Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

I started up with Sergeant Fitzsimmons on my own sad quest of looking for our dead in the enemy wires. Just ahead of us as we passed through Sommerance a German shell lit on the road right in a party of five German prisoners and four American soldiers. The nine men lay scattered in all directions. We ran up and I found one of ours with both legs blown completely off trying to pull himself up with the aid of a packing case. In spite of his wounds he gave not the slightest evidence of mental shock. While Fitzsimmons ran for an ambulance, he told me his name was Conover, and that he was a Catholic, and said the prayers while I gave him absolution. He had no idea his legs were gone until a soldier lifted him on a stretcher, when I could see in his eyes that he was aware that his body was lifting light. He started to look but I placed my hand on his chest and kept him from seeing. Three men were dead already and it did not seem to me as if any one of them could live. One of the Germans was an officer who cursed his fate that brought him to this death by the fire of his own guns after lasting through four years of war.

When we reached our old battleground I found that one man had gotten there before me on the same errand as myself. It was Father Davitt of Lenox, Mass., who had been detached from the 32nd Division as Corps Chaplain.

On both sides of the Sommerance road as it neared the wire we saw the bodies scattered, still well preserved and recognizable by reason of the cool weather. Right around the wire and in the sunken road that ran into it the Germans had buried them. It was a surprise to find that even now the wire was absolutely unbroken in any place. An occasional shell had landed in it, as was evidenced by the holes made, but the whole fabric was so well bound together that it simply jumped up and then dropped back into place again. The 2nd Division had evidently been wise enough to carry their attack around it as I found just one of their dead and he was lying in the chicane or passage made by the highway as it passed through it.

I arranged with Father Davitt to have his detachment of Pioneers look after the sepulchre of our dead in case the Regiment got orders to move on, and returned to make my report to Colonel Dravo.

The 3rd Battalion got back to our place in the rear during the morning, having suffered some losses from shell fire, amongst them being Jimmy Fay, who had part of his foot blown off. Orders to take up the advance were received on November 2nd, our 3rd Battalion being out of the line less than 24 hours.

The first day’s route laid down for us showed us that we were going to take over in the region to the west of that in which we had been fighting. In the plans for the attack of the 2nd Division they had moved rapidly towards the NNE., leaving the Germans on their left to wake up and find themselves in a salient between our troops and the northern extension of the Argonne Forest. The 78th Division was engaged in expediting the evacuation of these Germans. Two days’ march, neither of them very long, brought us to Brieulles, just north of which we were to relieve the 78th. The only difficulty about the march was for the wagons. Every outfit had lost half of its animals, and those that were left were in miserable condition. The artillery felt this hardest, but it made trouble for the infantry, too, in getting up the supplies and the kitchens. The worn down roads were frightfully crowded with ambulances, trucks, kitchens, guns, caissons, ration and combat wagons, headquarters automobiles; and the M. Ps. were kept swearing till their voices gave out trying to keep traffic conditions tolerable. When we got to Brieulles we found that the Germans were blowing up bridges and roads in their retreat. Colonel Dravo, following tradition and his own generous instincts of being nice to an old fellow like me, had sent me on with his car; and Brown was carrying me rapidly out of Brieulles towards the front when Major Doyle, our Brigade Adjutant, stopped me and said that while it didn’t matter much what became of me, cars were getting scarce and he had decided objections to presenting what was once a perfectly good car to the Germans. I deduced from this that the enemy were in the next town and that I had better stay where I was. The regiment was stopped at Authé, to which place I returned.

The villages which the Germans had left had a number of civilians, and in accordance with the order of the German Commander, the Mayors put a white flag on the church steeple to warn us against shelling them. I have never seen a happier lot of old people in my life than the French civilians whom we were instrumental in saving after four years of captivity. At Authé our P. C. was in what had once been a village inn. The proprietress was old and little and lively and pious. She gave a warm reception to M. l’Aumonier when she heard that I belonged to the Old Church, and immediately proceeded to make plans for a High Mass next Sunday in spite of my telling her that we would not probably be there more than one night. “I have been doing most of the preaching to the people around here the last four years,” she said. “M. le Curé is old and quiet and he hasn’t much to say; but me, I talk, talk, talk all the time. I tell these people that God sent the German Devils amongst them because of their sins. I preach so much that they have given me a nickname. Do you know what they call me? They call me Madame Morale. And I preach to the Germans, too. I tell them they will all be in Hell if they do not mend their ways.” “What do they say to you?” “Most times they laugh and call me Grossmutter, but some of them swear and get mad. But I preach at them just the same. My sister she does not preach, she just prays.”

I went up to see the sister. They must have been both around eighty; and she sat in her chair looking absolutely like Whistler’s picture of his mother, except that the hands were not idle in her lap, but fingered unceasingly a worn rosary.

Madame Morale’s piety was not limited to preaching. It included hospitality. We have brought along some fresh supplies of food for our Headquarters Mess; and as soldiers from different outfits kept drifting in to the kitchen looking for water and incidentally anything else they could get, the old lady dipped into our scanty stock, saying, “Here, my poor boys, there is much food here”—until nothing was left.

In going into action in this last phase of the Argonne fight Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dravo was in command, with Major Anderson second in command, Captain Merle-Smith (vice Kelly, evacuated with fever) commanding the 1st Battalion, Captain Henry A. Bootz, in charge of Anderson’s Battalion, and Major Reilley with the 3rd. We relieved the 78th Division at the village of Artaise-le-Vivier. Here the Germans had left in such a hurry that large stores of flour and vegetables had been left behind. On asking the inhabitants the reason for this extraordinary occurrence we were answered by the word “Avions.” In this sector we have absolute mastery of the air and we see vast flights of planes spread out like wild ducks in V-shaped fashion advancing over the German lines. I almost sympathize with the poor Boches, for I certainly do not like aerial bombs.