TODAY--AND ONE YEAR AGO An Anniversary Story by Major Frank C. Mahin, of the Harrisburg Recruiting Office, Who Saw Service in France TODAY Harrisburg is officially wel coming her veterans of the World War. Some of them fought the ;desperate Battle of Camp Travis. Texas. ;-omo tho Battle of the Philadelphia Sup iply Depot, others the 2nd Battle of the bklarne, the St. Mihiel, and Meuse-Ar igonne offensives, but wherever they I served, Uiey 'did their bit' to the limit lof their ability. Some were lucky and ,got overseas in combat divisions, some 'thought they were going to be lucky (when they were sent to France, but ate •out their hearts in the S. O. S., without fever even hearing the distant boom of (A gun. Many others, anxious to get (over and fight never left the country (and spent their time training or for hvarding supplies. But Wherever they •served, whatever may have been their IduUes. or their rank in the service, they (played the game like men and did what (the Nation called on them to do. And (furthermore, it was not, in most cases, (the men's own fault that they did not (get out of this country and have the (pleasure of sleeping in the mud, or en during shell and machine gun fire, of 'being hungry, wet and cold, of suffer ing the acute torture of many succes sive nights of hiking with everything Itliey possessed loaded on their backs, rights of utter exhaustion, exhaustion so complete that every step was agony, -and still the necessity existed to go on, •and on they went. A year ago to-day the first stage of the world's greatest battle, the Meuse- Argonne, was about completed. At dawn I - A §F H IK. MAJOR FRANK C. MAHIN of September 26th, Just fourteen days after the start of the St. Mihiel. the Americans went over tho top in their second great offensive, the offensive which broke through to Sedan and cut the German lines of communication end- | ing the war. On the west bank of the 1 Meuse, extending from the river to in- 1 elude most of the Argonne forest, a j distance of about 20 miles, nine divi sions had attacked, accompanied where possible by tanks and protected by some two thousand American and French I guns. The divisions in lino from east i to west were the 33rd (Illinois). 80th! (Western Pennsylvania and West Vir- ! glnia), 4th (Regulars), 70th (Eastern 1 Pennsylvania and Maryland), 37th i (Ohio), 91st (Far Western States), 33th | (Missouri and Kansas), 28th Pennsyl- | ▼anla), and 77th (New York City). On the east bank of the Meuse the 29th Division (New Jersey. Delaware and Maryland) was assisting, as was the 26th (New England) still farther east, j but the first day or two these two di visions were not as actively engaged as , the nine on the west bank. It is of in- : terest to note that of these nine divi- ] slons the 28th was the Pennsylvania j National Guard and the bulk of the 79th and 80th were Pennsylvanians. In ' the entire operation nearly 10ft,000 ] Pennsylvania boys were engaged, about I one thousand of whom were from Har risburg Itself. Objects of Battle The object of this great battle, which i •was In full swing a year ago. was "to draw the best German divisions to our front and to consume them." And that I object was fully accomplished. During J the 47 days the battle lasted, 37 Ger- I man divisions were engaged and con sumed. Furthermore, we drove in 54 miles, took Sedan and cut the main railroad running through Longuyon and Sedan, which carried practically half ,of the reinforcements and supplies for the German Armies engaged farther! (West and north. Our having "drawn the best German divisions to our front" made possible the spectacular advances of the French, British and Belgians. Such famous German divisions as the 2nd and 6th Guard Divisions, the 10th and 29th, were thrown in our way only to be "consumed." And It was 21 American Divisions that did the consum ing of the 37 German. To be sure our divisions contained about twice as many men as the German divisions, but we were attacking over most difficult ground, the same ground that had brought about the disasterous German defeat of Verdun in 1916. ► You remember the French motto at ((Verdun "On ne passeront pas" (They Wiall not pass), well! the Germans re- glpillir order*, They were told MONDAY EVENING," ! """ . ' . ■ -- • i ...- - - . ' f • .. 'H BATTERY E, 10STH FIELD ARTILLERY (FORMERLY THE GOVERNOR'S TROOP) AT VAR ENNES, IX THE ARGONNE FOREST LAYING DOWN BARRAGE O N GERMAN LINES; PICTURE MADE ONE YEAR AGO TODAY. to fight to the death, that if we broke : through it must mean disaster, utter 1 disaster for the Vaterland, and the I warning proved true, for it did. That i they fought to the death everyone : knows who participated in the battle j and it is also proven by the fact that I we only took 16,000 prisoners, most of' them the first two days before the de fense became so desperate. There were • several times as many dead Boche on ' the battle field as there were live ones in the prisoners cages. And that we were paying too, is shown by 120,000 ca'sualties. What the German losses were has never been made public; they probably don't know themselves as their dead were mostly in our hands, as we were steadily advancing. First Big Gain It was the first day, September 26, that we made the big gain. Some divi sions made as much as six miles that I day, across No Man's Land and | through Boche barbed wire and trenches • In an area of inconceivable desolation, i The Germans knew we would attack j sooner or later on the Verdun Front. I but who, other than Americans would ! dream of putting over a big attack I of 17 divisions—the St. Mihiel—on Sep-! tember 12th and then two weeks later I to a day starting another attack, which j probably would be the turning point of j the war. Of course it was impossible j to swing the veteran divisions from the St. Mihiel to the Verdun Front in time I for the uttack. The best that could j be done was get a number of them into I reserve and one, the 4th (Regular), got! into line for the attack. Of the n(ne di visions which went over the top the j morning of the 26th, the 4th, 28th and ! 77th were veteran troops who had at- i tacked before. The 33th and 37th had been in tlie trenches (wo months or mora in quiet sectors, but had never made an attack. The 33rd. 79th, 80th and 91st were all lust in. None of them had been in the trenches more than a few days and really had not even learned what to do in a quiet sector yet, much less to participate in a great attack. Fortun ately, the attack which came out of j the dawn that morning, preceded by an intense roiling barrage and covered by a tremendous bombardment, caught the Boche napping. After the first few minutes of excitement and fear those green troops settled down to the game of chasing Boche out of trenches and dugouts, then thickets and woods, and finally from shattered villages. As the attack progressed it became rather good fun. everything was going our way, we were winning hands down, and the boys were beginning to think that this going over the top wasn't half as bad as it was made out to be. Of course it w.isn't any place for a | mother's darling baby boy who objected 1 to getting muddy and was afraid of getting scratched or his panties torn on nasty barbed wire, but for a boy who liked a bit of excitement and who wasn't particular about leaving pieces of his hide on the barbs, it was fine pickings. Why it was lots better than hunting rdbbits. rabbits just tried to run or I hide wheresfs these rabbits shot back • at you quite frequently so that it made J the game much more of an even break ' and also much more exciting. Besides, | when one stopped to think of it, these ! dirty, gray rabbits you were hunting ; out of their warrens were the same! baby-killing, woman-raping swine who j had laid Belgium and Northern Franca waste. "Why damn it all. it is these birds who caused us all to leave our girls and come over here to hike, to sleep in mud, travel in cattle cars, to be wet and cold for days at a time." Thus thought these attacking Yanks and they proceeded to give the Boche what war is supposed to be. Along towards evening that beautiful rolling barrage which had kept the Boche so busy hunting cover began to dwindle away and peter out. Even the heavier guns didn't seem to be doing very much of anything to help out. Of course not, because the sweet little 75 that had been laying down our barrage. in the morning won't shoot much over six miles and not much over five miles with sufficient accuracy to burrage for us. In other words, that first day the boys ran out of range of most of our artillery anfl as soon as we did that the whole aspect of things changed. The Boche began to come to life; their ma chine gunners didn't have to duck into a dugout to avoid our barrage, and their artillery wasn't having Itself shot to pieces by our guns. So the Boche machine gunners perked up and gave us fits and, the Boche artillery gave us the devil, and as far as the boys could > see our own gunners had hung out their | "out to lunch" sign and had quit us , which was not very encouraging for j new troops in their first attack. Now you who have not seen an active , sector will wonder why the gunners let i the poor mistreated Doughboys get so i far ahead : why didn't they hitch up j and drive up closer where they could | still reach the Boche with their shells. ; But dear reader, even the little 75 j weighs about a ton and a half, and so ! do its caissons and limbers of ammuni- I tion. Consider that for miles the whole i country in front is torn up by trenches, ! ditches varying in width at the top from | 4 to 10 feet and from 6 to 12 feet deep. I Before a sun can cross they must be ! either bridged or filled in. In addition ' the whole surface of the ground is torn I to pieces by shell fire. The shell holes j every where overlap each other and are ] from three to twenty feet deep, sepa- j rated only by knife edge walls which • crumble down and collapse when even ! a man trioc to walk them. It is simply \ impossible to drive a gun or any kind of ] a vehicle through the maze until the j walls between holes have been broken < down. And since many of the holes ! have several feet of water standing in 1 them that just adds to the difficulty, j On top of all that are miles, literally : miles of tangled, rusty barb wire i through which gaps must be cut with wire cutters, strand by strand and the wire bent back out of the way. These entanglements are not fences but jungles of wire—much heavier than ordinary commercial wire—with barbs an inch to i an inch and a half long. As the in- | fantry pass on over No Man's Band | and the Bjche trenches, thousands upon] thousands of engineer troops appear on ! the scene, equipped with picks and j shovels, with wire cutters and with j dynamite and "rack-a-roek." Day and j night, fresh relay after fresh relay, j under constant shell fire, these engineers | worked clearing passable roads for the j guns and their ammunition caissons, j And as usual it had been raining, so j hundreds of truck loads of crushed rock \ had to be brought up and dumped into j holes and soft places in order to get! enough of a road bed for the wheels I of the heavy guns to ride on without i going axle deep In the mud and stick- ' ing tight. Remember, too. that each j gun was supposed to have six horses to | pull it but none had more than four and some were trying to get along with two. Without a pause the engineers worked on all day, all night, all the next day and during the second night I a few guns began to filter through the ] desert and got up where they could ] help out. But meantime the victorious ] and interesting advance of the infantry ] had ended. On tlije second day it was | only at the expense of the utmost de- I termination and heavy losses that any ground at all could be gained. Even j the fbur Inexperienced divisions made desperate efforts to advance, though this was hardly to be expected. But one thing was accomplished dur- i ing the 27th and that was the comple- j tion of the signal corps lines of commu- ! nication. Under Intense enemy fire, fire | that was constantly increasing in ac- j curacy and severity the men of the ! signal battalions brought up their ] wires, their instruments and their ma- ; terial. Everything had to be carried , on men's backs as No Man's Band was still an Impassable desert. And the j signal men's troubles had just begun | when they got their lines installed, j Constant breaks occurred in the wires, I merely laid along the ground. A shell ' would hit nearby and tear out 20 or! 30 feet of wire. Infantry re-inforce- ; ments coming up would trip over the j wire and break it. Each time a break I occurred a lineman had to go out with j a length of spare wire and his insulat- I ing tape and repair the break. It did ] not matter how Intense the barrage j might be. day or night, the wires had to j be kept open and it look men to do it. i I take my hat off to the linemen of the i field signal battalions. Op the 27th the problem of supply] had not reached an acute stage as all of I the bqys who went over the top the day*' before and carried with them two days ! rations. Carrying details brought up I enough ammunition for the machine guns to give them a partial supply in j Case of heavy counter attacks by the • enemy. Those units which had been j careless and wasteful with their ahi- ] munition the day before suffered on the 27th. The obtaining of sufficient, water for actual drinking heeds was becoming a matter of dlrticulty for most of the attacking troops. That country would ordinarily be considered a well watered country—too well watered as far as rains are concerned. Consider any piece of country right around here and think of what water there is available. I There la perhapa a tons with a well BUUUSBURG TEtEGRXPH > and half a mile away a brook. That | seems like plenty of water, but con- I sider that the lines probably pass rgid j way between the farm and the brook, i and that means that the men to get I water must cross a quarter of a mile j .of open ground, ground swept by artil-j • lery and machine gun fire. It meant I ; mean's lives everytime a detail went | | for water. • Medical Corps Difficulties j Heavily as the infantry were suffer j ing there was one branch of the service I that was simply up against it'and that j was the medical corps. The boys who j wore the cadusis went over the top with I the infantry, unarmed. dressed the I wounds of the casualties as they oc [ uurred and followed the advancing lines jas rapidly as possible. Behind the men ; administering first aid came the litter bearers and they had a lovely job. Of j course the ambulance could not cross • No Man's Land, which necessitated the ! carrying of all wounded, unable to walk, ( for distances up to six miles. Now you i get a hundred and seventy-five pound I man on a litter and carry him six miles j through barb wire, across trenches and i shell holes, even with four men to a ; litter, and It is some little job. And I when the litter cases ran into the thou ! sands, and four men to carry each lit- I ter, each trip back and up to the front ?pp— ■ ■ - , ■ - —~ ■ A SNIPHft TN THE SUIX 11E USEE XO CAMOUFLAGE Ilia ACTIVITIES Hi SHOOTINO UP MACHINE QUN KI'AIM, *• , * •' - ' ' * '- : f A 75 BARRAGING FOR THE ADVANCING INFANTRY IN T HE MEUSE-ARGONNE BATTLE. j again taking seven or eight hours, you | may begin to get an inkling of the stu ] pendous job the handling of the wounded presented the first couple of days. Do | you wonder that badly wounded men j iay on tho battle field for twenty-four ] hours or more. Their wounds had been ! dressed and they had been made as j comfortable as possible, but It was be j yosid human power to get them evacu ated to the rear until their turn came. And all the time doctors, hospital corps men and litter bearers were no more immune to shells and bullets than any one else and were themselves suffering heavy casualties while their work of mercy went on. Even the military police were doing their part during those days. Much as they have been cussed by indignant Doughboys over whose activities on pass the M. P.'s. exercised a restraining ln j fluence, their joD was no pleasant one. They were on duty day and night rounding up stragglers who had gotten lost, straightening out traffic tangles, taking charge of the steady stream of prisoners coming back from the front, and in general helping everyone who needed help. ■ No Beds of Roses Perhaps you are wondering what the supply and ammunition trains were do ing all this time. Well! they weren't lying aj-ound on beds of roses taking life easy. Their trucks were running day and night bringing up ammunition and supplies to newly established dumps as far to the front as the engineers had built roads. The idea was that when the roads were completed across No Man's Land, the stuff would be that much nearer the front thus saving on the length of haul. The wagon trains, too, were hauling until the animals dropped dead from exhaustion in the traces. And as the Boohe naturally realized that all this traffic was going on behind the lines they were constantly shelling the roads with their big guns. On their trips back the enemy trucks and wagons carried wounded for whom there was no room on ambulances. Fresh relays of drivers kept the trucks running without pause until they were wrecked or blown up by shells. The mobile repair shops promptly repaired any damage that could be repaired and sent the big gas wagons lumbering on. their way. And meantime the artillery men were not idle even if their, guns were silent Observers and reconnois sance parties went up the afternoon of the 26th and selected battery positions as close to the infantry as they could place guns. Then thousands of artil lerymen came up with picks and shovels and prepared the positions for occu- SEPTEMBER 29, 1919. pancy. All the time the gun crews had to be on duty with the guns to open up i at once in case the Boche drove our doughboys back within effective range. The big gur.s and howitzers were pound ing the Boche batteries as fast as the Allied airplanes discovered them. Of course the position of some of the Boche heavy batteries was previously known and those batteries were given no rest, but most of them were in positions un known to our people. It was, of course, vitally necessary that the now German battery positions be located and also that a close watch be kept on the ground to our front so the allied aviators flew until they were I shot down or out of gas. Just as soon as their tanks were refilled away they went again. During the nights the bombing squadron bombed the German lines of communication with tons of high explosive in order to delay the furnishipg of supplies to the Boche troops Mid the arrival of reinforcements. ' The combat planes were doing their best to shoot down every Boche plane they could find, to prevent them. from bombing us Or getting information of our movements. But with all their efforts many Boche airplanes slipped through and flying only a few hundred feet off the ground they shot us up with' their machine guns. Besides the weather was rainy and misty and that flying conditions most unfavorable. Guifs to the Front But as I Said/ during the night of the ■ some of our guns got through to the front Eight, ten, and even, twelve, horses were hitched to a gun and with, the aid of "every man who could get a hand on the spokes of the wheels or to push, the guns durched and labored through the new roads that were being built As a result the infantry got a little more help the morning of the 28th, and were enabled to make several excel lent local advances. In fact during the day the whole line was pushed forward, in some places as much as a mile and a half. All day long the guns were coming through and at once were get ting into action. The artillerymen rea lizing the necessity for haste worked to the limit of their endurance getting the ipuch needed guns and shells forward, and succeeded to a marvelous degree. But remember that two full days and I nights had passed, during which time i tens of thousands of fresh Boche troops had arrived and hundreds upon hundreds of guns. Also they had gotten their orders to fight to the death, with the result that it was harder to advance a hundred yards on the 28th than it had been to make a milo on the 26th. The fun and excitement of the first day had changed to a miserable Hell. With out pause the Boche guns shelled us, there were enemy machine guns in every clump of bushes, in every ditch,' In every woods, In every fold of the ground. Enough guns of our own were not yet up to lay down an intense roll ing barrage and even if the guns had been up, there wasn't eqough ammuni tion for such a shoot. The result was that every foot wo advanced was pro tected only by our own machine guns, 37 millimeter guns, and .Stokes mortars, with some help from the artillery on , special points. Every foot taken was at the cost of lives, taken by dogged en durance and courage. Besides everyone was tired, wet, cold, plastered with mud, and beginning to get discouraged. Actually many of the men had reached the stage at which their only desire was • to get killed as quickly as possible and have the nilsery over with. >You who read this, if you were not up front in France, cannot conceive of the utter exhaustion, physical, mental, and nerve, i that the men were suffering by the third day. The constant shell fire, the con cussion of exploding, shells that knocked the breath out of you, the never ending expectancy of instaVit death, got every one jangled, shattered nerves to such' a point of tension that it was all you could do to keep from screaming out "For God's sake,, stop a minute and let me get my breath." But that is war to-day; get men on the ragged edge of. a break-down and keep them there un til they do break. The veteran reaches a stage in which he is absolutely fatal istic ; if the enemy shell him, ' well!. they are shelling, and if they aren't Hhelling, well! 'they aren't shelling; maybe they'll get you and maybe they won't Don't think .for a minute the veteran isn't scared, because he is, but he knows how comparatively seldom a shell or a bullet will hit a man. so he calmly takes the Inevitable, whatever it may be, with little nervous strain. The recruit imagines every shell is go to hit him, and every bullet; he can not see how anyone can come of the Hell of battle alive, with the result that in a couple dayß ne is a wreck. Continued to Drive By the night of the 28th a number of the veteran divisions from the St Mihlel were up In rear of the assaulting troops getting ready to relieve them as soon as an opportunity presented itself. But our success had been so phenomenal, considering the difiiculties under' which the attacking troops had been laboring, that the high command did not want to relievo any of the assaulting units as long as they still retained any power for attack. As this was to be such a vital and tremendous offensive, scheduled to last an indefinite period, it was neces sary to get the last ounce of driving power out of a division 'before a fresh division took its. place. So again on the 29th the shattered, exhausted divi sions tried to push forward and in places succeeded. By that .night the advance had, in places, reached a deptli of about nine miles' and was up against the strongly fortified Kriemhilde Stellung. By tljat night some of the new divisions had reached sucli a stage of exhaus tion that many of the men had passed beyond the limit of endurance, and were sneaking back from the front to get out of the awful fire. As a colored soldier said who had hceh up to the front, "dat ain't no.place for no man." A Year Ago To-day The 27th had .been bad enough, the 28th worse, but the 2Dth. a year ago to-day, was l.cyond description. The Boche by that time actually outnum bered our boys; they had several thou sand guns up there, with their lilies of communications untouched and actually shortened by our advance. Their supply of shells camo up in an unbroken stream and I can assure you they kept right on moving, through the gun and over into our positions. Our guns were lip in position all right, hut with the long haul over awful roads it was .impos sible to get enough shells up to give the Boche one-tenth of what they were giving us. And in addition our troops on the cast bank of the river had not advanced any great distance, so the Boche artillery from that side of the river were shooting us up from the right. It is bad enough to get it from the front but when you are being shot lup from both sides it is beyond descrip tion. f In the area in which our boys fought on the 29th there were no trenches and very few dugouts. The men lay in shell holes waiting and hoping their relief would come up before they all died. Machine gun bullets knocked the dirt in on top of them, shells burst all around, it had become impossible to ad vance, most of them were too proud to go to the rear, so thei'e they lay, hungry, cold and wet, waiting, waiting they knew not what. And during all of those days just past, everyone was busy, too busy to pay at | tentton or think of anything but his own particular job. For Instance, no one had time to bury the dead ; Boche and American lay as tliey had fallen throughout the length and breadth of the battle field. The weather was cold, so there was no imperative need of im mediate interment, and it was diffi cult enough to look out for and take care of the living without spending more lives trying to take care of the dead. Not for one minute was anyone dis paraging the heroes who had given their all, but in such a vast and vital affair as that great battle, everyone got a new viewpoint of life and death. Those who had died were beyond our help, those who were living might die if we failed them, or hesitated, or allowed our efforts to be diverted ■ to anything but the winning Of the .battle and ,tlie war. And if those who bad died could have talked, they would have told us not to mind them but to fight on and finish the war. That they really would have felt this way I know because we. who still lived, often spoke of it and of how wise and right it was to work for the living and for success. We all felt that when our turn came we would be only too glad to lie unheeded where we fell until such time as the stress of events allowed burial detachments to get to work. It was through no lack of respect, through no lack of sorrow for the fallen, that they were allowed to lie unburied for days. It was to save the living that wc 'left undisturbed those who had died. How the Men Suffered It was about the 29th'that the doctors started putting two entries on every wounded man's diagnosis card. The two entries were the nature and place of the wound and the other was the phrase' 'acute exhaustion.' Everyone, be he general or colonel, private, cor poral, or captain got those words 'acute exhaustion.' The diagnosis card was a regular baggage tag with various print ed lines to fill in. The tag when filled in was tied in a buttonhole of the wounded man's coat and acoompanied him clear back to the hospital. All treatments and dressings given him were entered on the.tag. Up near the front you could always toil the wounded at a distance for they had their coats open, a white tag fiutterlng on their breasts as they limped painfully to the rear. And really, of all the men you saw up front the most cheerful were the wounded. They knew tbey were legi timately getting out of it all for weeks, maybe for months. For the first time in many, many moons they were going to be clean, have three hot meals a day, and rest in a bed wjth two real honest to-goodness sheets on It, and though you may not realize It, those considerations were well worth a bullet through the arm or leg. < If you could have seen the exhausted troops coming out. after being relieved, you would better be able to realize how lucky the wounded.. were, especially the slightly wounded. And on the 29th the reliefs were being made of some of the new divisions. The first ones to bo re lieved were the 79th and 35th, both of which had suffered very heavily. The Ist (Regular) relieved the 35th and the 3rd (Regular) the 79th. It was a sight to see those men coming out of their four, five, six or more days of fighting; clothes in rags, plastered with mud from head to foot, a week or more growth of beard, eyea sunken, cheek bones as prominent as Indians., cheeks sunken, thin lipped, with an awful look of strain and suffering on thefr faces. They slowly tramped along in absolute sil ence. Fresh troops going In would pass them without remarks or the usual jokes. If anyone spoke it would be at most a low voiced "How It is, Buddy?" and a muttered 'lfs Hell!" would be the only answer. One Great Battlefield And as the days went on more and more divisions were relieved, those re lieving were themselves In turn relieved. It got so that the whole country for miles back of the original front was filled with troops, ammunition dumps, supply dumps, aviation fields, and all ♦he paraphernalia of 1,200,000 men. Divisions came out, rested and drilled, [Continued an Pace li] 11
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