Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

In spite of their hard day, Company D wished to remain in the fight with their own battalion. Connelly and Daly represented this to the Major, who was very glad to keep them.

Major Donovan did not try to retain occupation of all the hill, since the results of the gallant work of the preceding battalion were preserved if the German machine guns could be prevented from re-establishing their posts on it. So he placed automatic riflemen and sharp-shooters in the wheatfield, and drew up the main body of his troops under the lea of the high inner bank of the river road, the one under which McKenna’s Battalion had formed for their attack. The Alabamas were under the same bank further to the right, while Anderson’s men held the river bank and the wooded swampy ground across the valley to the left, keeping in touch with the Ohios, who were also along the river.

The afternoon and night passed without any special infantry action. When the strength of the enemy resistance became manifest, the artillery were put to work. Both regiments of our divisional light artillery were given to the 83rd Infantry Brigade: The 151st (Minnesota) behind us and the 149th (Illinois) behind the Ohios. Further back our heavies, the 150th (Indiana) and Corps Artillery were sending their huge missiles over our heads at the enemy’s position. The edges of the forest of Nesles and the roads behind were heavily shelled. This led the enemy to a great deal of counter-battery work, and the infantry had it easier. But their shelters were exposed at all times to machine gun fire and it was dangerous for a man to lift up his head. Companies B and C successively held the hill slope and had many casualties. Captain Reilley was wounded, but kept right on till the whole battle was over. Tommy Mooney was hit four times and came off the hill joking with his friends, who had so often said that he was too thin for a German to hit him. B Company lost good men in James Phillips, William Doyle, Michael Tierney, Joseph Chambers, John A. Lane and Thomas Kelley. That night, too, Barney Barry, soldier and saint, pulled the latchstrings of the gate of Paradise. From C Company also Mat Carberry and Richard Dieringer, Joe Augustine and John O’Connor, good lads all and true, received their mortal wounds and John J. Campbell and John F. Autry, litter bearers of Company A, were killed while performing their work of mercy.

By morning the plans were made for a new alignment for attack. The 165th Infantry was to sweep the valley along both sides of the brook, with Bois Colas on the left of it, and Meurcy Farm on the right, as their immediate objectives. The second battalion was to be in close support. Further left, the Ohios were to advance on the right of the French and occupy the Village of Seringes et Nesles. The movement of the 84th Brigade was co-ordinated with the advance of the 83rd.

This called for a shifting of Donovan’s battalion to the left, to face up the valley. The movement was carried out in the early morning of Monday, July 29th, with few losses, but one of them a costly one. Lieutenant Daly, thinking as usual of the safety of his men, and paying little attention to himself, was killed. Well, as Lieutenant Burke had said of him two days before, there was no place else he would rather be. His sacrifice was made with a generous heart.

The Battalion was lined up in the following order. Right of the brook, Company A, with Lieutenant Baldwin in the lead, and Company B in support, under Captain Reilley, their mission being to debouch from the scattered trees which concealed them, and advance up the gentle slope forward and right to Meurcy Farm. On the left, Company C, under Captain Bootz, had the van, with Company D, under Lieutenant Connelly, in support. Their work was to push on to the left of the brook and clean up Bois Colas, a thickly wooded clump of trees about as big as three city blocks, which lay two hundred yards west of the farm.

Company A had only one officer with them in the attack as Lieutenant D’Aguerro, with Sergeants Duff and Schmidt, had charge of a platoon whose duty it was to carry ammunition. Lieutenant Baldwin, an earnest, courageous man, was in command, with Sergeant Thomas J. Sweeney as First Sergeant. They advanced at eight o’clock in the morning and were immediately made to feel that they were in for a hard time. There were German machine guns now in Meurcy Farm and on both sides of it. The shelling, too, was vigorous, as all their motions could be seen and reported. Sergeants Fred Garretson and Don Matthews led a detachment with great prudence and dexterity, capturing one of the machine gun nests and seven prisoners. The direct attack against the farm, however, was not to be successful that day. Sergeant Scully, who had been badly wounded in the Lunéville raid, was wounded again early in the fight. Acting Sergeant Willie Mehl, whose father used to bring him to our encampment as a lad, was also hit; and many another good man was put out of action forever. Corporal Petersilze was killed and Corporal Michael O’Sullivan, a big, bright, good-natured giant, whom I had held in my arms as a baby, and another of the Campbells of Company A, Louis, this time, slender Harry Kane and sturdy Dan O’Connell, Stephen Curtin, who did good work with his automatic; James Ronan, Leroy Hanover, Joseph P. Myers, James Robinson, John Gray, John Williams, Clyde Evans, John Boneslawski, William Barton, John Gilluly, John Rice, William Thompson, W. V. Kelley, John Fisher, Dennis Donovan, Fred Floar, William Mallin, were killed on the field. Fred Finger was killed going back with the wounded. Tom Fleming and Charles Mack died in the dressing station, and Anthony Michaels, Albert Poole, James Tiffany, Patrick Carlisle and Edward Blanchard died of wounds in the hospital.

Lieutenant Baldwin was in the van waving his pistol, when a machine gun bullet struck him in the chest. His last words were: “Sergeant (to Sweeney), carry out the orders!” His spirit animated the brave men who followed. Moreover, they had still a fine leader in Tom Sweeney, and they kept pushing ahead, some of them meeting their fate under the very walls of the farm. It was all that they could do. One officer and twenty-five men of the diminished company were killed that morning. Multiply the deaths by six to get the total casualties and one can see that few indeed were left. Sergeant Sweeney ordered his men to dig in and wait. They were still full of spirit and vigor. Major Donovan tells of the impression made on him by a New York High School boy who carried his messages under fire with a cigarette nonchalantly drooping from his lip, coming and going as if he were an A. D. T. messenger on Broadway. It was Harold Henderson. Ed. Chamberlain, whom I had always admired, also did credit to the good opinion of his friends. He was hit across the stomach and as he rose to go back, holding the ripped edges together to keep his bowels from falling out, he said to Sweeney: “Have you any messages for the rear?”

It was some hours after Lieutenant Baldwin’s death that Lieutenant Henry Kelley arrived with Major Donovan’s orders to assume command. “Hec” Kelley, a young lawyer who enlisted as a private in B Company when we went to the Border, was never one to take good care of himself in a fight. He lasted just half an hour and was carried back with a bad wound which robbed us of his hearty, courageous presence for the rest of the war. Sweeney and the rest stuck it out till morning. Corporal John F. Dennelly, who had left his country newspaper in Long Island to join the 69th, spent the night with an outpost which was busy discouraging the nocturnal efforts of the Germans to erect barbed wire defenses in front of the farm.

In the morning the remnants of Company A withdrew a slight distance down the valley to merge with Company B. This Company, too, had had its losses. One platoon, under Lieutenant Wheatley, was in line with Company A, and the rest of them were close behind. Lieutenant Wheatley met the usual fate of officers in this battle by being wounded. Timothy McCarthy, Denis Bagley and Albert Lambert were killed and Phil Schron died at the dressing-station. It was a pleasant surprise to everybody in the Company that their gigantic captain, Tom Reilley, was not hit again, as he walked around using a rifle for a crutch and exposing his massive frame to the enemy. But he escaped with no further wounds.