MILITARY: Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania in the World War, H. G. Proctor, 1919 - Chapter XV Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Banja jbanja@msn.com Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/1pa/military/ww1/iron/iron-division.htm ________________________________________________ THE IRON DIVISION NATIONAL GUARD OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE WORLD WAR THE AUTHENTIC AND COMPREHENSIVE NARRATIVE OF THE GALLANT DEEDS AND GLORIOUS ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE 28TH DIVISION IN THE WORLD'S GREATEST WAR by H. G. PROCTOR Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, Publishers, 1919 A MARTIAL PANORAMA 227 CHAPTER XV A MARTIAL PANORAMA BUT meanwhile great and portentous things had been happening elsewhere on the long battle line. Up in Flanders, the British troops, with American brigades fighting shoulder to shoulder with them, were driving the Germans eastward. Farther south, the French were hounding the fleeing Germans. And American forces around Soissons were pounding away in such a fashion as to make the positions along the Vesle untenable for their stubborn defenders. The enlisted men knew little or nothing of this and even the junior officers were surprised when word came back from patrols on the north of the river on September 4th, that they met almost no opposition from the enemy. Even his artillery fire had fallen off to a little desultory shelling, so at once a general advance was ordered. Roads in the rear instantly became alive with motor trucks, big guns, columns of 228 THE IRON DIVISION men, wagon trains and all the countless activities of an army on the march. The sight of the main forces crossing the river was a wonderful one to the officers standing on the hills overlooking the scene, and one that they never will 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. Below them lay the villages and towns of the Vesle, pounded almost to dust by the thousands of shells which had fallen upon them during the weeks the two armies contended for their possession. The men went down the hill exactly as they had done so often in war maneuvers and sham battles at training camps. Only an occasional burst of black smoke and a spouting geyser of earth and stones showed it was real warfare, although even that had been so well simulated in the training that, except that now and then a man or two dropped and either lay still or got up and limped slowly back up the hill, the whole thing might have been merely a drama of mimic warfare. Many of the officers who watched did, in fact, compare it with scenes they had witnessed in motion pictures. A MARTIAL PANORAMA 229 Despite the occasional casualty, the line moved steadily forward. On reaching the river, there was little effort to converge at the hastily constructed bridges. Men who were close enough veered over to them, but the rest plunged into the water and either waded or swam across, according to the depth where they happened to be and the individual's ability to swim. Once on the north side, they started up the long slope as imperturbably as they had come down the other side, although every man knew that when they reached the crest of the rise they would face the German machine gun fire from positions on the next ridge to the north. Without faltering an instant, the thin lines topped the rise and disappeared from the watchers to the south, and the fight was on again. The German machine gunners resisted and retired foot by foot, but the American advance was unfaltering. It had been freely predicted that the enemy would make a stand on the high plateau between the Vesle and the Aisne, but the pressure elsewhere on his line to the west and north precluded the possibility of this and he plunged on northward. 230 THE IRON DIVISION The 109th Infantry made its crossing of the Vesle about two and a half miles east of Fismes, the regiment's position on the south of the river having been at Magneux. Its next objective point was Muscourt. The Germans confronting it had not retired so precipitately as those at Fismette and the regiment fought its way across the river and on northward, losing its third commander in the action. Colonel Samuel V. Ham, regular army officer, who had succeeded Colonel Coulter when he was wounded, led the firing line of the regiment across the river. He was so severely wounded that he was unable to move, but remained ten hours on the field looking after the welfare of his men. So conspicuous was his action that he was cited and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the official citation reading as follows: "For extraordinary heroism in action near Magneux, France, September 6, 1918. By courageously leading his firing line in the advance across the Vesle River from Magneux toward Muscourt, Colonel Ham exemplified the greatest heroism and truest leadership, instilling in his men confidence A MARTIAL PANORAMA 231 in their undertaking. Having been severely wounded and unable to move, he remained ten hours on the field of battle, directing the attack, and refused to leave or receive medical attention until his men had been cared for." The Pennsylvania regiments came onto the high ground, from which the lowlands to the north were spread out before them like a panorama, and in the misty distance, fifteen miles away, they could descry the towers of the Cathedral at Laon. This was, in a sense, the Allied promised land. It was defiled and invaded France and, furthermore, Laon, since 1914 had been the pivot of the German line, the bastion upon which the great front made its turn from north and south to east and west. The five miles of hill, plateau and valley lying between the Vesle and the Aisne were not crossed with impunity. It was on the Aisne plateau that another company of the 109th wrote its name high on the scroll of honor. A small wood below the village of Villersen-Prayeres obstructed the advance of the regiment. It had been strongly organized by the Germans and was fairly alive with 232 THE IRON DIVISION Boche machine gunners and snipers. Company G, of the old First, was ordered to dispose of it. The orders were carried out in what the official communique of the next day referred to as a "small but brilliant operation." Considering the small extent of the action and the fact that it was but an incident of the whole battle, the fact that it was mentioned at all in the official reports speaks volumes for the men who carried it out. The glory and distinction were won at a bitter cost. Company G, after the fight was over, ranked side by side with Companies L and M of the same regiment and B and C of the 110th for their splendid stand and heavy losses south of the Marne. There were 125 casualties in the company of 260 men. Included among them were Sergeant Frederick E. Bauer, Sergeant Graham McConnell, Corporal Thomas S. B. Horn, Private Charles A. Knapp, all of Philadelphia, and Sergeant John H. Winthrop, D. S. C., of Bryn Mawr, killed, and Lieutenant Harold A. Fahr and Sergeant Earl Prentzel, both of Willow Grove, Pa.; Corporal Theodore G. Smythe, Bugler Howard W. Munder, Privates Gus A. Faulkner, A MARTIAL PANORAMA 233 Charles Quenzer, Thomas Biddle, Robert C. Dilks, Frederick C. Glenn, Charles Lohmiller and Bernard Horan, all of Philadelphia, wounded. Private Paul Helsel, of Doylestown, Pa., a member of the same company, came out of the battle with six bullet holes through his shirt, two through his breeches, the bayonet of his rifle shot away and a bullet embedded in the first aid packet carried on his hip, but without a scratch on his person. The Americans were subjected at times to a heavy artillery fire, especially while crossing the plateau. For about two miles it was necessary for them to advance in the open on high ground, plainly visible to German observers. There was little cover, and both heavy and light artillery swept the zone, but with slight effect and without checking to any degree the forward movement. The advance of the Americans over the plateau was effected without material loss because, instead of advancing in regular formations, they were filtered into and through the zone, never presenting a satisfactory target. The German stand on the Vesle had 234 THE IRON DIVISION enabled them to remove the bulk of the supplies they had accumulated there and what they could not remove they burned. Vast fires, sending up clouds of smoke in the distance, marked where ammunition dumps and other stocks of supplies were being destroyed that they might not fall into the hands of the Americans. Thus it was that the progress from the Vesle presented a different aspect from that between the Marne and the Vesle, where the way had been impeded in places by the unimaginable quantities of supplies of every conceivable kind the Hun had abandoned in his flight. By September 10th, the pursuit had come to an end, as far as the Iron Division was concerned. The Americans and French were on the Aisne and the enemy again was snarling defiance across a water barrier. The artillery regiments followed the infantry as far as the high ground between the rivers and there took position to blast the Huns away from the Aisne and send them rolling along to their next line, the ancient and historic Chemin- des-Dames, or Road of Women. Battery C, 107th Artillery, of Phoenix- A MARTIAL PANORAMA 235 ville, commanded by Captain Samuel A. Whitaker, of that town, a nephew of former Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker, was the first of the Pennsylvania big gun units to cross the Vesle. On the night of September 10th, the 107th was relieved by the 221st French Artillery Regiment, near the town of Blanzy-les-Fismes. The French used the Americans' horses in moving into positions. They discovered they had taken a wrong road in moving up and just as they turned back the Germans, who apparently had learned the hour of the relief, laid down a heavy barrage. A terrible toll was taken of the French regiment. Lieutenant John Muckel, of the Phoenixville battery, 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, Lieutenant Muckel was thrown twenty-five feet by the explosion of a high-explosive shell, and landed plump in the mangled remains of two horses. All about him were the moans and cries of the wounded and dying Frenchmen. Hee had been so shocked by the shell explosion close to him that he 236 THE IRON DIVISION could move only with difficulty and extreme pain. He was barely conscious, alone in the dark and lost, for the regiment had gone on and his detachment of Americans was scattered. Lieutenant Muckel, realizing he must do something, dragged himself until he came to the outskirts of a village 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 demolished it. The Lieutenant was half buried in the debris. While he lay there, fully expecting never again to rejoin his battery, Sergeant 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 and save himself. The Sergeant defied the Lieutenant, refusing to obey and announcing that he would remain with the officer if the latter would not get away on the horse. At last they compromised, when the Lieutenant had recovered somewhat, by the Sergeant's riding the horse and the A MARTIAL PANORAMA 237 Lieutenant's assisting himself by holding to the animal's tail. In this way they caught up with the battery. Having reached the Aisne, the Twenty-eight Division now was relieved and ordered back to a rest camp, which they sadly needed, after about sixty days of almost unremitting night and day fighting for the infantry and approximately a month of stirring action for the artillery. Thoroughly exhausted, but serene in the knowledge of a task well and gloriously performed, their laurels thick upon them and securely in possession of the manfully earned title, "The Iron Division," what was left of our Pennsylvania men turned their backs upon the scene of action and prepared to enjoy a well-earned period of repose and recreation. It was not to be, however. Disappointments, of which they had been the prey for more than a year, dogged their footsteps. While on the road, moving toward a rest camp as fast as they could travel, orders reached the division to proceed eastward to where General Pershing had begun to assemble the American forces into the First American Army. The emer- 238 THE IRON DIVISION gency which had led to the use of American brigades under French and British higher command had passed and America at last was to have its own army under its own high command, subject only to the supreme Allied commander, Marshal Ferdinand Foch. The men in the ranks were keenly alive to the fact that they were headed for a rest camp, and when their route and general direction were changed overnight and they set off the next day at right angles to the course they had been traveling, they knew something else was in store for the division. Not an officer or man, however, had an inkling of what time only brought forth - that the thing they were about to do was immeasurably greater, more glorious and more difficult than that which they had accomplished. Grumbling among themselves, after the true soldier fashion when not too busily engaged otherwise, the men found some compensation in the knowledge that their herculean efforts of the past weeks were understood and acknowledged by the higher authorities. They cherished with open pride a general order issued by Major- A MARTIAL PANORAMA 239 General Charles H. Muir, the division commander. It was of special significance because he is a regular army officer, not a Pennsylvanian, and therefore not imbued with local or state pride, and also because before the war the National Guard was held in huge contempt by the average regular army officer. Here is what General Muir's general order told the men: "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 of 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 it by gas since its entry into battle. "It is desired that these facts be brought 240 THE IRON DIVISION 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 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 upon itself as an organization of veterans."