Then everybody jumped and started forward. The Bois de Remières lay in front of the right flank of our first battalion and as they moved forward, the flank units gave way to the left to pass around instead of through the woods. For a moment they lost direction. The support companies seemed to hesitate at the first belt of wire and began picking their way rather too fastidiously through it. Lieutenant Harold L. Allen was with the headquarters group which consisted of a mélange of runners, pioneers, liaison men, snipers, etc. He tells about Donovan running back from the front line shouting to the men “Get forward, there, what the hell do you think this is, a wake?” These words seemed to inspire Captain Siebert and as the lines moved forward he shouted loud and profane encouragement to the machine gun carriers burdened with boxes of ammunition and struggling forward through the tangle of trenches and broken wire.
Machine gun resistance was met on the enemy’s second line. The assault waves deployed and began firing. Automatic teams and snipers crawled forward to advantageous positions. Donovan, with his usual disregard of danger (never thinking of it in fact, but only occupied with getting through), moved back and forth along the line giving directions, and the enemy resistance did not last long, most of their men surrendering. Donovan led his men at heart-breaking speed over the hills, smashing all resistance before them and sending in small groups of prisoners. St. Baussant was taken at the point of the bayonet and the line swept on. On the hill overlooking Maizerais the battalion was halted once more by machine gun fire, and a battery of artillery behind the village less than five hundred yards away. The Germans had evidently decided to make some sort of a stand, taking advantage of the hill and the protection of the Rupt de Mad. But Donovan with about thirty men jumped into the river, made his way across it under fire, and when the Germans saw this determined assault from their flank they threw up their hands and cried “Kamerad.”
They attempted further resistance near Essey where they had machine gun pits in front of the village, but the resistance was quickly reduced by the aid of a tank and the village was cleared of the enemy. Donovan kept the battalion in the stone walled gardens on the outskirts of the town. Our own barrage was still pounding the village, for Essey represented the objective of the “First Phase, First Day,” and some of our men who wandered into town were hit by flying stone from the walls of houses.
Prisoners began to come in and a prisoner park was established near a big tree on the road leading into the village. French civilians were still living in this village, having spent the period of bombardment in a big dugout—the first civilians that we had the pleasure of actually liberating. They laughed and wept and kissed everybody in sight and drew on their slender stock of provisions to feed the hungry men. The soldiers began wandering everywhere looking for souvenirs. Corporal Kearin was in charge of the prison park. All the captives were from the regiments of the 10th Division, except a few from an attached Minenwerfer company and an artillery regiment. They were eager for fraternization and chatted and laughed with their captors. The men of the support battalions and from the units on our right and left, attracted by the town, began to straggle over. It resembled a County Fair, the prisoner park being the popular attraction of the day. Americans literally swarmed around the prisoners in idle curiosity while others rummaged through the German billets and headquarters looking for pistols, maps, German post-cards and letters—anything that would do for a souvenir.
However, this did not last long, Donovan had his battalion out and going for the objective which was marked as “Second Phase, First Day,” which lay beyond the next town of Pannes; and Anderson, coming in with the bulk of the 2nd Battalion, imposed his rigorous discipline on those whose business it was to be in town. He certainly was not loved for knocking in the head of a barrel of beer which some of the fellows had found (and, by the way, there can be no better proof of the rapidity with which the Germans evacuated the town than the fact that they had left it behind).
Donovan met with further resistance when he arrived before Pannes about one o’clock in the afternoon. He called for artillery and tanks and filtered up his men along the trees on the edge of the road while the Ohios advanced on the left and the Alabamas make a flanking movement against the town from its right. They soon had the opposition broken and by 1:45 P. M. our advanced elements, widely extended, were proceeding from Pannes towards the Bois de Thiaucourt, and at 1:55 the objective “Second Phase, First Day” was occupied by the 165th Infantry.
AT QUENTIN ROOSEVELT’S GRAVE THE CENTRAL FIGURE IS COLONEL McCOY
The whole day it had been a wild gallop with occasional breathing spells when the Germans put up some resistance. From the rising ground around Essey men looked back, and towards the west and east where the 1st and the 89th were also moving forward. It was like a moving picture battle. Tanks were crawling up along the muddy roads and khaki colored figures could be seen moving about in ones and twos and fours along the edges of the woods and across the grassy plains. Toward the rear were passing ever larger groups of prisoners in their blue gray uniforms, carrying their personal belongings and in many cases their own wounded as well as ours on improvised litters. Overhead the shells were still screaming from our heavy artillery with a good deal of answering fire from the German batteries, which caused most of our losses.
The prisoners were mainly Austrians and Austrian Slavs. They had not been very keen about the war at any time and were made less so on finding that they had been left behind after the bulk of the army had withdrawn. Many of them had been in the United States, and the first question that one of them asked was “Can I go back now to Sharon, Pa?” One of them was found seated in a dugout with a bottle of Schnapps and a glass. He immediately offered a drink to his captor saying “I don’t drink it myself, but I thought it would be a good thing to offer to an American who would find me.”