MILITARY: Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania in the World War, H. G. Proctor, 1919 - Chapter III Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Banja jbanja@msn.com Proofread by Jesse Davis. 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 48 THE IRON DIVISION CHAPTER III THE LAST HUN DRIVE OUR Pennsylvania regiments now were operating directly with French troops, under French higher command, and in the line they were widely separated, with French regiments between. The troops faced much open country, consisting chiefly of the well-tilled fields for which France is noted, with here and there a clump of trees or bushes, tiny streams, fences and an occasional farm building. Beyond these lay a dense woods, extending to the Marne, known variously in the different localities by the name of the nearest town. The Bois de Conde, near Monthurel, was the scene of some of the stiffest fighting that followed. The real battle line lay right along the Valley of the Marne, a little more than two miles away, and the men of the Pennsylvania regiments were disappointed again to learn they were not actually holding the front line. That was entirely in the hands THE LAST HUN DRIVE 49 of the French in that sector, and French officers who came back to visit the American headquarters and to establish liaison with these support troops confidently predicted that the Boche never would get a foothold on the south bank of the river. The river, they said, was so lined with machine gun nests and barbed wire entanglements that nothing could pass. That evening, Sunday, July 14th, runners brought messages from brigade headquarters to Colonel Brown, commanding the 109th, and Colonel George E. Kemp, of Philadelphia, commanding the 110th. There were little holes in the French line that it was necessary to plug, and the American support was called on to do the plugging. Colonel Brown ordered Captain James B. Cousart, of Philadelphia, acting commander of the third battalion, to send two companies forward to the line, and Colonel Kemp, from his post command, despatched a similar message to Major Joseph H. Thompson, Beaver Falls, commanding his first battalion. Captain Cousart led the expedition from the 109th himself, taking his own company, L, and Company M, commanded by Cap- 50 THE IRON DIVISION tain Edward P. Mackey, of Williamsport. Major Thompson sent Companies B, of New Brighton, and C, of Somerset, from the 110th, commanded respectively by Captains William Fish and William C. Truxal. Captain Cousart's little force was established in the line, Company M below Passysur-Marne, and Company L back of Courtemont-Varennes. The two companies of the 110th were back of Fossoy and Mezy, directly in the great bend of the river. The Dhuys River enters the Marne near that point and this river separated the positions of the 109th and 110th companies. Fossoy, the farthest west of these towns, is only four miles in an air line from Chateau-Thierry, and Passy is about four miles farther east. The reason for this move was two-fold: Marshal Foch had manipulated his forces so that it was felt to be virtually certain the next outbreak of the Germans could be made only at one point, directly southwest from Chateau-Thierry. If the expected happened, the green Pennsylvania troops would receive their baptism of fire within the zone of the operation, but not in the direct line of the thrust. Thus, they THE LAST HUN DRIVE 51 would become seasoned to fire without bearing the responsibility of actually stopping a determined effort. The second reason was that the French had been making heavy concentrations around Chateau-Thierry, and their line to the east was too thin for comfort. Therefore, their units were drawn in somewhat at the flanks, to deepen the defense line, and the Pennsylvania companies were used to fill the gaps thus created. French staff officers accompanied the four companies to the line and disposed them in the pockets left for them, in such a way that there were alternately along that part of the front a French regiment and then an American company. The disposition of the troops was completed well before midnight. The companies left behind had watched their fellows depart on this night adventure with longing, envious eyes, and little groups sat up late discussing the luck that fell to some soldiers and was withheld from others. The men had had no sleep at all the night before and little during the day, but no one in those four companies, facing the Germans at last after so many weary months of 52 THE IRON DIVISION preparation, thought of sleep, even had the artillery fire sweeping in waves along the front or the exigencies of their position permitted it. Eagerly the men tried to pierce the black cloak of night for a first glimpse of the Hun lines. Now and then, as a star shell hung its flare in the sky, they caught glimpses of the river, and sometimes the flash of a gun from the farther shore gave assurance that the Boche, too, was awake and watching. About 11.30 o'clock, the night was shattered by a ripping roar from miles of French batteries in the rear, and the men lay in their trenches while the shells screamed overhead. It was by far the closest the Pennsylvania men had been to intensive artillery fire, and they thought it terrible, having yet to learn what artillery really could be. Days afterward, they learned that prisoners had disclosed the intention of the Germans to attack that night and that the French fire was designed to break up enemy formations and harass and disconcert their artillery concentration. The Germans, with typical Teutonic THE LAST HUN DRIVE 53 adherence to system, paid little attention to the French fire until the hour fixed for their bombardment. Midnight came and went, with the French cannon still bellowing. Wearied men on watch were relieved by comrades and dropped down to rest. At 12.30 o'clock, the German line belched forth the preliminary salvo of what the French afterward described as the most terrific bombardment of the war up to that time. The last German offensive had opened. The gates to glory and to death swung wide for many a Pennsylvania lad that night. That the French did not exaggerate in their characterization of the bombardment was shown in documents taken later on captured prisoners. Among these was a general order to the German troops assuring them of victory, telling them that this was the great "friedensturm," or peace offensive, which was to force the Allies to make peace, and that, when the time came to advance, they would find themselves unopposed. The reason for this, said the order, was that the attack was to be preceded by an artillery preparation that would destroy completely all troops for twenty miles in 54 THE IRON DIVISION front of the German lines. As a matter of fact, shells fell twenty-five miles back of the Allied lines. For mile on mile along that bristling line, the big guns gave tongue, not in gusts or intermittently, as had been the case for days, but continuously. Only later did the men in the trenches learn that the attack covered a front of about sixty-five miles, the most pretentious the Huns had launched. Karl Rosner, the Kaiser's favorite war correspondent, wrote to the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger: "The Emperor listened to the terrible orchestra of our surprise fire attack and looked on the unparalleled picture of the projectiles raging toward the enemy's positions." Pennsylvania's doughboys and engineers shared with the then Prussian War Lord the privilege of listening to the "surprise fire attack," but to them it was like no orchestra mortal ear had ever heard. Most of those who wrote home afterward used a much shorter word of only four letters to describe the event. There was, indeed, a strange unanimity about the expression: "It seemed as if all - had broken loose!" THE LAST HUN DRIVE 55 Crouching in their trenches, powerless to do anything for themselves or each other, they endured as best they could that tremendous ordeal. The very air seemed shattered to bits. No longer was it "the rumbling thunder of the guns," to which they had been giving ear for weeks. Crashing, ear-splitting explosions came so fast they were blended into one vast dissonance that set the nerves to jangling and in more than one instance upset completely the mental poise of our soldiers, so that they had to be restrained forcibly by their comrades from rushing out into the open in their temporary madness. Paris, fifty miles away "as the crow flies," was awakened from its slumber after its holiday celebration by the sound of that Titanic cannonade and saw the flashes, and pictures were jarred from the walls by the trembling of the earth. The regiments back in the support line were little, if any, better off than the four companies of Pennsylvanians up in the front line, for the Hun shells raked the back areas as well as tearing through the front lines. Men clenched their hands to steady shaking nerves against the sheer 56 THE IRON DIVISION physical pressure of that awful noise, but officers, both French and their own, making their way along the lines in imminent peril to encourage the men, found them grimly and amazingly determined and courageous. As usual with the Boche, he had a schedule for everything, but it went wrong at the very start this time. The schedule, as revealed later in captured papers, called for the swinging of prepared pontoon bridges across the Marne at 1.30 o'clock, after one solid hour of artillery preparation, and the advance guards were to be in Montmirail, thirteen miles to the south, at 8.30 o'clock that morning. As showing the dependence placed by the Germans on their own ability to follow such a schedule, it may be permissible here to recall that during the fighting an automobile bearing the black and white cross of the Germans was driven into a village held by Americans. It was immediately surrounded and a German major, leaning out cried, irascibly: "You are not Germans!" "That's very true," replied an American lieutenant. THE LAST HUN DRIVE 57 "But our schedule called for our troops to be here at this time," continued the perplexed German. "They missed connections; that's all. Get out and walk back. You are a prisoner," snapped the American. The anticipatory artillery fire of the French had so harassed the Germans in their final preparations that it was not until two hours after their schedule time, or 3.30 o'clock in the morning, that the pontoons were swung across the river and the infantry advance began. The Prussian Guards led. The bridges swarmed with them. The French and Americans loaded and fired, loaded and fired until rifle barrels grew hot and arms tired. Gaps were torn in the oncoming hordes, only to be filled instantly as the Germans pushed forward from the rear. The execution done among the enemy when they were concentrated in solid masses on the bridges was terrific, and for days afterward the stream, about 100 feet wide in that section, was almost choked with the bodies of Germans. The moment the enemy appeared, the excitement and nerve-strain of our Penn- 58 THE IRON DIVISION sylvania soldiers dropped from them like a robe from a boxer in the ring. Their French comrades said afterward they were amazed and deeply proud of the steadiness and calmness of these new allies. Their officers, even in the inferno of battle, thrilled with pride at the way their men met the baptism of fire. All the new troops going to France have been "blooded" gradually in minor engagements and have been frequently in contact with the enemy before being launched into a major operation. Virtually the only exception to this was the case of the seven divisions of the British regular army that landed in France and were rushed at once into the maelstrom of the first German onslaught in 1914, retreating day by day and being slaughtered and cut to pieces constantly, until they were almost wiped out. It was the intention that the Pennsylvania troops should be carried by slow and easy stages into actual battle, too, but a change in the Boche plans decreed otherwise. Thus, Pennsylvania regiments, with the engineers fighting as infantry, found themselves hurled immediately into front THE LAST HUN DRIVE 59 line fighting in one of the most ambitious German operations of the war. The maximum German effort of the July thrust was made directly along their front. It seemed almost as if the enemy knew he faced many new troops at this point and counted on that to enable him to make a break-through. But Pennsylvania held. The great offensive came to smash. Official reports compiled from information gathered from prisoners and made public afterward showed that the enemy engaged fourteen divisions - approximately 170,000 men - in the first line in this part of the battle-field. Behind these, in support, were probably fourteen additional divisions, some of which, owing to the losses inflicted on those in the front line, were compelled to take part in the fighting. No figures are available as to the number of French, but their lines were so thin that Americans had to be thrust in to stop gaps, and there were fewer than 15,000 men in the Pennsylvania regiments.