I was in the dressing station one evening when a sturdy young lieutenant walked in with one hand almost blown away. He announced himself to be Lieutenant Wolf of the 150th Machine Gun Battalion, and settled down on the table for his operation with more coolness than most people display when getting their photograph taken. He had just one thing on his mind, and that did not concern himself. He had come in with an ammunition detail, which was ready to start back when a shell got him just outside the hospital door. That detail had to go back. He was much relieved, one would say perfectly contented, when I assured him that I would convey his orders to the sergeant in charge. Through such men battles are won, and nations made famous for bravery.
On one of the days of the battle I was coming up the street of Villers sur Fere with Jack Percy when an enemy gun began to land shells just across the narrow street from us. We dropped alongside a wall when the shriek of the first one told us it was coming across the home plate, and as we lay there I saw a ration wagon coming down the road with George Utermehle, Sergeant of mounted section, H. Q. Company, on the box. George had no whip and was urging his team by throwing cherries at their heads. I shouted at him, “This is a bad corner just now, they’re shelling it.” “Oh, this old team of mine can beat out any shell,” said George, as he hit the ear of his off animal with a cherry; and he went tearing by in time to miss the next, and, I was happy to find out, the last one that came over.
I overheard a conversation in the woods which gave me a good story on Major Donovan. The majority of his battalion have always looked on him as the greatest man in the world. But a certain number were resentful and complaining on account of the hard physical drilling he has continually given them to keep them in condition for just the sort of thing they had to go through last week. As a result of watching him through six days of battle—his coolness, cheerfulness, resourcefulness—there is now no limit to their admiration for him. What I overheard was the partial conversion of the last dissenter. He still had a grouch about what he had been put through during the past year, and three other fellows were pounding him with arguments to prove Donovan’s greatness. Finally he said grudgingly, “Well, I’ll say this: Wild Bill is a son of a ——, but he’s a game one.” When I told it to Donovan, he laughed and said, “Well, Father, when I’m gone write that as my epitaph.”
I shall always think that the finest compliment paid to Major Donovan was the devotion of John Patrick Kayes, an Irishman, very tall, very thin, somewhat stoop-shouldered, not at all young, and a servant of the rich in civil life. The Irish in him had made him a volunteer. He was put in charge of the Battalion H. Q. mess, and I used to tell Donovan that I came to visit him, not on account of his own attractions, but because of what John Kayes had to offer me. He refused to remain behind in action. He wanted to be where the Major was, though he knew that anybody who kept near Donovan stood an excellent chance of being killed. On July 31st he went forward with him on his restless rounds, which led them out of the shelter of Bois Colas into the open country. A German machine gun began firing at them and Kayes was struck in the ankle. He fell forward into the path of the bullets and as different portions of his long body neared the ground he was hit successively in the thigh, arm and face. He still had strength enough to protest that the Major should not risk himself by carrying him in. He died in hospital weeks later, his last thoughts being that Major Donovan would be neglected with him gone. The terms “hero” and “butler” are not generally associated in fiction, but they met in the person of John Patrick Kayes.
Major Lawrence tells me that he met Captain P. P. Rafferty, a doctor in our Divisional Sanitary Train, who told him,
“We had an original character from your outfit through here last week—a Lieutenant Connelly. He was lying on a cot and in a good deal of pain, I knew, when I was surprised to hear him laugh a hearty laugh. I thought he was going out of his head and I went over to him and said, ‘What’s happened to you that’s funny, Lieutenant?’”
“‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I was just thinking about something.’
“‘Let me in on it,’ I said. ‘There is not much to amuse a man happening around here.’
“‘Well,’ said he, ‘it’s just an incident of battle. I was in command of a Company that had just about forty men left, and Major Donovan gave me orders to send some of them one way and some another and take the rest and capture a woods and Meurcy Farm. Just after I started I got into a mix-up and was put out of action and my first thought was ‘Thank God! Now I don’t have to take that damn farm.’”
One of my own prayers of Thanksgiving is “Praise be! Major Lawrence is back.” When I told him so he thanked me for the compliment, but I said, “George, don’t take it as coming from me. It is only for my own peace of mind. Since the day you left I have been pestered by everybody, officers and men, who have the right to wear your red cross armlet, with the plaintive petition, ‘Father Duffy, can’t you do something to get our Major back?’”