Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

We spent last night in this shell-torn town, and this evening we take up the pursuit of the withdrawing Germans. Donovan’s battalion is out getting touch with them and McKenna is starting up too. The 84th Brigade has already relieved the 26th American Division and a Brigade of the 28th and have been in a hard battle with the enemy at Croix Rouge Farm. It took all their undoubted courage to sweep over the machine gun nests, and they succeeded in doing it at the price of a battalion. The roads coming down are filled with ambulances and trucks carrying the wounded and dripping blood. We are relieving the 167th French Division, but nothing seems definitely settled, and messengers are coming and going with orders and counter orders. I have greater admiration than ever for McCoy these days. He moves in war as in his native element, expending his energies without lost motion or useless friction.

Tonight we go to the Chateau de Fere. If the Germans decide to make a stand at the Ourcq we shall be in action by tomorrow.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] These distinctions were won by men of the 2nd Battalion in a coup de main led by Lieutenants Ogle and Becker (also decorated) in the Baccarat Sector.

[3] The three O’Neills and Bernard Finnerty as also Sergeant Spillane of Machine Gun Company came from the town of Bantry. “Rebel Cork” added new leaves to its laurel wreath of valor in this battle on the plains of Champagne.

CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE OF THE OURCQ

Croix Rouge Farm was the last stand of the Germans south of the Ourcq but it was expected that they would make some sort of resistance on the slopes and in the woods north of this river.

To get to the battlefield from the south one can go on a broad highway running straight north for five miles through the thickly wooded Foret de Fere. Near the northern point of the woods is an old square French Ferme—the Ferme de l’Esperance, and a more pretentious modern dwelling, the Château de Foret. A little further north one comes to the contiguous villages of La Folie and Villers sur Fere. On the map they look like a thin curved caterpillar, with the church and the buildings around its square representing the head. Beyond the square a short curved street known to us as “Dead Man’s Curve” or “Hell’s Corner” leads to the cemetery on the left, with an orchard on the right. From the wall of the orchard or cemetery one can see the whole battlefield of our Division on the Ourcq. A mile and a half to the left across the narrow river is Fere en Tardenois blazing, smoking and crackling all the week under the fire of artillery, first of the French, then of the Germans. About the same distance to the right and also north of the river, lies the village of Sergy where the Iowas were to have their battle. To get the Ourcq straight across the line of vision one faces to the northeast. The eye traverses a downward slope with a few clumps of trees for about eight hundred yards. The river, which would be called a creek in our country, has a small bridge to the left and another a little to the right as we are looking, near the Green Mill or Moulin Vert. Straight ahead beyond the river is a valley, and up the valley a thousand yards north of the river is a house and outbuildings with connecting walls all of stone, forming a large interior court yard. It is Meurcy Farm. A brook three or four feet wide runs down the valley towards us. Its marshy ground is thickly wooded near the Ourcq with patches of underbrush. And about two hundred yards west of the Farm is a thick square patch of wood, the Bois Colas. North of the Farm is a smaller woods, the Bois Brulé.

The whole terrain naturally slopes towards the Ourcq. But tactically the slopes that were of most importance in our battle were those that bound the brook and its valley. Facing the Farm from the bottom of the valley one sees to the left a gradual hill rising northwestwards till it reaches the village of Seringes et Nesles, which lies like an inbent fish-hook, curving around Bois Colas and Meurcy Farm half a mile away. To the east of the brook the rise goes up from the angle of the brook valley and the river valley in two distinct slopes, the first, fairly sharp, the second gradual. Six hundred yards or so north of these crests is a thick, green wall across the northern view. It is the Forest of Nesles. The difficulty of attacking up this little valley towards the Farm lay in the fact that it made a sort of trough, both sides of which could be easily defended by machine guns with a fine field of direct fire, and also by flanking fire from the opposite slope as well as from Meurcy Farm and Bois Colas which lay in the northern angle of the valley. And when the attackers got to the top of the eastern crest there were five hundred yards of level ground to traverse in face of whatever defences might be on the edge of the Forest.

With plenty of artillery to crack the hardest nuts, and with regiments moving forward fairly well in line so that the advance of each would protect the flanks of its neighbors, the problem would not have been a terrific one.