The Brighton Boys at St. Mihiel

by James R. Driscoll

It was all over in an instant, but when Ollie tried to rise his left leg caved under him. The Frenchman gave him a helping hand, but even when he was upon his feet he could not walk, could not even touch his left foot to the ground, while the jar and shock of trying to hop sent excruciating pains shooting all the way to his hip.

So the Frenchman, who was not very tall, but extremely broad of shoulder—a man who had been a hard-working, peaceful farmer until the barbarous German armed mobs had come coursing over neutral Belgium and into France—had taken him upon his back and had carried him for more than half a mile to the nearest first-aid station.

Thus it was that all three lads, although able to be moving around, were on the sick list and were called upon, if at all, only for the lightest duties. And so it was, also, that when the great summing up came—the casting of the total, so to speak—when every agency that had been brought to bear or had participated in the campaign was taken into the accounting, the three lads were brought into that semi-clerical, altogether pleasant and highly informative task.

It afforded them an entirely new impression of the magnitude of a single big battle in war, when they learned something of what had taken place in that now historic St. Mihiel Drive, of which they were themselves no small or unimportant part.

All had seen the vast telephone system in operation, a system which was changed and extended and contracted almost hourly as the tide of battle swung back and forth and the advance steadily continued. Nevertheless it was in the nature of a revelation to know that no less than ten thousand men had been engaged in operating it. And supplementing all this, a silent corps of three thousand carrier pigeons had flown back and forth, faithful and often martyred servants in the great cause of humanity, fulfilling their duty unquestioningly, unerringly with that rare sense of direction which man has never fathomed.

More than six thousand telephone instruments were connected up to five thousand miles of wire in the system already mentioned, and together with the pigeon service supplementing it, it afforded a service rivalling that of many fair-sized cities.

Ollie Ogden, going through the figures set forth in one set of reports, uttered an involuntary ejaculation as his total correctly showed that during the drive four thousand, eight hundred motor trucks had carried food, men and munitions into the lines. And in addition to this, miles of American railroad, both standard and narrow gauge, carrying American-made equipment, assisted in the transportation of men and supplies throughout the period of advancing conquest.

Of the more than one hundred thousand detailed maps, together with some forty thousand photographs, completely showing every foot of the ground over which the battle was to be fought, the youths knew before the drive was fully launched. But significant as these facts were of the scope and thoroughness with which the battle was to be carried out, they were not prepared for the proofs of American efficiency which their present duties brought before them.

Apparently no contingency was overlooked, and it was this care in preparation which figured so largely in the sustained drive which utterly routed the theretofore self-confident Germans.

The hospital facilities that were provided for the care of the sick and wounded included thirty-five complete hospital trains, with no less than sixteen thousand beds in the advanced, or almost front line, sector, and fifty-five thousand such additional beds behind the lines. That not more than ten per cent of them ever had to be used was a matter of natural gratification and another proof of the expert strategy which directed every mile of the advance. Nevertheless the preparations had been made, in the event that they were needed, and this sort of leadership served but to strengthen the confidence and determination of the American fighting forces.