Lieutenant Cassidy, pistol in hand, ran to the opening of the dugout and called on them to surrender. If any one of them had any fight left in him we would have had to mourn the loss of a brave young officer, but they surrendered at discretion, and our whole party, with no casualties, started back as fast as they could, carrying the wounded prisoner and dragging the others with them. It was an excellent job, done with neatness and dispatch. Valuable papers were found on the wounded man and other information was obtained at Division by questioning. The only thing to spoil it was that two of our men, Corporal Joseph Brown and Charles Knowlton got lost in the dark coming in, and have not yet reported.[1]
REHERREY
May 9th, 1918
War is a time of sudden changes and violent wrenches of the heart strings; and we are getting a taste of it even before we enter into the period of battles. We are to lose Colonel Barker. Back in Washington they are looking for men who know the war game as it is played over here, and, as Colonel Barker has been observing it, or engaged in it, since the war began, they have ordered him back to report for duty at the War Department.
Our regrets at his going are lessened by two considerations. The first is that we feel he will get his stars by reason of the change and it will make us glad for him and proud for ourselves to see one of our Colonels made a General. The other is the news that his successor is to be Frank R. McCoy, of General Headquarters. He was not a Colonel on the General Staff when we crossed his path first, but Captain McCoy of the 3rd Cavalry, stationed at Mission, Texas. I did not meet him down there, but heard a whole lot about him—all good—from Colonel Haskell, and from Colonel Gordon Johnston of the 12th New York, who had been a captain with McCoy in the 3rd Cavalry. About the time we got to Mission he was made Chief of Staff to General Parker at Brownsville. Later I read of his going to Mexico as military attaché with our new Ambassador, Mr. Fletcher, and then that General Pershing had reached out after him there to bring him over here with the A. E. F. In the more remote past he has been Aide de Camp to General Woods, Military Aide at the White House under President Roosevelt, and on special duty for the government on various semi-diplomatic missions. If this list of employments had any tendency to make me wonder how much of a soldier he was, it would have vanished quickly after one look at his left breast which is adorned with five service bars. They say in the army that McCoy has done all kinds of duty that an officer can be called upon to do, but has never missed a fight—a good omen for the “Fighting Sixty-Ninth.”
He is a man of good height, of spare athletic figure, with a lean strongly formed face, nose Roman and dominating, brows capacious, eyes and mouth that can be humorous, quizzical or stern, as I learned by watching him, in the first five minutes. He has dignity of bearing, charm of manner and an alert and wide-ranging intelligence that embraces men, books, art, nature. If he only thinks as well of us as we are going to think of him I prophesy that he will have this regiment in the hollow of his hand to do what he likes with it. Everything helps. “McCoy, is it? Well, he has a good name anyway,” said one of the “boys from home.”
Colonel McCoy came to us in the lines, the P. C. being at Reherrey. The popotte (mess) occupied two low-ceiled rooms in a three-room cottage. We sat close together on benches at a long plank table, but it was a jolly company. To give the new Colonel a taste of his Regiment I told him a monologue by one of our men that I had overheard the evening before. There are a couple of benches right in front of my billet, in the narrow space between the dung-heap and the window, and there is always a lot of soldiers around there in their free time. They know I am inside the open window, but pay no attention to my presence—a real compliment.
There was a military discussion on among the bunch from Company C. They got talking about the German policy of evacuating the front line trenches when we send over a concentrated barrage preparatory to a raid, and then letting fly at us with their machine guns as we return empty-handed. Somebody said he thought it was a good thing. This irritated my friend Barney Barry, solid Irishman, good soldier, and I may add, a saintly-living man. “But Oi don’t loike it,” he said, “Oi don’t loike it at all. It looks too much loike rethreatin’,—I think they betther lave us be. Take the foive uv us here—me and Jim Barry and Pat Moran and Moike Cooney, and you Unger—you’re a Dootchman, but you’re a good man—the foive of us in a thrench with our roifles and what we’d have on us to shoot, and a couple uv exthra bandoliers, and a bunch of thim guinny foot-balls (hand grenades) and a bit of wire up in front; and if the young officers u’d only keep their heads, and not be sayin’ ‘Do this; and don’t do that’; gettin’ themselves excoited, and whot’s worse, gettin’ us excoited, but just lave us be, I give ye me wurrd that be the toime mornin’ u’d come, and ye’d come to be buryin’ thim, ye’d think ye had your old job back diggin’ the subway.”
The Colonel was delighted with this sample of the spirit of his Irish regiment. And I determined to let him see the whole works at once. He might as well get the full flavor of the Regiment first as last. We had a concert going on in the next room. Tom O’Kelly sang in his fine full rich baritone the “Low Back Car” and that haunting Scottish melody of “Loch Lomond.”
“Give us a rebel song, Tom,” I called. “What’s that, sir—Father, I mean.” McCoy twinkled delightedly. “A rebel song,” I repeated. “Alright, Father, what shall I sing.” “Oh, you know a dozen of them. ‘The West’s Awake,’ ‘O’Donnel Aboo’ or ‘A Nation Once Again.’” Tom responded readily with “O’Donnel Aboo,” and as its defiant strains ended in a burst of applause he broke into the blood stirring old rebel ballad, “The Wearing of the Green.” Colonel McCoy’s face was beaming. He evidently likes things to have their proper atmosphere. I can see the old Irish 69th is just what he expected it to be, and what he wanted it to be. I see there is no worry in his mind about how these singers of rebel songs will do their part in this war.