Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

About half an hour after the advance began a rifle bullet struck Colonel Donovan in the leg, going through the bone and rendering him helpless. He would have ordered anybody else to be evacuated, but he refused to allow himself to be removed. In answer to the protests of his Adjutant he swore he would stay there and see the thing through. So he lay in his shell-hole and continued to direct the battle. It was bound to be a one-sided one until the tanks should come up. Our men in the sunken road were being shelled by trench mortars which dropped their shells into the narrow cutting, spreading disaster. Our elements in the more open ground to the rear were under continuous shell fire as the enemy artillery had the exact ranges.

One of the creepiest feelings in war is that of being boxed in by artillery fire. A shell lands to the right of a group of men; no harm in that—all safe. Then one lands to the left, to front, or rear, and the next is closer in between them. Then everybody knows what is happening. That square is in for a shelling until nothing living inside it will escape except by miracle. This was the experience of many a group that morning, and Colonel Donovan and his headquarters men had to undergo it to the utmost. There always has to be a good deal of motion around a Post of Command, so this slope was made a special target. Shells fell all over it, and men were blown out of their holes by direct hits. Thus perished Patrick Connors of Company H and Color Sergeant William Sheahan, one of the finest and bravest of men. Donovan (and Major Anderson, who had come up and was lying in the same hole with him) escaped without further injury. Messages which had to be carried the short distance between his shell-hole and where Kelly was were sent with difficulty, many runners being killed or wounded. They had no direct connection with the rear. It was a lone fight, but both Donovan and Kelly were of the same mind, not to desist from the attack so long as any chance remained of putting it through.

Finally the tanks appeared coming up the road from Sommerance. Everybody was elated. At last there was a chance to get through that wire and mop up those infernal machine gun nests. But the tanks were under artillery fire, some of which was evidently doing damage to them, and with disappointment and disgust the Infantry saw them pause, turn about and rumble down the road to the rear. About 10:30 Captain Buck, who had been wounded and was on his way to the Dressing Station, brought word to Donovan that a counter-attack was evidently in preparation. Donovan’s party urged him to let them carry him back, but he swore at them, and ordered them to bring up more machine guns and the Stokes Mortars, under Lieutenant O’Donohue and Sergeant Fitzsimmons. These were disposed in an advantageous position, which means a dangerous one, and the counter-attack was smothered in its inception.

By 11:00 o’clock Donovan had decided that the 1st Battalion had too many losses to make it possible for them to get through. He told Anderson, who was with him, to return and bring forward his battalion so that Kelly’s men and their wounded could pass through.

Kelly, whose fighting blood was up, at first refused to retire, demanding written orders from his chief before he would give up his claim on the post of danger and glory. Donovan gave the orders and then permitted himself to be carried in, leaving the situation in the very capable hands of Major Anderson.

This relief was begun about noon with the aid of a heavy barrage from our artillery, of which nobody in the line knew the exact reason. The reason was that Brigade had ordered another attack which was originally scheduled for 11:15. Merle-Smith had protested that we had only one battalion left and that it was unwise to use up our last effectives. The only result was that the barrage was extended until noon, on Colonel Mitchell’s report that it would be impossible to get the orders forward to the front by 11:15. He sent the order in three different directions, but none of his messages arrived until the barrage which was to cover the attack had passed over and the relief of the 1st battalion had already begun.

The situation was a stalemate. We had made an advance of three kilometers under desperate conditions, but in spite of our losses and sacrifices we had failed to take our final objective. Well, success is not always the reward of courage. There is no military organization, no matter how famous, that has not its record of failures. In this war every regiment and division in the older armies has known times when it was impossible for them to do all that it was hoped they might be able to accomplish, and most especially when they were called upon to capture well defended trench positions.

Indeed, since 1915, no commanders in the older armies would dream of opposing to strongly wired and entrenched positions the naked breasts of their infantry. They take care that the wire, or part of it at least, is knocked down by artillery or laid flat by tanks before they ask unprotected riflemen to try conclusions with its defenders. When the wire is deep, and still intact, and strongly defended, the infantry can do little but hang their heroic bodies on it.

But we shall not dwell on this. The most glorious day in the history of our regiment in the Civil War was Fredericksburg, where the Old 69th in the Irish Brigade failed to capture the impregnable position on Marye’s Heights, though their dead with the green sprigs in their caps lay in rows before it. Landres et St. Georges is our Fredericksburg and the Kriemhilde Stellung our Marye’s Heights.

Whatever the mature judgment of history may decide about it, the opinion of our Corps Commander, General Summerall, was the one that counted most. He had been in command of the 1st Division when it made its attack in this same area, and was promoted after the battle to the duty of commanding the corps into which we moved. On the evening of the 15th he came to our brigade and made a visit to our P. C. in Exermont to demand why our final objective had not been taken. He was not well handled, Colonel Mitchell is a good soldier, and one of the finest men in the world, but he is entirely too modest to say a strong word in his own defense. Everybody is familiar with the kind of man who, in spite of the merits of his case, makes a poor figure on the witness stand. Donovan, who is an able lawyer and likes the give and take of battle, verbal or otherwise, would have sized up the Corps Commander’s mood and would have been planning a new attack with him after the first ten minutes. Captain Merle-Smith stated the facts of the case—the enfilading fire from the Cote de Chatillon, the unbroken wire in our front, the inadequacy of artillery against it on account of lack of air service to register their fire, the failure of the tanks and the extent of our losses. General Summerall was in no mood for argument. He wanted results, no matter how many men were killed, and he went away more dissatisfied than he had come.