The battery kitchen, in town, a few hundred yards away, put the Germans’ vegetable garden to good use, cooking the carrots, cabbage and turnips in vessels which the Germans had abandoned—a practically complete kitchen equipment. Fresh vegetables were so rare that they were highly appreciated. The wounded cow—divided, according to Solomon’s principle in the dispute of the two women over the babe, in equal parts between E and F batteries—proved to be more venerable than we thought, and though boiled for many hours, provided only soup for our nourishment.
| Highways Swarmed with Troops Advancing to Clear the St. Mihiel Salient |
| Terraced Vineyards about Dernau, Germany, where the 149th Spent Christmas, 1918 |
By the afternoon of September 14 details came to us of the clearing of the entire St. Mihiel salient, freeing 150 square miles and yielding 15,000 prisoners, as well as considerable prestige to the American army in its first independent effort. Occupying the center of the advance, the 42nd Division had advanced nineteen kilometres in twenty-four hours.
The following day came the order for us to advance. The move was a short one, only two kilometres ahead, but the road was uphill through mud up to the axles. The horses, succumbing already under the heavy labor and scanty food, required all the assistance the dismounted men could give them. Sometimes there was question whether the cannoneers were not pushing the horses as well as the caissons. Even such famous teams as Hardy’s “Omar” and “Ambrose,” Grund’s “Bunny” and the mare, Hedgepath’s “Dick” and “Fatima,” and Young’s “Red” and “Bud,” were worked to their utmost to pull up carriage after carriage through “Lepage Avenue,” as the muddy way was named from its resemblance to the famous glue.
The position was on the hill top in the midst of woods, the greater part of which had already been cut by the Germans. A well equipped saw mill was not far away, and from its yards was obtained lumber for the gun pits and for shacks built for the officers and for the kitchen. Corrugated iron huts housed the B. C. detail and the extra cannoneers, who brought up supplies and ammunition on a narrow gauge railroad which ran from LaMarche up through the woods to St. Benoit station in front of them, where there was a full gauge track. When the Alabama doughboys first discovered the narrow gauge railroad, it furnished them high entertainment for a couple of nights. They coasted on flat cars down the hill to LaMarche. They ran the little engine on a wild journey through the woods, tooting the whistle and shouting loud enough to wake Fritz in his dugouts two or three miles away. Then the 117th Engineers took over the rolling stock and operated it for practical instead of amusement purposes.
The gun crews finished their gun pits and dug abris, employing the lumber and corrugated iron left by the enemy, before there was call to fire. Now that the salient was cleared, the chief work was the establishing of a firm defensive line. On the 19th the battery fired twenty rounds on an American aeroplane which had fallen within the enemy lines, in order to destroy it before the enemy carried it off. That day also the battery fired for adjustment.
Rocket guard was established when the data was provided for an indicator board. By sighting along an arrow on this board, the sentinel could tell from the location of the place where the red rocket rose whether it called for normal barrage, “green” barrage, or whatever other barrages might have been given us.
The following morning, September 20, about 5 a. m., the call came over the telephone for normal barrage, no rocket having been seen. No sooner was that fired than orders were given for green barrage. Later we learned that the enemy raiding party had gone around the first barrage but were caught by the second and none escaped back to his lines.
Two days later, September 22, we crawled out of our tents at 3 a. m. to carry 100 rounds per gun from the piles along the road back of the position. From 4 to 5:45 the battery fired a slow bombardment and then a barrage till 6:30, to accompany our infantry’s highly successful raid of Marinbois Farm, strongly held by the enemy. About noon a few rounds were fired on an enemy working party.
At 3:30 a. m., September 23, at the cry, “Normal barrage,” from Kulicek, then on watch at the rocket post, the guard in each gun pit woke the men sleeping in their pup-tents in the bushes behind. Hastily pulling on our shoes, we dashed out into a drizzling rain, and fired about 100 rounds per gun in the next two hours. A raiding party of American troops and one of the enemy had accidentally stumbled on each other in the darkness. The following night there was heavy firing on both sides, and the battery was aroused twice, but fired little either time. Both sides, it seemed, were uneasy in anticipation of the great drive that began September 26.