It was a little later, after they had driven the Germans back to the Marne and had retired again to their original positions, that there came to the Pennsylvanians a highly pleasing estimate of their prowess as viewed by the British. A runner from division headquarters brought up a copy of a great London daily newspaper in which appeared the following comment:
"The feature of the battle on which the eyes of all the world are fixed, and those of the enemy with particular intentness, is the conduct of the American troops. The magnificent counter-attack in which the Americans flung back the Germans on the Marne after they had crossed was much more than the outstanding event of the fighting. It was one of the historical incidents of the whole war in its moral significance."
One other bit of cheering news came to them, passing down through the various ranks from headquarters. It told something of what the intelligence officers had gleaned from the study of documents taken from enemy prisoners and dead. One of these latter had been an intelligence officer. He was killed after writing a report on the quality of the American troops and before he had a chance to send it along on its way to German great headquarters. Our men learned that in this report he had written that their morale was not yet broken, that they were young and vigorous soldiers and nearly, if not quite, of the caliber of shock troops, needing only more experience to make them so.
With his troops back at the Marne and balked from moving southward, the enemy now tried to move eastward along the banks of the river toward Epernay. The checking of this move fell to other troops, chiefly French, while our men lay in their trenches, the victims of a continuous, vindictive bombardment, without apparent purpose other than the breaking of that morale of which the dead intelligence officer had written.
The men did not know what had happened. They knew only they wanted either to get away from that sullen bombardment or get out and do something. They were not aware that Foch had unleashed his armies between Château-Thierry and Soissons and that the enemy already was in flight from the Marne, the bombardment being designed to keep those terrible Americans in their trenches until the last Huns had recrossed the river to begin the long retreat northward.
Until July 21st, the Pennsylvania regiments hugged their trenches, nursed their minor hurts and their deadly fatigue, and wondered what was going on out yonder where the fate of Paris and possibly of the war was being decided. The roar of artillery had gradually died down and the men realized that the front was moving away from them. This could mean only one thing—a German retreat: and our soldiers were gladdened, despite the sad gaps in their ranks, with the knowledge that they had played the parts of real men and splendid soldiers in making that retreat compulsory.
Uppermost in the mind of more than one old national guardsman, as evidenced by scores of letters received since that time, was the thought that the despised "tin soldiers" of other days had "come through" with flying colors, and had put their fine old organization well beyond the touch of the finger of scorn.
So, on July 21st, the regiments were ordered back out of the ruck of battle and away from the scene of their hard six days for a rest. They went only a few miles back, but it was a blessed relief for the men—too much and too sudden for some. Men who had come through the battle apparently unscathed, now collapsed utterly as their nerves gave way with the release of the tension, like the snapping of a tight-coiled spring, and more than one went under the physicians' care from that rest camp, miles away from German fire.
Not all were allowed to rest, however. Details were sent to the scene of the recent fighting to clear up and salvage the wreckage of war, to hunt for wounded and to bury the dead. This was not the least trying of their experiences for the men engaged. The bodies of well-liked officers were dragged out from tangles of dead Huns and buried tenderly, each grave being marked by a little wooden cross on which was placed one of the identification disks taken from the dead man, the second being turned over to statistical officers for record purposes.
A week had passed since the first engagement, and the burying squads had no pleasant task, from the physical standpoint, entirely aside from the sadness and depression it entailed. The men got little touches of spiritual uplift from things they found on the battlefield. Such as, for instance, the body of little Alexander Myers, of Green Lane, Montgomery County, a private in Company M, 109th, who had been known in boxing circles about Philadelphia as "Chick" Myers. He was found with five dead Boche about him. And the body of Sergeant Coburn, of the same company, who had been married two days before he sailed for France, was found prone on an automatic rifle, with the ground before him literally covered with dead Huns.