We kept going through that day, the 3rd Battalion relieving the 2nd during the night, and reaching on November 8th, the village of Wadelincourt on the heights of the Meuse, directly overlooking Sedan. A patrol from Company M with orders to go down to the Meuse and scout up to the suburbs of Sedan, got nearest of all American troops to that famous city. Eighteen men started out, of whom most were wounded, but Corporal John McLaughlin, with two men, carried out the mission and reported the results of the reconnaissance. Under shell fire that night Albert Bieber and Carl Maritz of Company I were killed and Lieutenant Behrendts, the Company Commander, and many others were wounded. James P. Smith of Company M was also killed and Sergeant Lester Lenhart of Company E was mortally wounded.
That night our Division was relieved by the 40th French Division, which from the beginning had the right of way. As a matter of courtesy the French Division Commander invited a company of the 165th and 166th to enter with his troops for the occupation of the suburbs of Sedan. Company D of our regiment was selected for the purpose and Lieutenant Cassidy had them all ready, but through some mix-up of orders they were not called upon to share in the little ceremony.
On November 8th we marched back to Artaise and the next day to Les Petites Armoises; on the 10th, to Vaux-en-Dieulet. The 11th found us at Sivry-les-Buzancy, where we spent two days.
On our way in I got a rumor that the Armistice was signed. I had always believed that the news of victory and peace would fill me with surging feelings of delight. But it was just the contrary; no doubt because the constraint I had put upon my natural feelings during the year were taken off by the announcement. I knew that in New York and in every city at home and throughout the world men were jubilant at the prospects of peace. But I could think of nothing except the fine lads who had come out with us to this war and who are not alive to enjoy the triumph. All day I had a lonely and an aching heart. It would be a lesser thing to have been killed myself than to go back to the mothers of the dead who would never more return. Luckily for me my dear friend Chaplain Nash came over to see me and walked me for hours through the desolate country, encouraging me to express my every feeling until fatigue and the relief of expression brought me back to a more normal mood.
The men had no certainty that the rumors were true, and discounted them. On November 13th we marched to Landres et Saint Georges which we had striven vainly to enter from the other side five weeks before. The village was almost completely demolished and our troops with others of the Division pitched their shelter tents on all the hills surrounding the town. That night official information was given of the Armistice. The men raided the Engineer and Signal Stores for rockets of all descriptions and the whole sky was filled with lights which in war would have demanded the expenditure of at least a million shells. Bonfires were blazing all over the hillside Finie la Guerre. The war was over.
My duties, like my feelings, still lay in the past. With men from all the companies I went round the battlefield to pay as far as I could my last duties to the dead, to record and in a rough way to beautify their lonely graves, for I knew that soon we would leave this place that their presence hallows, and never look upon it again.
On the 15th, in accordance with Division orders, a formal muster was held. Our strength was 55 officers and 1,637 men, with 8 officers and 43 men attached, 1,300 short of the number we had brought into the Argonne. Of the survivors, not many more than 600 were men who had left New York with the regiment a little over a year ago. And most of these belonged to the Adjutant’s Office, Battalion and Company Headquarters, Kitchens, Band and Supply Company. In the line companies, there are about twenty-five rifle men to each company who are old-timers and nearly all of these have wound stripes earned in earlier engagements. The great bulk of the old regiment is in hospitals, convalescent and casual camps; some of them promoted, some transferred, hundreds of them invalided home, a great many, alas! buried on battlefields or in hospital cemeteries.
CHAPTER X
WITH THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION
On the 16th we took to the road again, happy at the thought that the Rainbow Division had received the honor of being chosen as part of the Army of Occupation. At the end of the first day’s march our Headquarters were at Baalon. Crossing the Meuse at Duns sur Meuse I ran into Hogstrom and Mullen of Company C, whom I had thought dead, but who had been captured by the Germans in the wire on the night of October 14th. They had been well used, they said, except for the fact that there was little to eat. We crossed the Belgian frontier on the morning of November 21st at the village of Fagny, which was all decorated up like Old Home Day. The village band—a nondescript outfit—played us into town. The people had made out of dress material American flags, or rather well-meant attempts at them, as five or six stripes and a dozen stars was about as near as they could come to it. After crossing the border we received a new commanding officer in the person of Colonel Charles R. Howland, a regular army man who had a regiment in the 86th Division. When that Division was broken up for replacement purposes, he was assigned to fill the vacancy in ours. About the same time Colonel Henry J. Reilly, who had been ably handling our brigade during the past five weeks, was superseded by General F. M. Caldwell, U. S. A. Colonel Reilly returned to the command of the 149th F. A.
As we crossed Belgium at its southmost tip, we made only a two days’ job of it, headquarters being at Ste. Marie on November 21st and at Thiaumont November 22nd. My chief impressions were of a clean, orderly, prosperous country as compared with the ruined parts of France, and a very intelligent curé in whose house I stopped at Ste. Marie. When we passed the borders of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at Oberpollen on the 22nd there were no brass bands to greet us. The inhabitants were civil and pleasant but they adopted a correct attitude towards us as foreigners crossing through their territory. Most of the regiment was billetted, and rather well accommodated, at Useldingen, a comfortable town with a fine new parish church. Here we stayed until the 1st of December, till arrangements could be made for our passage into Germany. We are part of the Third Army now, and the Third Army has been organized on a shoe-string. It cannot be said to be functioning very well, and the system of supplies and equipment is not in good shape. We have gotten a good deal of equipment—and we never needed it worse than after leaving the Argonne—but there are many old and ill-fitting shoes, which makes hiking a torture for the men.