Some distance out there was a deep, irregular sand pit. O’Neill, carefully rounding the corner of it, suddenly saw right under his eyes a body of about 25 Germans. He uttered a shout of warning and jumped into the midst of them with his pistol cracking. He had shot down three Germans before they realized what was happening, and produced great confusion amongst them. Some rushed to the other side of the pit while others began firing at O’Neill, who kept firing after he was hit, and when finally carried back to the dressing station had seven bullets in him. The Germans who had run across the sand pit found themselves face to face with Lieutenant Connelly and his little group. What followed was as sudden, as confused in plan, and as resolute in spirit as the action around the log house in Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The Company D men came running from all sides to take part in the fighting. On our side Connelly was hit; also Geaney, Gribbon and McDonough. And James J. Gugliere, Paul McGee, Louis Peterson and Rollie Bedient were killed. This all happened in an instant. The Germans paid a fearful price for it. Those that were left scrambled out of the pit to flee in the direction of their own forces. There they saw the advance elements of O’Neill’s section running back toward them, and they turned toward Bois Colas at a headlong gait. The cry went up that a counter attack was coming. Colonel Hough saw it and telephoned to our headquarters. Anderson heard back in the woods and stormed up from the support with reinforcements. Our machine guns were turned on the advancing Germans; and the advent of a few bedraggled prisoners in dirty field gray uniforms let the rear line see that the counter-attack was a myth. The whole business was over in a few minutes.
But the Germans in Bois Brulé were again at work sweeping the ground with their bullets and it was under fierce fire that John Burke, Joe Lynch, McAuliffe, Bingham and Blake carried in Lieutenant Connelly and the other wounded. Sergeant Murray took command and kept the survivors going forward until they had outposts established in the approaches to Bois Brulé.
Besides those already mentioned, Company D lost, killed in these three days, Corporal Frank Fall, Privates George Johnson, Terance McAree, John McCormick, Michael Romanuk, Harvey J. Venneman, Robert Luff, Frank J. Lackner, Attilio Manfredi, Edward G. Coxe, John Dolan and the senior of the two Michael J. Sheas, who died of his wounds.
July 31st was a day of comparative quiet. The longer the struggle lasted the more it was borne in upon the Lords of High Decision that the ousting of the enemy from their position was a matter for artillery. It was the first time we had the opportunity to observe with reluctant admiration the German development of the use of the machine gun in defensive warfare. To send infantry in under the intense fire of their numerous guns was like feeding paper to a flame. Our artillery, however, was good,—none better in the whole war, we confidently assert, and we waited with assurance for them to reduce the resistance. If our air service were sufficiently developed to give them good photographs of positions, and to register their fire, we felt sure that the Infantry would soon be in a position to make short work of enemy opposition.
That day we had our first experience of another auxiliary arm. The day before there landed at the regimental P. C. a section of our 30th Engineers, our Gas and Flame regiment. With them there was an Australian officer with a name that would qualify him for the 69th, and a young lieutenant who, we discovered after he was killed, was a son of the famous baseball manager, Ned Hanlan of Baltimore. They came out with their men on the 31st and threw over thermite and smoke bombs on Bois Brulé and Meurcy Farm. Under their protection Company D occupied the woods.
Company A, under Lieutenant Stone, finally took possession of the Farm. The first attempt failed. A patrol led by Corporal Sidney Clark started up but four men were hit in the first three minutes, Michaels dying of his wounds. Another attempt was made in the evening and the farm was occupied by a patrol under Corporals John Dennelly and Van Arsdale.
It was evident that the enemy’s resistance was weakening and that it would be a matter of a very short period before he would retreat to his next line of defence. On August 1st the 3rd Battalion relieved the 1st in line. Company M had had serious losses after being drawn out from the line on July 28th, as the battalion had been bombed in its reserve position at the sunken road, and the Company had suffered other losses in a ration detail which was caught out under a heavy fire. Of its officers, Lieutenant Hunt Warner was badly wounded; Lieutenant Collier was wounded but stuck to his post. Edward Brennan, Hugh Kaiser, Alfred Schneider and Johnnie Madden were killed and Sergeant Nicholson wounded. Captain Meaney and Lieutenants McIntyre and Bunnell escaped uninjured. Lieutenant McIntyre was blown into the Ourcq by the concussion of a shell, but he stuck to his task till he finished it.
Company K also suffered further disaster while in reserve, and Sergeants Peter Crotty and Bernard McElroy, who had done prodigious deeds in action, received mortal wounds; and also William Bergen, who did more work as a stretcher bearer than any other man I have ever seen in a battle. Louis Gilbert and Everett Seymour of Company L were killed in the same bombardment and Sam Klosenberg fatally wounded.
In fact, the town of Villers sur Fere was throughout the action a part of the battlefield. Its church square at the northern end was not more than a thousand yards from the place of actual conflict. The front line forces were at times too near each other to allow artillery fire from either side, as each side had to avoid the danger of shelling its own infantry—an event which is always most disastrous to the morale of troops. But the approaches to Villers sur Fere lay under the eyes of the enemy, and they could see a constant stream of liaison men, litter bearers, hobbling wounded, and food and ammunition carriers going in by the entrance to its one street. They knew it to be the center of our web so they very wisely concentrated most of their fire upon it and especially on the square which opened out after the short narrow northern entrance of Dead Man’s Curve. Even before dawn they had been raking its streets as a natural mode of approach of an oncoming enemy, killing and wounding a large number of men. Indeed nearly one-third of those who lost their lives in this action received their death wounds from shell fire in and around Villers sur Fere.
Early in the morning of July 28th, Lieutenant Joseph J. Kilcourse, Medical Officer attached to the Third Battalion, had opened his aid post in the schoolhouse facing on the square, and the development of the battle soon made it the regimental dressing station. The schoolhouse quickly filled up with wounded. A constant stream of limping men, of men with bandages around their heads or with arms carried in rough slings, of men borne on rude litters, were coming into town along the narrow entrance. No ambulances had gotten through and there were no directions as to where a triage could be found. The courtyard in front of the hospital was filled with “walking cases,” discussing the battle with that cheerfulness which is always characteristic of soldiers who are not fatally wounded. A menacing whiz came through the air and a shell fell amongst them, followed by two others, one of which struck the wall and spattered the litter cases with plaster and broken bricks. The survivors in the yard scattered in all directions but nine of them lay quivering or motionless. Lieutenant Kilcourse ran out sobbing and swearing and working like mad to save his patients from further harm. Those who could walk were started down the road towards the Château de Foret in the hope of being picked up by an ambulance or truck. Inside the hospital nobody was seriously hurt, but the men of the Sanitary Detachment labored energetically to get them into places of comparative safety. These were Sergeant 1st Class William Helgers, James Mason, James McCormack, Ferraro, Planeta, Larsen and Daly.