The whole sector has been pinched off by the operation and we are now in touch with the French on our left, the 1st Division being crowded out by the operation, and the 89th Division still occupying the positions to our right. We are faced now in the general direction of Metz, and the Germans occupy the Hindenburg line as their line of defense. Our main business has been to organize our newly acquired positions and to throw out frequent patrols to test out the enemy.
Colonel Donovan established his battalion headquarters in the Forester’s House on the road to Haumont which was the nearest village held by the enemy. Here Sergeant Moore of B Company brought him a German prisoner whom he had just captured. On interrogation he said that he was a sentinel of a machine gun cossack post and that in the post there was an officer and eight men including one non-com. All of these he thought would be willing to surrender except the officer and perhaps the N. C. O. Colonel Donovan suggested that a rope be tied to the prisoner and that he be compelled to guide a patrol to the outpost, but the German protested that it was entirely unnecessary, as he was willing to betray his comrades. A patrol was sent out which captured the outpost and killed the officer, who, as predicted, put up the only resistance encountered. Our patrol was delighted at making the capture, but if a chance shot had ended the career of the man who had betrayed his own officer, no one amongst ours would have shed any tears.
Patrols from the 1st and 2nd battalions were sent out frequently both by day and by night until September 17th. Some prisoners were captured, and we had our own losses. In the first battalion a patrol of Company F came back without Bernard Cafferty and Lawrence Whalen who put for shelter with the rest, under withering German fire, and are probably killed.
I have picked up a couple of stories which relieve a little this sombre side of war. Lieutenant Ogle took out a patrol one dark night and found in his party one soldier without a rifle, for which he rebuked him in a savage whisper. Later on he discovered that it was Father Carpentier who had accompanied the patrol—he says to render spiritual first aid if anyone was wounded. “Yes,” I said, “that’s what the priest told the bishop: that he went to the horse races so as to be handy if one of the jockeys were thrown.”
Allen likes to tell stories on Donovan, for whom he has great admiration. One afternoon he came in from patrol very hungry after being away since early morning, and he dropped into Captain Buck’s shack near Hassavant Farm, which was also occupied by Colonel Donovan. “Captain Buck’s orderly promised me a roast beef sandwich and left the room to prepare it. I repeat I was very hungry and was anticipating with great pleasure the coming roast beef sandwich. In a few minutes the orderly returned with the food. It was a large sandwich with a luscious rare slice of roast beef protruding from the slices of bread, and with it the orderly brought a cup of coffee which he placed with the sandwich on the table. Precisely at this moment a soldier entered with two prisoners; one a small Roumanian about sixteen years of age, and the other a tall, gaunt, dirty looking soldier, both members of a labor battalion. They had been lost in the retreat and had wandered several days in the woods, until encountering one of our patrols they had surrendered. Donovan grabs the sandwich with one hand and the cup of coffee with the other. The small boy got the sandwich and the old man the cup of coffee. I immediately protested ‘Colonel,’ I said, ‘it is against regulations to feed prisoners before they have been questioned at Division. You should not feed these men.’ ‘Allen,’ he said, ‘you ought to be ashamed of yourself. This poor little boy has been, wandering around in the woods for two days with nothing to eat.’ ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘that was my sandwich.’ ‘And you,’ he continued, ‘a great big healthy man, would take his meal away from him.’”
LA MARCHE
September 26th
On September 17th our regiment was relieved by the Alabamas and the men were encamped altogether in the town of La Marche, which consists of one large ferme with a few extra stone buildings and a number of wooden shacks which were constructed by the Germans. In the big farm house we are a happy party. Colonel Mitchell likes to have his officers around him and they share his feelings to the full. We have plenty of provisions, a good many of them German, and Staff and Field Officers are messing together. At table are Colonel Mitchell, Lieutenant Colonel Donovan, Majors Reilley, Anderson, Kelly and Lawrence, Captain Meaney, Adjutant, Captain Merle-Smith, Operations Officer, Lieutenant Rerat, Lieutenant Spencer and myself. If my fancy leads me to the open air I can walk down the road to Pannes where Captain Mangan with Kinney and Frank Smith are working away with their doughty mule-skinners, unless perchance the German shells chase them underground; or across the open field to the woods where our men are leading a lazy though muddy existence.
Various incidents, amusing or tragical as is the way of war, broke the comparative monotony of these ten days. There was a captive observation balloon just outside the village which evidently must have had a good view of the enemy because they were most anxious to get it down. No aeroplane succeeded in setting fire to it, so the Germans got after it with long range guns. One afternoon the fire got so hot that the chauffeur of the truck to which it was attached started down the road to get out of range with the big sausage still floating in the air at the end of its cable, the Germans increasing their range as their target moved. Sergeant Daly, the mess sergeant of the Machine Gun Company, was peacefully crossing the field on a lazy going mule unaware of what it was all about, when a German shell aimed at the aeroplane down the road passed with the speed and noise of a freight train about twenty feet above his head. The mule gave one leap forward, and Daly was not trying to stop him; and two thousand soldiers who had been watching the flight of the balloon burst into a tremendous laugh.
On the night of September 23rd, a large calibre German shell made a direct hit right into a shelter pit in the woods where five of the best men in our machine gun company were lying asleep; Sergeant Frank Gardella, who had won the D. S. C., Sergeant Harry P. Bruhn and Sergeant J. F. Flint, with Privates H. McCallum and William Drake, who was one of three brothers in the company. All five were blown out of the hole by the concussion as high as the lower branches of the trees. Sergeant Flint landed, bruised and stunned, but untouched by the fragments. He gathered himself together and found Gardella killed instantly and the other three terribly wounded. He bound them up, calling for help, which was brought by Lieutenant De Lacour, and the three wounded men were gotten back to the hospital by Major Lawrence and Captain Dudley, but we had little hopes for them, and have since heard that they died of their wounds.