III
Longeau, which with the surrounding villages constituted the Regiment’s new home, is a small farming town in the Haute Marne District. Unlike those of Naives, its houses are strongly built and in excellent preservation, and the billets in which (awaiting the completion of barracks) the troops were stationed were dry, warm and comfortable. As soon as possible, the Regiment moved into the new barracks built in the outskirts of Longeau and nearby villages, and was thus more nearly consolidated than it had previously been since its arrival in France.
In Longeau, the 69th Regiment was destined to receive much more practical training for the trenches than it had received in Camp Mills, Naives or Grand. These last two towns had really been merely stopping places, Longeau was a training camp. The most important event of the stay in Longeau was the advent of Colonel John W. Barker. Colonel Hine was withdrawn from his post with the regiment early in January, in order that he might take part in the transportation work for which he was especially fitted. He was succeeded on January 12th by Colonel John W. Barker, National Army. Colonel Barker was an up-state New Yorker, who graduated from West Point in the class of ’09. He had served in the Regular Infantry ever since in Cuba, the Philippines and on the Mexican Border. He saw considerable active service against the Indians, after taking part in almost the last of the Indian fight at Leach Creek, Minnesota.
Four years ago, he was recommended by his arm of the service to represent the Infantry for one year’s duty with a French Infantry Regiment. He was in France on this duty when the great war broke out, and remained as a member of our military organization until the arrival of the American Expeditionary Forces. Then he joined the staff of the Commander in Chief as General Staff Officer, 5th Section. He served General Headquarters in this capacity until personally selected by the Commander in Chief to command the 165th Infantry.
Now the regiment began to take the form of a modern fighting organization. It was Colonel Barker’s task to bring it into conformation with the new Tables of Organization, and to this task the best energies of himself and his staff were immediately devoted.
The specialized platoons (pioneers, trench mortar, one pound cannon) were now organized and intensively trained. Competent enlisted men from these platoons were sent to the schools newly established by General Headquarters and given the advantage of instruction by officers who had gained their knowledge of the subjects in actual warfare conditions. Hand grenades were supplied, and every man taught their effective use. Steel helmets now replaced the historic felt campaign hats. To every man were issued two gas masks, one French gas mask and one English box respirator. By means of constant drill in the rapid adjustment of these masks, under the direction of an officer who had specialized in the subject, the men acquired a proficiency in their use which saved many a life in the Lunéville and Baccarat Sectors and during the weeks of desperate fighting on the banks of the Suippes and the Marne.
It was during the stay in Longeau that the 69th Regiment organized its Intelligence Section, the first in the 42nd Division. Under the direction of the Regimental Intelligence Officer, Lieutenant Basil B. Elmer, U. S. R., there was organized and trained a group of scouts, observers, map-makers and snipers so expert in detecting and hindering the movements of the enemy that they were several times, in the course of the action that came later, asked to attach themselves permanently to the Headquarters of the 42nd Division, in order that they might serve as instructors to the other regimental intelligence sections.
There were several changes in the personnel of the Regiment’s administrative staff. Lieutenant Colonel Reed had been selected for Staff College, and the Regiment never got him back. Captain William Doyle, who had served as Regimental Adjutant in Camp Mills, had been relieved while the regiment was in Naives-en-Blois, and his place taken by Captain Alexander E. Anderson, long in command of Company E. Now Captain Anderson was relieved as Adjutant and placed in command of Headquarters Company. Its former commander, Captain Walter E. Powers, for several years Adjutant of the Regiment, went to the Headquarters of the 42nd Division, leaving an enviable record for absolute efficiency in company and regimental administration. His abilities were soon recognized by his commission as Major and appointment as Divisional Adjutant. Captain Doyle was attached to Brigade Headquarters. Captain Anderson’s work was taken over by Lieutenant William F. McKenna, who was appointed Acting Adjutant, an office which he had filled during part of the Border campaign.
The training of officers and men never flagged while the Regiment was stationed in Longeau. Battalion and company commanders, Lieutenants and enlisted men were sent for brief periods to the special schools instituted by General Headquarters for their benefit, and on their return imparted to others the knowledge they had gained. There were lectures and quizzes every evening in the barracks, supplementary to the instruction received every morning and afternoon in the drill field and on the range. A number of American officers who had seen service at the front were now attached to the Regiment, and their first hand information gave new actuality to the daily work.
The training of the Regiment for the action in which they were soon to take part received new and strong impetus during the month of February by the arrival in camp of the 32nd Battalion of Chasseurs. These famous French soldiers, who had been in violent action ever since 1914, proved to be the most useful instructors for the men of the 69th. On the range and during the long hours of grenade throwing and open and trench warfare practice, their instruction, example and companionship was a constant incentive to the American soldiers. And it was a proud day for the 69th Regiment when its soldiers perceived that in rifle marksmanship and in grenade throwing they had succeeded in proving their superiority to their veteran instructors.
From February 7th to February 13th the Regiment took part in manoeuvres in which it was opposed by the 166th Infantry. These manoeuvres took place in the hilly country around Longeau and had as their ultimate objective the seizure and holding of the town of Brennes. This difficult strategic task was eventually accomplished.
Now the desire of the men for immediate participation in the action, the lure of which had drawn them across the ocean, was so strong as to amount to an obsession. It was evident to any competent observer that the whole Division was ready to render valuable service, as thoroughly trained as any unit in the American contingent. This was evidently the opinion of those who directed the movement of American troops, for on February 16th, 17th and 18th the Regiment marched to Langres, under orders to entrain for the city of Lunéville, in the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, for training with French troops in the line—that is, for actual duty in the trenches.
Lunéville was the largest town in which the Regiment had been stationed since its arrival in France. Some of the companies were put in billets, and some in the Stanislas Barracks, a magnificent stone building in the center of the town. Regimental Headquarters was established in the Stanislas Palace, a building which had previously housed the Administrative staffs of some of the French regiments who since 1914 had done brilliant work in retarding the German advance.
Now the Regiment was placed under the tactical orders of the General commanding the 164th Division of the French Army, the Division then occupying what was known as the Lunéville Sector. On February 21st, the 1st and 2nd Battalions, Headquarters Company and Machine Gun Company paraded in the central square of Lunéville and were reviewed by Major General Bassilière, then commander of the 17th French Army Corps. A few days later, the Regiment was made happy by learning that orders to go to the front had been received. On February 27th and 28th respectively, Companies D and B marched to their posts in the front line trenches, relieving companies of the 15th Group of Chasseurs of the French Army.
And now came a chapter in the history of the 69th Regiment which blotted out from the minds of officers and men all the hard work of the Camp Mills training period, all the privations and discomforts of the ocean trip and the journey across blizzard-beleagured France. The 69th was actually in the fighting—it was called “a period of training in the trenches,” but it was no time of sham-battles and manoeuvres. It was, in fact, an initiation into battle, by way of what was (up to the time of the 42nd Division’s entry into it) a quiet sector.
A “quiet sector” is one in which the German and French lines are separated from each other by a considerable distance—sometimes as much as five kilometers—in which there is no immediate objective for which the troops on either side are striving, in which, finally, shots are seldom fired, the opposing forces being content merely to hold their trenches almost undisturbed. These are also termed “rest sectors,” and the task of holding them is given either to troops wearied by participation in great battles or to troops fresh from the drill field and lacking in experience in actual warfare.
Nothing could have been more idyllic than the Rouge-Bouquet-Chaussailles Subsector of the Lunéville Sector when Company D marched to its strong point before dawn on the morning of February 27th. The subsector is heavily wooded and almost clear of underbrush. As the company marched up the hill through groves of birch, pine, spruce, and fir, and saw to right and left little summer houses, benches, tables and dugout entrances elaborately decorated with rustic woodwork they were rather shocked by the idyllic beauty of what they saw. Not for service in such a recreation park had they crossed the seas. Where were the bursting shells, where was the liquid fire, where were the bayonets of the charging Boches? This series of outposts joined by little ditches seemed at first too much like Central Park to satisfy the battle-hungry soldiers of the 69th.
The impression of absolute peacefulness was further emphasized in the course of a thorough reconnaissance of the subsector made on the morning of the 27th by the Regimental Intelligence Section. They stepped across a ditch and learned that they had passed the front line trenches—had gone “over the top.” They wandered about what seemed to be a deserted pasture and learned that they were in No Man’s Land.
But this tranquillity was not long to endure. The “Fighting Irish” lived up to their reputation—they “started something” at once. Rifles were cracking merrily before Company D’s men had been at their posts for half an hour. And by dusk on the evening of the 27th, Corporal Arthur Trayer and Private John Lyons of Company D had earned the distinction of being the first soldiers of the Regiment to be wounded. A high explosive shell burst on striking the roof of a shack in which they were resting, and the fragments wounded them—not seriously, but enough to warrant sending them to a hospital for a few weeks and later awarding them the coveted wound chevrons.
By the night of the 27th the Chaussaille-Rouge Bouquet Subsector had lost much of its reputation for quietness. The Germans may not have known as yet that Americans were in the trenches opposite them, but they knew at any rate that some new and aggressive unit had taken over the line, and they felt in duty bound to show that they were not in the trenches entirely for a rest curé. So the fight was on.
Regimental Headquarters took over the Regimental Post of Command at Arbre Haut on March 3rd. Company A occupied Strong Point Rouge Bouquet from March 1st to March 7th, Company E from March 7th to 13th, Company L from March 13th to March 21st. Company B occupied Strong Point Chaussailles from March 1st to March 6th, Company H from March 6th to March 12th, Company K from March 12th to March 22nd. Company D occupied Strong Point Sorbiers from March 1st to March 5th, Company F from March 5th to March 11th, Company I from March 11th to March 17th, Company M from March 17th to March 22nd.
There were many minor casualties during the early part of this period, but nothing of a really tragic nature occurred until March 7th. Then came a calamity which would have broken the morale of any regiment less high-spirited than this, so sudden was it and so lamentable.
On that unforgettable Wednesday, all was quiet as if there were no war until exactly 3.20 in the afternoon. Then the enemy started a barrage of minnewerfer shells. Interspersed with 77s they fell steadily and thick for about an hour. One shell fell directly on the roof of a dugout in Rocroi—an old dugout, built by the French four years before. In it were 21 men and one officer—1st Lieutenant John A. Norman of Company E. All were buried in the broken earth and beams, and some were at once killed. Two men were sitting on the edge of the upper bunk in one of the rooms—a falling beam crushed the head of one and left the other uninjured.
At once a working party was organized and began to dig the soldiers from their living grave. There was bombardment after bombardment, but the men kept at work, and eventually they dug out two men alive and five dead. There were living men down in that pit—their voices could be heard, and they were struggling toward the light. Lieutenant Norman could be heard encouraging them and guiding the efforts of their bruised and weary hands and feet. Several times they were at the surface and willing hands were out-stretched to draw them to safety—when well-aimed shells plunged them down again into that place of death. At last, after almost superhuman efforts on the part of men from Company E and from the pioneer platoon of Headquarters Company, after deeds of heroism, brilliant but unavailing, the work was discontinued. The bodies of fourteen men and one officer still lay in that ruined dugout—it was unwise, in view of the constant bombardment of it, to risk the lives of more men in digging for them. So a tablet was engraved and erected above the mound, the last rites of the church were celebrated by Father Duffy, and the place where the men had fought and died became their grave.
After March 7th, no one called the Rouge Bouquet-Chaussailles Sector a rest park, no one complained that it was too peaceful to make them know they were at war. Not only the front line sector but the reserve position at Grand Taille and the road leading from the Battalion Post of Command at Rouge Bouquet to Regimental Headquarters at Arbre Haut were bombarded every day. But the Regiment held the line with undiminished zeal, and gave the enemy an experience novel in this sector in the shape of a Coup de Main on the night of March 20th. Of this adventure, the first of many of the kind in which the regiment was to take part, a brief, accurate account is to be found in the citation of its leader, 1st Lieutenant Henry A. Bootz, (later Captain of Company C), by the Seventh French Army Corps.
His citation reads: “In the course of a raid, led a combat group into the enemy’s lines, going beyond the objective assigned, and recommenced the same operation eight hours later, giving his men an example of the most audacious bravery. Returned to our lines carrying one of his men severely wounded.”
It is a matter of no military importance but of deep interest to everyone who sympathizes with the 69th Regiment and knows its history and traditions, that when the raiding party marched up past Regimental Headquarters on their way to the trenches, there fluttered from the bayonet of one of the men a flag—a green flag marked in gold with the harp that has for centuries been Ireland’s emblem—the harp without the crown—and inscribed “Erin Go Bragh!” This flag had been given to Sergeant Evers of the Band and by a stranger—an old woman who burst through the great crowd that lined the streets when the Regiment marched from the armory to the dock on their journey to Camp Mills and, crying and laughing at the same time, thrust it into his hands. The flag went “over the top” twice that night, and for memory’s sake the name “Rouge Bouquet” was embroidered on it. Later, the embroidered names became so numerous that the design of the flag almost disappeared. Who the woman was who gave the Regiment this appropriate tribute is unknown. Perhaps it was Kathleen in Houlihan herself.
It was natural that this brilliant and utterly unexpected Coup de Main should have the effect of irritating our country’s enemy. It did so, and the result was a dose of “Schrecklichkeit” which at first threatened to prove more serious than the fatal bombardment of the dugout in Rouge Bouquet. It came on the days of the raid—March 20th and March 21st. The French soldiers had been inclined to make light of the 69th Regiment’s elaborate precautions against gas-attacks, of the constant wearing of the French gas mask and the English box respirator at the alert position (the respirator bound across the soldier’s chest ready for immediate use) when in the trenches. The Germans, they said, could not send cloud or projector gas through Rocroi Woods, and their last gas shell attack had been made three years before. Why take such precautions against an improbable danger?
But the French officers and men saw the wisdom of the Regiment’s precautionary measures after March 20th and 21st. For on these dates occurred a gas attack of magnitude unprecedented in this sector, in which the French casualties far outnumbered those of the Americans. The gas sent over in shells that burst along the road from Arbre Haut to the Battalion Post of Command and along the trenches and outposts from Chaussailles to Rouge Bouquet were filled with mustard-gas, which blinded the men and bit into their flesh, and poisoned all blankets, clothing and food that was within the range of its baneful fumes. There were four hundred casualties in the Regiment on those two nightmare-like days—four hundred men, that is, who were taken, blind and suffering, from the fateful forest to the hospital in Lunéville and thence to Vittel and other larger centers for expert medical treatment. Most of these men were from Company K, others from Company M and Headquarters Company. But only two men were immediately killed by the gas, and of the four hundred who went to the hospital only three died—of broncho-pneumonia resulting from the action of the gas on their lungs. To their careful training in the use of the gas mask, the men owed the preservation of their lives in an attack which was intended to destroy all of the battalion then in the line.
A volume could be filled with a record of the heroism displayed by the officers and men of the 69th Regiment during these two days and nights of violent bombardment. The French authorities overwhelmed the Regiment with congratulations and awards. And surely the Croix de Guerre never shone upon breasts more worthy of it than those of First Lieutenant George F. Patton, of the Sanitary Detachment, who, standing in the center of a storm of mustard-gas, coolly removed his mask in order to give a wounded soldier the benefit of his medical attention, or that of First Lieutenant Thomas Martin of Company K, who, when every other officer of his company had been taken away to the hospital, took command of the unit and held the sector through forty-eight hours of almost incessant bombardments. The French Division commander bestowed the Croix de Guerre on Col. Barker, with the following citation:
“Commands a regiment noticeable for its discipline and fine conduct under fire. Has given his troops an example of constant activity and has distinguished himself especially on the 20th of March by going forward under a violent barrage fire to assure himself of the situation and of the state of morale of one of his detachments starting on a raid into the enemy’s lines.”
165 U.S. INF. 1917-1919