensive Gen.
Pershing in his report to the secretary or war said: “On the day after we had
taken the St. Mihiel salient, much of our corps and army artillery which had
operated at St. Mihiel, and our divisions in reserve at other points, were
already on the move toward the area back of the lines between the Meuse river
and the western edge of the Forest of Argonne. With the exception of St. Mihiel,
the old German front line from Switzerland to the east of Rheims was still
intact. In the general attack planned all along the line, the operation assigned
the American army as the hinge of this allied offensive was directed toward the
important railroad communications of the German armies through Mesicres and
Sedan. The enemy must hold fast to this part of his lines or the withdrawal of
his forces with four years’ accumulation of plants and material would be
dangerously imperiled.
“The German army had as yet shown no demoralization,
and, while the mass of its troops had suffered in morale, it first class
divisions and notably its machine gun defense were exhibiting remarkable
tactical efficiency as well as courage. The German general staff was fully aware
of the consequences of a success on the Meuse-Argonne line. Certain that he
would do everything in his power to oppose us, the action was planned with as
much secrecy as possible, and was undertaken with the determination to use all
our divisions in forcing a decision. We expected to draw the best German
divisions to our front and consume them, while the enemy was held under grave
apprehension lest our attack should break his line, which it was our firm
purpose to do.
“Our right flank was protected by the Meuse, while or
left embraced the Argonne Forest, where ravines, hills and elaborate defenses
screened by dense thickets had been generally considered impregnable. Our order
of battle from right to left was the Third corps, from the Meuse to Malancourt,
with the Thirty-third, Eightieth and Fourth divisions in line and the Third
division as corps reserve, the Fifth corps from Malacourt [sic] to Vauquois,
with the Seventieth, Thirty-seventh and Ninety-first divisions in line and the
Thirty-second division corps reserve and the First corps from Vauquois to
Quienne-le-Chateau, with the Thirty-fifth, Twenty-eighth and Seventy-seventh
divisions and the Ninety-second in corps reserve. The army reserve consisted of
the First, Twenty-ninth and Eighty-second division.
“On Sept. 25 our troops quietly took the place of the
French and thinly held the line in this sector, which had long been inactive.”
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